Chapter Text
Elena Parker was feeling particularly down on that cold November night when her life changed forever. Work had been a long, arduous affair and her feet hurt something terrible. All she wanted in the world was to get home, feed her cat Miko and relax with an entire bottle of wine in front of the tv. Driving down the darkened stretch of road just a mile from her childhood home, she didn't see what she hit in the road that made both of her front tires blow out at the same time but she sure felt it.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit," she hissed between her teeth as she fought against the steering wheel jittering in her hands.
She could hear both of her front tires flapping uselessly against the pavement as she struggled to stay on the road long enough to pull off onto the shoulder. Once she came to a stop, she just sat there for a long moment to catch her breath and let her heart slow down a little. Her arms and shoulders had brand new aches in them and she knew her hands would be shaking like crazy if she weren't still gripping the steering wheel so hard. For a second there she'd thought her shitty twenty-year-old Ford Explorer was going to flip ass over teakettle and send her sailing into the ditch. It took her a while just to reassure herself she was still all in one piece.
"Just what I fucking needed," she said to no one as she let go of the wheel to hit the button to start her emergency flashers going. "Goddamn it."
Letting out a huge sigh, she searched the seat beside her for her purse until she spied it down on the passenger floorboard. Unbuckling the too-tight belt and freeing herself, she leaned over to snag the strap and pull it back up into the seat again. She muttered angrily to herself as she opened her purse and dug through it for her phone. She kept it in there to ward off the temptation of looking at it or answering a call while she drove. Her father had died reading a text message - fucking spam, at that - and she'd be damned if she'd go out the same way. Those who didn't learn from the past, blah, blah, blah.
She found her cracked, cheap ass phone underneath a half pack of Kleenex and pulled it out with another frustrated sigh. Turning on the flashlight function, she tried to steel herself before opening the driver's side door and stepping out. Immediately a gust of frigid wind blasted against her, forcing her back a step, and she cried out miserably as all of the skin on her body tightened in one terrible instant. Cussing some more, she pulled the hood of her jacket up over her head and pulled on the strings to tighten it; covering the short brown ponytail that had just begun to come undone at the back of her head.
Shining her light out on the open road, she saw a few curls of black that she assumed to be pieces of her front tires and something else further back; something that looked ominously shiny. The moon was new and she could see very little beyond the glow of her phone's flashlight or the headlights of her SUV. She could hear no cars, no sound other than the wind whipping through the trees around her, and she felt like she was alone in the middle of nowhere even though the city of Dallas, Texas and all of its nearly a million and half residents were literally just beyond the treeline on both sides of her. But it was so dark and cold and no one seemed to be out so she couldn't hope for a kind stranger to come along and help her out. More than likely they'd just try to run her down anyway; believing her to be the bait in a trap of some sort. Things really hadn't changed a whole hell of a lot since she was a kid. She'd just have to figure out what happened and go from there.
Elena walked toward the shiny thing lying in the road and held her phone up so that she could see it better. Coming ever closer to understanding, she saw some kind of latticework and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. Were...were those spikes? What the actual fuck? She shook her head, thinking, No, it can't possibly be what it looks like. and then the wind died for a moment and she heard footsteps coming up from behind her.
Starting to turn, adrenaline flooding her veins in one great big wallop, Elena felt a hand grab her arm and she screamed aloud. There was a man there, a man wearing a heavy peacoat, black gloves and a black ski mask, and she reacted without thinking, swinging her hand at his face and smashing her phone into the side of his head. She heard him grunt and take a step back and used this opportunity to knee him in the balls. He let out a horrible noise and his grip from her arm was gone so she turned and ran back to her vehicle; not thinking, only panicking.
Ripping open the door, she jumped inside and tried to turn the key even though she had left the engine running. She heard it grinding before she slammed her door shut and tried to shift into drive. She'd somehow forgotten that both of her front tires were out even as she thought, Spike strips! Spike strips in the road! It was a trap! A fucking trap! She stomped on the gas and her Explorer tried to go somewhere but its front tires were hobbled and useless; letting her start moving only at a crawl. She heard rims grinding on the pavement and she was moving but barely picking up speed. She wasn't getting out of here like this. The man in the mask would have no trouble catching up to her.
She hit the brakes, shifted into park again, and then shut off the engine. "Oh God, oh God," she gasped, barely hearing herself as she began to look through her coat pockets for her phone. She'd forgotten that it was gone; lying shattered on the roadway in a thousand pieces. "Oh God, please. Please, don't let me fucking die."
She heard movement outside and tried, too late, to reach over and lock the door. It was ripped open with sudden savagery and she screamed again as she came face to face with the man in the ski mask. He reached for her and she kicked and punched and screamed at him to go away, to fuck off and leave her alone. He dodged a few times and her hand caught the bottom of his mask, jerking it askew on his face.
She heard him growl and then he was bulldozing his way over her, using his much bigger, heavier body to pin her down. Elena screamed again and tried to dig her fingernails into his mossy green eyes but then he was putting something over her mouth, a cloth, a white cloth soaked in something, and she was breathing in the fumes, inhaling whatever chemical he'd doused it in. Within seconds her struggles slowed and weakened, allowing the man to grab both of her arms and pin them against her body with one of his.
Her eyelids fluttered and she felt like she was swooning; falling down, down, down into a dark place where everything was muffled and unimportant. He took the cloth away and she sucked in fresh air but her head wasn't clearing. Even as he stepped back and began pulling her out of the driver's seat, she couldn't lift a hand to stop him. Her arms felt like cooked spaghetti noodles and her legs were so dead that she might as well have been gone from the waist down.
The man lifted her, cradling her like a baby in powerful arms easily twice the thickness of her own, and began walking away from her vehicle, leaving it there with the door open and the dome light still glowing. He carried her down the embankment and to another road, never slipping once even though the grass was icy and crunched under his boots like brittle glass. They walked a little ways and came to another road, a hidden one behind the trees.
Elena came back to herself enough to look up at him and ask, "Where...?"
"Shhh," the man in the ski mask said, though not unkindly. "Just a few more minutes."
His voice was deep but not unpleasant. She could feel the vibration in his chest as he spoke and it made her squirm a little before she grew still again.
"Wanna go home," she told him. "Miko is hungry."
"I know," he said, his voice soothing away her fears. "Don't worry about him. He'll be taken care of."
Elena nodded and closed her eyes, feeling so very tired. Whatever he'd given her made her feel like she could sleep a thousand years; like one of those stupid princesses who ate poison and lay in a deathlike state until Prince Charming came to rescue them. She dozed a little, the rhythm of his steps lulling her, and only opened her eyes again as he came to a stop.
He set her on her feet and she would've crumpled to the ground if not for his arm holding her up around her waist. She saw a car there, something midnight black where it wasn't covered with road dust, and then he was leaning forward to open one of the back doors.
"Here we are," he said, picking her up again. "Let's just get you inside and -"
"No!" she cried out suddenly, weakly shoving against his broad chest with both hands. "I wanna go home!"
He threw her into the backseat face first and she cried out in fear and pain as he grabbed both of her wrists and forced them behind her back. Elena struggled a bit but he was too strong and soon she heard the clink of handcuffs being placed on her. Seconds later she was bound and he got off of her long enough to reach into his pocket for the cloth again.
Placing it over her mouth once more, the man in the mask said, "That's it, sweetheart. Breathe it in." His green eyes met her terrified blue ones and she saw them crinkle at the corners as he smiled. "I'm going to take you home, honey, don't you worry your pretty little head about that. Everything's going to be just fine from here on out, I promise."
Elena's struggles slowed again as her eyes rolled back in her head and the last thing she was aware of before darkness swallowed her up was the man in the ski mask laughing in her ear.