Britta stood, asking them if either of them would want anything to drink before turning to enter her kitchen and then Jace felt like everything went in slow motion. He heard the shattering of the glass first, the newspaper tearing inwards, and shards glittering in the sunlight like dust motes before tinkling to the floor. He heard it next, the thundering boom that was becoming all too familiar to him, and then the wet pop of Britta's skull as it burst.
He felt the blood spatter across his face, burning hot, too thick, and an iron smell filled his nostrils. He sat there. He didn't move, just watched as Britta thudded to the floor, her green eyes emptier than they'd been before. He didn't move when Ben shouted in his ear to get down, or when another shot rang out, grazing his ear, slicing it, but leaving him alive. Ben was still shouting angrily but Jace could not make out any of the words. He felt Ben grab his arm and yank him roughly to the floor.
Jace wasn't sure how long they stayed there before he felt Ben start pulling him to crawl towards the door. He reached up slowly to turn the knob and pull it open, and Jace noticed that there were new holes in the wood from the bullets. They crept through the doorway on hands and knees and then Ben was pulling him behind him on to the bike and starting it with shaking hands before he tore away from the sidewalk and up the street. He didn't slow until the chateau came into sight, speeding all the way up to the bridge and then kicked up dirt as he slid to a stop in front of the door.
Jace got off the bike gingerly and followed Ben into the house. Kaelie was inside, red hair tumbling down her back, made bare by the open backed sweater she had on, marred only by the band of a black bra. "Yes, of course," she said smiling into the phone she held pressed to her ear. "Yeah, yeah, he's okay, I think they just got back. Thanks again, and be careful."
She tapped a button on the phone and Jace realized that Ben had disappeared to find the others, that Kaelie was the only one in the foyer with him. She turned around with a smile still on her face that dropped immediately when she took in his shell shocked appearance, the blood on his face.
"Jace," she gasped out, her face draining of color. "Jace, what the fu-"
Jace crossed the room in two strides, tangling his hands in her hair and bringing her face up to his, a little rougher than he meant. He kissed her hard, enough to bruise her mouth if she had been normal, and he drank in the the surprised gasp that left her mouth like it was his only source of air.
She pulled away, "Jace, that's blood, that's blood, Jace, are you okay?" came out strangled before Jace laid claim to her lips again.
"S'not mine," he mumbled, finally stopping his assault on her mouth to bury his face in her neck, the clean, floral scent of her shampoo and perfume clearing the metallic smell from his nose. He was aware now that his whole body was shaking and Kaelie tightened her arms around his neck, clutching him to her body and stroking her hand down his back.
"It's not mine," he repeated. "You. You're mine. Right? You're mine?"
"Okay, Jace. Okay," Kaelie said, her voice low and hoarse. "C'mon. We'll get you cleaned up. You need to tell me what happened."
She pulled her head back and looked at him imploringly, trying to will him to move. He shifted forward to follow her up the stairs, catching Michael's confused eyes, and Ben's, watching him from the hall. Kaelie sat him down on the toilet, turning on the water and leaving it to warm and fill the room with steam. She left the room briefly, grabbing a towel and a set of clothes that she'd been gifted by the shop owner for Jace. She tugged his shirt over his head, her swollen bottom lip tugged between her teeth in concentration and all Jace wanted was to kiss her again because that's when he knew he was alive.
He mumbled to her that he could finish the rest on his own and she raised an eyebrow skeptically but didn't protest. She told him that she'd be waiting for him in his room, to come find her when he was done so he could tell her what had happened to him.
Kaelie shut the door with a quiet click, wandering to Jace's room and then crawling on to his bed. She laid on her back, staring up at his ceiling and listening to the water run. She was desperate to know what had happened to Jace and Ben, but she didn't want to go down and ask Ben and risk Jace not finding her in his room like she said she'd be. As each minute ticked by, she came up with increasingly worse and improbable ideas, and kept running her fingers over the ridged scar on her throat, a habit she'd had since she got it.
Her mind kept flashing to the wild look in Jace's eyes when he'd come through the door, the fine spatter of blood that covered his jaw and cheek. The words he'd finally said, asking her if she was his. Kaelie knew she hadn't answered him, his question catching her so off guard that she'd had no idea what to respond with. Was she his? It felt like she was in some ways, and she wondered if Jace felt as protective and possessive over her as she did over him. She knew that she'd wanted to say yes, to say to hell with whatever normal was supposed to be- when had she ever been that anyways- and tell Jace she was his if he was hers.
But it felt juvenile to Kaelie, foreign, because she'd never grown up in a way that made things like this seem like something that everyone went through. She had read enough books to know all the silly cliches on things like first loves and first everythings and while she blanched at the thought of love, she knew that losing Jace would rip her up as much as it would losing the others, and sometimes she felt like it would hurt worse.
Kaelie sat up with a start when she heard the water shut off, and moments later, Jace stepped into the room, rubbing his hair with a towel. She studied his face as he dropped the towel unceremoniously to the floor, and her eyes zeroed in almost immediately on the torn flesh of his upper ear. "Jace," she barked, and she felt a little bad when he flinched at the loudness of her voice.
He just turned his gaze to hers instead of answering her and raised his eyebrows. "I know you did not just lie to me and say that none of that blood was yours," she said and Jace brought his hand up to his ear, wincing when his fingers brushed against the injury. Kaelie rose from the bed and crowded into Jace's space, daring him to try to lie to her again.
"Kaelie, I'm sorry. I didn't even know it happened, I never felt it until I was in the shower, I didn't think any of the blood was mine," he said, and his wide eyes held nothing but honesty. Kaelie sighed, accepting his answer and backing off.
"What happened to you, Jace?" she asked, gesturing for him to come and sit next to her on the bed. She scooted back and leaned back against his pillows, and he crawled up next to her, leaning his head against her shoulder. Kaelie didn't try to stop him. His voice was flat when he explained to her that Britta was dead, one shot to the head, that they'd shot again trying to get him or Ben, that the cut on his ear was the reminder that he was alive by luck.
"All I could think of is what would happen to you if I didn't come back, what you would do," he admitted softly, and if a few tears fell on to Kaelie's chest, she didn't say anything. After a while, as she stroked her hand through his hair, Jace fell asleep, and all Kaelie could hope was that it was dreamless.
After a few more moments, when she was sure that he wouldn't stir with her movements, she slid away from him and off the bed, heading to the door. She needed to talk with Michael, Sarah, and Lilith, she knew that they were going to need to take out that lab and everything in it sooner than they'd wanted to. Kaelie thought of what they would do about the children. They were killers, or they would grow up to be, but Kaelie would never be able to hurt a child. She wondered if they would be able to give them to families here, maybe their technical mothers, if the nurture a true family could provide would be enough to change their fate.
The thought of what might happen to those kids, that they could grow up to be monsters one day and Kaelie would have to look them in the eyes and kill them because she hadn't stopped the Illusion quick enough, it made her nauseous. She found the others standing around the bar in the kitchen, and avoided the look Michael gave her when she came in.
"Jace just told me what happened," she said. "Are you okay?" She turned to Ben as she asked, taking in that he hadn't been hurt, which was as relieving as it was infuriating. He never did seem to come out of anything worse for wear.
"We need to take the place out sooner rather than later," she continued without waiting for a response. "They know we're here now, and they know that Britta talked, that's why they murdered her. I don't know how they figured it out, that Ben and Jace were going to see her about what they did to her, but they did, and the longer we wait, the more likely it is that they start killing the other women."
Lilith was nodding, twisting bits of her dark hair around her fingers in her concentration. "Well, we did figure out how to turn off the systems, thanks to your phone call Kaelie. It's likely that our only plan is to get in there after shutting everything off, and go guns blazing."
"We can't just do that," Sarah cut back in and Kaelie nodded. "We have to be careful about what we shoot, you guys know that it's not just Hunters in there. It's babies and innocents. We have to be paying attention to what we're doing."
"Well it would have been a lot better if we'd gotten anything from Britta, before-" Ben cut himself off, closing his eyes. "I think I know how they figured out we were here. Britta said that they put some sort of tracker in her before they got her pregnant."
"They what?" Michael asked, cutting him off. "They never did any of that before."
"That was before they lost an entire set of Hunters that could expose everything about them. They have, of course, known her movements since they let her go, and I would not be surprised to know that they bugged her house too, and sent someone down the minute they figured out what we were trying to get her to talk about."
"So, we still can't plan exactly how to get in with no intel, but at the very most we can try and take it room by room and get as many out safely as we can before we go through the containment protocol. It's gonna be the only way to completely destroy the lab," Kaelie said. "But we need to be careful, or we're going to end up going down right along with the lab."
Sarah nodded, agreeing with her. "Tonight?" she asked, but Michael was already shaking his head in refusal of that idea.
"No," he said. "We are going to need all of us, and that means Jace too," and he shot a look at Kaelie to quell the protest that rose to her her lips the second he mentioned Jace's name.
"He has to go, Kaelie. They tried to shoot at him today, which means they know what he looks like, and they're likely not far from figuring out where it is that we've set up shop. If we leave him here, we'd have to leave someone else to protect him and we can't afford that. Besides, he's valuable in a fight, from what you were telling me about the bar."
Kaelie grit her teeth, she knew that Michael was right, he had an irritating tendency to be, but the thought of putting Jace near these people and the danger they brought with them, it made her anxious with worry. She knew she'd never be able to focus her mind when she was fighting, knowing Jace was in danger. "Fine," she said. "But he stays with me, and no one else." It was not a question, it was a demand and Michael nodded, he knew he'd never change her mind.