[O] Trapped

Over time the room felt like it was shrinking, the darkness in the corners seemed to creep forward engulfing everything it touched. The feeling of confinement felt more real and increasingly overwhelming.

The woman hung limply from her wrists, restrained with an excessive amount of chains bolted to the wall and floor. They were damaged from her constant struggling but remained firmly in place.

Her wrists and throat, raw and angry from the harsh metal. Blood caked the side of her head, her stubborn nature hadn't gone unpunished.

Wearily her eyes focused on the ground beneath her, unfocused and half hooded.

Perhaps it was better to give up, to surrender to the pain and torment, to let go, death would be a welcome reprieve.

Her eyes flickered over to the body next to her, his state was just as bad. If they both died this would all be over, these people would no longer have anything to hold over Fawsi, perhaps the children would be spared then.

It would be a selfless decision, one she couldn't make for Tom, one she couldn't make for herself. Her mind would wander back to Khaliq in her darkest moments. Was he looking for her, had he given up already, had he assumed that she had run off with Tom or did he think she was already dead?

All of those options threw her further into despair. It had been so long since she was taken that any hope of rescue was dwindling.

The door creaked open, and fell shut with a quiet click as a small body slipped into the room.

The quiet entrance was negated by the loud thundering of boots pounding down the stairs.

Cadence Hewitt was a regular down in the basement. She visited her her family as often as Gerhard would allow, venturing down into basement and sitting with the tortured man.

She didn't pay the half-conscious woman much mind as approached her, grabbing the singular chair that furnished the basement. Clearly it had been Raisa's time to feel Gerhard's love most recently. She dragged the chair noisily along the ground before situating it in front of Edard's suspended body.

He was unconscious at the moment, and hung freely. This was often the case. It was rare that Edard was conscious when Cadence came down.

It was all the worse when he was conscious. The basement would be filled with eerily sung children's rhymes, or quick words from languages long dead or evolved.

She sat herself in the chair, and crossed her legs. The ridiculously large hoodie that she was wearing slipped down over her dainty shoulder and pooled in the crooks of her elbows and over the edges of the chair.

A quiet, eerie hum sounded, flirting with a popular tune.

Her voice, deceptively soft when she wasn't growling and yelling, began with the lyrics.

"Ring-a-ring-a-roses
A pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes
We all fall down."

It was a popular song among Edard and his child, a morbid joke over the terrible luck the basements occupants had. Gerhard's sadism was like a plague, picking its victims and torturing them until they gave in. Denzel, then Edard, Tomaso and Raisa. They'd all fallen to Gerhard's plague.

The woman's brows furrowed at the sound of singing, it was rare that the basement was full of anything other than silence or screaming.

The hybrid's head lulled to the side, casting a weary gaze up at the vampire.

Her eyes trailed over the form of the strung up vampire, if that was how they treated their own then there was no hope for them, unless they could make a break for it during the daylight hours.

Raisa'a lips parted as if to speak, letting out only a steady stream of breath, any words she had for these people were going to land deafly. How many times over the weeks had she attempted to reach out to them only to be jeered.

Cade's head dropped back at the wordless hiss from the woman.

She blinked up at her with her large blue eyes. Usually these others didn't attempt to talk to her. In the beginning she had only had eyes for Edard. She'd only interact with him. Eventually they'd learned to just stop.

But it had been months since any of them had spoken to her.

With her eyes still wide and mockingly curious, she lifted a hand to cup it around her ear.

Rai met Cade's eyes, her curiosity was met with complete and utter exhaustion from the hybrid.

She was worn down, her soul slowly surrendering to the realization that help wasn't coming, even if it did, were they beyond saving?

So many full moons cooped up in here, mating seasons had come and gone, all the while they were chained in place, slowly feeling their sanity slip away.

"What's the point?"

She murmured, any plans they had which involved them being useful hostages must have already taken effect.

"He likes breaking people," Cade answered simply.

Her shoulders drew up to her ears and she rocked back and forth a few times as she shrugged.

"You won't be broken. He'll keep you around until he does. Then... " She threw her hands out dramatically and shrugged again. "I don't know. Maybe he'll deliver your broken corpse back to your Necromancer slut. He won't be able to do much. Necromancers fix the body, not the soul."

The way Cade spoke was quiet, her voice unassuming, but blunt and cruel in its words. She spoke like she was talking about the weather, or Rai's hoorscope, not her mental death, and torture of her lover.

Cade's words made what Rai already knew sink in.

If she ever got to see Liq again, it would be too late, she would be beyond repair.

It would hurt him more seeing her like that than if she really was dead.

"How do I get him to kill me?"

She asked, Rai was calm, her mind clearing, death would be better than this.

Liq was a necromancer after all, if she died, maybe she could see him again before it was too late.

Cade snorted. Loudly.

"For someone with so much life, you flirt with death an awful lot."

Cade stood up, and dragged her chair back over towards Rai. She planted herself in it, leaning back against the low back of the chair, her legs falling apart and planting wide. Her fingers laced together over her thin stomach.

This close, Rai would be able to see the tattoos that covered her chest and upper arms. Right up to her throat was heavily inked in all sorts of colours, though the designs were mostly floral.

"The more you try, the less you'll get out of him."

A small smile graced Raisa's battered and bruised face.

"At the moment it seems like an attractive option."

Her smile was fleeting though as her features smoothed back out, she was tired of it all.

"I'm tired of these four walls."

She missed being outside, the sun and the breeze, feeling the dirt under her paws as she ran.

"The Germans had a name for that. Fernweh." Her tongue moulded around the Germanic word smoothly. She didn't know any German, but her second language, and the one that she spoke the most was Mercian. "Far-sickness," she translated.

"Modern times they use the term Wanderlust."

Her head tipped back, and she looked up at the ceiling.

"I have it too, Fernweh. Edard and I travelled often. The only place we every stayed for extended times was Tamworth. That was where he was born." Her fingers beat against her stomach. "Gerhard doesn't let us travel. We have to be here, close enough to run when he calls."

Raisa gave a bitter chuckle.

"Fernweh? No what I'm suffering from is far more simple. It's called being trapped."

The hybrid's fingers flexed and clenched in their bindings until her knuckles turned white.

"The full moon comes, even though I can't see it, I can feel it through the walls, every time one of you knocks me out before I can turn."

Her smile reappeared, spreading wide over teeth, exposing her fangs.

"How many more do you think I have before I lose my sanity? My money would be on four. It's arriving soon then I'll be down to three."

"That's what Fernweh is." Her dainty shoulders hoked upwards then dropped again. Being trapped in one place, wanting to be in another. Wanderlust had a slightly different meaning. It was similar, but not the same.

Cade's own lips twisted into a grin at Raisa's broad, manic smile.

"One full moon closer to being reunited with your slut." She put on a false thoughtful expression. "I don't know how that'll go. He's found other women, you know. And men. I don't know how much room there is left in his life for you, even if you're just a corpse."

She'd kept tabs on the people around these. Tomaso's cock sleeve, Raisa's slut. They were the same. One withdrew to avoid people, while the other expanded, consuming any trash that waved money in its direction to avoid people. They were both quite pathetic really.

Her smirk was twisted now, dark. "But you can find that out in four moons."

Cade's cruel words didn't hurt as much as the vampire probably wanted them to.

As they sunk in she felt a weight lift off her shoulders, it was the last semblance of hope she had left and now it was gone, fading into the oblivion that had been the last two years of her life.

"That's fine."

She replied, pursing her lips, dragging them roughly between her teeth to stop them from exposing any emotion she was feeling.

"I never expected him to wait for me, but tell me, since you've clearly been keeping tabs on them, did he even try to find me?"

She had long faced the realisation that she would die with regrets, at first it had been that she had never been able to become Liq's mate.

Now, through the torment it had twisted, her big regret was that she'd never be able to kill Fawzi and Gerhard for what they had done to her and Tom.

"One week, three months. Bring it on, let's see what kind of creature you have turned me into."

Either she died here or she left twisted beyond recognition.

She looked up at Cade with hardened eyes of steel, if she was going down, she was taking someone else with her. The question was who.

Cade's head tilted to the side at the request, and she pondered her answer for a long while. To be cruel to the already kicked puppy or not?

"He still hasn't stopped." Cruel, she decided. Tell her the truth. Let her know that despite whoring himself out, Raisa was still very much at the forefront of his mind all the time.

That hybrid meant the world to the Necromancer, and despite his sister's awful situation, he looked for the woman he'd given himself to every spare second he had.

"It's more of a body search now. Even he doesn't believe you're alive. He just wants to know how you died."

Her eyes met Rai's without so much of a flinch. If Raisa thought she was scary, she hadn't seen much of the world. The world was full of much scarier creatures than this little girl and her torture.

"You're boring now," she sighed. "More boring than him." Her gaze turned back to Edard.

That answer was like a blow to the chest.

It would be easier to be mad, to give into hatred and resent everyone for leaving her to this fate.

But to know she was missed, that no matter how she ended up that she would bring heartbreak to people around her.

"Idiot, he should have just given up and moved on."

Raisa shrugged as best she could from her position.

"I'm not here for your entertainment you nasty little bitch."

She snapped, she had gotten the information she needed out of Cade, she served her purpose.

"He's too stupid for that."

From what she'd observed, the Necromancer was stubborn and thick-headed and didn't know how to leave well enough alone.

"No, you're here for his." It was clear who she meant when she referenced the man, though no name was given. The plague of this house - him - was well known even without a name.

Cade slapped her thighs, and stood. She reached up hands coming up to wrap around Rai's throat, thumbs pressing firmly into the underside of her chin to keep her still. For someone so small and weak in appearance, Cade had hundreds of years of strength behind her.

"If we'd met on the street, we probably would have been friends," she mused, head tilting to the side. "I would have walked into your little parlour, and we would have talked, bonded over ink and music and vampirism."

A little smile curled her lips.

"Your little brother would have gotten to know me, and liked me, too. More than he already does, that is. He misses you terribly, by the way. Your dogs, they're comfort, but not you. He's a full fledged piercing technician now. Does a good job. I love the dermals he did for me. He hopes you'd be proud of him for coming so far."

The thought of him sent a horrid shudder through her body, she knew true torment by his hands.

Every day that he didn't make his way down those stairs was a blessing and every day he did come down here was worse than hell itself.

Raisa's lips curled up in a bitter smile.
"We probably would have, it's a shame."

They would have been friends, she could admit that, but in this situation she hated Cade, she hated everyone in this house except for Tom.

A low growl sounded deep in her throat as it was gripped and she spoke of Ti.

"Stay away from him or I swear to god..."

She snarled, tears of total and absolute resentment welling in her eyes. The fact that they were so close to the ones dear to her frightened her more than anything.

"I can't do that."

Her hands slid up, cupping Rai's cheeks and rubbing under her eyes tenderly with the pads of her thumbs.

"We're hanging out tomorrow, and then we're going to talk more piercings. I'm thinking of getting a second tongue piercing, and Ti's more than willing to help out."

Raisa struggled uselessly in Cade's grip, her chains straining to keep her still.

Tears spilled from her eyes streaking down her cheeks and catching on the Vampire's thumbs.

"You're more similar to him than you know."

They were all monsters, willing to strip away everything someone had in order to break them.

Her body trembled with the flood of emotion she felt at the thought of the very real danger near her loved ones.

The tremors turned to sharp cracks of bone as her body tried to shift on its own accord, sensing the nearby danger.

Cade smiled brightly, as if Rai had just given her an incredible compliment. In some twisted way, she had.

"I know," she chirped. "It's why he kept me around instead of right next to you."

She wiped away the tears that spilled over Rai's cheeks, then let her hand move down to the woman's throat. It curled around her throat mercilessly, cutting off her air.

"Can't have you changing in here."

She watched Raisa with cold eyes and a bland smile as she choked her out of consciousness.

Her body continued to crack and snap into place as she gasped for air.

This all too familiar feeling of being starved for oxygen no longer frightened her as her vision blurred.

Her body slowly stopped struggling as she lost consciousness, sagging in the grasp of various chains and the vampire holding her throat.