Scarlet Queen Ch. 04-05

Thirty minutes later, they were given special clearance that Ellington must of have arranged. Ellie had no idea how he did it in such a short span of time, but some things were not worth dwelling on, especially in the state that she was in.

The car stopped in front of a small Gulfstream airplane, Ellie dragged herself out of the car, stumbling slightly then climbing the stairs to board the plane.

Sitting down in the nearest seat, she buckled herself in and leaned her head against the glass. Not long after, the plane was lining up on the runway to take off, Ellie swore she could have spotted the forms of Rain and Dante.

It was impossible though, they couldn't have known where she was, could they? Just as she pondered that, Ellie felt exhaustion take over and she gave into sleep, leaving that worry for another day.

* * *

Rain and Dante cursed themselves as they watched the plane, take off into the sky with Ellie aboard.

"Where the hell is she flying off to now?" Rain demanded, but Dante didn't answer him immediately because he had his phone out and was placing a call.

"Hi Silver it's me, can you see if you can find a flight manifest of a plane for me please? I've got it's tail number, let me know when you're ready. ... Okay, it's DC-984. ... It's heading to London, England? Please set up a private plane for us too, same destination, and we need it out of LaGuardia, preferably, since we're already here. ... Thanks, Silver, we owe you one."

"Right, Silver says he's got a private plane enroute to meet us here in the next hour."

Rain sighed in frustration, "Why is she going to London?"

"I have a feeling that she's seeking out medical help. You smelt it too didn't you? The huge loss of blood, I mean at the festival grounds. Ellie's probably seriously injured from the collapse, she panicked and the first call she made was to her man of affairs, Ellington. He's probably got a doctor who specializes in dhampir on his payroll."

"Merde, this ridiculous, Dante, why didn't she just come to us? We would have taken care of her," Rain said raking a hand through his hair in frustration.

"She probably did even spare us a thought," Dante responded, feeling just as upset over the matter.

"You're damn right she didn't, well, that is changing because it's to go with plan B," Rain announced.

Dante eyed his lover. Of the two of them, Dante was the rational one, and Rain was the dramatic one. Rain's dramatic nature could often lead them into trouble, but, whatever he had in mind right now, Dante was a hundred percent in favour of. It was time to finally sort this all out so that they could be happy together.

Dante slowly nodded at Rain and said, "Alright, I'm in, we just need to find out where she'll go in London. It was hard enough tracking her tonight; something was off with her blood."

Rain suddenly smiled really brightly and Dante was suspicious again.

"What?" He asked Rain cautiously.

"Her scent was different tonight, if I'm not mistaken, I'd say it was almost human-like."

Dante was shocked, though as he thought about it, it didn't seem so hard to believe. Rain was right again, her scent was super faint, and it had almost completely blended into the rest of the human population, that's why it had taken them so long to find her. If she had been her regular dhampir self, they would have been able to find her in a heartbeat.

Born dhampirs were very rare, Dante had heard a rumour that there were only five in the entire world. In the last couple weeks, he felt like he had sensed another one, but he wasn't entirely sure. The other possible dhampir was weaker, which meant that they were younger and not in complete in control of their magic yet. Ellie, on the other hand, had been taught to use her gifts since birth, and she was also well over two hundred years old, which made her scent potent.

Dante was both angry and elated at the thought of her being human. If she was human and severely wounded, then it was really stupid for her to get on the plane, not being able to receive medical support for at least five to six hours. On the other hand, it helped their plans.

They stood in silence for half an hour, both men lost in thought, until Dante couldn't bear it.

"I'm so mad right now. I'm going to call Silver again. The plane was registered to one of the seventeen different corporations under Ellington, so it stands to reason that Ellington knows where's she heading and will be there to meet her. If we find him, we find her."

Rain nodded his agreement.

Dante dialled Silver's phone number again and Silver picked up on the second ring.

"Hello, Dante, miss me so soon?"

"Very funny Silver, a thought just occurred to me, can you see if you can find out the whereabouts of Ellie's man of affairs, Raphael Ellington?"

"Sure, that's not hard at all. Give me a second ... he's on a plane bound for New York City, right now. Its ETA is approximately five hours out."

"How the hell did you find that out so fast? Wait why would it be bound for JFK, if Ellie's bound for London?"

"Well, to answer your first question, I'd like you to believe my hacker skills are that epic, but I already had the aviation flight manifests for planes owned directly by the conglomerate that Rafael runs. There are seven planes in total. Four are on the ground in Tokyo, Paris, Berlin and Los Angeles. Three are in air. Number One is enroute to Newark International Airport from Montreal's Pierre Elliot Trudeau Airport. Number two, is currently enroute to London's Heathrow from NYC LaGuardia, so safe to say that it's Ellie's flight. The last is going from Heathrow to JFK. I pulled the flight log for the plane and saw that he's listed as soul passenger."

"I'm seriously impressed, though it doesn't answer question two."

"Well I can't really answer question two right now, but I can in a couple of hours. Hacking phone records are tedious especially when one number is unknown, and it's probably safe to assume that Ellie used a prepaid phone."

"Hold on, it shouldn't be too hard; the number would still be a New York number."

Silver sighed, "Yeah, except when I checked Rafael Ellington's background, he has more official links than your girl does, but it looks like he's pretty paranoid too. The man's got nine cell phone numbers, four land lines and a ridiculous number of business listings that go to different peoplethen route to another point. Yadda, yadda, yadda, you get the point. It's going to take time, though I'm searching the cell phone numbers and landlines first. I have a feeling your girl got a direct number to him. It'll take me about four hours."

"Can you do it in under two and a half?"

"What! Why?" Silver asked.

"I want you to shadow Rafael Ellington once he gets here. I feel like something fishy is going on because none of what's happened so far is making sense. To top it all off, the only person who can make sense of it is on a plane nearly three quarters of an hour ahead of us right now."

"Oh, I'm so in, I love a good mystery. Oh, and by the way, your plane should landing in five, four, three, two, one." Dante watched as, sure enough, a small Gulfstream plane touched down on the tarmac.

"I hate when you do that," Dante grumbled.

"You're just jealous of my awesomeness. Right, I've got work to do; I'll talk to as soon as I can."

Rain looked over to Dante with arms crossed, but neither spoke as the plane pulled up near their location. They climbed aboard quickly and buckled in.

"So, Ellington's enroute to the Big Apple? You're right, none of this makes sense. Do you think he came on his own to find out what happened to Ellie or do you think she asked him to come here for a different reason?"

Dante pondered this for a moment, as he watched, the pilot locked the hatch and the fuel crew filled the tanks.

"I think she asked him here. If you look at his track record, Ellie is always his first priority."

Rain leaned back and gave Dante a ghost of a smile, "I think we're in the wrong line of business, love. This detective business seems much more intriguing."

"You're right, but first I want to find Ellie. Then, I want to keep her in our bed so long that she'll never want to leave us," Dante stated his intent.

The plane started to roll on the tarmac again about five minutes later. Rain leaned forward and kissed Dante.

Drawing back after a moment, he whispered, "I like the way you think, mon amour."

Dante shook his head at him. Rain often reverted to French when he was scheming, seducing or highly stressed. Dante didn't think that Rain was stressing that much anymore, which left scheming and seducing. Dante could only imagine what erotic torment Rain was plotting for Ellie, especially given that he probably had seven hours to think of something truly diabolical. Dante turned to look out the window and grinned. He didn't dare interrupt a master at work, it was unsporting, really.

* * *

Ellie woke up to an annoying beeping sound; blearily, she looked around until she spotted the hateful machine. She weakly pulled at the closest cord to get the stupid thing to turn off but it didn't help as it erupted with a louder noise.

"Oh heaven's sakes, shut up will you," Ellie said to the machine belligerently.

Someone came bursting into the room, and she vaguely recognized him. It was Gabriel, Rafe's younger brother who was a famous doctor on Harley Street. In fact, Ellie recognized her surroundings as being part of his private clinic.

"Lady Prescott, don't pull at wires at random," He chided setting the machine to rights.

"Turn it off will you, it's annoying me."

"You need it," he retorted.

"What does it do?"

"It tells me your oxygen levels and heart beat."

"Then I don't need it, I can tell you that I've got the constitution of an ox."

"More like a stubborn mule, you should have gone to a hospital in NYC, we could have covered it up later. You nearly died; there was a small sliver of metal that nicked your heart. I know you were severely weakened but a small part of your powers actually worked to keep you from bleeding to death. It stopped working when you landed, if the plane had been delayed by even an hour, you would have died. You're not out of the woods right now either. Your blood levels are low and you're fighting an infection. Your arm is about three times the size that it normally is. Not to mention you have a couple of compression fractures with your rib cage and other debris-related cuts on your back that required some stitching."

"How long was I out for?" Ellie asked, licking her parched lips.

"Surprisingly, not as long as you should have been. You've been out in total twelve hours, seven on the plane, and the rest here. You still need more rest, until your dhampir powers kick back in."

"Okay," Ellie said weakly as her eyes started to close again.

"I'll be back in thirty minutes to check on you." Gabriel murmured quietly.

Ellie's eyes fluttered back open, "Please turn the machine off, I really don't like it. I can't sleep with it on. Besides I'm not human, my levels are different."

Gabriel looked at Ellie, fiercely debating with himself, before he finally gave in and unplugged the machine.

Ellie closed her eyes again and pretended to sleep. Waiting until she heard Gabriel walk out of the room and shut the door. She sat up as quickly as she could without doing any more damage and unhooked the blood bag from her arm. Gabriel hadn't run a saline solution because it was determined long ago that it hindered dhampir recovery rather than helping.

Ellie felt very dizzy, but she knew she couldn't stay here; anyone could kill her in her sleep here, though Gabriel would protected her as best as he could. Ellie was still really weak, and, with only one good arm, she somehow managed to lift the window enough for her to crawl out from the basement. Standing up, she leaned against the fence, catching her breath, then walked into the back alleyways. The destination that she had in mind wasn't that far away. Ellie kept a secret World War II bunker in the city for a place to go when she was injured or needed to feel safe. It was only a few blocks away.

She didn't know how she did it, but Ellie made it to the entrance, which was a storm drain on the Thames, without attracting any attention. She walked a few more feet into the drain and pressed the secret button as a door swung open to a secret elevator. Getting in she closed the door and pressed the down button. Just as she started to disappear from view she swore she saw Rain and Dante again, she could even hear them shouting at her.

Panicked by the surreal image, Ellie got off the elevator and limped over to the hatch door and twisted it open with what remained of her strength. Once it was opened, she quickly limped in and shut it, using another secret button to seal it completely.

At the same time, a light flicked on and a clean, surprisingly bright room that was big enough to be a cozy studio apartment with full separate bath, lay before her. Sighing, she sat down on a nearby couch, overcome by the dizziness of her adventure. Ellie felt really sick suddenly, and she stood up, moving as quickly as she could to the bathroom, to throw up. Ellie made it to the bathroom and, after a few moments of retching violently, she stopped but felt so warm.

Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the cool tile behind her, hoping to absorb the coolness of the tile into her. Ellie felt two large hands stroke her cheek.

Gasping in surprise she opened her eyes wide and saw Rain in front of her, though on her right side, crouched so that he was eye level. Dante had also knelt down beside her on the other side, looking at her. It had been their hands on her face.

Dante grabbed the mouthwash from the counter and gave her some. Ellie, beyond the point of being humiliated, used the mouth wash to get rid of the nasty taste in her mouth; then Rain handed her a small glass of cool water. Ellie drank a few sips, before setting the glass down, looking at them.

"Naughty, ma cherie, you've been very naughty," Rain muttered as his eyes hardened.

Dante looked more concerned at the present moment and asked, "Tell me something, Ellie, do you really want to live?"

Ellie's reply came swiftly, "Of course, I do."

"Well now, ma belle, you've made your bed, you will lie in, plus tard."

Ellie's beleaguered mind tried to make sense out of what he said, "Later? Why am I'm going to be lying in bed later? I want to sleep now."

"No, love, wrong conclusion, but you'll see soon enough," Dante corrected.

Both he and Rain showed her their fangs before lunging at her neck. Ellie felt the sting of the bites on either side of her neck. In shock, she slipped into a blissfully ignorant oblivion though she knew that her life would never be the same again.