Rain falling from the sky splattered against her, each cold drop stinging as it hit her. Her few scraps of remaining clothing did little to block the impacts, and she was already soaked to the skin. All she could hear was her own heavy, ragged breathing, broken only by the heavy boom of thunder.

She didn't mind that thunder, when it came; the flashes of lightning that immediately preceded each clap of roaring sound gave her glimpses of the road ahead of her, helped her somehow manage to remain on her feet and not go sprawling, headlong, down on the rough gravel of the road's edge.

She didn't dare look behind her, not even for a single glance. Was she still being pursued? Even if the men had given up in the darkness and the rain, she couldn't risk slowing down even for a moment to check if they were chasing after her.

It had been a moment of pure luck, she knew. The heavy rain made the roads slick, the gravel sliding beneath the van's wheels. They hit a puddle or a deep pothole, slipped and skidded, and the van came to a skewed stop on the side of the road.

She didn't know where they were, of course, or what was outside the metal panels of the van. There were no windows in the back. Just metal benches, bolted to the sides, on one of which she huddled and tried to ignore how the bumping and jolting of the vehicle made her entire body shake and cringe.

The van had skidded to the stop, and the man in the front, the driver, had been cursing. He yelled something back to the second man, the one sitting across from her with his gritted teeth and permanently angry expression, but the drum of rain on the van's metal roof made it impossible to hear his words. The angry man had yelled something back, and then turned and shoved his head, shoulders, and upper torso through the grate that separated the front of the van from the back.

For that moment, his eyes weren't on her.

The woman hadn't hesitated. She knew that the back door of the van wasn't locked. She'd never considered leaping out before, of course, since the van was rolling along. Even if she somehow survived the fall, the angry man would signal for the van to stop, and he'd leap out and drag her back in. She still had heavy, dark bruises on her upper arms from when he'd last shoved her. She couldn't even remember what she had done wrong, what she'd done to bring on his anger.

Sometimes, he was angry for no reason at all.

But now, with him distracted and turned away from her, she had a chance. With the van stopped, she had a chance. With the darkness and the rain thundering down outside, giving her the possibility of hiding, she had the faintest sliver of a chance.

She'd taken it.

The cold and rain hit her like a blow as soon as she leapt from the back of the van, but the woman was used to feeling pain, and she didn't pause. She hit the ground, felt the sharp stones of the gravel biting into her bare feet, and she ran.

As she tumbled out of the van, she heard a yell from behind her. The angry man had noticed her fleeing. There was a scrape of gravel, and then another curse, this one filled with pain as well as anger. Perhaps the angry man had slipped, unable to find footing on the slippery, loose scree.

At first, she ran along the road, figuring that it was something she could track, a way to make sure that she wasn't just hopelessly moving in circles. It was only after a minute or two that she realized that the van could also move along the road, could use its headlights to pick her out of the darkness.

She could be recaptured, if they found her.

The woman gritted her teeth, more at the thought of being back in the men's grasp than at the cold and pain and rain. She wouldn't let it happen! She promised herself fiercely that she would fight them, that she'd rather die than let herself be dragged back into that black van. And truly, death would be preferable to what she would face if they got her back.

Fortunately, as she realized that she couldn't follow this road any longer, she found herself at a crossroads. The road she'd been following was gravel at the sides, but had some sort of black tar partly covering it, making it a little smoother. This cross road was even less of an obvious path, little more than a dirt and gravel track, turning off at a right angle.

The woman made a choice immediately. This side road would be tougher for the van to follow, and they might not expect her to turn. The men would expect her to be panicked, to keep on going straight, thinking only of putting as much distance between her and them as she could manage on her exhausted legs.

The woman was panicked, but deep inside, she could feel that tiny little flare of resistance still burning. She wasn't yet an unthinking beast! Not yet!

She made the turn, forcing her legs to pound once again as she scurried down the side road.

Another flash of lightning, and this time the woman saw something huge up ahead, looming out of the darkness. It was lost immediately in the blackness when the lightning's flash faded, but she remembered the image, seared into her eyes.

Directly in front of her was a house.

House might not even be the right word, the woman suddenly thought, her mind feeling the gibbering screams of panic drawing closer to her little flickering campfire of sanity around which she huddled. It was a mansion, almost, big and sprawling and asymmetrical.

Another word loomed up in the woman's mind. That word was "shelter."

Her feet kept on carrying her closer to the house. She felt something hard impact her ankles, and she threw up her hands as she fell forward. She caught herself before she was more than halfway down.

Stairs. These were stairs, leading up to a porch. Lightning flashed again, this time followed almost immediately by its accompanying clap of thunder. The storm was nearly on top of her.

She scrambled up the stairs on all fours, feeling the rough wood beneath her hands and knees. Up on top, on the exterior porch, she felt something new; it took her a moment to realize that the overhanging roof was blocking the rain, and the heavy droplets were no longer stinging at her skin.

There was a door ahead of her. Something was on the door, some sort of shape, but the woman was too tired to make any sense of what her eyes were telling her. All she could conceive was that there was a door, that on the other side of that door might be shelter, warmth, a hiding place from the men in the van.

She grabbed the handle of the door, not expecting it to turn.

It did.

The woman didn't waste any time on surprise. She wasn't really thinking at all, now, only moving on automatic instinct. She crawled inside, trying to push the door shut behind her. It swung part of the way, but didn't fully close. She couldn't even make herself turn around to fix it.

There was softness beneath her, a scratchy sort of thick softness. Carpet? She didn't know, couldn't see. There was no light inside, and the lightning's flash could no longer help her to see.

Footsteps, she suddenly thought. Ahead of her, a heavy tread. A man's footsteps, coming closer to her.

Had they found her? Were those the footsteps of one of the men from the van? She raised her head, tried to bring her hands up to fight them off, to resist. She couldn't do anything, however, aside from wave her arms vaguely. All her strength, even the very last dregs, were gone. She couldn't even see her opponent, didn't know how to attack.

The footsteps drew closer, stopping in front of her. A light played over her - a flashlight or something, perhaps, she sensed. The light glinted off of black leather boots, with silver buckles shaped like something.

Skulls, the woman thought to herself as the darkness closed in around her mind.

That was her last thought before she lapsed finally into unconsciousness. But just as her awareness faded away, she heard a voice. A deep, powerful, male voice, speaking above her. The words didn't make any sense, not with her fading, but she heard them nonetheless.

"Where the hell did you crawl in from?"

Chapter two

Cain reached up and rubbed his face as he stared down at the woman on the floor in front of him.

"Where the hell did you even come from?" he said again, talking more to himself than to her. A glance revealed that the front door to his house was ajar behind the woman; she'd clearly come crawling in, although how she'd ended up here in the first place was a mystery.

Mysteries. Cain hated the things. They were far too complex, and often led towards full-on adventures.

That wasn't what Cain wanted. He was tired of all that. He just wanted to relax, to sit on his porch and enjoy a beer, maybe tinker with his bike's suspension a bit, just for the fun of it. He'd had his truck with adventures, and they'd parted on distinctly bad terms.

But now, he had this mysterious woman laying, all but naked, in his front hall.

First things first, Cain decided, reverting to simple logic and stoutly ignoring the puzzle on the floor in front of him. He stepped gingerly over the woman, taking care where he placed his boots, and put one big hand against the door to push it shut.

Before he closed the door, however, he took one look outside, wondering if there was a vehicle of some sort out there. There had to be, didn't there? He was miles from town; how else could this woman have ended up here? She couldn't have just dropped out of the sky.

There was nothing there but darkness and rain.

Cain stared out into the blackness for a moment longer, trying to see some vehicle or something, but there was nothing there. He eventually gave up and firmly closed the door.

With the rain no longer blowing into his house, dampening his carpet, he turned his attention to the girl on the ground. He crouched down a bit, carefully pushing back some of her messy hair with one finger.

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