The air is thick with the stench of fresh blood and burnt flesh. Painful screams echo in the tight confines of the concrete bunker as they rip out of the creature's throat. Another garbled cry tears its way out of the bound man, his teeth clenching as the tip of a blade runs down his forearm. A red trail forms in its wake and blood drips onto the floor. 

A normal person would balk at the sounds, sights, and smells, and while the woman wielding the blade feels as any other human would, her humanity is hidden behind a mask of stoicism. Even after years of witnessing vile acts such as these, the idea of torture still makes Laine's stomach turn queasy. The fact that she needs answers – and by God, she's determined to get them – allows her to brush those thoughts off and focus on the task at hand. 

She barely bats an eyelash as she moves the blade to his exposed chest, leaving another laceration in the blotched skin. This time, the man lets out only a hiss and glares up at her, unable to stop her due to his weakened state. Although a reaction, not the one Laine was looking for.

Dropping the blade onto the table beside her, she turns back to her hostage that she captured yesterday evening after work. He had followed her out of the club after her shift had ended. He had assumed that she would be surprised, but she'd already been on alert for days. She had stocked weapons into the car and placed a couple bottles of holy water in there just to be sure. It had come in handy.

Despite being a half-demon with superior strength to her own, she had little trouble getting him into the back of her truck unconscious. Oh the wonders faked obliviousness could do, but reminiscing is for another time. She has a job to do.

The two stare at each for a long while, each daring the other to do something, when she draws her fist back and launches it at his cheek, his head whipping sideways on impact.

"You ready to tell me who sent you?" This has to be the hundredth time she has asked this question, so hopefully this will procure results.

Wiping her bloodied hand on the rag nearby, Laine holds in the hiss of pain at the contact. Her fists have started to sting from the continuous blows she's been dealing the hell spawn, but if that's what it takes to get answers, she's willing to accept a few scrapes and bruises.

The man spits out a gob of blood, a lone tooth flying out alongside it, and grins at her with blood stained teeth. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

An annoyed exhale leaves her as she steps towards the beaten man, a hand coming up to grip his sweat soaked hair and jerk his head backwards.

"Wrong answer," Laine shoots back with a sneer on her face, her free hand grabbing his chin to pry his mouth open. Releasing her hold on his hair, she grabs the small flask of holy water next to her. With a twist of the cap, she holds it tauntingly over his open mouth.

A twitch of resistance upsets the bottle and the harmful liquid spills out and into his mouth. Laine clamps her hand over his mouth and he begins to gag, smoke trickling out between her fingers as it burns his skin. He can hold it in his mouth or swallow it, but either way, he isn't going to feel too well afterwards.

"Y'know, if you'd tell me what I want to know, you wouldn't have to go through this." She leans in close to his ear as she speaks and waits patiently for his response. A rough chuckle is let out from behind her hand and she can't help the huff of annoyance that escapes her.

"It won't matter," he reveals when Laine releases his mouth. He coughs up the blessed water and blood before meeting her eyes in a hard stare. "They will find you, and you won't be able to run when they do."

She turns away from him at his words, eyebrows drawing together as she searches the room – for what, she does not know. She hates doing this, and out of the few times she's done it, she never despises it any less. Having to use the skills ingrained in her from adolescence is something she's not proud of, but all other options are out of the question.

No matter how much she loathes the Order for teaching her these things – how to extract information, how to dispose of a body, how to kill a man quietly and cleanly – she wouldn't be here today if it weren't for their rigorous and scarring training. Laine will never admit that to their faces, though; having to use the skills they taught is admittance enough.

She takes a deep breath, hoping it will reaffirm the idea that she needs to do this if she wants to survive. The mask is back in place before she even turns around.

Glaring back at the half-demon, Laine snatches an iron poker stick from the pit of hot embers nearby. Sparks dance in the air as she twirls it in her hand, illuminating the dim room. With a sigh, she impales it into his left shoulder.

The man screams as the heat burns away the skin and muscle, lungs still strong despite the hour of torture. The acrid, almost charcoal, stench of seared flesh assaults her nostrils and tongue. She wants to gag, can feel the bile rising up in her throat at the smell, but she presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth and swallows it back down with force.

Only do his wails subside into whimpers when the stick slides through his flesh and touches the back of the chair he sits on.

"Well, if you'd be kind enough to spill some secrets, I could take that info and be long gone before they get here. But no," Laine twists the stick in deeper at an odd angle, accentuating her words with a firm shove, "I have to stay here and torture you."

Grunts of discomfort fill the air, tainting it with their inhuman sound, but the pain from the scorched rod doesn't last long. Soon enough, her point is made and she retracts the stick, placing it back in the shallow pit. Leaning in close to the man's face with her hands resting on the back of the chair, she connects her gaze with his.

"Give me a name."

"There's no point. You're out of time and places to hide, and they want you bad. Wherever you go, they will find you," he proclaims, the statement causing a scowl to form on her face. Snickers of glee leave him when he sees her reaction. His mirth sends a deep need to bash his head in with a brick through her body, but she restrains herself.

With a drawn out exhale, Laine pulls away and takes a step back, hands poised on her jean-clad hips.

"You're like a goddamn broken record," she mutters, running a hand through her mussed curls. "You gonna tell me or not?"

The silence drags on and despite a few huffs of aggravation from her at his refusal to tell her anything useful, no other sound is made. She comes to the conclusion that she isn't going to get one bit of information out of him – at least, not anything different than what she already knows, which isn't much to start with. With that in mind, she decides that it's time to wrap things up.

The man's eyes are full of trepidation as she steps over to the table alongside the far side of the room, tools and supernatural deterrents littering the surface. When she turns back around, a short blade is held in her hand.

"You planning on cutting off my fingers or something? Running out of ideas to get me to talk?" he taunts with a grin, but soon falls silent when she shrugs in a nonchalant manner, a casual expression on her exhausted face.

"Wanna find out?" Her voice holds no trace of sarcasm when she speaks, only dead seriousness.

The half-demon sits there with his dark eyes squinting at her as if he doesn't believe that she will go through with whatever she has planned, and that is exactly what she wants him to think.

A sound ranging between a sigh and a laugh leaves her as she trails the tip of the blade down the forming bruise on his cheek. "If you think that I'm gonna keep you around for any longer, you're sorely mistaken."

As the last words tumble off her tongue, she brings the blade across the man's neck in a precise movement and steps away. The skin tears apart cleanly and the cut runs deep, the monster's life draining from his eyes just like the blood spraying from his neck. Despite being the by-product of demon and human, his head lolls forward once the blood loss is too great, demonic powers not enough to keep him alive.

Grabbing the already bloodied rag, she cleans off the blade before dabbing at the blood that splattered on her cheek and chest, a red stain the only evidence left behind. Laine sets the blade down on the table and then gets to work on cleaning up the mess in the room; cleaning up the blood is the first bit of business, then burning the body, and finally weapon maintenance.

Laine runs her fingers through her auburn hair and pulls the long strands into a messy bun, her eyes surveying the room to see where the best place to start is. Once her hair is secured and out of her face, she begins untying the dead body from its bonds. Grabbing it under the arms, she drags it towards the stairs and props it against the wall. It can sit there until she is ready to take it out back.

After grabbing some cleaning supplies from the storage closet, she disposes of the tarp on the floor and gets to work scrubbing the blood from the chair. It's a messy and tedious process, her knees beginning to hurt and hands becoming irritated from the cleaning product, but soon enough, she is done with the first task.

She walks over to the body and grabs the body by the armpits, tugging it up the short flight of stairs and out into the crisp air of a late-summer night. A short walk later and with some logs and kerosene, the body is placed on top of a pyre. She lights a match and throws it down onto the wood.

The oil ignites and both the logs and body are rapidly consumed in a fiery rage, the body turning to ash under the intense heat. Standing there, Laine watches with an emotionless gaze as the fire obliterates, the flames dancing in her blue eyes. If she allows herself to feel anything about the things she does to survive, then she will have to confront the demons she locks within, and she can't handle that right now.

With a silent prayer for her soul to be granted forgiveness and her conscious to be granted peace, she turns and walks back into the bunker.

As she enters the room, a sharp ringing slices through the quiet. Her eyes flit around in search of the offending object and eventually she catches sight of it, the light of the screen reflecting off an extremely clean blade.

Walking over, she reaches out and swipes a finger across the screen, accepting the call without looking at the caller ID, and holds it to her ear. "Hello?"

"Laine? What's going on? You seemed outta sorts in the message you left." The gruff voice of a man drifts through the phone. She recognizes the voice as Jamie Sinclair's and a breath of relief escapes her lungs, her demeanour becoming entirely different than who she was just minutes prior.

"Christ, Jamie. I was freaking out thinking you wouldn't get back to me in time! I didn't know who else to call," she babbles, a large weight lifting off her shoulders. Despite the vague message she left him three days ago, he still thought it important enough to call her back and she thanks him for that.

"Sorry, just got back from a case. What's going on?" He repeats his earlier question, not wasting time by beating around the bush. Laine doesn't call often – the last time they spoke was six months ago when she thought they were getting close – and when she does, it's never for a Sunday chat.

It takes a few moments to get the words past her lips, and when she does, her voice is hushed with caution as if someone may be listening in. "They've found me again."

Even with that vague sentence, she knows Jamie understands her meaning. If there is one person who can help her, it's Jamie.

"How can you be sure?" he asks, and she hears the tone of dread in his voice.

A strained laugh escapes her lips. "I just fucking tortured one of them for info. I didn't get much from the bastard, but from what he did say, it sounds like they're close."

Jamie sighs, the sound low and faraway as if he has pulled the phone away from his ear, and then his voice returns. "This isn't good."

"You think?"

"Don't sass me, girl," he warns, but his tone doesn't shift away from one of rugged softness.

"Sorry," Laine murmurs, regret bubbling in her gut for snapping at the one person she can count on to help her in a situation like this – the only one out of three that she can look to for help without feeling bad for asking. After a moment of silence from both ends, she voices the thought that has been a constant in her mind for days. "What do you think I should do?"

The silence continues for a short while before Jamie replies, voice full of authority from years of practice giving orders.

"The best place for you would be with people who can watch your back, so that's where ya need to be." Laine opens her mouth to protest, to insist that she is perfectly capable of protecting herself, but Jamie interrupts her and continues. "You can't travel here alone, though. That's giving 'em a ripe chance to snatch you up."

"I've been able to avoid them so far, as well as travel alone, so I'm pretty sure I can make the drive." She tries to convince him, but he shuts her down with a firm refusal. "C'mon, Jamie. It's not like I can't slip past them and make it there. I've done it before."

"Yeah, I know, but look where you are now. They've got your scent again despite how well you hid yourself."

She hates the fact that he is right. The last few years have been the hardest in trying to avoid them, but she has barely needed any help in staying hidden, so why should she need it now? It's only a twenty hour drive, and if she stays on backroads, she should be fine. Yet, to risk it would be stupid of her and she knows it.

Brushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear, Laine lets out an exhausted sigh. The defeat is evident in her voice when she says, "How do you suppose I get there, then?"

"I have a couple boys out in your area on a hunt right now. I'm sure they're just finishing up and can be out there by the end of today. I'll give 'em a call and let 'em know what's going on," Jamie explains, the sound of rustling papers carrying through the phone.

Her breath catches in her chest at the notion of who might be coming to take her home, and she can't stop the increase of her heart rate, the organ thudding against her chest in nervous anticipation.

"You all right, kiddo?"

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she leans against the wall behind her, hoping the chilled concrete will calm her nerves. "Is it – are you sending... them?

Laine doesn't need to elaborate further for Jamie to understand, and she can hear him click his tongue.

"Are ya gonna be okay seeing them? If it's that big of an issue, I can make the trip down, but y'know you can't run from them forever."

"No, it's fine – I'll be fine. Just... no, never mind, it's good." Pushing off the wall, she takes a deep breath and shoves all thoughts about those guys to the back of her mind. "I'll see you soon, okay?"

"You sure you'll be all right?"

"Don't worry about me. I can't avoid them for the rest of my life, so better to get it over with now, right?" She cracks a smile even though he can't see it, the action feeling forced on her lips.

"If you say so."

Deciding it's time to get off the subject and get back to work, Laine lets out a laugh. "Thanks, Jamie. You have no idea how much I appreciate this."

"It's what family's for, ain't it?" His parting words and a sigh are the last things Laine hears before the soft click signals the end of the call.

She shuts the phone off and tucks it into her back pocket, her eyes drifting around the room as she realizes that this mess isn't the only one she has to clean up.