Disclaimer: Laurell K. Hamilton and the Berkley Publishing Group do not authorize this author. All characters that you recognize belong to Laurell K. Hamilton except for the ones created by the people in this group. This is solely for entertainment purposes.

Rating: NC-17 just to be on the safe side.  Hints of non-consensual sex.  If that bothers you please stop reading now!!!

Nightmares

Part Five

The car finally stopped, and I pried my eyes open, and felt my heart drop.  All we could see were their vehicles.  It was enough to make me cry.  Panic was clawing at the back of my throat.  My eyes frantically searched the surrounding area for any sign of them.

"Keep it together Luna," Lija snapped.

My fingers dug into the palms of my hands.  The little stabs of pain were enough to let me focus.  We exited the truck, careful to be as silent as we could.  If I knew Shang-Da as well as I thought I did he would have more people lurking around here.  Methodically we searched.

In the end we had to resort to using our inner beasts to even begin looking in the right direction.  It was tricky to open my shields enough to search for the dueling pair but keep my presence unnoticed.  A scream split the air.  Lija and I exchanged glances before we dashed in the direction of the sound.

We moved through the enclosing forest like the animals inside us.  We floated over fallen logs, danced around low hanging branches.  We were liquid movement.  Both of us tried to reach the sound of the cry.  Strong arms grabbed me from behind and kept me from entering the clearing.

A hand clamped over my mouth when I would have screamed.  "Don't Luna," Lija warned in a low growl.   "Take a good look," his voice instructed.

What I saw froze the blood in my veins.  It was a three on one assault.  Two were holding Conor as Shang-Da rained blows all over my fiancé.  'This couldn't be happening,' I kept thinking.  Conor broke loose and landed several good blows one of which snapped my ex's head back.  The smell of blood was almost overpowering.   It scented the night air like the trees and dirt around us.

The two thugs succeeded in capturing Conor again, though not without some injury to themselves.  I watched in silent horror as my former boyfriend once again began attacking the love of my life.  As I watched with my heart in my throat another man came from out of the trees.  He was positioned behind the downed man.

I struggled in Lija's hold.  I couldn't, no, wouldn't stand idly by and watch as Shang-Da beat the life out of Conor.   Breaking the blonde's hold was harder to do, but I managed it.  Rushing to the middle of the clearing, "Stop it," I cried.  Tears were streaming down my face.   Shang-Da turned to face me.  "Please just stop it," I begged.

His dark eyes were maniacal.  The lights were on but nobody was home.  I reached out to him in supplication.  He seized my wrist and jerked me against him.  His tongue scraped roughly over my cheek.  His face nuzzled my neck; his voice was deep and husky. "The taste of your fear is like an aphrodisiac," to emphasize his point his free hand pressed our lower bodies together.  He ground himself savagely against me.  I couldn't help the whimper of pain that passed my lips.  "God!  How I've missed that sound," he breathed in my ear.

Let him think it was lust.  Let him think it was whatever he wanted as long as he would just stop this!  I knew Lija was out there somewhere.  "Please God," I prayed.  "Let him be able to save Conor."  Shang-Da's teeth on my pulse point brought my wandering mind back to him.

"Now my beauty," the backs of his fingers caressed my cheek.  "What should I do with him?  I could let him leave, but then you'll just go back to him.  I think the only way to keep you is to make sure he isn't around to have you."  He turned me in his arms.

The guy behind Conor pulled something out of his back pocket.  He snapped his wrist a few times and the object opened to reveal a butterfly knife. I began to struggle in earnest.  I kicked, twisted, and moved in an iron embrace.  He shouldn't have been so strong.

My panicked brain couldn't understand why he could hold me so easily.  We fell to the ground, both of us struggling for air.  Shang-Da jerked my arms behind my back and lifted them.  I heard the snap of metal and knew without being told that he had a pair of handcuffs.  They were silver.  The burning registered almost before the pain did.

There was so much pressure on my shoulders that I was sure he was going to dislocate them.  Tears were blurring my vision and still I tried to get to Conor.  I had to save him.  He had to live so that I could.  If he died then I might as well die too.  He yanked me upright so that I could watch my beloved struggle to save me.

"Funny, isn't it?  You're both trying so hard to save the other and neither worrying about yourselves."  One hand slipped through my cuffed arms holding the back of the neck keeping me immobile while his other was busy groping my breasts.  The sound of rending fabric quelled my resistance.

The cool night air hit my skin and I sucked in a breath.  It had been cool at the club but it was down right frigid now.  Or maybe that was just because of the situation I found myself in.  His fingers twisted my nipple sharply.  The cry left my mouth before I could stop it.

Conor's enraged bellow could be heard reverberating though the trees.  His trio of assailants was having a hard time keeping hold of him.  His eyes were blue/green flames in his battered and bruised face.  "I'll kill you, you bastard," he yelled.

"Not if I kill you first," Shang-Da called as his hand trailed across my stomach.

A cold thrill of fear danced down my spine.  "He couldn't be doing this," I thought.  "Oh God!  Please don't let him do this."  I renewed my fight.  I was not going to let him do this to me.  Not in front of his cronies, and definitely not Conor.

"Oh yeah.  Right there.  You know how I like it," he grunted in my ear as his hand unfastened my pants.

Tears spilled down my cheeks as I watched those men continue to beat my fiancé.  A short pain filled yelp echoed across the clearing and sent shivers down my spine.  It hadn't come from any of us.  Lija.  He was still out there, evening the odds it appeared.

"You're going to regret this," I ground out, still trying to break out of his grasp.

His fingers twisted in my hair and turned me to face him.  "Not before you do lover."  His mouth came down hard on mine.  When I wouldn't open my mouth he yanked on my hair.  I gasped, and his tongue invaded me.  I couldn't help it I gagged.  He jerked back and nodded at one of the men across from us.

"No," I wailed.

'You can stop this sweetheart," he breathed as one of his cohorts grabbed a handful of Conor's hair.  His neck was exposed that pale expanse of flesh so open, so vulnerable.  Shang-Da's hand caressed my throat as he spoke his next words.  "Just say that you *need* me, and all of this can stop."

I couldn't say those words.  It was physically impossible for me to say them.  They stuck in my throat.  No amount of pushing or prodding could make those words come out of my mouth.  Not while Conor still drew breath.  I squeezed my eyes shut.  At this point I knew that no matter what I said or what I did my beloved was going to die.

The Asian man would not be denied.  He shook my head roughly.  His voice was twisted with madness and jealousy.  "Watch Luna.  I want you to watch him die.  I want you to know that if you\d just come back to me this could all be avoided.  He could go on breathing.  Just say it Luna, say it and he goes home.  No harm, no foul."

We both knew he was lying, and my saying it wouldn't keep Conor alive.  To my unending mortification I shook my head.  A deep male chuckle opened my eyes.  Conor, bless his stupid little soul, was laughing at Shang-Da not a smart move.  "She's mine.  Always has been always will be.  Mine," he managed to choke out.

If Shang-Da didn't kill him I was going to.  You're not supposed to egg on the bad guys!  Another aborted yell reached us, and we knew that Lija was getting closer.  Having, or already had, dispatched most of Shang-Da's lookouts.  My ex was beginning to panic.  You could smell it on the air.  I was betting Richard hadn't Okayed this.

There was movement in the woods behind Conor.  Help was on the way.  I began to relax and shouldn't have.  "Finish this," Shang-Da snarled.

I watched in what seemed like slow motion as Lija broke through the trees.  One of the men holding my fiancé held the blade to his throat, as another knelt behind him and drew his hand back.   Then everything seemed to happen all at once.  The one man drew the knife across Conor's throat as the other pushed his hand through the rib cage, capturing the heart on the journey out the other side.

Lija never had a chance to save him.  As he neared the men he let out cry like none I'd ever heard before.  The man nearest him spun to face him only to have the blonde rip his throat out.

My eyes were glued to the man I loved.  In the time it had taken for them to do their worst, Conor's brain hadn't registered the fact that he was dead or dying.  I would swear till the day I died that he mouthed "I love you." Then his body slumped forward on the ground.

The cry that left my lips was rage, pain, and agony.  It shook the ground, a wind sprung up from out of nowhere. Unnoticed my engagement ring slipped from my finger.  I was moving before I had even realized that I had been let go.   I slid to a halt in front of him.  Cradling his limp body in my arms.  The tears came fast and furious.  A rain began to fall on us.

My eyes searched the area.  The only thing I could see through my blurred vision was a shadowy figure making its way toward me.  I held my bundle protectively and snarled at the shape.  "Luna," the voice said.  It took a moment for me to recognize the speaker.  Lija!

Lija could help.  I blinked back the tears.  "You can help him right," I begged.  A small part of me knew I was being unreasonable but at this point I didn't care.  "You, and Liam, and Killian can make him better," I babbled.

The blonde man knelt down by me. "Luna," he said gravely.  His hand gripped my shoulder.

"No!"  I shook my head.  I was in full-blown denial.  "No, you *will* make him better!"

He sighed, his hand moving to cup my cheek, his thumb brushing my jaw line.  He leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead.  Lija leaned back on his heels and peeled his t-shirt off.  He handed it to me.  My confused gaze traveled between the shirt and him.  "Put it on sweetheart," he said tenderly

I gripped Conor tighter to me and shook my head.  He couldn't make me let go of him.  There was nothing in this world that would make me willingly relinquish my hold on my beloved.  "Luna," his voice was like ice.  "I'm not asking you I'm telling you to put this on."

The growl bubbled up from deep in my chest.  Lija's blue eyes narrowed and his power crawled across the space that separated us.  It danced over the skin and sank into your bones.  It was a not so subtle reminder of the power structure, and my place in it.  Reverently I laid Conor down, smoothing the hair back from his forehead.  His gaze, so like my own, stared sightlessly ahead.

The white shirt, which had been snug on him, was two sizes too large on me.  Hell I could take the pants off and I would still be decent.  Blindly I turned to Lija.  I didn't know what do to now.  What was expected of me?  Should I curl up and cry?  Nothing seemed right.  This whole situation seemed surreal.  Like it wasn't really happening to me but someone else I was watching.

"C'mon.  There isn't much time," he said solemnly.  Gingerly the blonde picked up his best friend.  The hole in Conor's chest looked like so much raw meat.  I danced around the pair like a mother hen.  For once the smell of blood didn't make my mouth water.  The only thing I could taste was fear.

We made it to the truck, though I don't remember how.  In the car I clasped his still form to me, rocking, and crooning to him. The tears wouldn't abate, and neither did the light rain that was falling over us.  In my melancholy I thought it was like the earth itself was mourning his loss.

Lija pulled into the lot of Dead Druids the place was still jam-packed.   He came around Igor and opened my door.  We stared at each other over Conor's body.  Neither of us knew what to say.  Was there anything you *could* say at a time like this?

"Here Luna, let me take him," his voice gentle as if a harsh word would shatter me.   The blonde man collected his friend and I climbed out of the truck.  As we made our way to the entrance the bouncers from the club surrounded us.  Each of them tried to shield the crowd from the sight and tried to keep me from following.

That was too much.  The more they fought to keep me away the angrier I got.  I don't remember much, but I do know that I broke someone's arm another received a bloody nose. The level of violence was escalating in direct proportion to my pain and anger.

"Enough," Lija bellowed.  "She has a right to be here."  The glare he turned on them would have sent most running.  It looked like a few were actually considering it.  The club was immediately closed all those in line started to voice protests until they got a good look at me. I'm sure I looked a mess.  The shirt that I'd started the night out in was gone.  In its place was Lija's blood soaked t-shirt.  Let's hope that no one had a camera.  I didn't need a fiasco like the one with Jean-Claude and Anita.

Most of those who frequented Dead Druids happened to be lycanthropes, and the occasional vampire.  They could smell the blood and knew better then to ask questions.  They began leaving though there were still a few who wanted the grisly details.  Those people were dealt with, and none too gently either.

We entered the club to find it nearly deserted.  A few stragglers complaining that it wasn't even closing time yet.  Those people were shown the door.  The place fairly hummed with unrestricted power.  This club had magic, though what kind I still didn't know.  Even so I prayed that these people that Conor had put so much faith and trust in could save him.  "Please God," I begged silently.  "Please just let this be a nightmare."