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"I will eat in a moment," he said, gratefully taking the coffee from her, and sipping it with care. It was fine to him, as he wasn't one to be picky when Raquel brought him anything.
As he lounged in his chair, staring blankly at his monitor, he could not help but wonder how safe they really were. Lorey was not exactly one to defend herself. If trouble found her... well, he couldn't imagine things going well. Raquel was wise enough to know when to fight, take flight or just take it... and he had weaponry on his side. Richard obviously had muscle... but was it any real use to plan against a threat you didn't even know?

"Thank you for the coffee, though." Damian stood from his chair to give her a kiss upon the cheek before walking back to the kitchen where Lorey stood.

"And how are you this fine day?" he asked her, hoping they could have a civil dialogue between them for once.

"Hoping everything is going well with Richard..." she said glumly. "Where do you think he's gone? He could be dead for all I know..."

Leave it to Lorey to give him something he had no answer to or reaction for. Anxious eyes looked to Raquel before he dared even make a suggestion.

"Well, I'm sure he's alright... like Raquel said yesterday, he's crazy about you and would never go down knowing you were still alive..."

Conversation awkwardly dropped off after that. There seemed little that could put Lorey to rest other than Richard himself, but he was obviously not there, and couldn't be summoned from thin air. Damian decided to have a little swim instead of fighting of her demons, inviting Raquel to join him if she pleased. Really, he thought. Lorey should try to be a bit stronger for everyone's sake instead of throwing a raincloud over everything.

--

It was about seven in the evening when Lorey returned to the library to have a bit of a read. Without Richard there, she felt very limited to what she could handle... goodness knew she didn't know how to interpret a text on her own just yet. Everything was guesswork without someone there to validate her ideas... but did she really need that?

Lorey plucked a small, leather-bound edition of poetry from a shelf, and sat down to read in an equally luxurious leather chair. It was lovely in the library with the dome overhead. Sunset light dripped through each colored pane, leaving a golden hue to everything within the circular pool of light upon the glossy marble floor. Beautiful, she thought. And with the remote she found within her grasp, she could open a small hole in the very top of it to let the breeze come through.

With a few whirs and clicks, there was soon a lovely, sweet-smelling breeze drifting it's way through... so gentle that Lorey almost felt drowsy from it. She couldn't fall asleep just then, though. She had to get to reading so that she could become more knowledgeable, and know the world outside. Funny, she thought, how she wanted to know the world by looking through pages instead of actually trying to understand it first hand. The world first-hand, though, had struck her hard... pages to her were like a safety cushion of sorts. Perhaps things could be best understood indirectly.

Lorey tried her best to understand the poems. Some were very straight-forward and lovely sounding, while others seemed to mean something else than what they said. Was poetry supposed to be like that? she wondered, closing her eyes to think. Would people write one thing, and mean another...?
She could see the images the writers wanted in her mind. Rolling fields (she'd seen pictures once in a travel guide), roses (she'd seen those in vases at the Ballroom)...

But the image she did not expect at all was what she saw when she opened her eyes once more: two very large, but human, yellow eyes staring at her no more than five inches away from her face.

Lorey screamed, rolled out of her sideways position in the chair, and scrambled to her feet. There, crouched on the floor next to where she had just been, was a woman with an odd raspberry color to her hair, slender frame, and large yellow, feral eyes. Her outfit was nothing more than boots, a trench coat, and what seemed to be a very tight black bra with very short shorts.

"Wh-who are you?" she stuttered, utterly terrified. How had she come in? There had been no sound in the library other than her flipping pages, how had she made no sound with that coat...?

The woman, whose name was Terra, stood, her eyes never leaving Lorey.
"You look like her..." she muttered. And before Lorey could question just what was going on, Terra had moved with an unnatural speed to come to a stop right in front of her face once more. Those large, haunting yellow eyes... they made all motion stop just from pure fear.

Again, with a great speed, Lorey found her wrists taken up in the woman's hands, and brought above her head. Higher, higher, until she was lifted right from her feet and dangling helplessly in the air. "Not your mother, if that's what you were thinking. She was all torn to pieces... remember?"

As if the eyes weren't enough, the maddening grin that accompanied them was just as feral. "Remember when I killed her...?"

"N-n-no..." The realization made Lorey want to heave. This... thing, this woman, had...
But before she could put all the pieces together, Lorey was thrust against a bookcase, wrists still caught in a vicious grip above her head and fear still preventing her from crying out.

"Yessss," Terra hissed. It was delightful to finally reveal herself to the daughter of her last plaything. She'd been forbidden to kill like that for ages. The last one, a man, hadn't been so fun, unfortunately, but this one... maybe she couldn't kill her, because of personal reasons, but it would be lovely to watch her squirm, especially after a long day of watching the entire household.

With Lorey pinned against the bookshelves, Terra could have a free hand. The other still kept her wrists bound, but the other could do all sorts of mayhem. Each finger, to Lorey's horror, had a long, shining nail growing from the tip, making them seem more like claws. They appeared normal, if highly manicured, but the tips were sharp as razors with twice the bite.

One nail was placed on the neck of Lorey's dress. "You look like her, though... but you're not her, are you? That b***h..." And slowly, the nail acted like a pair of scissors, tearing a neat line right through the dress as it was dragged downward, exposing Lorey's sunless body.

Still the yellow eyes kept her in a hypnotic fear, and Lorey could not cry out for help. Please, she thought to anyone able to somehow hear thoughts, please come.

Terra didn't like crowds, however. She enjoyed her victims alone, so that they're suffering could be hers alone. during the day, she had seen Raquel and Damian together in bed, laughing as she squirmed from his touch. Terra and her past lover had done much the same...
She took a nail and dragged it against Lorey's middle, once, twice, until Lorey began squirming, too, just as Raquel had, just like she had...

For a minute, Lorey thought she was a victim of some twisted tickler, until the nails at her sides suddenly turned on point, and were swiftly driven into her flesh. Two inches of razors, it felt like, being driven and pressed into her side as she screamed out in pain.
"Betrayal," Terra whispered, viciously pulling out her bloody nails from Lorey. "You think everything's fine... everything is innocent, and fun... and then..."

Crack!
Lorey screamed out once more as Terra brought her wrists so painfully close that something gave way. Pain, blood trickling down her sides...
If it weren't for a sudden book flying from the doorway, Lorey would have believed herself to be utterly alone in the house.

Damian had heard the screams from the recreational room where he had retreated or some alone time with his thoughts. It only took him a few steps to find Lorey bleeding at the hands of the chilling woman, who swiftly dropped her in a heap on the floor at the mere sight of Damian.

There was that feral smile again, before he, too, was caught in an amazing feat of superhuman speed, because that is what she was... a Super.
Damian struggled against her, fighting with any skill he once thought he had, until punch after hit after stab had rendered him in a mess upon the floor. It had all happened so fast... so quickly, that he never stood a chance and could never properly say just what had happened.

"You bleed just like your father..." Terra said in an unnaturally triumphant voice. "Just like your father, you're just like him and nothing like him at all... my son, my son, save my son and you, you are nothing but a boy and a girl and a credit in your pocket!"
Terra was becoming almost mad with bloodlust and repressed memories, but there was still someone in the house that she was waiting for...

The yellowed eyes of Terra looked up, pupils dilated from the frenzy.
But she stopped. There was something about Raquel that was terribly familiar now that she saw her face-to-face...
"Damian!?" she said in a perfect impersonation of Raquel. She twitched and took steps back, wanting to spread the blood all about the place, but she couldn't. Terra wasn't allowed, she couldn't do that, not then, not then...

"R-rraquel," Lorey gasped through her pain. Both of her wrists felt broken, while her side was bleeding badly from her puncture wounds. "Run."

Her pitiful voice made Terra laugh insanely. "No need for that, no need, no need," she said, prancing off to the middle of the dying circle of colored light. The window at the very top was still open. It was where she had dropped in, and where she would get out.
"Good bye."
And like a rabbit, she gathered up her legs below her to spring out the dome, leaving behind her a mess, though no trace of herself other than wounds.

Damian could barely breathe let alone speak.
"Ribs," he managed. He'd been the object of Terra's released frenzy, so he was bleeding and broken in several places. But what hurt the most was how she had spoken of his father... that woman had murdered him, or had had a hand in doing so, and he had succumbed. He'd let her go.

"R-right foot... cuts... pretty bad..." he kept saying for the sake of staying conscious. Already he was becoming swollen and dazed...

Lorey, though, still had some fight left within her, though she was crying from pain.
"C-call a doctor or something... Richard took the speeder when they had to leave."

Oh, how she wished Richard was there. Each arm felt like it was on fire. She couldn't even properly cover her front, what with her dress being split in two practically. Lorey was humiliated, cold, and in such pain that she thought passing out would be better than staying awake.
She was already contemplating succumbing to that want, but what if she blacked out and didn't wake up? What if she didn't see Richard again...?

Damian, however, didn't have much of a choice. His mind was starting to go on him whether he wanted to stay awake or not.
"You're... you're so beautiful," he said, with his head in her lap. He had the perfect view of her lovely face looking down at him with all the worry he could ever ask anyone to feel for him, right in those eyes.
"I'm s-so glad you're my Raquel. My Raquel..." Damian's dry lips kept forming her name as he went slightly loopy from pain and blood loss. Hang on, she had said... hadn't she? Or was it, "stay with me"? Either sounded good to him at the time.

((I thought Richard was going to come back now at some point... but yeah, they do need someone to come and fix them up xD))

Lorey was too busy staring at Damian to give a proper response. He wouldn't have been carrying on like that in his state if he didn't mean it... From what she had known of him, any ruse he put up was swiftly knocked down once things became too bad or involved.
Was he truly genuine?

Damian kept himself focused on Raquel. He would do whatever she wanted. She was always fawning over him unless she was mad at him, but he cold stay awake for her... he would try his best.

"What was she?"

Lorey's voice was so little as she leaned against the books for support. Guilt clouded her eyes when she saw how some of them were stained because of what had happened, but she supposed they could be replaced like everything else in the house.
"How...?" But her voice trailed off. It was becoming too painful to take in large breaths, or really move. She hoped help would come soon... or Richard. But maybe it was best for her to just stick it out so she could show him how strong she was, even when he was away.

"Richard...!" Lorey was so utterly confused. Who had Raquel killed? Rose? But that was ridiculous, Raquel hadn't hurt anyone... not like the photo she had seen, anyhow. She was sure of it.

The battered woman tried to get up, but her wrists were swollen and badly bruised. One was certainly broken. With nothing but her feet working properly, Lorey pressed her back against the wall, trying to use that as support as she tried to stand once more, despite her punctured sides. The state of her dress humiliated her to no end, but she kept telling herself it was like being seen in a bikini... and somehow that made it less awkward.