Raw Deal

by Bella Knight

  Saber mentally gave himself a cold shower. Sigrun's cooking was amazing. They all ended up at the kitchen island, munching the tiny pizzas and drinking cherry waters.

  "I was hungrier than I thought," said Wraith. "I'm inhaling these."

  "I knew it," said Sigrun. She kissed Wraith on the mouth first, then Saber. "There is something so not-sexy about needing love and touching, then having to stop halfway through because your stomach is eating its way out of your spine." She smiled. "I'll draw the bath." She picked up the kitten, stroking her head, as she swayed her way to the bathroom and the Jacuzzi tub.

  Wraith kissed Saber, then said, "I don't know about you, but I suggest we finish up, fill up the dishwasher, and get into that bathtub in less than ten minutes."

  "I am so glad you and I have a polyamorous marriage," said Saber. "I get the last gorgonzola."

  "Pig," said Wraith. She pushed him --but gently. He was still healing from getting shot in the chest.

  They ate, cleaned up, stripped, and put their clothes in the hamper, and made it to the bathroom in record time. Sigrun washed Wraith's hair, then put in conditioner. She then did the same for Saber. He was letting it grow long in his recovery period.

  "I like it," said Sigrun. "More to wash, but more to play with."

  Saber smiled. "I like being played with."

  Sigrun laughed. "As do I."

  Sigrun then washed them from head to toe. She carefully scrubbed Wraith's face, then helped her stand, and put a plastic bag over her hand. She scrubbed her body from head to middle, then helped her sit again for the legs and feet, and rinsed her hair. She did the same for Saber, minus the plastic bag, being careful with his sternum and ribs, now a pale yellow.

  She then had Saber sit on the edge of the tub, his feet in the water, his back against the tile, and got in the water. She used her fingers, and tongue and teeth on his erection, making him scream and shout and come. She washed him off and helped him step out of the tub. Saber dried his body and hair while Wraith one-handedly washed Sigrun's hair, added conditioner, scrubbed her back, and carefully scrubbed her face. Saber came over to wash Sigrun's body, rinsed her hair, then sat back down to watch. Sigrun and Wraith kissed lovingly, then with more urgency. Wraith laid back, and Sigrun used her fingers to make Wraith come again and again.

  Sigrun and Saber dried off Wraith. Sigrun blow-dried her hair and braided one side while Saber put lotion on her and helped her into a soft robe. They put her in their king-sized bed, and she fell asleep within moments.

  Saber laid down, and Sigrun rolled a condom on him, then rode him, gasping and screaming into his neck when she came and he released. She used wet wipes to clean them both off. Saber laid in the middle, and held both his women in his arms. Wraith rolled over, and draped her broken wrist over his chest. He kissed her hair, then kissed Sigrun, and fell asleep in absolute bliss.

  Aftermath

  Ajai let the federal prosecutor grill her for another hour, then abruptly stood up. "I'm hot and sweaty, I'm thirsty, I'm exhausted, and if you ask me another question about how those bastards raped me for days, I'll remove your face."

  Special Prosecutor Vincenza Varga leaned back from the look in her eyes. "I want you to be prepared."

  "There's prepared, and there's mental torture," said Ajai, looking down at the woman. "Now, get the fuck out of my hotel room." Varga stood, grabbed her crimson jacked from the back of the chair, and strode out without a word, heels clicking on the floor. Herja, adoptive mother and bodyguard, let her out.

  Skuld came over and looked into her daughter's eyes. "That woman is a great white shark in blood-red clothes. She smells the blood in the water from these human traffickers. This will give her a name people will remember."

  Ajai snorted. "Hard to say, not to remember."

  Skuld laughed. "She's an evil bitch, but she's..."

  "Our evil bitch," said Ajai. "Only reason she's not dead right now." She peeled off her T-shirt. "Shower," she said.

  "Good," said Skuld. "You stink so badly our enemies can smell you coming." Ajai threw a sock at her. Skuld ducked, laughing. Ajai took off the other sock and threw it at her boots, standing like sentinels in the doorway. She went in and scalded herself with hot water, scrubbing and rinsing and scrubbing again to get the stink of her past off her. She dried her hair with a towel, put on lotion, and dressed in underwear and a robe.

  They put on skanky rock, and Skuld bade her daughter sit on a chair backed up to the bed. Skuld put in battle braids, with little metallic tips hidden inside the hair that could be thrown. Including a lock pick, a joss stick (with a sharpened end), metallic rings that had foldout spikes, and metallic beads to set the machines off. It would slow them down going in and out of security, but they wouldn't find them all.

  "This is war," said Skuld. "They will try to wear you down. So far, the trial is all fingerprints, and video and trackers. The first two girls are too broken to testify much. You are stronger." She put in the last bead.

  "Shower, Mother," said Ajai. "I will wind your weapons in your hair."

  "This won't stop bullets," cautioned Skuld. "You will wear the ultralight body armor."

  "As will you," said Ajai. "Go, shower."

  Ajai carefully did her nails while her mother showered, the glittering silver shade of a child. They would see a Goth child, not a woman. She turned down the music and put on the movie called Suicide Squad. Her mother padded back in, looking like a lioness. Her creamy skin, blue eyes, thin build, and white-blonde hair made her look like a waif, and underestimation was something her mother cultivated.

  After her shower, Skuld laid on the bed while Ajai smoothed the hair and braided the tiny braids, from her ear up to her forehead. It made her hair cascade over the other side of her head. She fingered her mother's earrings, crawling all the way up her ear, in small rings of silver, gold, bronze, tourmaline, garnet, and onyx. They propped up pillows, took out bags of caramel and M&M popcorn they had bought earlier, along with Cokes. They watched Harley Quinn tear up the screen.

  The body armor came in two forms, the motorcycle jacket and the soft vest that went under the T-shirt. Ajai had traded in her Harley for a rental dirt bike, her mother following in on the Harley. They parked in a lot the back way from the courtyard, in case the assholes decided to bomb the courthouse. They went into the garage, and met Varga and her

  entourage.

  "You look like a biker," said Varga, dismissively.

  "I am a biker," said Ajai. "A cute little Goth biker. Shall we?"

  Varga sighed, and grunted when Skuld slid in, the last one in the elevator. "I get that your mother is your bodyguard, but Skylar here will protect you."

  Both Skuld and Ajai looked him over. "Doesn't train with me," said Skuld. "Don't know him."

  "He's been with me for years," said Varga.

  "I thought you said Tim has been with you for years." Tim was Varga's paralegal. Privately, Ajai felt Tim was the smarter of the two, and did seven times the work.

  "He has been," said Varga.

  "Standing right here," said Tim. "And, yes. Seven, nearly eight years."

  "Your boss always rip the rape victim a new asshole the night before the trial?" asked Ajai.

  Tim glanced over at his boss. "I wondered why I wasn't invited to the 'late-night strategy session.'"

  "Are you questioning my work?" Varga asked Tim.

  "Yes," answered Ajai for him. "Now, if you play the cast-iron bitch in the courtroom, that might actually accomplish something."

  Tim snorted. He whispered to Ajai and said, "It's not an act. She really is a cast-iron bitch.”

  Security took a long time. This was because of the high-profile nature of the trial, the sheer number of other trials going on, and the fact there were only two security lines. The lawyers, victims, family members of both the accused and the victims, justice center employees, journalist, and looky-loos all crowded in. Ajai and Skuld's braids were examined, and they got through, but they held up the line, w
ithout too much grumbling. Ajai thought of all her invisible weapons, and held back a small smile.

  Ajai was the star witness. She went over the leaving her birth mother and her mother's abusive boyfriend, catching a bus, hitchhiking to bigger bus terminals to get farther away from the res. The Russian woman at the bus station, the sting of a needle. Waking up in a warehouse, raped, being forced to have men for sex. All the times she resisted. X-rays of her broken bones. She picked out member after member, even speaking in Russian and Ukrainian to repeat verbatim conversations she'd overheard, naming dates, times, women and girls. All those who had disappeared and never returned.

  The defense attorney, Danilo Davidovic, a Serbian with a penchant for getting Eastern European mobsters off on technicalities, tried to get her to break down on the stand. He asked how she could recite languages she'd never heard, word for word. She then repeated, word for word, his lunch order in Serbian to his Serbian driver. She'd been sitting right behind him. The audience thought it was funny.

  Davidovic was infuriated. He went after her, despite objection after objection from Varga, trying to get her to recant, trip up, lie, break down, flip out, anything he could use. She just sat there, waiting on his next question. He painted her as a lost Goth, a biker, a drug user, someone who slept with anyone who walked by; anything he could use to impugn her character.

  She simply said, "That's not true," except for when he called her a biker.

  Varga asked her most of the same questions on redirect, and Ajai kept her cool... barely. She wanted to attack the prosecuting attorney more than the defense attorney. One was paid to defend his clients in any way he could find. The other was just a vicious, soulless bitch. She kept her voice calm, and only when she'd had enough did she show the brief flash of murder she wanted to commit in her eyes, right when Varga was looking at her. Varga stepped back, then covered it up by going to get a file off the prosecutor's table. She wisely wrapped it up.

  Ajai was sweating under her double protection from bullets, and stood. A flash in the doorway had her leaping to the side. The bullet hit the chair where she had been. She knew her mother would keep her safe, but also that she had to fight back if she were to survive. She saw the hair of the shooter, that neckline under the mask, and knew it to be one of her rapists. She slid to the side, and saw the judge huddled down under his desk.

  "Go into your office," she said. "This will be over soon." She heard the "pfft" of multiple guns, and she threw out two of her little metal "stickers," as she liked to call them.

  The bailiff was down, her mother having trouble getting to the shooter with the panicked crowd pushing past her, and the three prisoners trying to bolt. Skuld couldn't let the prisoners bolt, so she kicked each one in the head.

  Ajai threw the stickers. One lodged in his neck, the other in the skin between his glove and jacket. He screamed. She slipped on her spike rings, and lunged. She took two shots in the chest, but her double bullet protection held. Despite the kinetic energy from the bullets throwing her off course, she got him in the neck with one ring, and the exposed skin of his wrist with the other. He was wearing body armor, so she didn't bother with kicking him in the chest. It would break her own foot. But he wasn't wearing body armor on his vulnerable knees, so she cracked them both with steel-toed, biker boots. She grabbed his right hand with both the wire and her two spike rings, digging into his skin, making blood drip and pool on the ground. He howled.

  Then her mom happened, and the man was down with a broken neck. Ajai dropped the wire and pulled the spikes out of the man's flesh, and, one by one, folded the bloody spikes back down. She felt as if someone had struck her with the pommel of a sword.

  She said, "He was another of my rapists."

  Skuld's eyes gleamed. "Then well met in battle. I got a chance to repay them for my daughter's pain and suffering."

  Ajai smiled. "I made him bleed."

  "That you did, daughter. Soon, he would not have had a hand, a fitting punishment."

  They stopped their bloodthirsty talk when police rushed the courtroom. They checked on the prisoners. Two were out cold and one was moaning. Their lawyer was dead; a bullet had taken him in the eye.

  "They meant to kill him," said Ajai, gasping as she stood up.

  "They considered Davidovic a failure," said Skuld. "He couldn't shake you." They started walking toward the door.

  Wraith ran in, and slid on the bloody floor trying to get to them. Skuld reached out, stopped her forward slide, and held her up. "Sister," said Skuld. "We are well, but my daughter was shot twice. Her bruising will be severe."

  Wraith pulled back Ajai's hair on the other side from her battle braids. "Your daughter has been perforated. I think they took out a chunk of skin and muscle." She put her hand on the wound as blood seeped out.

  Skuld grabbed her daughter, and walked her out the door. "Medic!" she screamed.

  "Conference room to the right," said Wraith, and they went there double-time, one on each side of Ajai. Ajai concentrated on moving her booted feet as quickly as possible. "There's a medic in there tending people who haven't actually been shot."

  "Medic!" said Skuld again, banging open the conference door and putting her daughter on the table.

  The medic was wrapping someone's hand in a flexible bandage. He stepped over. "Shot in the neck. Call 911." He reached into his medical bag, and brought out a pressure bandage. Wraith whipped out her phone and started yelling into it.

  "Just need. Stitches!" said Ajai, concentrating on the words so they came out clearly. The room was turning black at the edges.

  "Fuck, girl," said the medic. "I see bullets in... what is that? Body armor that looks like a motorcycle jacket? You most likely have severe bruising."

  "With your shield," said Ajai.

  "Or on it," said Skuld. "Rest, daughter, the battle is won."

  "I am so sorry I wasn't there," Wraith said to Skuld and Ajai. "Other trial went way the fuck over, then we evacuated." She smiled grimly. "I knew it had to be you."

  "Yay us," hissed Ajai. "Doctor now, please."

  "On it," said Wraith. Then, the EMTs burst in the door, saw the blood, and got Ajai on a stretcher just as the room narrowed into black.

  She woke up in the hospital. The sheets were white and scratchy. The lights were too bright. There was an I.V. in her hand. She felt the pain snap into focus, right then. Two separate elephants, one on her chest, and her neck...

  "Turn off the fucking light," she said. Rota stood, pulled a chain, and a light went out. "Thank you, Mom," she said.

  "Alvitr," she said, "My all-wise daughter." She sighed, and touched her own forehead to her daughter's. "You are the one who told me to finish the climb, that I would be back by the time it was over." She lifted her head, looked into her daughter's eyes. "You were right about that. I was driving when Skuld reached me. She told me where you were. We shall have a battle feast," she said, wiping her eyes, "when that purple chest of yours heals."

  "Mom, I got shot, I get to cry. Get over yourself."

  Rota laughed. "Four stitches in your neck. You must be in terrible pain from your bruising. And my terror," she smiled, watery-eyed. "It means nothing. I have my warrior daughter." She stroked her daughter's braid. "I will bless your mother all the rest of our days for the battle braids."

  "With your shield," said Ajai/Alvitr.

  "Or on it," said Rota. They touched foreheads again.

  Rota helped her daughter sip water from a cup with a straw, then brought over a tablet and earphones. "I loaded it with Suicide Squad," she said. She put the earphones in her daughter's ears.

  "Get me some Sonic, Mom," she said. "A cherry lime thingy."

  "I'll text your mother," said Rota. "She is singlehandedly destroying your attorney. She'll practice law again, but she's gotten in trouble for how she treated you with her superiors."

  "Good," said Ajai. "Now, I need Sonic and my homework. I have a test in patent law in three days."

  "Gods," said Rota. "H
ave it pushed back."

  "Last face-to-face class," said Ajai. "Then it's all online. I'm going to move to Pahrump for a while to work in their garage while I get finished with the business degree. Herja wants to do the soldier thing, teaching them to buy junk bikes and refinish them, and I want to get in on the ground level. I want to do that, too. The trikes are fun, but making something old new again? Way cool! I can do the miniatures business with Willow, and split the orders; do the stuff that isn't Ghost's top-secret Harley project. Willow and Ruby, and whoever else can do the grunt work with pouring stuff into molds."

  "All right," said Rota. "See if you can take the test electronically, with Henry or Callie proctoring. Your life is going to suck for a few weeks as you recover."

  "Since I'll be flat on my back anyway, might as well get this stupid class out of the way. I'll talk to the professor about accelerating it somehow, and about a camera in the classroom next week so I can 'attend' on Skype."

  "All right," said Rota. "I am so glad you know what you want. It makes the path all the more clear."

  "It does," said Ajai. "Now, let me sleep, woman."

  "Will do," said Rota. She kissed her daughter's brow. "Will do."

  Ajai took the test in her own bed, propped up on pillows, nice and slow and easy, arms held at just the right angles, because all the other angles made her want to scream. Henry sat in the corner, his eyes a little puffy, like he wanted to cry with her moving so slow. She took it, and aced it. She asked her teacher to let her come in virtually.

  He sighed. "You're getting straight A's. All my lectures are online. Did you review them?"

  "Yes," she said. "Read every reading, too. And you've got all three of my papers."

  He ran a hand over his eyes. "So, next exam, three weeks. Go over all the lessons. I'll send you two practice tests. Ace the second test, and you get an A."

  "Thank you, Mr. Dao," she said.

  "And, remember to get enough rest. We can always push it back a week."

  "I know," said Ajai. "I won't."

  "You're the first student of mine that got shot and lived," he said. "I lost two in Detroit, one in Chicago. That's why I moved here and decided to teach at the college."