I felt her breath ruffle my hair. I smelled the sweat on her skin and felt the warmth from her body.
My eyes were on Max. On his dark, furious face. In my mind I heard his heart throb with fear, which had my own heartbeat share in that rhythm of terror.
Max feared what this woman might do to me and his fear terrified me.
Behind muffled hearing - Max's screamed threats to Tess still appearing far away - I focused on the foreign arms around my body. Almost naturally, I was conjuring the same method of protection which I had used when Sean had been attempting to force himself on me.
With the energy building inside of me, a soft hint of relief playing in Max's dark eyes, Tess didn't react the same way that Sean did. Instead of anger and pain, Tess simply laughed while her skin started heating.
"He's taught you a thing or two, hasn't he?" she asked in the most gleeful of voices. "That's my man. Ever the resourceful one."
Even with the smell of burning skin I started to doubt that it was working. Maybe the connection was more deprived of energy than I had thought.
Tess continued to restrain me. Even with her skin burning, her hold was only tightening, cutting off my air supply.
My eyes were on Max that entire time. I saw the relief flee his facial features. I saw him start rattling the bars again, desperation and dark anger rolling off him, when he realized that my attack on Tess wasn't making her release me.
"Hasn't anyone ever told you to not play with fire?" Tess mused in my ear, while the heat of her skin was starting to hurt my own due to the close proximity of our bodies.
"Get off me," I pressed out through clenched teeth. Max's anger was feeding into me, slowly obliterating my fear and vulnerability.
By sharing the memories of his encounters with Tess with me, Max was making me stronger. He was providing me with an instant reason to dislike - even hate - the person who had separated me from Max and Isabel.
Tess giggled. The giggle quickly burst into full fledged laughter with an air of lunacy and I saw Max's face pale behind the shadows of his anger.
Her arm pressed into my throat, choking me. The panic at not being able to breathe started in my chest, with my burning lungs, and quickly spread through my body.
She was strong. The strength was plausibly originating from her insanity. But since it was being used to strangle me, my body tapped into an adrenaline-induced well of strength.
Her arm around my middle had captured my arms, but only barely. Teetering on breathlessness, I freed my arms and used them to pull at the arm she had around my throat. The oxygen deprivation was making me weak, but within seconds I had managed to pull her arm upwards where I angled my chin downwards to bite into her burnt underarm.
Fluid which had accumulated in the heat blisters on her arm crept into my mouth when my teeth ruptured the thin layer. The warm transparent fluid touched the tastebuds on my tongue, but I pressed the disgust back and sank my teeth as deep as I could to inflict as much pain as possible.
I could fight without powers too. I had the survival instinct of a human being.
Finally, pain seemed to register with her and her laughter melted into a loud deep scream that tore through my ears while I got loose and spun out of her grip.
For the first time, I was face to face with the real Theresa Harding.
My first observation was that she was a tattered version of the Tess I had met in my dreams.
Her hair was tangled and oily, a disorganized mess around her face. Her skin was red and blistering (most likely because of what I had just tried to do to her), with blood dripping from the arm where I had just bit her. Her clothes were torn and dirty, her feet bare and blackened. The expression in her eyes was feral. Her lips had been painted with lipstick, but the lipstick had ended up more around the outside of the lips than on the lips themselves, making her look frighteningly similar to a clown.
And the clown was happily smiling at me.
She's insane, I realized.
Max had told me as much, so had Max's father and Dresden, but to actually stand in front of a mentally disturbed person was horrifying.
She was only two feet away from me, still I could smell her. Smell her inability to look after her own hygiene, smell her madness.
I took a step back towards Max. A slow and cautious step, since I had no idea what powers Tess had (except mind illusions). I was prepared to throw the protective field up, almost positive that she would fire a blast at me.
She did indeed raise her arm and she did release some kind of energy. But behind the protective field I had instantly produced between her and me, I saw the bars to the gate behind me (gradually, but quickly) turn a rusty color before lighting up in a glowing red.
Turning to face Max and Isabel - my side facing Tess - I saw Max rapidly jerk his hands off the bars and I felt the whispers of his burn through the connection. Keeping a constant eye on Tess in my peripheral vision, I noted that she was still keeping her arm raised, continuously heating the bars with her energy.
In effect, she was preventing me from getting physically close to Max, which would have strengthened our connection.
"Did you get the news, Max?" Tess singsonged with increasing redness to her face. "Did you hear about your daddy dearest?"
Max's face hardened while Tess continued, "But he never was very dear to you, was he? You always had a problem with him, if I remember correctly."
"Shut up," I growled at her.
Max didn't move. He barely appeared to be breathing. Tess turned, twinkling mirthful eyes at me.
"It's true," she emphasized with innocently raised eyebrows. It transformed her dirty face into the definition of a contradiction. Dirt and innocence. "He hasn't told you?"
She took a step towards me, but I remained rooted to my spot. I didn't want her to intimidate me. Her teeth slowly sinking into her full bottom lip, she languidly shook her head while clicking her tongue. "Max showed me everything. How much he hates being an alien. How much he hates his father. How annoying his sister is."
"I didn't show you anything," Max stated coldly. Flatly.
Isabel was standing behind Max, face pale. My gaze stayed on her face, frowning at her color, recalling how she had been having difficulties walking just now. I looked at the blood on her clothes. Had there been that much before?
Next to me, Tess dropped her arm. The bars still glowed with heat and would surely retain the heat for some time.
Obviously refueling her energy, Tess turned to me, eyes cold but playful. "They are so soft, aren't they? Lovely, really. Warm. Heats you up."
I pulled my gaze away from Isabel, simultaneously feeling how Max's attention became divided. Split between me and his sister.
"What the hell are you talking about?" I bit out.
My eyes strayed to the stains of blood on the floor below Tess' arm. Even with my aversion to blood, it was better to look at that dark redness than Tess' face.
"His lips," Tess answered simply.
The realization tore painfully through my chest. I visualized him - Max - kissing her and freezing trembles rushed through me with sharp prickling torment.
She angled her head to the side, blackness filling her eyes, while she pondered, "I don't like to share."
"Me neither," I grumbled, anger boiling in me. I wonder what she was referring to. But I had my suspicions.
She was insinuating that Max was hers.
Her laughter was sudden and loud. It stopped just as abruptly as it had started with her picking up on some kind of singsong rhyming, "Ring around the rosie," she took a step towards me, "a pocket full of posies," I took a step back, "one," she looked at Max, "two," she looked at my face with a grin spanning from ear to ear, "three," her eyes traveled down my body, making me feel exposed and ridiculed by the judging expression on her face, "four." She grew still and whispered, "We all fall down down."
"You're insane," I whispered back.
"You'll see," Tess said. "He'll break his crown and you will tumble."
"He doesn't belong to anyone," I told her tightly, my chest aching with darkness. "Especially not you."
"You little whore," she said quietly.
I swallowed. There was something in her voice that made me feel guilty even though I had done nothing wrong. Even though I was not what she was accusing me of.
Her voice grew louder, "He was mine. They promised! He is mine."
She frowned, looking lost as her gaze fell to the ground and flickered across the floor without aim. She continued talking, mostly to herself, "Our children will never meet him. Tiny seeds that will never grow. They will eat me up from the inside. They're starving. Eggs without life."
I couldn't look away. My eyes were fixed on her, tuned into her rambles. I was so transfixed by her words that her instant refocusing took me off guard.
Her head shot back up, her eyes wide opened with her pupils divulging the irises, her voice threatening and cold with the loud hiss of, "You bitch!" and then I was flying through the air like a lifeless, vulnerable, fabric doll.
My right shoulder hit the wall first, the loud pop of the joint dislocating reverberating through my whole body. My head hit the wall next, pain exploding behind my eyes, dark spots blotching my vision. My body crumbled to a helpless pile of limps as the strong claws of gravity forced me to the floor with a numbing pang.
For the next few moments, I couldn't tell what was going on outside of the ringing in my head. I was lying on a non-functional, aching shoulder, the muscles of my upper thighs were throbbing from the impact and my ankle was hurting from having been in the wrong position when my body had fallen on top of it.
My hearing was going in and out, like a bad radio reception, and I was fighting to not give in to the beckoning darkness.
Immersed in the thickness of pain and injury, I barely registered the burning sensation around my wrist, creeping up my arm, zinging the fine hairs and heating my skin.
It felt like I was moving. Like I was on a big wave, floating on top of the gentle movement.
Then it came to a stop and I was solid on the ground again, this time someone's hand in my hair.
Before I had time to panic, my blurry brain communicating that it was Tess, Max's voice made it through the thrumming in my injured head.
How was he close? All I knew was that I had been flung up against a wall several feet in the opposite direction of the gate that was already keeping me separated from Max.
A thrill of relief went through me.
Was the gate up?
Then I felt the increasing heat around my arm, quickly overriding the pain from my other injuries. Another type of heat was warming the top of my head and tiredly I figured that he was healing me. But while the heat to my scalp was soothing the pain in my head, the pain in my arm was intensifying.
I screamed as my unjoined arm was sharply pulled and Tess' voice cut through my healing head. "Get your hands off her or I'll pull her whole arm off!"
The comforting heat to the top of my head vanished as quickly as someone blowing a candle out and the burning pain to my arm started to calm down.
"I'm gonna fucking kill you!" Max roared, his voice close.
Tess laughed. "Maybe I should let her watch. That would teach her to not steal someone's man."
I bit my lip against the pain in my arm. The arm she was still holding onto with her clammy cold hand. The tears were stinging my eyes, but I refused to cry. She was probably watching me and I didn't want to give her the satisfaction.
My eyes closed, I pressed my forehead to the dirty floor and tried to wish the pain away. Tried to focus on the connection and healing myself through Max.
It was like trying to hold on to a wet slippery rope. I caught it over and over again, but lost it. Over and over again. Max wasn't focused. Max was focused on Tess and the danger she was posing to me.
"Watch what, you witch?!" he demanded.
I had never heard him that angry before. He even scared me.
Tess' voice softened, "When you fertilize me, of course."
Vomit rushed up my esophagus and threatened to spill out on the floor in front of me.
"Let her go," Max stated coldly. Tess' statement about forcing me to watch when her and Max would be having sex was probably too much for Max to even respond to.
"Are you just gonna let them die?" Tess continued, sounding sincerely upset now. "What kind of a man are you? What kind of father are you?"
"I'm not the father of your sick children, and I never will be," Max replied.
Another sharp tug on my arm, the pain radiating down the arm and up my neck, paralyzing the pain centers of my brain.
"Show some respect, Maxwell!" Tess screamed furiously.
How are we going to get out of this? I wondered.
But even with the question being posed telepathically, no one answered. Tess was succeeding in what she was doing. She was scaring Max enough by torturing me, that he wasn't focusing on the connection. All his attention was on Tess and trying to read her next move.
With that realization, I tried to reorganize. I focused on my breathing, focused on the memory of Isabel's yoga sessions, and tried to think away the pain from the arm that Tess was carelessly swinging back and forth, the head of my humerus bumping against surrounding muscles, ligaments, and the outside of my shoulder joint, sending impossible pain into my body.
I tuned out the conversation going on around me, where my occasional screams of pain only gave Tess more power while Max became increasingly desperate to do whatever Tess wanted only to put a stop to my pain.
Just like I had at the beginning of our relationship, I focused on finding that strong core of the connection between us. The very center.
The pain exploded more intensely and my heart rate tripled while a scream tore through my chest.
Vaguely I heard Tess laugh and the connection I had been focusing on was getting cooler rather than warmer.
Desperation gripped tightly around my heart when Tess let go off my injured arm and it fell heavily to the floor while the heat from Max's body dimmed.
Then her voice close to my ear, whispering, "She's dying now. Just like you. Chip chop chip chop." Giggles. "Here comes a candle to light you to bed. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head. Chip chop chip chop - the last man's dead."
There was suction in the center of my body now.
Max was using a large amount of energy.
The only time that happened was during healing. But he wasn't healing me. He wasn't healing himself.
That only left-
"How does it feel to not be important anymore? Look at you. You're in pain. You're in so much pain."
The pain intensified in me, as if her words made my body realize how much in pain I really was.
"And he just leaves you."
She clicked her tongue again, as if she was disappointed in Max.
I wasn't. I knew what must be happening. Isabel was dying. She had been injured previously. Her imminent death was one of few reasons why he would not be able to focus on me right now. Even when I needed him.
He was weak now too. He was pulling a lot of energy from me. Something he wouldn't do if he didn't need to. Especially not when I was hurt.
His actions didn't make me worry about myself or how vulnerable I had become, rather it made me worry about Isabel.
"Just forget about him," Tess continued. "He certainly has forgotten about you."
I was not one to listen to the ravings of a madman, and I wouldn't start now. While she kept on trying to pull me off balance, I did everything to remain stable. I concentrated on feeding Max the energy he needed while biting my teeth hard against the pain.
It was something in her tone of voice that brought me back to listening to Tess. Something about the smug surprise infiltrating her statement, "Oh, well look at that."
It had me opening my eyes and lifting my forehead off the floor. Pain shot down my neck as I raised my head and took in my surroundings.
Stumbling in from a side corridor, with blood running from his hairline just above his temple, was my father.
My heart stopped beating and lodged in my throat as white blinding terror coursed through me.
With a bemused short laugh, Tess straightened and announced theatrically, "Well, hello there! Welcome!"