I woke up in the cage feeling incredibly sick, and my mouth was really hard. I couldn't open my eyes properly. My face now felt very swollen; my breathing was difficult, and it was like trying to breathe through a wet cloth. I could feel my breath wheezing and rasping.
The pain in my ribs made me try to breathe shallowly, but then, when I couldn't get enough air, I just had to suffer the burning pain in my ribs. I didn't know if there was a painless spot in my body. Everywhere was hurting. I moved a little. I could open my eyes enough to see. A red rash covered my arms, indicating some kind of allergic reaction. I was naked, and this was a freezing basement.
Bran was sitting on a stool outside; he had a coat on, smiled coldly, and said, "Morning miss, -Your sentence is two weeks in a cage, alone. We are no longer in Boston. I can tell you that, but I won't tell you where we are. There's food on the other side, army dry rations, you'll be fine. I won't leave you without food. As punishment, you'll lose everything you stole from the men with interest. Plus, I gave you a treatment in payment for taking my will and abandoning me. And don't think you're getting these."
Bran showed me the painkillers Colin had left.
Bran continued, "I had a stockpile of a substance that would cripple your healing ability, even yours, to human levels or even slower, for at least two weeks. It is good to be prepared, especially when it comes to dealing with you. Therefore, you may be sore and tender for a bit because I kicked and beat you with all my might. I spared myself no mercy. I hung you up on that wall and let go. I gave you an excellent lesson. Examine for yourself which of your bones are broken and remember how long it takes a human to heal them. Let's see if this is an effective enough lesson for you. Pain is excellent teacher and I am ready to do this again."
Bran walked to the door and said, "I'm leaving here too, so this house is empty. No one will find you here. The lock is time-locked and will open in two weeks. You can look at the wall. You might want to think about how much you want to move. I broke both your femurs, and that stuff also depresses your blood supply so that you can be pretty damn anemic, but you're immortal. You'll come back to life. Water is limited, so you'd better be dirty rather than thirsty." He stopped.
He looked at me coldly, smiling thinly, with his eyes still almost black with rage, and said, "Little girl, you'll learn."
Bran walked away, and the door locked with a dull thud. Darkness was all around me, but I was too agony to even worry about falling asleep and seeing nightmares. No, I was living one right one.
Nausea hit me with a sharp pain in my stomach, and I remembered this. I felt I was in a pretty fucking terrible place. All alone.
Bran had tied up the pack bonds, so I couldn't get in touch with Adam. Damon had once again disappeared somewhere. Adam had gone to Chicago, Samuel had gone who knows where, and I didn't know where I was.
I knew I had the second chloral hydrate poisoning of my life, so Bran deliberately overdosed on me. I vomited uncontrollably and passed out from the sheer pain of it all. I had plethora of other problems as well. It was just my life that I would not be in shape, not at all.
I woke up in a panic, not able to breathe. I struggled to catch my breath and coughed, my mouth so clean that somehow I could breathe again. Pain, Well, I didn't know if I could call this all-encompassing agony pain anymore, but this experience was beyond the torture of Drusilla and Spike. That felt like child's play compared to this.
My fingers were broken and using my hands wasn't easy. Every movement made the pain explode somewhere in my body, and I didn't know how many times I'd lost consciousness from the sheer pain. I finally threw up blood when my stomach felt pretty damn hard and painful. I was almost convulsing, shaking, my mind was messed up.
I don't know what he had done in my mouth, but my palate and tongue were on fire. My entire face was swollen: my lips, my nose, my eyes. I was groping my face through and I felt a pain in my cheeks, probably my face was smashed too.
I felt my ribs gently, and almost every rib was sore or downright painful. In a couple of places, I could clearly feel bone fragments moving around in there. No need for a rib crusher in Bran's hands, just some damn concoction to take away my ability to heal and then just beat me up real good, poison me with choral hydrate so that I would vomit all the time. Well, at least, there was no one talking to me all the time. Little herbs in addition and I will be in awful shape and fast.
This was another cellar room and cool. I was shivering from the cold. I was naked. There were no mattresses or blankets in the cage. Then I wondered where I could at least get some shelter. I saw plastic flashing around the food packets. That might be of some use. I needed to try to preserve my body heat in someway.
I crawled over to look at the food, and it was dried, hard, and crunchy. Eating was going to be painful here at the mouth, and I couldn't eat until this vomiting stopped. I couldn't really get my jaws to move, so my jaw was dislocated or broken.
Mimosa and Mirella were both unconscious, and I saw Mimosa shaking from the cold, too. My teeth were not producing anything, though I tried to think of different substances, and it took me a while to realize I didn't have my vampire fangs. Bran had ripped them off and done something to stop the new ones from growing in their place.
My skin was on fire; the rash had now turned into large blisters, and some of it seemed to have almost purulent discharge. I went near the food or got near it. I tried not to vomit in it. I was in no good shape and I had no idea how fucking long it would take to get me in shape again.
I started unpacking the food from its plastic wrapping carefully and gathered all the plastic close to me. I tried to insulate the cold and protect myself from freezing. It was difficult to do with broken fingers, but slowly and persistently, I tried to wrap my body in plastic and save at least some of my body heat.
I was weak from pain and anemia. I could see the bruises spreading when I moved, and I lost consciousness so often that I couldn't be sure I hadn't died somewhere in between and come back to life. My mind was a fucking mess. I couldn't even think of anything rational. I had rash all over my body more or less. It burned, not really itched but ached, burned and hurt.
I drank water only after many days of vomiting, not that the nausea stopped. I had tried to eat army food, and they made me feel double awful no matter what I ate. I couldn't vomit. I just let my stomach convulse, but nothing came out.
I was desperate to get some nourishment from somewhere and soaked dry portions in water and then tried to swallow the softened slop. It didn't taste of anything but the chloral hydrate had apparently destroyed my stomach so well I wasn't even hungry. I tried to come up with different things what to do but no; I had not much in my mind, my reasoning did not work. I was almost hallucinating from time to time.
I couldn't remember how regularly I ate; the clock was on the wall, but when my memory faltered, and I couldn't remember what it was, I leaned against the door, hoping it would open. Still, the cold steel beneath my back wouldn't budge, and desperation crept slowly into my foggy mind. I felt like I was drugged with some goddamn drug and I was in pitiful state.
The pain was on all the time, and when I got sick of it, wanting a moment of painlessness, I moved my leg so that the broken femur moved enough to make the pain explode and knock me unconscious. I finally was somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. In some place, where there was no pain.
I found myself in my secret place. Bridgette had cast a spell. It had been a perfectly safe spell, and with it, she had created a pocket dimension in the backyard of the Paris house.
it wasn't an extensive area, a lawn, a bench, and a very peaceful river; the whole point of the space was to give me peace. My hiding place and it was accessed through one of the closets. She had given it to me, to show that there I would feel peace and not feel like monster. That I would see that I was still me.
I sat on the bench and I was painless, now it was good to be and I watched the water flowing slowly, I let the deep peace wipe all the shit away for a moment and I sat and I was, knowing that inevitably I would regain consciousness and this bliss would end. But it was good now.
I noticed nothing when I suddenly smelled passionfruit. Damon? He was striding out of the woods. I saw Smoke running off with Mimosa, and I hadn't even realized that Mimosa was off from me. She was an exquisite wolf, and they were playing with Smoke, running and enjoying themselves.
Damon came and sat down next to me and said, "What on earth, baby? How did you do this? Start telling me, darling,"
I said, "When I woke up, I was really sore, and Colin gave me painkillers and explained the whole thing. I'm really sorry about the whole fucking mess. Well, Colin left, I got myself up and went to get a drink after the painkillers worked. Bran was in the kitchen, hit me with a marrok force, and made me drink chloral hydrate. I passed out. I woke up naked in a cage, sore all over, bruised. He's given me a drug that's crippling my healing ability, beat me with everything he's got, I've got chloral hydrate poisoning. I'm puking. He had given me herbs, i am bruises, not sure have I died already and come back. I tried to wrap the plastic I got from those army-dry rations around me when I was naked. I don't know where I am; my femurs are broken, and my skin is covered in some satanic rash, big blisters, most of my bones broken and not healing. This punishment lasts two weeks; there's a clock on the wall, and the cage is time locked."
Damon's expression was stern. He said, " Darlin. Bran will pay, I'll come and find.."
I returned to the cage. It had been a pleasant dream. I believed it was just a dream and couldn't hope there was any truth in it. My punishment went on as brutal as ever, feeling myself weakening mercilessly all the time.
Damon took a deep breath as the connection to Mimi broke off. He felt that kind of rage building up again, but now he would control himself. First things first, Mimi had to be found.
Damon drove the car to the rest stop. He slammed the wheel in his rage, yelled and when he got himself back under control barely, he called Adam first thing.
" Adam," he answered when Damon had connected the call.
"Damon here, now Hauptmann. First thing, are you in the car?"
Adam said "No, I'm in my office. Why do you ask?"
Damon replied, "Well, then, control yourself. Bran attacked Mimi. Mimi is beaten, sick, and weak in some satanic cage in the basement. Bran has paralyzed her ability to heal and poisoned her with chloral hydrate. Broken her bones badly. some herbs too, she is not sure if she has died and come back, she has bruises, she is naked. Mimi contacted me. I don't know how miraculously but it was cut off before I could ask any more questions. Mimi's got some fucking rash, supposedly two weeks in a cage, and it's time-blocked, and it's been over three fucking weeks since we left. Oh, I want to attack Bran. I don't even dare think about what fucking condition Mimi's in."
Adam was silent. Damon could hear something breaking in the background, and he couldn't blame Adam.
Adam said, "Fine, I'll take Bran's car GPS. data. Let's see where Mimi is and which one of us gets there first. Magnum is also on the loose. "
Damon grunted and said, "Good. Someone needs to get to Mimi as fast as possible."
Adam hung up the phone, pulled up the data, and found out that Mimi had been taken to Utah. Magnum was closest, and Adam gave him the Utah house codes. Damon started driving. He would be there soon, too. He had to be there and help her.
Adam called Samuel, getting him mad at his dad, and Samuel also called Charles, who wasn't too impressed with his dad's antics, either. Charles promised his plane was ready, and Adam knew the house in Atlanta was in tip-top shape. There was a top-of-the-line medbay, and it would be a good place to take Mimi. Adam was furious.