Lillian's head was foggy, and she felt... Strange. Like something was attached to her skin... Ouch. Whatever it was, it was tight, and it hurt, and for some reason, she felt... Afraid.
What time was it? Had she fallen asleep? She hadn't thought she was that tired, but maybe... What is that smell... And why does my head hurt and... and..."
The cement blocks on her eyelids, finally shifted, and she lifted them slowly to reveal a room covered in... Was That Plastic Sheeting! Oh Fuck! Oh Fuck! Oh Fuck! She was in a Freaking Murder House, and it was exactly how Kaeron described it.
Blood rushed to her head, and she was assaulted by a sudden rush of nausea, but when she tried to hold her mouth shut, she realized what that feeling was on her skin... It was rope! Because, of course, it was! Wouldn't be much of a murder house without a trusty rope.
She projectile vomited everywhere and even got some on herself, and the room that already stank like strong bleach, now also smelled like vomit, and she just wanted to cry, and.. and..
Tears started rolling down her cheek.
"Why are you crying? Did you have a nightmare?"
Lillian froze. She hadn't noticed that she wasn't alone. Was this her captor? Wait? Why was she in a murder room if this was about the bounty. Had Talion changed her bounty to wanted Alive.. or Dead!?
She was disoriented and everything was foggy but she could tell that her captor was a woman and a very beautiful one at that.
"Pretty girls don't cry." The woman said unfazed by Lillian's not answering, getting right up in her face, putting a hand over Lillian's face just before the two got nose to nose.
Her voice was perfect. Too perfect.
"What are you doing!? And. Why did.."Lillian asked, pulling at the rope and when that didn't work, she cleared her throat. "And why did you chloroform me and take me hostage!?"
Swear to the god Venus, the god of truth. Lillian heard the woman smile before she took her hand away from Lillian's face, blinding Lillian with the sudden rush of light, and the bitch punched Lillian so hard. Her head snapped to the left, and she heard a pop.
The room was spinning, and she felt like vomiting, but she was able to muster up the strength to ask tearfully. "Why are you doing this to me? Tailon doesn't want me tortured now as well... Does he?"
"Tailon? Tailon Atriuem?" Said a different woman who also had a beautiful voice. The restraints on Lillian's neck stopped her from moving her head around too much, so she couldn't turn and look at the speaker, but she seemed... nicer than the one that just almost knocked her teeth out, which admittedly sounded redundant, but she just had this feeling that this woman was different somehow... at the very least, she was stable... hopefully.
"What do you want from me?" Lillian asked again, quieter this time. She was tasting blood, and her face felt like she had run into a wall. Whoever had hit her knew what they were doing, and she'd do just about anything not to feel that again.
"We just want to talk." Said the new woman.
"Maybe this time you'll listen." Said her must-be kidnapper.
"Sorry, next time, I'll invite the stranger on my balcony to tea and crumpets and ask them about work, and maybe just for the fun of it I'd..."
"Please miss...?" The other woman said.
"What? You guys don't have my record on file laying somewhere around, or do you guys always go abducting complete strangers?"
Her left leg was beginning to shake.
"Kaeron Lucian Deitas." The woman said with a deliberate slowness.
A cold breeze danced up Lillian's spine, chilling her to the bone. This wasn't about Talion's or her own sins. This was Kaerons fault, and that meant that the list of suspects had just sky rocketed into numbers, that for her own mental health reasons, she decided not to try and calculate.
"What about him."
"I absolutely... care for that man, and I look out for the things I care for. So I thought, why not get the what's what, and the who's who, from his latest... Assignment."
Lillian shivered and bit her tongue. The way the woman said "assignment" made every muscle in her body lock and scream to get as far away from the psycho as possible.
"Like I said, we just want to talk. About you. Where you came from, and where you're headed. So this could all be over just as fast as it began. With less dramatics and gagging this time, I hope. You just have to tell us what we want to know, but if not... please. Just tell us everything. I don't want to watch you being tortured." Said the nicer one, though Lillian was starting to get the feeling that the woman wasn't much nicer.
"You guys must be really confident that Kaeron hasn't already started looking for me." She smiled, pretending to be more confident than how she actually felt. "You know he will come looking, though? Like you said, I am his assignment, and he's already promised not to let anybody hurt me, so when he finds you, and he will find you. If you've laid even a finger on my head. You will be lucky if he is so kind but to leave any of your families friends' families alive. Do you understand me?"
The psycho woman started laughing. "Sounds like hanging around with somebody with abilities on a higher level than yours has made a poor little mouse cocky. But sadly for you, little mouse. I have been a predator for all my life, and you're nothing more than a quick snack for me, so I'll give you one last chance, girlie. Who are you, and who is Kaeron protecting you from."
. .. ..... "My name is Lillian Hearthstone, and Kaeron is protecting me from Talion Atriuem, with help from his sister Lexie."
"What!?" The two women exclaimed simultaneously.
"You're the person that pompous prick has been so obsessed with finding." *sniff sniff* "But you're only human." Said the nice one.
"Thanks for the reminder, and you're a spineless kidnapper who had to sneak attack a defenseless human girl, so who should really be embarrassed here?"
She felt more than heard the oncoming footsteps stomping towards her unprotected backside.
"Get out of my way, Mala, we're getting started now!" Said the psycho woman. "I'll show her a sneak attack."
Maybe she had gone too far.
"Don't use my name, remember, and I'd like to avoid hurting her as long as she's cooperating, so please calm down."
Lillian let out a small breath of relief; She thought that she was about to get hit a...
Plop.
It all happened so fast. One second, she was sitting there celebrating not being hit, and the next, she was underwater screaming helplessly for air, and the next, she was back in the room soaked to the bone without a sign of the culprit.
She began coughing up and gagging violently on the water that was still trapped in her lungs.
"What. The.." Lillian tried battling the feeling of panic rising inside her. She had never thought that she'd leave Solaris by drowning on land, but here she was dying... by drowning... on land.
And just as sudden as it all began, the pain up and vanished, and the crushing pressure of the water plugging her airways disappeared alongside it.
"I'm sorry about that, but you had to be held accountable for provoking my associate. You need to know that we are the ones in charge, and you will treat us as such, now. Do you understand me?"
Lillian nodded obediently. She couldn't upset them anymore. They clearly knew what they were getting into and who Kaeron was, and yet they didn't seem to care in the slightest, so hurting her really was an option, one that she'd rather they'd not pursue.
"Good. Now, why is Talion after you?"
Lillian sucked in a breath. "I'll answer anything else but that, you want to know where I was before this? Talion kidnapped me as a child, and ever since that day, I have been living in his mansion..."
Lillian tried to scream bloody murder. The water was back and with it the head splitting pain, but this time, it felt as if the pressure from it were pressing her bones together, as if they were magnets trying to get to their opposite attraction.
Poof. And just like that, the water was gone, but the pain in her lungs had yet to subside, and the water was still blocking her oxygen as if it were being made anew out of thin air.
"You will hide nothing from us." The woman said.
"But I can't, it's.."
Whack!
One of the women had walked up and jammed their fist into her ribs, launching her limply through the air, a scream caught in her chest, and her head exploded with an overload of information before...
Crash! Split!
The impact from the hard stone floor had her spitting up blood and disoriented. The drop had also taken little wooden pieces from her throne of pain, but besides a few chips to the frame and paint. It was still the perfect torture chair.
Somebody lifted her upright with an unnerving amount of ease and speed and set her back in place.
"You will answer her questions, or better yet. Don't. That just means more fun for me."
The woman bent down as the other woman came into view, and for the first time, Lillian saw their faces without the fog from sleep, and a sob caught in her aching throat.
Both of them were wearing those creepy killer clown masks Lillianwould always see being sold on tv, and the woman in front of her was inspecting a really sharp knife like she was planning on testing it in the horrifyingly near future.
"So what's it going to be? Girlie."
Lillian wanted to cry. She wanted to scream, and she wanted to cry, and she wanted to punch, and she wanted to kick, and she especially wanted to cry. She wanted to open her eyes to it all just being a horrible, terrible, god-awful nightmare, and instead of the agony she was about to endure. She wanted to open her eyes to see that she had really just fallen asleep on Lex's lap again, listening to some gossip channel on the radio. She wanted to open her eyes.
And be anywhere else, but here.
******
Kaeron had slept. He stretched his arms in either direction and inhaled deeply. Kaeron still slept time from time. Not even a paranoid, dragon shifter who was trained to be a war machine could avoid sleeping forever, but last night's sleep was... different. It was a good, different, though. He couldn't remember the last time he had slept like that, if ever, but he knew that it couldn't happen again, atleast not while he was on this job; he couldn't risk to take his eyes off the two girls he was protecting for long or they'd probably burn down wherever it was they were staying.
He attempted to move his leg but it had somehow gotten trapped under Lex. She groaned. "It's too early to be moving around right now. Can't you wait another hour or so before being... you."
He rolled his eyes. "How is it that you aren't adopted."
She lifted her head and smiled that goofy smile of hers. "Who says I'm not."
He met her grin with his own, which quickly turned into them laughing.
"Seriously though, Lexie Orphan Girl Deitas. I need to go check on your friend, suspicious girl in the back of the room, Hearthstone."
She scoffed and lifted herself off of his leg, standing and stretched. "If anyone looks suspicious, brother, it would be you."
He scoffed back but didn't respond. Lillian wasn't the only thing him and his sister disagreed on. She was just the most consistent thing of late.
He stood and walked over to and out the door followed closely by Lex. The hallway was a tight fit for him. He had to crouch down a bit in order to walk, and thanks to his wide, powerful body, in a suffocatingly small hall. He couldn't walk side by side with Lex, and the entire upstairs hallway was way too long for only having three rooms up there.
They came to a stop at Lillian's room door, and he knocked before letting himself in. "Lamb, get yo ass up, we gotta talk..."
"Oh My God, Lily!" Lex shouted, pushing past him.
Lex reeked of fear, but Kaeron's focus was now on another scent as urgency kicked in, and he picked up his pace.
Blood.
"Kaeron hurry, she's bleeding bad, and she's been..."