A Song for Severus ~ (Not Update, but Edit)

Chapter 40 ~ Vengeance

The revel was particularly brutal that night, the Death Eaters taking out their frustrations on the remaining muggles. Blood and screams were everywhere.

Elizabeth found the muggle who had spoken to her before they entered the lower mansion and made the poor man suffer terrible, conjuring hard spikes inside her pussy and fucking him, slicing his cock in the process, blood pooling on his thighs. The other female Death Eaters were pissed off at her about it, but she didn’t give a damn.

The good thing about Rosier’s revels was that a person could roam from room to room and there were other entertainments besides raping and killing. He had a smaller ballroom for dancing, a banquet room where food and drink were served, a shower room, and a game room where wizards and witches could play cards, darts or billiards. So Severus didn’t have to stay where the muggles were being abused.

However he did return at the end of the night to do “cleanup,” mercifully casting the Killing curse on the poor, shattered yet still breathing muggles and disposing of their bodies. It was terrible work, but he was used to it, and it was kinder than letting them suffer for hours.

He stayed in one of the opulent guestrooms and for the next week traveled with Rosier to other revels being held in various homes and secret locations. When he went to bed at night, he focused on Hermione to keep from reliving the horrors he witnessed night after night. He would be glad when this would be over.

Rosier finally put together the competitor list and received the oaths necessary for participation. The competitors for the Dark Lord’s throne were to come back Wednesday after next to find out who their initial foes would be. Then the competition would start in earnest.

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Eloise was walking home from the tube four days after Eddie had found out where she lived and worked. The shrewd young man managed to get inside the apartment building by following some tipsy night owls in, then sat on the stairs at the top landing, watching down below. He was there over an hour before an upstairs tenant walked out of her apartment on her way to work and looked at him.

“Waiting for a friend,” he said to her with a genteel smile.

The young woman eyed him, then gingerly walked past, looking up at him once more before descending the stairwell completely. Eddie’s smile faded. After a while he saw Eloise exit her apartment. She left and the young man walked downstairs to get the number off the door.

He met Robert Thatcher at the designated meeting spot and gave him the information he wanted. That was an easy two hundred pounds.

It was just beginning to get dark when Eloise walked through the East End. The next full moon was just a week away and Eloise still hadn’t come up with a plan to kill Fenrir yet, so had decided to try and embrace her werewolf form so she could retain knowledge of her actions and control her acts. If she could do this, she would be in a better position to consciously wreak her revenge on the big, hairy bastard.

Robert Thatcher, dressed all in black, waited up the street for Eloise. Luckily for him, he was downwind, because if Eloise had caught his scent, she would have immediately gone on point. Eloise let herself into the apartment, groaning immediately as she heard music blasting so loud she could hardly hear her own footsteps as she walked up the stairs. On the first floor two young men moved in with little more than stereo equipment about a week ago. Eloise knew the moment she saw them, they would be flooding her flat with loud music. But at least they turned it off about ten-thirty or so…in time for her to get some sleep.

The brunette walked up the stairs to the second floor, let herself into the flat, walked to the cooler and took out the raw steak she planned to have for dinner. She had tried other meats, chicken, lamb and pork, but none had the flavor of beef. She put a pan on the stovetop and turned it on low. Eloise liked the steak warmed…not cooked.

Robert waited until he saw three young men approaching the apartment and fell in behind them. They opened the door and went in, Robert catching it and sidling in after them. He lifted his collar and pulled his black hat further down his head so his features wouldn’t be seen clearly and waited for them to go into a flat that was blasting music. How convenient for him. If the bitch struggled with him no one would be able to hear her.

Robert mounted the stairs quickly and looked for the number of Eloise’s flat. It was right next to the stairs. The gray-eyed man pulled on a pair of black leather gloves, looking around carefully before knocking hard on the door and stepping aside to avoid the peephole. He might have to kick the fucking door in if she didn’t open it. Then he had another thought. The woman might not open the door if she didn’t see anyone. So he stepped back in front of the door but turned his back to it and pretended to be enjoying the music, bobbing his head.

Eloise looked up at the sound of the knock. She wouldn’t have been able to hear it if not for her enhanced werewolf senses. That music was loud. She turned off the pan and walked to the front door, looking out the peephole. A man was standing in front of it, bobbing his head to the music. She couldn’t see who it was but he seemed to be a party guy. He probably had the wrong apartment. She opened the door.

“Can I help…” she began.

Suddenly she was hit hard in the face and stumbled back into the apartment, falling on her back and landing hard on the floor as the man entered behind her, closing the door and locking it, his gray eyes resting on the fallen woman, who was rubbing her jaw and looking up at him. She recognized the scent immediately as Robert Thatcher started walking toward her menacingly.

What he didn’t realize was that he had only surprised Eloise. She wasn’t hurt at all. Rage filled the woman and she scooted back, crawling on her elbows and pushing with her feet, to lure him further into her flat.

“What do you want?” she asked him, her belly all in knots. The man stopped, an evil leer on his face as he pulled off his cap.

“You remember me, don’t you love? You recognized me on the tube a week or so ago,” he said, “We had a run in about ten years ago. I was never caught for it…not until now.”

Eloise felt her head hit the back of the couch, then slowly rose, moving behind it as Robert began to advance again.

“What do you want?” she asked him again.

“You. You can finger me. My life is a whole lot better now and I can’t afford to have you ruin it,” he breathed, walking around the couch.

“Are you going to kill me?” Eloise asked him, her eyes glittering.

“Afraid so, love. It’s nothing personal, but I can’t go back to jail now…” he said, his eyes washing over her body, “But I think I’ll have a bit of fun first. You remember how fun I was, don’t you?”

Eloise’s heart began to pound as she remembering the man choking and hitting her as he raped her brutally.

“Yes I do,” she said with a low growl.

Robert hesitated. Had this bitch just growled at him? He looked at Eloise with a measuring glance. She wasn’t that big…there was no way she could overcome him.

“Come here,” he hissed, darting forward, Eloise pretending to try to elude him. She didn’t move as fast as she could have and just managed to stay a bit out of his reach as he chased her around the room, his confidence growing as she fled before him.

“I said come here, damn it! You’re just going to make it worse for yourself,” Robert seethed, jumping over the couch and blocking her path. He grabbed her, yanking Eloise against his body and gripping her jaw hard, his eyes hard as he looked down into her face.

“You’re going to pay for running, bitch,” he snarled, raising his hand to slap her.

As he brought his hand down, Eloise caught his wrist. Robert tried to pull away from her grasp but found he couldn’t.

“Let go of my wrist!” he hissed, releasing her jaw and trying to punch her in the face.

Eloise caught the other wrist as well. Man and woman now stood toe to toe, Robert desperately trying to pull his hands away. He started when he looked at Eloise’s eyes. The pupils had dilated and now black veins were racing through the whites, and she pulled her lips away from her teeth which seemed very, very sharp.

“Holy mother!” Robert breathed, struggling fiercely now.

“You took something from me,” Eloise said in a husky voice, “Something I can never get back, you bastard. Then you have the nerve to come back ten years later to finish the job? You black-hearted fuck. Now I’m going to get my pound of flesh from you.”

Eloise began to squeeze, Robert crying out in pain and falling to his knees as she slowly crushed his wrist bones, feeling them turn to jelly under her hands as the man screamed in agony. Then Eloise viciously planted her sharp knee into his face, breaking his nose and two front teeth, blood gushing from his nose and mouth. He fell to the floor, his useless hands brought to his face, staring up at Eloise with the fear of God in his eyes.

“I’m not going to kill you…but you’re going to wish I had,” she breathed.

Robert screamed as the woman went to work on him.

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Two hours later, amid a slew of nosey neighbors, medics removed Robert from Eloise’s flat. Almost every bone in his body was broken and he had lost a lot of blood. The detectives took down Eloise’s statement, frowning at her terribly for what she had done to the broken man. Robert Thatcher was in bad shape, criminal or not. Eloise claimed it was self-defense, but anyone could see that she had beaten the man far beyond what was necessary to disable him.

“He said that he couldn’t go to jail for a rape he did ten years ago,” Eloise told the detectives, “And said he was going to kill me. I had to defend myself.”

”Every bone in his body is broken,” the detective said to her.

Eloise shrugged.

“At least he’s still alive. I did him a better turn than he intended to do me. He was going to rape me again before he killed me,” she said evenly, “What would you have done if someone who had hurt you badly before came back to do you in? I did what I had to do. He’s lucky I didn’t just let him die then called you blokes.”

“That would have been murder, Miss,” a detective informed her.

“It would have been ‘shock,’” Eloise replied.

The detective sighed. Yes, she could have claimed shock for a reason to not call them until after he was dead. Mr. Thatcher was a lucky man.

“Did you use something on him, Miss Hedgeberry?” the other detective asked her.

“Just my hands and feet,” she said, then added the lie, “I got him down by kneeing him in the balls, then I just started hitting and stomping.”

“Are you a martial artist, Miss Hedgeberry?”

”No. But I know how to protect myself,” she said, thinking of the crowd of boys on the tube.

The detectives looked at each other. That was an understatement if they ever heard one. They both closed their pads and stood up, still eyeing Eloise as if they’d like to arrest her. But Robert Thatcher did have a record, and there was no good reason for him to have been in her flat. She was probably telling the truth. It had been self-defense…and more than likely…revenge. Eloise had busted him up but good. Probably adrenaline. People could become unbelievable strong when that stuff was pumping through their veins. She must have been terrified and flew into a frenzy when she got him down.

“Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Hedgeberry. If we need anything else from you, we’ll be back,” the detective said, eyeing the blood all over the carpeting. She had quite a clean up to do.

“Fine,” she said, walking the detectives to the door.

Her neighbors were all standing around, craning their necks to see inside Eloise’s apartment and looking at her expectantly.

“A break-in,” she said to them, “It went very badly for him, but I’m all right. Good night.”

Eloise closed the door and locked it as the neighbors murmured to each other about how badly the man had been injured.

“And she looks like such a nice young woman,” an elderly woman said to another, who scowled.

“She is. She just gave that bastard what for. Serves him right, trying to take advantage of a woman that way. He got what he deserved if you ask me,” she snapped.

Most of the neighbors were in agreement. Actually, this might work out in their favor. Any other thugs who might have thought about robbing someone in this particular building would most likely have second thoughts now.

Eloise walked back into her living room and looked down at the congealing blood. After a moment’s hesitation, she knelt and used her finger to pull up the hardening surface of the blood and stuck the tip of it in the part that was still liquid…swirling it because the blood had separated. Then she stuck her reddened fingertip into her mouth, bliss washing across her face as the sweetness hit her tongue.

God, human blood tasted so much better than beef blood.

She knelt there for several minutes, collecting as much blood as she could with her fingertip, then finally leaning forward and lapping up the rest with her tongue.

Damn…it was good. So good.

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A/N: :::shuddering::: ooh, that was a rather grisly ending to the chapter. :::shudders again::: Robert was quite lucky she didn’t get a taste of that blood while she was wailing on him. Anyway, thanks for reading.