by Izzy Shows
I didn't know which theory was more terrifying, but they were both horrible as far as I was concerned.
I slammed into the bag again, dancing to the side and hitting it three more times.
“Give in to me...”
The brand came to life as I let some of the rage slide out into my attacks. I had to work it out of my system, but that usually meant waking it up to some degree. It was nowhere near as good as working out the rage with Mal, or better yet, having him dissipate it with a touch of his hand. Gods, I didn't know how he did that, but it always left me feeling much better after.
And during.
I glared at the bag as I landed a combination punch, slamming my knee into it this time instead of a wide kick.
When was Fred going to attack? I could really use a distraction from myself right now. I was getting nowhere fast with my own thoughts, and I hated being left to my own devices like this when I knew that something else was coming. The tension was building in the back of my neck, right at the base. I knew that he was going to attack, I just didn't know the when or the how of it, and that was what was killing me.
Soon. It had to be soon, right?
The minutes ticked by as sweat dribbled down my forehead and into my eyes. My breath came in small, quick pants. I had to regulate that, get it back under control. Get myself under control.
And then I screamed. I was driven sideways into the wall by the force of the attack on my mind. My head smacked into the concrete wall and I collapsed on the ground, clutching my temples, and screaming out a litany of verbal abuse.
"Stop, stop, stop!" My nails were digging into my head so hard that I thought I smelled blood in the air. The pain was indescribable, worse than anything anyone else had ever visited upon me. Raven had never been so cruel. I hadn't expected this from Fred, not at all, and I could barely think straight to understand that this attack was from Fred.
It may have only been a few moments, not even a minute long, in retrospect. But just then it felt like an eternity of pain, torture worse than anything I could imagine, and it was all I could do to keep my heart beating and air rushing in and out of my lungs.
I wanted to die.
I rocked in place for several minutes, still clutching my head, choking on sobs that tore at my already tender throat. I shook my head, smoothing my hands along my hair—why was it so wet? Was it sweat or was it blood? I felt like my brain had leaked out of my ears, and I wasn't so sure that hadn't happened.
Fred was kind; he gave me time to put myself together, not chiding me for not being stronger. I forgot he was there for a minute, so obsessed was I with the pain that I had just endured.
Finally, I turned my head and looked at him. He was perched on the picnic table, his stumpy legs spread wide, an elbow on each knee. His face was devoid of emotion, and he looked so alien in that moment that I was actually afraid of him.
"Why?" I gasped, dropping my hands to the floor. My arms shook in the effort to hold my tired body up. I looked down at my hands, the athletic tape had come undone at some point and shreds were half hanging off one of my hands. I felt like it then, unwound and precarious and uncared for. Ripped.
"You has to be broken, Miss."
"You couldn't...you couldn't have started slow?"
"No one is going slow on you," he said, his voice sad. "I is doing what I cans to help you."
"I didn't know," I said, my voice just a hint of a whisper in a room that suddenly felt empty.
I had no idea what Fred was, had no idea the power that he held within him, that he never gave even a hint of possessing before.
"You is not needings to know."
I looked at him again, narrowing my eyes. "Do you hate me?" My voice cracked. It made sense, now that I thought about it. Of course, he had to hate me, that was the only explanation for being so cruel, for driving me to my knees with pain I hadn't known could exist before now. He had to hate me, for some reason, or just because he was something other than me. He'd been waiting for the opportunity. It was so clear now.
No one was ever just my friend.
His already large eyes went wide and he jumped off the table, scurrying over to me. Emotion had returned to his face, overwrought now with concern and a little bit of fear. "No, Miss, I is not hating you." He patted at my shoulder, an attempt at soothing me. "I is trying to helps you. You is saying you is needing to be attacked! I is only doing what you asked." I heard the plaintive begging in his voice, felt it tug at my heart strings, but didn't know what to do.
My paranoia was too real, my abandonment issues were clamouring to hit the surface, and the pain was only making it worse.
I sat back on my haunches, pulling in a much-needed breath of air. "OK. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. Sorry."
Now that I was sitting up, he wormed his way under one of my arms and wrapped his around me. "I is not hating you, Miss Blair! You is having to know that."
I patted him on the back, making shushing noises, and leaned my head on his. "I get it, Fred, it's just my own issues. No harm done?" Well, excepting of course the fact that I had been harmed. I was not going for a repeat of that fight with Fred; he could keep his massive powers to himself for all I was concerned. Maybe someday soon we would revisit it, but not right now. I was knackered.
We stayed like that for a long time, just breathing and holding one another. I needed the time to pull myself together, Fred needed the comfort of knowing that he still belonged. I could feel it in the way he clutched at me, as if he was afraid I would cast him out for hurting me. I could never get rid of the little booger head; he was too precious to me.
"Miss Blair?" His voice piped up again.
"Hm?" I felt like I may have dozed off, my head was fuzzy and my eyes heavy.
"There is someones at the door."
And then I heard the incessant pounding that I had somehow ignored.
4
"I'm coming!" I shouted when I made it to the top of the basement stairs, glaring at the front door barely visible from the angle of the hallway. It felt like it had taken forever for me to make it up the stairs, Fred had really done a number on me down there. I staggered down the hallway, taking a quick break here and there to lean against the wall and breathe, then through the living room.
"Who's out there?" My voice was loud and sharp, to penetrate the thick door and let whoever was on the other side know that they weren't dealing with a pushover.
"Please! I need help!" A man's voice cried from the other side, I could hear the panic embedded in it.
I squinted at the door, trying to decide what to do. I liked to think that I was a kind person, willing to help those who needed it, but I was also a cautious person. I'd done a lot of foolhardy things the past two years—trusting Aidan could probably be described as one such decision—and I was trying to do better nowadays. Dropping my wards was a dangerous decision; if the wrong kind of person was on the other side, I was totally screwed.
Chewing on my lip, I looked over my shoulder to where Fred was standing a few paces away.
"What do you think?"
He closed his eyes, humming. I quirked an eyebrow. What the fuck is that?
His eyes popped open and he nodded his head. "Is OK, Miss Blair. You cans open the door."
All right, well that was cool, whatever it was. I muttered the spells and opened the door.
Standing on the other side was a tall man, with skin the colour of copper and mahogany brown eyes. His black hair hung past his shoulders. But none of that registered first—the blood pumping out of his leg did.
"Fuck!" I reached out and grabbed his arm, yanking him inside my house. I hadn't invited him in, something I refused to do, but I wasn't about to let him bleed to death on my porch.
He wavered on unsteady legs once inside. I spared the briefest second to shut the door and replace the wards before I turned to assess the damage of the situation.
"Sit down," I said sharply, pointing at the couch. Surprisingly, he did as he was told.
"Fred, get me a bowl of water and some towels. And one of my old T-shirts...and a spatula." Fred disappeared to gather the supplies I'd asked for. I followed the man to the couch, kneeling there once he'd laid down. It was interesting to be on the other side of this sort of situation; I was usually the one on the couch, with Shawn kneeling beside me to fix my stupid mistakes. "What did you do to yourself?" I peered at his bloody calf, visible through the shredded material of his pants.
"I didn't," he said through clenched and chattering teeth.
Yeah, I'd be cold too, if I'd lost that much blood right at the dawn of winter.
I bit my lip, lifting one side of his torn trousers so I could see the wound better. It was deep, down into the muscle. He was definitely going to have a scar, if he made it out of this at all. I was going to call Shawn as soon as I had him cleaned up a little, and hopefully stabilised the bleeding. If I couldn't accomplish that...
Well, the man had made it to my house, one could only hope that he would hang on long enough for Shawn to get here.
Fred trotted over, the towels and shirt slung over one shoulder, his hands carrying a bowl almost as big as his head, filled with water. The spatula was tucked under one arm. He placed the bowl down and dropped the spatula beside me, then handed me the towels and shirt. I put the towels down by the bowl and held onto the shirt. Gripping it with two hands, I shredded it down the middle, then again to make a skinnier piece. I didn't know much of anything about any of this medical shit, but I figured it was better than nothing to try and tie off the area right above the wound. Maybe that would help to stop the bleeding—I couldn't make it worse, could I?
"I hope this doesn't hurt," I said, gingerly picking up his leg so that I could slide one piece of cloth underneath. He groaned, half sitting up in a crunch, his eyes shut tight. Trying not to bite clear through my lip, I concentrated on the task at hand. I made sure not to get the cloth on the cut in his calf, positioning it just above. I then picked up the spatula, tied the cloth off around the long end, then began twisting it. Once it was tight against the skin, I picked up another piece of cloth and tied the whole thing in place.
It was a shitty fucking tourniquet, but it was the best I could do. I didn't know much at all about any of it, but Shawn would be here to fix it, if what I was doing didn't kill the man first.
I looked up at the man's face, which had gone a sickly white. He was shaking, his lips were blue, and he didn't seem entirely aware of where he was or what was going on. I twisted around to grab my phone off the coffee table and punched in Shawn's number.
"Hello?"
"Hey, it's Blair."
"Ah," he said; I could practically hear him grinning. "Miss me?"
"Yes, but that's beside the point. I've got a bleeding man in my living room that could really use your help."
"Fuck, what, OK. Why haven't you taken him to a hospital?"
"That's a good question," I said, nodding, and smacking my forehead. I moved the phone away from my mouth. "Hey, hey, mate. Do you want to go to a hospital?"
"No...hospital..."
"Ah, that answers that." I repositioned the phone at my mouth again. "He doesn't want to go to a hospital." Neither did I. I tend to fry the electricals in places like that and didn’t want to be responsible for that kind of damage.
"Why the fuck does no one ever go to the bloody hospital," he said. "All right, I'll be there as soon as I can. I'm leaving right now."
"Thank you!"
He clicked off the other line and I put my phone back on the coffee table.
"Who...was that?" The man on my couch gasped out, having the audacity to muster up a glare.
"Don't look at me like that, he's the guy who's going to save you from any mistakes I make," I said. I picked up one of the towels and dipped it in the water before I started to clean off some of the blood. "His name is Shawn, by the way. He's a doctor. He's pulled me out of more than one shitty situation, so I can personally attest to him being the perfect guy for the job. Bonus, he doesn't talk about anything he does for me. So, any secrets you have, they're safe."
That seemed to make him relax a bit, which only piqued my curiosity further. What secrets did he have?
"So, what happened?"
He hadn't answered my question the first time I'd asked it, not really, and I wanted to know.
He shifted his gaze away from me. "I was attacked."
"I can see that. You've lost a lot of blood."
"I should be healing..." He frowned, sitting up a little to look at my tourniquet. "Why is it still so bad?"
Now it was my turn to frown. "Because you're not Superman? You're going to be off this leg for a while, I can tell you that."
He shook his head. "No, that's not how it works."
I huffed, throwing down the towel I had just bloodied, and put my fists on my hips. "You're being very cryptic. I finally understand why Shawn was so fed up with me. What's going on? Why did you come to my door begging for help, and what attacked you?"
Surprisingly, he chuckled. "You're everything I expected you to be."
"Well, what the hell does that even mean?" I glared at him.
"I'm sorry. My name is Kailan. I am a Fae of the Wylde."
My eyes went as wide as was humanly possible and my hands began to tremble. A Fae? In the flesh? I hadn't thought I was actually going to get to meet one of those—everything Raven had told me about them was so...other worldly and a little terrifying. But here was one, sitting on my couch and bleeding profusely, just like a regular bloke.
"You're a Fae?" I squeaked, trying to regain control of myself.
He flashed me a cheeky grin. "Yes. That is what I mean when I say I should be healing—flesh wounds like these do not inhibit my species, and are usually healed within an hour or two of sustaining them. Maybe a bit longer, if the damage is worse, but this should at least be showing signs of healing. Your little...device there." He waved a hand at my tourniquet. "Should not be necessary. I have never taken so long to heal. Something is wrong."
"Were you bitten by something poisonous? Well, no, that doesn't make sense, this doesn't look like a bite..." I trailed off at the sober expression on his face. "Is this a bite?"
"No. It's a scratch. And I mean that literally, it's a scratch from a monster of a thing. It has no name. We call them Utakar—unknown."
"How...how can something be unknown? That doesn't make sense."
He shrugged. "They come from nowhere, they have no people to call home, no land that pays homage to them, no people who remember them. They are Unknown."
I looked over at Fred, eyes narrowed. "Do you know what he's talking about?"
"Yes...and no...it is impossible to be knowings, Miss Blair. What he says is a truth."
I sighed. "I guess I'll have to take your word for it."
"You should. I am not capable of speaking an untruth."
"What?" I laughed. "That can't be. Everyone can lie."
"Not the Fae," he said, shaking his head. "We are incapable of direct deception. It's why we're so adept at other manners of it." He winked at me, the cheeky bastard.
Just then there was another knocking at my door. I gave him a look—we were so not done with this conversation—and went to open the door. Shawn was on the other side, medical bag in hand.
"Hey, thanks for coming over," I said, standing aside so that he could walk in.
"So, this is the patient?" he said, eyeing the man on the couch.
I shut the door, put the wards back up, then turned around. "Oh yeah, and get this, he's a Fae."
Kailan's eyes all but bugged out of his head at my declaration, causing me to dissolve into a fit of giggles.
"You can't just announce that!"
But Shawn, who had adapted very well to the notion of the supernatural, kept his cool. He just nodded and walked over. "Anything I need to know about your biology to do my job properly?"
Kailan looked from me to Shawn and back again, obviously uncertain of who to address for this mi
sstep. "I really don't know what to tell you, other than that I shouldn't need you. My body should be repairing itself even as we speak, but it does not appear to be. I was attacked three hours ago."
"And you've been losing blood like this for that long?" I gaped at him.
"It would appear you're healing to some degree, then," Shawn said. "Just barely fast enough to keep you alive, but not fast enough to get ahead of whatever this is and heal yourself."
He had accepted the notion of someone being able to heal on an unnatural scale rather quickly. I was impressed.
"I would agree with your summation," Kailan said, nodding.
I rolled my eyes. They were both getting used to one another far more quickly than I had anticipated, but I guess that’s guys for you. They could bond over just about anything. Football. Beer. Supernatural creatures. Anything.
Shawn walked over to the couch, and just then appeared to see the tourniquet I had made. "The fuck is that?"
My cheeks flamed. "It's a tourniquet," I mumbled. "Obviously."
"It's a spatula."
"I made do with what I had! If you don't like it, do something else."
"I will. I'll give him a tourniquet that won't ruin his leg," he said, chuckling. He put his bag down beside the bowl of water and knelt in the same place I had. He began to busy himself there, preparing a fancy looking tourniquet that he'd taken out of his bag before he dismantled the one I had hastily put together. "All jokes aside, it is good that you thought of that. If it's left in place for too long though, it can do serious nerve damage. But for a short amount of time, it's not bad at all."
I all but preened at his praise. I didn't know anything about medicine, so not fucking it up completely was good for me, and having a doctor tell me that I did a good job was just amazing. Yes, I was taking 'not bad at all' to be 'good job.' Shush.