Bane stared, wide-eyed beneath his bone mask, sunlight through thr cracked walls of his ruins, through swirling dust motes, gleaming off his polished bone mask through the gaping holes in his ruined keep.
"Her name is Celeena Sharif."
Bane felt a brief sensation of pain in his chest. It was not a physical pain (...and it was); it was not something he could ignore, or
He stared down at the baby, and the baby up at him. "Its eyes..."
Suheila smiled. "Her eyes. It's called heterochromia. She can see just fine."
Heterochromia? Bane sifted through Jonathan's memories, and was answered in silence.
Celeena made a brief raspberry with her lips, slobbering over her chin, and blinking her eyes, one blue and one green, as she watched her parents ramble in sounds that meant nothing.
"...when?"
Suheila made a face. "Are you asking me if it is yours?"
Bane shook his head.
"She has a sister. We have twins."
Bane dropped onto his backside and stared at Suheila and the baby. "How?"
"...well. When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, they engage in special hugs. Adult hugs..."
Bane blinked from behind his mask.
Suheila smirked. "It's not like we see one another every day. It's been months."
Bane tilted his head.
"My aunt has baby Nadjia."
Bane clenched his eyes shut. The scent of perfume. A brief flash of electric blue eyes. Jeans. No, genes. "...Nadjia."
Suheila stared at him with a sympathetic expression. "What's going on inside of you?"
Bane lowered his head, resting his masked face in the palms of his massive hands. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled. "Hide her."
"From you?"
He lifted his head, dropping his hands to his knees, and shook his head once. "Everyone. Hide her. Hide them. You, too. Hide."
Suheila stared down at Bane, or rather at eye level to him. "What's wrong?"
"Danger." Bane arched his neck and felt a succession of pops, a haunting phantom pain aching in his back where the faceless man stabbed him with the rod. "Go. Do not return."
Suheila lowered herself carefully to the wooden floor, Celeena cradled in her arm. "There is nowhere safe for me, now. Nowhere. If I go, someone will only follow me. If I stay, someone will just come to my door. You are the only one who can keep us safe."
Bane frowned beneath his mask. "I cannot protect you, Suheila."
Suheila blushed. "Suheila?"
He nodded.
"I've never heard you call anyone by their name."
Bane shrugged.
Suheila stole a final look at Bane, and then stared down at Celeena. "I'll go... but only to see her off safely. I'm coming back. If I'm in danger, if you're in danger, then hiding won't help anyone. We can take the fight to whoever it is you're worried."
Bane stared up at Suheila, and then past her to the cracked walls of his ruins.
Suheila cupped the side of Bane's mask, drawing his eyes to meet hers. "I'm coming back."
✟ ☧ ✟
Bane paced the wooden floor of his ruins.
Of course, he was not worried for the witch, and her infant spawn.
Of course, he cared nothing of them.
He was after all little more than a beast wandering in the flesh of a man, and so he did naturally what beasts would do, rutting with any fair mate that should cross them.
(Liar.)
Bane glared into the empty space of his ruins, the piles of pine needles, and dead leaves piled in their corners, and strew across the floor. He clenched his teeth. "You are dead. Be silent, already."
He was thankful when he heard only silence in his head.
She was supposed to be back. Leave. Hide the child. Return. Destroy their enemies.
Bane paced.
He did not care. Of course, he did not care. She was the enemy. She was prey. The hunted.
Bane woke out of his loathing, the sense of movement in the cold air around him sending a tight chill down his back. Bane flexed, and shuddered, staring out the crumbling hole in the side of his ruins.
Her unfamiliar silhouette stood just outside his ruins, scant in ragged clothing, staring in with dull eyes, and a vacant expression.
Bane reached for his pistols, but no sooner did he move, she turned and ran.
✟ ☧ ✟
The path was too familiar, and Bane felt the memories of lacerations, and raw flesh on stone, and piney earth. Not one of these memories, his, after all, but the trail was in his head, the path as fresh in his mind as it was the day he lost Nadjia.
...not me. I've lost nothing. I've lost no one. Jonathan Walker is dead.
Bane kept pace, but she was fast, faster even than he... and worse, she knew the trails, the trees, the woods, and forest as well as he. Who was she?
No... no. He knew who she was. She belonged to the disfigured man that ran him through that night, at the place Jonathan and Nadjia would go. She ducked, and dipped below fallen trees, and darting around them as she sped forward.
Within moments, Bane was clear of the trees, and they were in a clearing. He watched her silhouette as she continued at full speed for houses on a long street past that familiar place (Gallows Road...).
Bane ignored the frustrating echo of the Jonathan's memory in his head. The name of the street made no difference.
She continued to the first house at the end of Gallows Road, and there she rushed up over the iron gated fence with too much grace, crossed the courtyard, up the small stairs and turned for a moment.
Bane stopped at the perimeter and watched her watching him. After only a moment longer, she turned and entered the house through the front door.
✟ ☧ ✟
Laurelynn dropped to the floor of Simon Bellar's keep, the trap door closing over her on the way, and ignored the ladder on the way down. She landed with nimble precision, and hurried to his feet, kneeling down at the concrete block foundation beneath his baroque high backed seat.
Simon Bellar stared down at her, admiring the scar on her cheek - a hard learned lesson for her early attempts to escape - as he passed a cattle prod back and forth between his hands.
Chained to the foundation beside him, Suheila glared at Laurelynn, and Laurelynn ignored the fury in her young face; she would understand in time, shed her old life, and get her new name soon enough.
"Did you fail me?" Simon arched his head back, squeezing drops of saline into his eyes.
"No. Your monster followed me here."
Suheila Sharif narrowed her eyes, shifting her cold gaze between Simon, and Laurelynn. "You're so fucking dead."
Could Simon smile, he would. He glanced down at Suheila. "You should thank me for saving you from that thing. In due time," he wiped a trickle of slobber away from the slit in his bondage mask. "...you will."
"We'll see." Suheila could not draw her arms up, the ragged skin of her wrists were testament enough to that. She closed her eyes, and felt the faceted black glass warm against the skin of her chest.
Simon's attention snapped to Laurelynn as his pet began to scream, her clothing smoldering on her body.
Bellar loved her already.
No, not Laurelynn, but his new pet.
The Arab mare, and her uncanny, and inexplicable ability to do his other pets harm with little more than a thought. That kind of power he could wield just having her at his side...
Suheila screamed out, eyes wide as the painful waves of electric rolled through her body, sparks arcing off her metal shackles.
Bellar held the prod to the center of her back a moment longer, his lesser pets mewling, and cooing behind her agonized howls.
Suheila screamed, bellowing somewhere between rage, and agony, and collapsed.
Bellar watched as Laurelynn's eyes, nose, and ears wept thin streams of blood. She collapsed, writhing on the concrete, foamy blood and spittle gathering at the corners of her mouth.
Bellar held the cattle prod on Suheila's back. She stopped screaming.
Laurelynn stopped moving, eyes unblinking, ever staring into empty space .
✟ ☧ ✟
The front door fell inward, smoking holes where hinges once held it in place.
Bane stood in the doorway, his shotgun in one hand, the other outstretched in the space absent the door. He sucked in a deep breath, and exhaled it all at once, slinging his shotgun back over his shoulder.
The lights were off inside, blinds drawn shut. Darkness did not hinder him, but he hesitated before taking the first step inside.
It was still - too still - inside; still shadows, furniture unused, untouched, and unmoved. The walls were void of decoration, uncommon for even the lowliest coven scum.
The house had no life in it; and what was the life of a house? A concept he once had no understanding. Even his ruins lived, and breathed, teeming with memory, tragedy, and the stink of magick left behind in its walls. His ruins, his keep, full of old memories, each stacked one onto the next.
Bane took a single, heavy step inside, too aware of the hard marble tiles in the foyer. He felt the marble crack underfoot, his each plodding step, the stress of his weight breaking the rough, unpolished black tiles.
The air inside was stale, sterile, and only the faint stink of base emotion lingered in the facade of a house.
(Whited sepulcher.)
Bane nodded with the memory of Jonathan's voice as it crept into the back of his mind.
✟ ☧ ✟
Simon Bellar sat in his baroque style throne, looming over his pets, and stared with wet, lidless eyes up at the ceiling as the monster tread through his domain in clumsy, heavy steps.
He worried, but not a worry born of any fear of the mass creature that walked like a man; he worried the beast would not find its way into the converted dungeon where he kept his prizes, and pets.
Suheila lay unconscious beside him, the back of her shirt scorched from the cattle prod, and still manacled and chained to the concrete foundation that made his pedestal.
Could he smile, he would. The creature in the mask moved faster now, stalking above from room to room. He heard a lamp crash against a wall in the den. He heard the table overturned in the dining room. He heard the sound of shattering glass, then distinct pop of a tube as his television broke through the coffee table in his den, and he imagined the glass spraying out over the carpet, the pungent odor of electrical wires as they shorted over broken circuit board.
The monster's pace quickened, its large, long strides bounding from one side of the house above, and back, back and forth, its loud heavy steps grew louder, and heavier as the witless thing lost patience.
Then, without warning, the noise stopped and it was silent.
Simon raised his hand up in a sharp gesture of silence, tight leather gloves glistened in the low light of his dungeon.
✟ ☧ ✟
The silence lasted long, Simon Bellar's tight leather clad outstretched hand holding the silence over his pets, even as the Arab mare began to stir.
The silence shattered as the trapdoor to his makeshift dungeon exploded inward, the monster dropping the distance from the floor above, toward the concrete below, its weathered, and in many places tattered, leather duster flapping up over it... and then it was on there, crouched low, those green eyes locked on Bellar's unblinking stare.
"You."
This was the moment for too long he waited. He felt his black wool pants tightening around his groin. Bellar lowered his hand in a sharp downward chop. "Monica, to me. The rest of my pets... kill that thing."
Monica, who prior to falling victim to Simon Bellar's indoctrination, was Eliza Langdon, some rich girl he snatched right up off Gallows Road. Eliza, who turned out to be more than just some rich girl, a daughter to The Order his father (may he burn in hell), and his Uncle so faithfully served; Monica, by her new name, and identity now, came obediently to his lap, who relieved the tightness of his trousers, and brought hin out into the tepid air of his dungeon.
Oh, how he poured his resources into The Order's efforts to find her, investing in equipment for thensearch parties as the drudged the lake, and Pridewater Creek. The amusement of grieving parents who would never know their lost daughter, a Huntress in their Order, was nearby all along.
She never begged once that he set her free, though her threats, and her demands echoed up from his dungeon with every visit, and every departure. It was not the tranquelizers, or the atrobe lights that broke her, though, the pretty mare she was. She killed two of his pets before she finally succumbed to the addiction of those sweet drugs, introduced between electric shocks, and that place between waking, and sleeping.
It was the agony of withdrawal, and the near climax of the opiates that brought her to heel. It was her love of sensation, and those sensations when she was on them that opened her eyes to her savior; not some Christ on a Cross, but the sovereignty of hedon pleasures. She was his, as they all were, but the biggest prize waited still, chained to the floor at his right hand, waiting for her salvation, too.
Simon felt hot breath in him, anticipation, and tension, and he reached down and stroked her hair.
Within moments, there was warmth again, the humid warmth of her mouth as she began to work on him as Sinon watched his loyal pets rushing at the monster that cost him his face, and that pretty mexican girl at twin knolls park.
There was excitement in this, and the pleasure from two fronts, to watch this man-animal die without the need to lift so much as a finger... and of course, Monica.
The monster, a living creature of nightmares would die, and its nask would make a fine trophy above his throne in the dim light of his dungeon.
✟ ☧ ✟
They came all at once, a cacophany of screaming. The sound was all too familiar, the memories of the Emim perched there upon Ehts, the mother tree, and how they sounded in their snarling, bellowing, screaming and gnashing.
Bane unholstered his revolvers, firing into the overwhelming crowd of scant clad women, these witless victims of the faceless monster there in his throne, abusing his power, the hedonistic fiend who took these women, and broke their will. Perhaps it was not their fault, these empty bellowing hollows. Shadows of their former selves, replaced by the stench of rotted poppies, lust, and the will of a madman.
They lashed out at Bane without skill, or combat prowess, with feral, graceless and violent rage.
They were little more than insects to him, to be crushed beneath his bootheel, his ancient mind born to violence, and in possession of a body forever in its peak physical state... but where one was weak, and even five would offer little challenge, these slaves to the leather masked madman were many, a colony, a hive, and their numbers were overwhelming.
He wrested his arms from their sharp grasps, their fingernails ripping free from cuticles against his heavy leather duster, tearing into the flesh of his throat wherever they could find purchase. Frantic hands with steely grips pulled at his hair, his duster, and his sleeves, and every punch, every pistol whip, every kick that threw one away from him, another replaced her.
There were too many of Bellar's wretched slaves. Beneath the mounting pile of screaming violence, he felt his pistol pulled from his grip. Somewhere beneath the crushing weight of the onslaught, someone took his blades. Someone upholstered his other pistol.
No room to maneuver.
No room to ready his shotgun.
No personal armory left on him, but his hands, and feet.
The dull popping of a broken neck; someone's jaw torn free from their face, ragged meat hanging from bone in his clenched hand; the wet splash of heat flowing through the eyelets in his mask, down his face; the length of his own blade sliding between his ribs... the sensation of fire in his lung, the burning agony of drowning slowly in his own blood; a deafening explosion, and hot metal piercing, tearing muscle, shattering bone; thunderous heartbeat in his ears; dull pain, a second blade piercing kevlar, the length a slow, long slide through his sternum into his heart; fists beating against the otherworldly bone of his mask; the world blurring, going grey, color melting away, sight fading in and out with his dying pulse.
Pain, and sound drifted somewhere in the distance of his mind, the weight on him, the grasping hands, the now rapid stabbing, far away.
Could he die? Yes, he decided. He could, and would death be so unwelcome? The voice of the dead boy, Jonathan, no longer creeping through his thoughts, haunting him of a life he never lived. He could die, and it would be a sweet relief from the hell he brought himself into when he entered the world of men.
No more pain. Pressure, far away now. His heart ready to give up.
It was about time.
This monster, this ugly faceless monster, the wayward predator that preyed on women had his revenge. He won.
✟ ☧ ✟
The flash of blue light compelled Bane to open his eyes, and there he stared up from beneath Ehts, the mother tree. The pain was present in him again, and he raised up his right hand to see it was still the same hand, his hand, stolen from Jonathan so long ago.
They barked, snarled, and drooled, perched on her branches, teeth bared for those who had the faces to bare them, and those others, reptilian, opened their jaws wide.
If this was death, it was unwelcome. Bane pushed himself up, sitting, and then standing. He stepped back, each step wracked in painful protest. He reached to pull the blades from his body, and found no purchase. No wounds. No bleeding holes from clumsy gunshots.
"I'm not here."
...here enough, Yan'shuf.
Tanīn crept from its branch, curling around the bough of the tree to a lower branch.
"Yanshuf is dead." Bane's voice was thick, his words slurred even as they left his mouth.
You will be soon enough.
"Try me. I will end you."
Impudent whelp. No better than the boy whose life you stole. We cannot be beaten, cannot be destroyed.
"Evidence speaks to the contrary." Bane made a lazy gesture to his mask. "Try, and perhaps next I will wear yours."
Tanīn leapt from its branch. Bane leapt toward it, and caught it mid air, his large gloved hands clenching the creature's massive toothy maw shut. He threw it by its scaly narrow snout into the ground.
Tanīn struck the cracked, crumbling asphalt with a loud thud, landing on the crown of its over-large head. Tanīn howled, but before it could recover, Bane landed on it and mounted it.
Tanīn struggled under Bane's weight, and Bane threw a series of heavy mounted punches. He felt Tanīn's bone break beneath the surface of it's scaly hide. Tanīn whipped it's long tail around its body, and Bane caught it in his hands. He dismounted the struggling emim, turning on his heel and dragging its body around him until Tanīn was airborne, wavering through the air with Bane spinning at the center. Tanīn howled a high pitched roar, but its kin stayed put on their branches.
Bane released Tanīn who sailed in a tumbling arc from Bane, and back into the rough bough of Ehts, the mother-tree. Again, before Tanīn could recover, Bane charged for it. Tanīn was in its clawed tridactyle feet just as Bane was upon it, lunging out of Bane's way.
Tanīn spun around, lashing out with clawed hands and feet, but Bane was gone, leaving a large crack in the trunk of the mother tree in his place.
In the tree, the six remaining emim, terrors of Taal's infinite plane, glared down at Tanīn. Tanīn snarled, snapping its jaws, and raising up its clawed hands as the other poised to leap at it.
✟ ☧ ✟
Bane opened his eyes to agony, and beneath it, something else.
Rage.
If Taal's Emim, those terrors in the tree could not stop him, how could anyone?
These were not the faceless hunters of The Order, bonded to the strength of heaven's Thrones by those close kept rites and blessings; these mortals cut from common cloth; common stock, little more than a mortal herd, thrashing, and striking with blind, uncontrolled fury.
The idea they - or that the coward in that black leather mask, dressed in his finery, could stop him...
Bane found purchase for his boots on the blood slicked concrete, and pushed his weight upward. The dogpile of Simon Bellar's enslaved victims scattered off him, some airborne, some thrust back from the sheer force. Those few who managed to cling to him, whether by his own blades still jutting from his body or by the holding tight to the heavy leather of his duster, he pulled closer. Bane plucked free the one who stabbed him, who held tight to the grips of his blades and pulled her tight to him in a bear hug. He squeezed and heard her breath leave her lungs, and kept squeezing, her ribs cracking beneath his steely arms. Bane waited until he felt the bones in her spine pop, and squeezed harder until she fell limp.
He threw her hard as he could, and whipped his arms, pulling two of Simon's women up into the air, and back down. They fell off away from his arms, landing hard on the concrete.
Bane pulled his shotgun free from his shoulder, finding the balance in its length, and spun it around to use the butt of the stock to bludgeon one of Bellar's slaves as she rushed in at him. He felt it connect on her jaw, the cracking bone, and watched blood and teeth spray out of her split mouth. Bane swung the shotgun by its barrel, cracking the stock into the neck of his nearest attacker. Her head arched with a wet crunch to the side. As she dropped, he spun the weapon around his wrist, catching the grip in his hand, and leveled it up at Simon Bellar. The leather masked madman was lost in the rapt attention of his... pet. Bane drew up the bead on his shotgun, lining it up with Simon's face, and stumbled forward as someone landed both feet in his back. Bane turned as she sprang back to her feet, and shoved the barrel of his shotgun into her eye. There was a moist pop, and she slid off the barrels, screaming to the floor.
It was a renewed assault and Bane was in the fray. His six guns, out of ammunition, were little better than maces, and in their untrained hands, clumsy bludgeons. Bane batted, clubbed, and shot at them as the came, using the same tactics they used before, piling in with overwhelming force, clawing, biting, and swinging over him until there was no space to move. Bane dropped his shotgun, pulled his arms in tight, and thrust them out, spinning on his bootheel. They dropped like felled trees as gloved fists met face, flesh, and bone.
Bane knelt, grabbed the closest to him, and even as she screamed, flailing wildly in his grip, stood and threw her into another. He leapt over the bodies of the dead, and unconscious, his boots sliding along the blood covered concrete floor as he launched into a punch aimed at the last of Bellar's few standing slaves...
...which she parried. She attacked back, thrusting a palm toward his throat. He caught her palmstrike, and she spun in and thrust her elbow into the seeping wound in his ribs. Bane released her with a grunt, and thrust his head down over her, slamming the bone of his mask into the top of her head. Her scalp split, spilling blood into her hair. She turned, and thrust her fingers out, jabbing him in the throat. Bane stumbled back, coughing and gagging on his bruised windpipe.
Bane felt - but did not see - the kick when it hit him on the side of his head, stars blossoming into his field of vision. Somewhere in the faint echo of the world around him, he heard Simon Bellar's laughter.
You will not survive this!
Not the voice of the dead boy. The coward's voice. Somewhere in there, up there on his false throne, laughing while his slave continues her work. Arrogant.
Unafraid.
"...you will know." Bane's voice carried from beneath his mask, barely a whisper. Loud enough to stop his assailant for only a moment... but a moment he could exploit. Bane charged forward, lowering his shoulder to her. He caught her in the midsection, and continued his charge forward rushing her into the far wall opposite from Bellar's throne. He felt her ribcage crack beneath him, felt her hot breath on his neck, spittle spraying against him in a thick, red coat. He reared back, holding her tight in his arms, and shoved her into the wall again, her breathe rattling in her throat as he released her, leaving he to slide down to the concrete, and drown in her blood.
Bane turned to see the last of the madman's victims cowerng, rushing for cover that did not exist. Those still living, laying there on the cold floor of the dungeon, those not dead, moaned and wept, dragging theirselves away from him as he limped back.
He mused over who these women were in their lives, their lives before the madman, their lives before this. The moment passed, and it did not matter. They did not matter... at least not to him. He picked up his shotgun.
Bellar sat there on his throne, head back, jaws clenched tight beneath that black leather mask, his eyes rolling back into his head as the poor woman there continued bobbing on him. Bane shook his head, and crept up on them. The sound of the coward's heavy breathing filled his ears, and Bane understood at least what was going to happen next.
It was not going to go his way.
Bane hurried, quiet as he could, the sound of whimpering far, far, to the right end of the dungeon. He paused, the distant memory of being bound in chains once, covered in burns, and bruises, and spared the beaten slaves a glance. They were whimpering, crying, simpering wounded animals, those emptied shells of the people they were. Victims, but monsters in their own right. He escaped from his binds, what felt now like a lifetime ago, and if they wanted their freedom, they would have to take it.
It was not for him to help them.
Bane climbed up the pedestal, pulling himself in silence to his feet. He stood over the woman, her head bouncing up and down on the lap of her captor, the faceless sadist behind the black leather mask. He stared down at her, and back up at the man. Bane slung his shotgun over his shoulder, clenched a fist and brought it down onto the top of her head as hard as he could. He felt her jaws clamp shut, maxillary and mandibular incisors shattering against one another, molars cracking against molars, and without pause, the man's gasping and groaning became shrieks, and howls as his slave fell backward off the bleeding stump on his lap. Bane stared down at her with mild amusement, her hands grasping at her throat, mouth bleeding, as she strangled on the length of her master.
Bane kicked her hard, and watched as she slid off the pedestal.
"Fuck!" Simon's scream was shrill, and his voice devolved into a series of high pitched curses, legs kicking, blood spurting from his lap in rythmic pulses.
Bane stepped forward, grasped the top of Simon's bondage mask, and pulled it free. Tears streamed down the coward's scarred, skull-like face, his round lidless eyes bulging in what Bane could only conclude was shock, and fear.
He tossed the leather mask aside, careful to throw it past Suheila, his dimnuative mate, still chained to the floor beside the throne, her eyelids motionless as she lay there. He looked from Simon, to Suheila, her scorched clothes, and back to Simon. Simon was desperately fumbling with his cattleprod, and resorted to swinging it wildly at Bane.
Bane caught the tool - the weapon - and pulled it free from Simon's grasp. He stared at it a moment, and considered pressing it into what remained of Simon's manhood. He pondered what would happen if he activated it, and whether or not it would cauterize the wound.
He tossed the cattleprod over his shoulder.
"You can't kill me! You need me!" Simon's high voice was sharp in Bane's ears.
Bane shrugged, watching Simon bleed out from his lap. "Fate will decide."
Simon cupped his hands over his lap, pressing down, and screaming, as he tried to stop the bleeding. "Leave her! Leave her! She's mine!"
Bane ignored him, and limped to Suheila. He nudged her with his boot. She lay still. Bane knelt beside her, and pushed her shoulder. She lay still. Bane glared over his shoulder a moment, watching as Simon tried to stand, bellowed, and fell back into his throne. "If she dies..."
...if she dies, I hate you.
Shut up! Not right now! Bane shook his head, and turned his attention back to Suheila. He pushed at her face. Nothing. He rolled Suheila onto her back, and placed a hand over her chest. It rose, and fell, and despite himself, Bane exhaled in relief. He caressed her cheek a moment, drew his hand back, and the slapped her. "Wake."
Suheila's eyes fluttered. Simon groaned behind him.
Bane nudged her shoulder. Her voice was small, and cracked, though she did not open her eyes. "...you came for me."
Bane stole a cursory glance around Simon's fallen dungeon. "I did."
He reached for her manacled wrists, and felt the memory of dull pain in his own. He ignored it, and pulled at the chains. Cheap metal. Weak steel. He pulled at the chains, and Suheila yelped. He stared down at her wrists, raw skin where she struggled. He huffed once, and pulled at the chains again, one in each hand, and the concrete bolts in Simon's pedestal moved. He pulled harder, despite Suheila's protests, and the concrete cracked around the bolts.
"Bane." Her voice was dry and weak. "Bane, stop."
He pulled hard, and the bolts came loose with chunks of concrete. Suheila pulled her hands away, and Bane let go of the chains.
Simon's voice was a weak sound in the now quiet dungeon. "I'll do it again."
Bane looked back over his shoulder and stood in slow deliberation.
Simon was pale, his round eyes set in dark sockets. "I'll just do it again. I'll find more, and next time, they'll be better. Stronger." Simon laughed, his voice a hollow wind. "I'll take them from The Order. Rogues. Maybe even her again."
Suheila started forward, and Bane raised an arm to stop her from moving forward.
"Let me go."
Bane shook his head. "Go."
Suheila stayed at Bane's side, her hand creeping to the black glass hanging from her neck. Bane caught it, without even a glance in her direction. "No."
Bane ushered her back, turning. "We leave."
"Wherever you go," Beller's voice was a low scratch in his throat, but held its edge. "You will have to see me again, and again, monster!"
Bane stepped forward and leveled his shotgun, pressing the barrel into the side Simon Bellar's head. Suheila winced as bane squeezed his finger against the trigger.
"Some things, even a monster cannot face."
Thunder and fire exploded from the barrel, and Simon Bellar's head went with it.
✟ ☧ ✟
"Can I die?" Bane dropped his shotgun, and dropped to a knee.
Suheila pulled at his duster. "Are you asking me permission?"
He shook his head, and fell onto his haunches.
"Bane!" Suheila's scream echoed in the dungeon. Bellar's survivors huddled with each other in the corner, but as Bane fell onto his back, they began to creeping forward.
"Bane! Bane!"
Suheila stood up, chains dangling from her manacled wrists. "You come any closer, I will fucking end you all."
Some crawled. Some crept. Some stood, limping forward.
Suheila felt the weight of the black glass hanging from her neck, heavier than it ever was. "I warned you."
Suheila closed her eyes, and clenched her fists. "Atar, Jahanam, Atash Gereftan. Ghatl. Ghatl. Ghatl!"
They stopped, in their creeping, their crawlng, their limping steps, their clothes smoldering, their skin blackening. Suheila scowled as their mouths opened wide, and black smoke billowed out of their silent screams. Their skin blackened, cinders forming beneath their cracking flesh, fire burning out from their veins.
Suheila narrowed her eyes. "Khakhestar."
The women burst into flaming bright flashes and they were gone, leaving greasy smoldering ashes where once they were.
Suheila unclenched her fists, her voice only a whisper. "Duzakh."
Suheila breathed in deep, rancid air, and exhaled smoke. She turned, and stared down at Bane. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her hands shook. Suheila felt faint, but fought through it. First one step. Then another. A third. She kept the slow pace until she was at his side. She pulled back Bane's mask over the top of his head.
"Baby, wake up." Suheila brushed his cheek. "Wake up."
Bane breathed fast, shallow breaths.
"Baby, wake up."
Nothing.
Suheila slapped him across the face. Bane's head hardly moved. She did it again. Nothing. Suheila struck him again, and rasied her hand up, and brought it down harder, but her hand never connected.
Bane held her manacled wrist in his grip. "Stop."
"We have to go. Now." Suheila pulled, her wrist, slipping from his weakened grip. "Now!"
Bane reached up for his mask and pulled it over his face. He groaned beneath the bone mask, and rolled onto his side.
✟ ☧ ✟
Bane collapsed onto the floor of his keep, and Suheila fell with him. "Get up!"
Outside, the night air glowed orange on Gallows Road, fire burning in their wake. She insured it would.
Bane coughed, and said nothing.
Suheila looked around the MacAllen ruins, the only way in, the gaping burned out part of the wall; no, there had to be more. Of course he would not go looking for anything. Here was all that mattered.
...except she needed him to hide. There had to move more than here, and more than now. Suheila rose up onto her feet, and hurried to the cracked walls, peeling plaster, and traces of once elegant wallpaper buried beneath creeping ivy.
This was a drawing room, not the only room in the ruin.
"Come on, come on, come on!" Suheila searched along the wall. Cracked plaster beneath the ivy, bare patches of thin horizontal boards, and - a door - swollen in its jamb, wood splintering beneath the overgrown, clinging blanket of green.
Suheila closed her eyes, and pressed her hand into the door. Mur. Murna. Krahia.
The ivy over the door shrank back on itself, drying, dying, and crumbling as the wooden door cracked, splintered, and decayed.
In the darkness, past the frame of door, she could see little of what was beyond.
"Bane, get up!" Suheila glanced at the heap of a giant laying on the floor.
Bane grunted, the sound of wet coughing from behind his mask.
Suheila hurried to Bane's side, and grasped his leather duster. She pulled, but may as well have tried to pull a boulder. Bane pulled back, and Suheila lost ground. "You have to get up. What if someone is coming for us? What if someone saw?"
"Let them come."
"No, you idiot creature! It is not just you for whom I worry. Our daughters will need their father, their mother."
Bane pushed himself up until he was sitting. Behind his mask, his eyes were half mast, eyelids heavy and tired.
"I found a way in. Deeper into your ruins."
Bane shook his head. "No."
"Don't be a jackass, you stubborn beast. Move!"
Suheila forced herself to unclench her fists, to bite her tongue as not to cast, or to try and force his cooperation. "You need to think if you're at all able. Anyone can find you here, now. You need to hide until you're better."
Bane pushed himself onto shaking legs. "Go. Go, and run. Do not look back."
He limped for the door that led deeper into his keep.
"God help you, Bane."
Bane stopped, and turned his head, staring at Suheila over his shoulder. "God? God. You do not deserve to speak His name."