Burnt Lies

Fever Dream

Alara

My head felt like it was full of cotton wool, it felt stuffy and unable to think coherently and every appendage on me ached with pain that refused to go away. 

"Ugh," I groaned pressing the base of my palm against my head trying to subdue the incessant ringing. I pressed my palms against the soft surface that I had been lying on, I looked down to see a drab grey couch, my dress handing loosely off me crumpled and drenched in mud. It hurt to see such a beautiful gown in tatters now. 

That was when I head the muttering of a voice, some curses thrown into the mix and a tight trepid voice. 

"Yes, I fucking have her, where the hell are you?" The voice unmistakable belonged to the ghost that was Cole Mason. 

His thin frame somehow still managing to be imposing, his hollow cheeks and dead ashy eyes screaming stay away.

He seemed angry, but his voice was a hissed whisper, probably because he thought I was still asleep. 

"Just get here quickly, I can't deal with her on my own," I pressed my lips together, I hadn't even done anything and he was sick of me. I looked around the barren room that I was in, it didn't look like any place I knew. Very bare with no charm or personality. 

I centred myself by pressing my palms behind me and taking a deep breath, refilling my lungs with much needed oxygen. I closed my eyes briefly trying to regain sensation in my arms and legs before opening them once more. My first course of action was to reach my gun, the pistol that had been strapped to the outside of my thigh. 

I reached to the holster that was connected to my undergarments but found nothing at all. 

"Looking for this?" I raised my eyes to reach Cole's stormy ones, he seemed unamused, with my gun hanging loosely between his fingers. 

My face flushed, realising that he would have had to lift my skirts to reach the gun, "You had no right to take that from me, or do what you did to get it,"

His face remained emotionless, "Don't worry it wasn't me that got it."

"Who was it then?" I said lifting myself from the couch. I still felt a little disorientated, teetering on my feet about to fall, but somehow managing to stay up right. 

"Then who was it?" I bit out far beyond schooling my voice to be polite. 

"Thea," he spoke as though I was supposed to know who that was. 

"Who's that?"

"A friend."

"Why am I here?" I gave him a pointed look, still painfully aware of my lack of weapon and it being threaded through a potential threat's hands.  

"To keep you safe," he responded almost immediately it seemed far too rehearsed for my liking. 

"Don't give me that bullshit, why am I actually here?" my tone was slightly aggressive but I was past my wits end, I had little patience remaining and I didn't like being tossed around like this. From one place to another like a damn rag doll.

"It's better if you don't know," I laughed at the statement but it was full of everything but humour. 

"And I'm just supposed to trust you?" I paused a moment giving him a once over, watching the way he moved like a wraith in the shadows, "That's not likely."

"You hardly have a choice," he drawled, his voice almost bored. 

"What are you going to do, threaten to shoot me again? That's not likely you clearly need me for something, so your not going to risk hurting me, I could walk out that door and you would be able to do absolutely nothing to get me to stay."