Chimera Part Sixteen

~ I felt dark night closing in upon me
Chilling shadows surrounding me. ~

"Do you have to?"

Tam looked at up at him with all the imploring she could muster from where she was plaiting Celia's hair. It was hard to connect her sweet, dreamy boyfriend with the violence and fear he caused. An *assassin*.

James Bond dealt with assassins. Jackie Chan did. Assassins were supposed to be eerie and dressed in black, and she had a vague idea that they should have a Russian accent; Aspen tended to wear merry, exotic colours ('It confuses people' was his explanation), and he had only a slight tendency to blur his words in one breathy rush, but he *did* have the eerie attitude down perfectly.

Her soulmate nodded solemnly, his odd eyes brilliant and possessive. "I don't want to," he said wistfully. "Even if it is only breakfast, I'd much rather be here with you. Jacqui's such a..." He hesitated, and she noticed again the peculiarly endearing habit he had of not liking to curse.

A boy who killed people, yet flushed when he had to be derogatory. The only time he lost that peculiar inhibition was when he was angry, but that hardly ever happened now.

"Bitch?" she suggested.

One shoulder lifted in an uneasy shrug. "I guess. But she has her good points," he said brightly, perking up. "She can gut someone faster than you can-"

Her expression registered, and he half-smiled, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You...didn't want to know that, did you?"

"Not really." The smile vanished, and she felt the kitten's paw-swipe of his distress because he had disappointed her - failed her again, he was too strange, too stupid, too-

~ You never disappoint me, ~ she said truthfully, and the smile returned, delighted and shy.

His desperate insecurity was a plague sometimes, but hopelessly captivating too. With his hard, narrow face that held bright intelligence and simple charm, and his pure sweetness, how Aspen could ever believe that he was somehow not enough was beyond her, and she always told him so.

Celia raised her head, her eyebrows raised pointedly. "You *gut* people? I mean, I know you have a job as an undertaker, but do you really do *that*?"

"Yeah," Aspen admitted, gazing down at his sister serenely. Celia, Tam had been told, was a smaller, prettier version of herself, her feature more delicate and refined, with flawless golden skin that Tam envied and silky black hair that was as straight and shiny as Tam's was curled and horrendously mad. If Tam's hair was at a rave, Celia's was at a soiree. "See, some of them want to be embalmed and we-"

"No detail," her little sister said hastily, crinkling her nose. "Just go and meet your freaky embalmer friend and stop distracting Tam. I don't want wonky plaits."

Aspen blew Tam a kiss on his way out, and threw back a parting shot, "Maybe you've just got a wonky head."

~*~

"Toya?"

Thom's quiet voice was unusually loud, shattering the hushed and sleepy silence of his house as she came in, half-leaning on Cougar who was still silent and smouldering. All the drowsiness rushed from Thom's eyes, replaced by horror.

"Guess who got herself ripped to shreds by Red Riding Hood's favourite guy?" the lamia drawled, a sardonic smile curling his mouth.

Her human friend stared before he shook his head, white-blond hair forming a fleeting fuzzy halo in the air. "I don't need to guess. Toya - sit down. I have some antiseptic somewhere...I guess you've run low on magick or you'd have done it yourself," he mused aloud.

Cougar guided her over to the couch (her ankle had collapsed on the way back) and set her down. She waited nervously, her hands resting in her lap; without thinking, her fingers rubbed together anxiously beneath Cougar's regard. On the way back, she had caught him staring at her with the oddest expression - then he realised that the watcher was the watched, and his face had closed off, shutters slamming to the outside world.

The odd buzzing noise that had hummed like a distant choir in her head had not vanished, but grown worse and worse - she supposed it came from where her head had cracked on the ground last night - yet there was something...odd about it. No pain, only a vague, unfocused noise.

By the time she reached the house, there seemed to be almost words in the sound, indistinct echoing fragments seemed somehow familiar.

Goddess, she would be glad when her powers returned and this odd side-effect would be gone..

"You two are quiet," Thom remarked as he came back in, his eyes flicking from onto the other. Just his presence was soothing; the Old Soul exuded a placid calm that Chatoya often wished she had. "Or are you both still spitting over last night?"

She stared up at him in mute horror - no, don't bring that back up, we've barely put it aside.

"Don't look at me like that, either of you," he said firmly, dropping a bottle of antiseptic by Chatoya, and seating himself on the arm of the chair. "I'm not going to sit through an awkward silence because you're both too stubborn to sort it out."

"I am not stubborn," she and Cougar said, and both halted.

A reluctant smile escaped her, and was reflected on Cougar's face; the sullen hazel of his eyes lightened to the soft honey colour that stole some of the storm cloud anger from him.

"Of course not," Thom said dryly. "Cougar, can you go and get some water and the first aid kit upstairs?"

"What did your last slave die of?" the vampire snapped.

Thom chuckled lazily. Nothing much fazed him, and Cougar Redfern in one of his moods was no exception. "Boredom. Cougar, I want to talk to Toya on her own - I was aiming for tact."

"Should have aimed for something a bit more solid than that," she muttered under her breath.

Thom snorted, and hastily turned it into a cough at Cougar's puzzled look. "Look, do me a favour, okay?"

When the vampire had gone, some of the mirth faded from the short human's face. He wasn't a looker, their Thom, and he didn't have Cern's sweetness or Jepar's sunny charm but he did have a gently barbed turn of phrase, and a devastating practicality that had got them out of many a tight spot.

"You realise that swapping saliva with Blue Malefici was not a good idea," he murmured. "It's the one thing guaranteed to flip a lot of people's switches." He smiled sourly. "You should have *seen* Tali come storming in last night - you'd think JJ was a panda 'shifter from the pair of black eyes Tali gave him last night when he dared to suggest she might have been a touch harsh."

"I don't need another lecture," she said wearily.

His eyebrows arched. "I wasn't giving you one, so that suits us both. Toya, it's not any of my business what you do - but the rest of them think it's theirs, so if there is something going on with you and this Blue guy, who I haven't met but well, I've heard chapter and curse about - keep it to yourself. And be careful." He ruffled her hair. "You're the only other sane person here."

"Don't count on it."

Cougar stomped back in and deposited various pieces of first aid on the carpet. "Thom, can we talk?"

"Fire away," the Old Soul answered, digging out wads of cotton and bandages.

"Privately..." Chatoya watched Cougar from the corner of her eye - there was an urgent note to his voice, and he was fidgeting. "Umm...it's about Sean."

Thom threw her the antiseptic and she caught it deftly, wincing as her muscles protested. "No problem - Toya, clean those scrapes, there's probably about fifty thousand bacteria holding a communist rally in them by now."

Whatever it was Cougar told Thom - she could only catch the faint murmur of their voices outside the ringing in her ears - he came out looking distinctly ruffled. Not alarmed exactly, because Thom had seen too much for anything to really shake him now, but a touch less complacent.

"I'm just going out," he said briefly. "Cougar'll give you a hand." An anxious look in her direction. "Don't go anywhere." The door slammed moments later, and she was left with the vampire.

~*~

Opal fires had lit the morning sky, and set Iager's memories ablaze as strange pastels churned across the dawn and streaked the undersides of the clouds with pale rainbows. Time seemed unreal, for everywhere he glanced, he saw hints of this enclosed, chilly little realm as it once had been.

Ryar's Valley, but how he wished that Ryar had lived to love it.

Once it had been only the fire valley, Fireblade's home - but after her death, he had given it her name, and made it her tomb.

His feet carried him along blindly; Kirsty, that wretched adult sat in a child's body, was crowded in the Enticing Ices Parlour with a group of other grinning, too-sharp children who had been sat there, clamouring for her to come over. Iager had left her with a vast chocolate sundae that looked like a slimmer's arch-nemesis, and happened to be the most expensive item on the menu. And when the other kids had heard he was paying, somehow they had wheedled, begged and sulked until he had paid for not one, not two, but six dieter's Darth Vaders.

It hadn't bothered him one whit. He had scarcely been aware of the shrill voices, of the sly looks exchanged, of the pavement that seemed to slide beneath his feet as he walked.

This place had changed so much, so stunningly much, yet everywhere he looked, he saw the ghosts of yesteryear floating, tantalising, in the winter warnings.

Winter! There had been no winter here once, only endless heat, fires spiralling up hundreds of feet into the sky, flaring and sparking, leviathan orange cobras that few could charm and fewer tame. Geysers to bathe in, searing over the skin and bubbling fiercely, cloaked by thick clouds of steam that were like inhaling liquid flames.

There had been no winter once, but then the mortals had come, Ryar had gone, and he had remained.

So beautiful, his Ryar had been. And he so stupid, so vain as not to see it. Years and years when he had insulted her, ignored her, used her when it suited him, and occasionally wondered why the girl stayed handfasted to him with a patient, simply devotion that had raised only boundless contempt in him.

He had married her for power, that was all. Bar that first, unique meeting, he had wanted only power.

And she - she, selfless - she had loved him.

She would have loved this season - he remembered her endless drifts of moonstruck hair, shining like a starlit desert and the way her eyes would cling to him throughout their wedlock, follow him where he walked with a child-like anxiety, though no child was she.

She was not Cesera, strangest and most beautiful of the Dragon-King's daughter, nor Avy, of the mind that soared like an eagle about the heavens, and he had not thought her worthy of him.

Yet he had chosen her, of all the thirteen daughters. Of them all, only she had not tried to bewitch and allure, to charm, to bribe, to blackmail, to threaten, to entice. And when he had to select a daughter to wive with, it had been her he chose; the gentlest, the simplest, and in the end, the finest.

He had scarce noticed her until he sought out the last of the daughters, wondering how she had eluded him so long while he looked them over like a buyer at a cattle-market. Ryar, the tender, the innocent. Only sitting, demure and silent among the sirens of Sangager, the last of thirteen, and the loneliest of all.

But her words, ah, her first words were like a charm that he held close to him now.

"Which of your sisters would you have me marry?" he had asked her mockingly, wanting - no, needing - the attention of this dragon-girl who alone of the thirteen, had steadfastly ignored him.

"She wouldn't," Cesera had cut in, stepping in front of Ryar and lowering her eyelashes for an instant so the power of her lilac eyes blasted him like a wine-drenched sunset. "Ryar is destined to be an old maid, Fireblade. All she does is sit, and watch, and pretend she means something to someone."

He was surprised - shocked even - as the other girl said not a word of reproach, but lowered her head over the piece of paper she clutched, so that the glistening mass of oyster-shell hair hid her face.

"Darling-" the older girl had begun, laying her hand upon his arm, a purr of promise in her words.

"Do run along, Cesera." The cruelty hadn't even been intentional - it had just been his way then. He was Fireblade, greater even than a king's daughter. "Go and pretend you mean something to someone."

Her mouth had opened once; he had simply swung his head, staring down sunset with an inferno.

And he had been left alone with this girl, hunched up tightly on her little stool in this shadowy corner of the Court. Her hands were smudged with charcoal, and very thin and small.

"Ryar," he had mused aloud, inspecting her bowed head. Neither word nor deed showed she had heard - still she scratched onto the piece of parchment that rested uneasily on her knees. "What a lovely name."

Her head flew back, as though someone had grabbed her hair and tugged sharply.

The depth of grief in her eyes had been alien to Fireblade; they were a curiously deep violet, but lit with flecks of oyster-radiance, and pain thrashed wildly in them.

"It means unwanted."

Her voice, ah, that haunted him most of all, a treasure among dragon-folk. Soft and whispery, it had been, but when she sang, it was as though a tiger sprang from her mouth and prowled about the world in music. There was fire in her voice, and it had burned even empty Fireblade, all those years and memories ago.

But then, with her face bare of expression and her agonised eyes alone betraying the façade, he had only heard the quiver in it. And it had struck something strange, something new in the dragon named as violent, mindless, reckless.

He had wanted to help her.

"Does it?" he had said, and examined the face turned to him.

No, not Cesera's brand of sensuous splendour, but the petal-pink mouth was wonderfully full and those eyes, curiously bruised and deep-set, somehow imploring.

A shrug, and the pale neck arched like a swan's as Ryar averted her eyes again.

He had startled even himself then, and dropped to his knees on the cold and rough stone floor. Settled back on his ankles to reflect for an instant.

Yes, there, her face was not hidden from him here, nor could it be. Cautiously, for the first time in his life, Fireblade reached out, not daring to take his glowing stare from her lest she flee like childhood and innocence, and laid his hands on her knees. Parchment crackled under his touch; her music, lines and curves of song ensnared, separating their flesh.

"Ryar." Her face frozen, again a mask of civility as Sangager demanded of his children and his Court, but her eyes traitors to her expression. Those tiny hands stilled on the parchment, curled together in her lap, not so far from where his rested. "Ryar..."

"No," she whispered, and the husky voice sent frissons down his spine in a way that Cesera's promises, Avy's flirting, Ulryat's laughter could not. "Go away, Fireblade, don't play with me. I may not be my sisters, but I'm no fool. I don't want you, and I don't want to be part of your horrible games."

Her eyelashes trembled as she blinked frantically.

Before he knew what he was doing, before he could even think, he had knelt up, and his hands were tugging at the coiled knot of hers, separating her fingers and marvelling at how delicate they were, how dew-cool her skin and smooth her knuckles until their hands were intertwined.

The mask had dropped, useless, crumpled at this simple touch. Panic flooded into her eyes, and the oyster-shell iridescence swelled until the violet was only threads in the radiance. "No," she said, a fine shuddering alarming him - him, alarmed by this! "No, Fireblade, please, please, it's not fair to do this..."

"I've never been about fair," he heard his own voice say as he leaned closer to her. Fireblade's words, and Fireblade's voice, but this was not Fireblade's feeling, this yearning to protect her, to curl her in his arms and makes her his in a way that could not be broken by time or place or person.

A whimper escaped her, and Ryar tried to shrink back, but he wouldn't let her. The pity he had felt was overridden by that fierce, good need to claim her, to make this one daughter who had paid him no heed *notice*. He was Fireblade; he was a weapon, he was burning and passionate and consumed all he wanted, that was all and that was everything.

Their lips met, and he was swamped by a curious impulse to be gentle. Her mouth trembled under his for one precious moment as he didn't move but only let their lips rest together, an intimate touch that mixed their breath.

Her hands tightened about his, so much strength for such smallness, and he kissed her then.

There would never be anything to compare with that moment - that one piece of humanity in an inhuman life. Nothing to match the sweetness and tenderness in that kiss, the way her mind opened like a lotus that held a diamond at its centre. And he *saw*.

Ryar, silent Ryar, had longed after Fireblade for all centuries that he had come to her father's court, Fireblade with his tiger's hair and volcano eyes, Fireblade who blazed like the heaven's lights made flesh. She had craved, but always with a deep abiding regret because she knew he would never want *her*.

Oh no, he remembered thinking, his hands releasing hers to cup her fragile face, brushing those sleek eyelashes, horrified to find tears caught on them. Oh no, nightingale, you're so wrong.

And here he was, so bronzed and smiling, swaggering into her father's court as he always did to take his pick of the crowds that thronged him with eager, lusting interest. Here he was - toying with her, and now he knew her love, oh, he knew, and he had the greatest weapon of all.

He tasted salt then, a tear that had left a comet's trail down her desolate face and eased between their lips. But he didn't stop, and nor did she - her hands struggled to be free of his, and caressed his face, tangled in his hair, wild and yet hesitant in a way he couldn't quite define. Tears and passion, a salt-soaked kiss that somehow tasted oh so satisfying.

And when at last - after what must have been centuries, not moments - that clinging embrace broke, the tears still streamed from her eyes, her shell-shining eyes, and fell to smear the curving music.

"There," she said, the words wrenched from her throat on a sob. "There, you've got all thirteen daughters now, Fireblade. Go away, go away and leave me be! You know, you've got your power over me. Why don't you go and find Cesera, and the pair of you can make the beast with two backs-"

"She's already got two faces," he had snapped, angry at himself, angry at her pain. "She doesn't need another spine to match. Don't blame me, Ryar ap Sangager, romance is not a spectator sport."

"Romance!" How lovely her face, how marble-pale and animated. "That's not romance. That's just - just lust. You don't want me any more than you want my sisters!"

"Ah, how true," he had hissed, livid, aching, trying to hold the scraps of that curious and wondrous impulse to help her - but it was gone, she was the duckling among the swans again. "How true."

He had walked away then, and when he glanced back, wanting, needing, to feel her eyes watching him, to know that he held her like all the others, her hair shielded her face, and her hands wrote upon the parchment once more.

So long ago, his darling nightingale gone now, he so different from that arrogant fool boy. That their first meeting, and many things were to change; she became his mate, neglected, unloved, while he cavorted with others - yes, even with her sisters - and drowned lives in blood. Fireblade had been a monster.

But Fireblade had died long ago, buried as surely as Ryar was. He was Iager now, and the face was the same but the soul was what it had been in that fleeting moment when his heart had ached for someone else.

He walked down to the lake, down to her grave. It had never been water, never this still and silver mirror, but when he had lost her - and he realised, he saw how unutterably much he had lost, he had brought her here, and buried her with his own hands, and covered her tomb in the rushing water. Only him, and her, while the dragon-world searched for Fireblade, not realising that it was Fireblade he buried in that grave with Ryar, sweet Ryar, whose voice was still but whose songs would echo forever in his head, lovelier and softer with each sun that sank.

The bench that overlooked the lake was cold, splintered, but he could gaze on the water unheeded, wondering if she still lay untouched in her tomb.

I miss your song, my sweet nightingale. I miss the music you carried for me in your heart, and my world fell silent without you.

He had thought for a deluded while that keeping himself busy might fill the gap; later that Trifolia would, but he had been wrong. Returning here had shown him that; it felt so right, so proper to be near to her, to watch over her resting place and try to atone for his cruelty to her.

"Iager?"

He jumped, startled. "Yeah?"

And then he remembered that that was not who he was supposed to be - and whirled about, his eyes wide and worried to take in the sight of Thom Ausner, mouth drawn tight and his glasses crooked on his nose. Never more human, and Iager thought - if I were Fireblade, if I were the monster and Ryar stood in my shadow still, I would kill him without a thought or a care.

He heard the lap of the lake water behind him, and the thought faded.

"Guilty," he muttered, and had never spoken a truer word.

~*~

A firm grip took her arm, and turned it gently; Cougar's pupils dilated slightly as he saw the horrific wounds, clear in the daylight, long and jagged. "God," he muttered softly. "They got you good, babe."

"They did." The nightmarish feel of the fur, so soft on her skin, and the claws, so cruel, recalled like a snatch of invasive song. Causing vibrations in her soul, in her throat, creeping into her voice. How could a memory shred her like this?

He started to clean the remaining cuts, the antiseptic causing nettle-like barbs of pain to poke in the gashes, but his touch all the while incredibly tender. An astringent smell made them both wrinkle their noses.

From under her eyelashes, Chatoya observed his dear, familiar face, the curious determined set to his mouth as if he wanted to say something but forced the words back.

"Tell me about the wolves." His voice was distracted; his eyes were dazzlingly sharp. "Why you, Toya? It's not a hunt night - you've not had any run-ins with our darling pack...I don't understand why they would."

"I don't know. One minute I was walking - I fell, and they went for me - ouch!" His grip had tightened, making her flinch as poppy-red blood trickled from an opened cut. "Careful!"

"Sorry." A sigh escaped him. He was always most striking in melancholy; it lent his face an ethereal compassion that tempered his hard mouth and too-bright eyes, but Chatoya would rather have had him ordinary and happier than stunning and miserable. "So you don't have any idea why the big bad wolves came out of the woods?"

"Not a one."

"Although," and a little mischief had turned his voice in that drawling, suggestive satin, "I have to say, you did look good enough to eat."

She couldn't help but smile. "Should I be trusting you with my body, Redfern?"

"Oh no." The soft, serious tones made her look at him, and his hands stilled as moss-green eyes met honey that was rapidly swirling with shiny golden streamers. "No, not at all." He blinked and the look vanished, replaced by a mixture of mischief and - bizarrely - regret. "Flaunting all your veins last night, most cruel."

"Predator," she said, glad to feel their relationship slip back into the easy familiarity. Cougar flirted like most people breathed, and indeed, tended to be the cause of heavy breathing in some.

"Prey," he whispered, then the amusement was replaced by a frown. "You shouldn't be anyone's quarry, not anymore, Toya." He tapped a bruise lightly. "I thought we were all safe here."

"Nothing's safe." The sadness invaded her voice, an unwanted thief of this brief peace. No, nothing was safe, Not her family, or her friends or even her emotions. All held to ransom, and the price to retain them was too high to even contemplate. "Least of all me."

The darkness of that night, filling her head like a plague of locusts, chewing up her contentment and leaving churned fear. The heat of the wolves' paws, and that crushing weight on her - and then the wet cool of their teeth, terrible, terrible-

The sound in her head rose like a wave, and words formed from the clamour;

~ such a lovely face can sweeten ugly lies ~

She shuddered, a ripple of frosty revulsion that passed from her toes to her head.

"Toya?"

"Nothing," she muttered vaguely, thrusting the memory away...

~ but such an ugly soul can tarnish any truth ~

The voice was still there, cool and efficient and incisive. And her vision seemed to slide and blur, as though she stood before a rain-smeared window, washing the world into one formless mass-

"Chatoya!"

Blinking dazedly, she found Cougar was holding her shoulders, holding her up. There was a half-afraid, half-worried expression on his face, before it smudged into a faint silver mist.

"I...don't feel good," she managed, the haze seeming to seep through her skin and into her mind until nothing was clear except the voice that hacked through everything else; the voice that was shards of Pluto, and cutting her deep.

"You don't say?" There was a panicky, near-angry note to Cougar's voice; his grip on her was becoming looser - or was it only that she could no longer feel it? "Oh no, Toya, don't faint - don't you *dare*!"

~ there's nothing to her but what *they* put there, nothing to most of those second-rate butchers with going-rate souls ~

Yes - yes, she knew that voice; it had whispered in her dreams before but now it mused idly, causing her to recall a time when she had intruded on this wonderfully sharp and intelligent mind before.

~ and you can cover nothing with something, but within it's still hollow ~

Blue.

He was Blue, and she was - something to him, or was she only a hollow nothing? Who knew, she only knew that she was in this boy's mind, secret and stealthy. She had slipped unnoticed into his thoughts once before with a...mirror spell - all it had taken was blood, and a connection, and a reflection. Enough blood - and the connection beyond all and - a reflection?

A reflection...in water, in silvered glass...

~ a shrewd creature, that one, with her false smiles and her pretended affections, and she was very clever yesterday, to use those wolves as a weapon for her ~

Or in another's mind.

~ but the witch is more of a weapon than she realises, so much force curled in her and she barely knows, she barely realises - and yes, Pursang could be hers and more importantly, could be- ~

There was a sharp pain in her arm, and the mist thinned just enough for her to see two flaring gold hoops about black bullets, and to hear someone shouting.

~ Can you hear me? ~ the smouldering tones demanded so loudly it made her head spin. ~ Toya, can you hear me? ~

But his voice was gone, flung to the winds that streamed past her until she was no longer in her own mind, but a hopeless passenger within another's soul.

Sunlight, the impact of her footsteps, and looking at someone, the tall boy whose dark hair had three pale streaks running through it and a broken, flashing smile to match a light and fast voice-

"Don't you think Jac-"

~*~

"-qui's changed lately?" Aspen said happily, walking backwards along the street so he could watch Blue's face. Of course, it was perfectly impassive, and Aspen privately thought that Blue should have been a statue stunning crowds in the Tate with all that chilled perfection, but he still watched because just occasionally Blue's guard would slip.

The endless blue eyes were bullets to the brain; the intense, invasive stare nailed Aspen's soul still. Nothing on earth was that colour; it was a pure, cool and boundless azure that arched in celestial heights.

"Change from Jacqueline is like change from a vending machine," Blue said calmly. "Forced."

Aspen didn't know why Blue didn't like Jacqui - personally, he thought his chic, tousled executive and executioner was a little neurotic, but otherwise darling. "She's buying breakfast, isn't she?"

"The cost of breakfast can buy a man's life if you know where to look." A simple, factual statement. "Don't be so naïve, Martin. We're vampires. We may need to eat - though you certainly don't-"

Aspen scowled. He liked the gnawing feeling hunger - human hunger, as he thought of it, not bloodlust - gave him. It was something he had control over, the one piece of power he still held over a life that had slid like wet soap from his hands.

"-but not often. Breakfast? Look this gift horse in the mouth - it may be wooden, hollow and Trojan."

Aspen shrugged off the disdainful words, not entirely sure what a Trojan was. He was proud to think he could call Blue a friend. All right, a friend who had let him get shot - and shot him once or twice - not someone he really liked, but he had earned Blue's respect and how many people could say that?

Well, one other sprang to mind. "How did Chatoya Irkil and Jacqui get on?" he said slyly.

"Loathe at first sight."

Aspen sniggered. He had somehow thought the fiery Monaco girl and Chatoya Irkil - somehow so shattered but still strong - might not see eye to eye. "Are you done messing with Chatoya now?" No answer, but Aspen pressed on, waving his hands agitatedly. "Please, leave her alone. She's good, Blue, like you and me and Therese aren't."

The stare deepened and unhurriedly froze, and Aspen felt a nauseous fear rise in his stomach. No longer azure, his irises, but a terrifying, monstrous black that swilled like oil. Oh, he could see no sign of detached amusement in there, nothing but a withering scorn of all else living.

"Yes."

Aspen found himself walking faster, backing away.

"She is good, isn't she?" Blue purred, the cobalt of his hair stark against the pale skin and pits of eyes, deep-set and hooded. "She tries to do what's right, and she thinks the world is nice. She's chasing rainbows and hunting shadows. And she's a *fool*." The black hell receded, and the faintest of wicked smiles touched Blue and lit him up like sunlight leaping through sprays of water. "She's a part of me, and I can't kill her. But I can destroy her. I can be rid of her, and I will be."

He stopped. And Aspen's heart, which had been sprinting from this horror, slammed hard to a standstill. The hairs on his arms were raised, he noticed with a start, and despite the cooling breeze, he was sweating.

"Hungry?" the lamia enquired, and something of the panther rolled about his voice.

Aspen blinked dumbly, then followed Blue's careless wave to the Blood-Rose Café.

"Just about," he muttered. Please, he thought, let Chatoya Irkil be stronger than you. I don't want to see her end like all the others.

Jacqui was waiting inside, the sole customer, and the blond-tipped hair sparkled with pretty clips that made her appear more feminine than usual. She was mulling over a sheaf of papers, and Aspen glimpsed just enough of them to know it was the same report he had scanned a day or two ago. It was a pair of their most interesting assassins, Vaje Chusson and Faith Tacarnan, a coyote shifter and witch who had a tendency to kill anything that got in their way. Both bitter, though he only knew it was because they had lost people close to them. Aspen wondered if he would be that way if Tam died.

A shudder convulsed him. No, safest not to wonder. This was not his world for much longer, it would be Chatoya's. And deep in his heart, he prayed she could make it better.

"Les saluads," she said, tapping the papers and staring up before switching back to English. "Morons! They're out of control, both of them. They had to steal that wretched painting - a Picasso, and they've probably torn it, the philistines! - and the vermin police will be turning the world upside down to find that."

"Never mind the six human bystanders they slaughtered," the lamia pointed out, pulling up a chair. Blue had wandered off to order some food, and Aspen mentally called a hasty request for coffee.

Her forest eyes, a sludgy brown mingled with pine-green, barely registered the fact. "Yes, yes - what is it you say, collateral damage? But the art, Aspen, that's worth more than both their worthless lives together. Chusson and Tacarnan are running wild." Then her smile flashed, melting and bright. "Ah, but enough of the bad news. I have some good news for you."

"It's about time we heard some," he said wryly, though slightly puzzled at her wide smile. "Do tell."

~ Something's up, ~ Blue's voice announced sharply into his head. Aspen winced - it was like being doused in snake venom. ~ The vermin who owns this place - Jacqueline's influencing him. ~

"Oh, you know I've always been one for show rather than tell," Jacqui purred, and the first chords of anxiety played a riff up Aspen's spine.

~ Blue... ~

But Blue had fallen silent, and his mind had slammed shut like a sphere of diamond. No way in, no way out. Smooth impassivity on his face - except for his eyes which were a shifting, uncanny gold. Startled?

Aspen turned around to see what the vampire was looking at.

And then he was on his feet, one hand sending Jacqui's coffee crashing to the floor. The high smash of porcelain, the splash of liquid meeting lino, and the dizzying sense of falling, falling...

Jacqui, his mind chanted. Jacqui, how could you, how could you, oh please, nononononono....

The man who stood there was nothing abnormal. Distinguished, elegant, kingly even. Silver haired, with the same hawkish features as he himself had, but somehow sharper and more aged; the eyes were a kaleidoscope of colour that shifted like his pretences, and crueller than anything Aspen had seen.

He could feel time drop away from him like shedding a cloak, feel the strength he thought he had crumble and flake and leave him naked, defenceless against this - this thing.

And Laburnum Martin saw the trembling, paralysing terror rip open in that lamia boy, saw the tremors begin, saw the boy shake his head again and again and again.

"Hello son," he whispered. "Did you miss me?"

~ I've had the poison leak under my skin
And it corroded my heart away
Cut away...
Dark night of my soul. ~

~*~

Chimera Seventeen

~ One way or another
I'm gonna find you
I'm gonna get you, get you, get you. ~

Some things were very simple. One touch, one smile, one word could pull someone back from an abyss.

For Blue Malefici, things had always been simple. There were no difficult decisions - weigh a life against a cheque, and if neither held any value, where lay the difficulty? His childhood had been empty of decisions - he had been not a person but a thing to most of his family, bar his stupid, naive brother. His life had no worth to them, and theirs none to him.

There were few people who ever left their footprints on his thoughts. Few who left trails through the sands of his mind, fewer who he regarded with anything other than disdain, and a detached interest for their curious whims and ways. Almost none who sprang from the same bloodline.

None except for these. Aspen Martin. Laburnum Martin. Father and son, priest and prayer, tormentor and tormented, adversary and ally. Some things were very simple.

One touch, one smile, one word could hurl someone into the dark.

One touch, one smile, one word could be a net to catch them-

That wasn't his thought. The blue eyes widened slightly, indefinably in that instant, though his expression altered not a whit. This was becoming, frankly, rather irritating.

~ You again? ~ he inquired.

~*~

There was virtually no one or nothing that Cougar Redfern cared for. Or so he liked to kid himself.

But as he stared at Chatoya Irkil's ghostly-pale face, cradled in his arms, he knew it to be a lie. Her skin was too cool for the autumn's lingering heat, her pulse a faint tide that drew away from him. Her wide open eyes stared beyond him into an elsewhere that shifted her features from confusion into...into...an expression he knew too well - an expression he had seen too many times. Watchful, and distant, and a little amused too.

It was Blue's and it was monstrous on Chatoya.

~ Talk to me, ~ he shouted at her mind, but it was as though he tried to shoot at smoke; nothing, only half-faded fragments of words and broken, bright images that made no sense to him at all. ~ Toya! ~

A shard of a sentence through the comet's tail mist. "...you miss me, son?"

Familiar, the voice was familiar, but Cougar didn't have time to take a stroll down a portrait gallery in Memory Lane. He didn't know what was happening with Toya, he didn't know what was wrong or where she had *gone*.

A comet's tail mist...

Tug on the tail, and you would catch the comet. Yes - he waited for those fragments of sounds, and followed them...but they were gone quick as will o' the wisps, children's souls in a silver-sprayed world.

Damn. Contact. That was it. He needed contact.

The lamia exhaled slowly, staring at her still face. It was odd, but somehow, she was the opposite of everything he had ever chased. There was no beauty in her face, but there was a serenity that Cougar had to admit he had spent too long searching for, and not yet found.

She was going to murder him. Horribly. Loudly. Maybe using a few tips from Blue.

The gold eyes hardened into a cool bronze. Fine, she could do that, but she'd be alive to kill him.

He brushed aside her black hair, glossy and feather-light in his hands, the ends tickling his palm, and wrestled with his conscience briefly. The veins on her neck were a pale peacock blue, a map towards her mind.

Just get it over with, he ordered himself. It's not like you've not bitten her before. And she didn't mind then.

Yes, but she *knew* then. And the worst thing was that he knew her blood would be every bit as sweet, and perhaps all the better for being taken stealthily. The vampire in him wanted the conquest, wanted this helplessness, to see a life lain before him in submission.

But he wasn't the predator he had been. That boy was gone - he'd died somewhere on the long run to Ryars Valley, maybe parched in the desert, maybe shot down by his own family. Who knew?

He took a breath, and leaned closer. Her skin smelled like strawberries, like the soft subtle scent she had used yesterday - strawberries and blood, and it was overwhelming. A tingle in his teeth, the dull ache that promised satiation.

Her skin was cool under his mouth, and her blood intensely powerful - misty as her mind, and-

The connection kicked in, and he caught the tail of the comet.

~*~

The words recalled her to herself. She was Chatoya Irkil - and this, this was Blue's *mind*. ~ Me again, ~ she announced flatly.

She could see through his eyes - his amazingly sharp eyes, as if her own vision had been split by a crystal into a multitude of rainbows. It felt distinctly strange - she saw as he saw, and heard as he heard, but it came as if through a cocoon, as though she was in some small cage in a corner of his mind. Bars of shadows, and a lock of will - but stronger than any earthly material.

~ Out. ~

~ No. I don't know why *you* called me here- ~

His mind-voice was texture as well as sound; opaque ice that neared burned her. Yet there was a curious roughness to it, and vibration that she had heard before, somewhere... ~ I didn't. I need you like I need an enema. ~

Emotion. There was a subtle, dangerous emotion burning under those words and it was-

~ You're angry! ~ she said, astonished. ~ *That's* what it is. ~

Not angry. Beyond that. Furious, a tightly leashed wrath that would not escape by word or deed - and had flown like a wounded eagle down the soulmate connection. To her. But...why?

And she turned her attention to the scene in front of her, and it hit her like a punch to her throat.

Aspen Martin, in stark and ghastly profile before her, one eye a whirling silver, recoiling, stumbling back blindly with his lips slack and his face ashen. Treading through smashed coffee, not even noticing the pottery shards that crunched under his feet.

He wasn't saying anything, but Chatoya could hear the quiet high whimpering escaping him.

Who was this man who terrified him so? She didn't recognise his austere features, though there was an alarming resemblance to Aspen, but the delighted, cold cast of his face chilled her.

"You've behaved very badly," he murmured in a voice that was deep and articulated. Someone used to rhetoric, used to shaping words into weapons. "You must repent, my son."

The boy shook his head frantically, and scuttled further back. And the man followed, his steps easy and almost loping; had he been painted in black and orange, there would have been more truth to what he was than the silver cross which hung around the man's neck - a crucifix-

A flash of blinding white light seared her mind and she gasped, strange pain raking across her soul, reverberating through her like discordant arpeggios crashing along a piano

~ He's oh-so fond of his crucifix. ~ So level, his voice, and beyond cold; this was the empty frozen core of a black hole, this was the shrine of winter, the primordial polar death. ~ Such a...visual symbol, isn't it? The ultimate suffering, he calls it, the ultimate penance. ~

And a memory he hadn't meant her to glimpse, leaping like an iridescent and silvery trout to the surface.

This man again - who *was* he? - talking with another, a tall dark haired man who had Cougar's hair, and Cougar's build, and Cougar's face, though this one was not half so dear. His hands about that crucifix - and they both seemed so tall, so tall as she looked up at them...

"The ultimate crime," he told Cougar's father, in that distant past that was nearly tangible, a piercing stare fixing her - pinning the child that must have been Blue. "Doesn't it deserve the ultimate penance? This boy, he is not right - he is unnatural...evil."

Beneath what was spoken aloud, words sent on a wave of triumph to Blue alone. ~ I'll see you nailed, demon. ~

And he had.

An onslaught of images, so many and so myriad that she couldn't comprehend what each meant. Few were Blue's - thoughts of others that he had stolen when they were unaware, inwardly dying in the prison of their childhood weakness. Too many people, too much fear and vulnerability and revulsion; all the more terrible because it came from people who should never have known any of those emotions.

For a moment, the feelings came close to drowning her.

Yes. Blue was angry - and *troubled*? She'd not have believed it, but yes, what did the darkness most fear? Not light, not radiance because that was only the opposite of darkness and must burn out eventually whilst true night was eternal. But *false* light - this man, claiming holiness, claiming perfection - false light could burn forever and diminish all beneath it.

~ Stop him, ~ she pleaded. ~ Please, Blue - I know you don't like him, I know he scares you- ~

~ That, witch of mine, is neither the problem nor the issue. I don't run from what I fear. I certainly don't let live what I detest. If I had all the power this life had to offer - had I drained the very blood of the universe's heart - nothing would change. ~

Trying to catch his thoughts was like searching for a snowflake in a blizzard, shrouded and blinded by the sheer power that whirled about his head.

~ I thought Aspen was your friend, ~ she said, unable to bar the bitterness from her words, equally unable to prevent the hard laugh that escaped. ~ But then - I know your ideas of friendship. ~

~ You know *nothing*. ~ The words were dropped like tomes slamming shut.

How, how could he be so incredibly callous? ~ Look at him! ~ she snapped, and felt Blue's attention turn from her to Aspen.

The lamia was backed against a wall now, and his eyes were wide, shivering like glass in a gale. There were a thousand objects he could have used as a weapon, but it was easy to see that there was no fight in him, nothing but a dreadful broken terror. His cheeks shone like silk catching the light - tears, she thought horrified, tears without weeping, or anything but that feeble whimpering.

And the man, with his sleek silver hair and his handsome, smiling face, ah, making every step slower and smaller, controlling Aspen like a puppet - a shift of his hands here, a tug there, and he could have made that boy dance to his own death. And he would.

She saw it in those ever-changing eyes. He would.

~ Do something! ~ she screamed, and her mind seemed to fill with red-orange anger, hurling heat and dust and spitting sparks at him. ~ Do something, or I *will*! ~

~ I can't, you fool. ~ Cutting, snarling rage - but not all directed at her. ~ Oh, we vampires may be known for our love of vengeance, but he knows it too. We've been witched, witched by *your* foul blighted kind. None of us can harm him - not Aspen, not Therese, not Cougar, not any of my brothers and sisters - and certainly not I. Why do you think we left him alive? Residual affection? A souvenir? ~

~ I... ~

~ He's nailed us, witch of mine, and we are all helpless. ~

Her words were stolen, hurled into oblivion. The truth of it resounded in her mind like a melody thrumming through crystal.

~ Goddess... ~ she breathed, trying to gather her snapped and dangling thoughts.

~ There is none. ~ The thought flicked out like a whip. ~ Better to believe in yourself. ~

Yes - there, there was leverage to use against him. ~ Well, let me tell you something, Blue Malefici. I called you a monster, and I was right. But that man - he's more than a monster. And if you have any belief left at all, you'll get up there, and you'll divert him. Because you can't kill him...but I can. ~

Silence, and then his laughter rippled through her head, terribly amused, and perhaps just a little sardonic. ~ You? You couldn't kill me. What chance do you stand against *that*? ~

~ More than you. ~ She paused, and then flung the next words at him, flung his own words in his face and prayed the lie would slide by unnoticed. ~ Better to believe in yourself. I believe I can kill him. Do you believe you can face him? ~

~ Playing tricks - you're improving, Chatoya Irkil. Oh yes....you're improving. I'll even concede you this one. ~ Yet there was no note of surrender in his voice, only - oddly - satisfaction.

Then she was unceremoniously thrust aside, into the icy corners of his mind - but every surface opaque and smooth as ice with no way in and no way out. And for a brief instant, she hovered, waiting to see if he would keep his promise, yet not wishing him to know that she would not kill - hurt, yes, but not kill - waiting, lingering and-

She was twisted up into the arms of some almighty fiery stream, and dragged from his thoughts.

~*~

"Guilty," Iager repeated softly, and dredged up a smile he didn't feel. "I could kill you, you realise."

The human shrugged. There was no humour to the thin mouth, no warmth in the crystal-pale eyes, the cerulean of dying skies and forget-me-nots. "I'd come back. I've got an unlimited pass to life. And I don't think you would."

"Oh?" he drawled, and resettled himself on the bench, trying to affect indolence. Once, it had been so easy not to care, and pretend he did. Now, so difficult to pretend not to care when he did. "Why not?"

"You'd have done it by now," Thom pointed out. "So - where is Sean?"

Iager grinned tiredly. "Off in Ecuador. Enjoying his gap year. Very much alive and kicking, apparently."

The hostility didn't fade, but instead seemed to harden. "Why him? How did you even know about him - I can't believe you'd track down every member of my family and go to all the trouble of writing to my kid sis-"

His voice wilted like a flower in the northern blast as his eyelids fell closed. "I'll kill her. I'm going to roast her alive."

Iager was tempted to offer a recipe for stuffing, and ask if he could sauté her personally, but wisely held his tongue.

"I suppose she's been selling you information," Thom snapped. "And which one do you work for? Not Nightfire, I'd guess. Pursang, is it? K'Shaia? One of those groups that everyone keeps telling me are so dangerous. Who sent you?"

"Actually...your friend Zara's fiancé did," Iager informed him, wariness bordering his tones.

A disbelieving stare was all his response. "Dark? But why would he want to kill..." He lifted his chin up, glowering at Iager from behind the thin wire glasses. "You are here to kill Chatoya, aren't you?"

"What?" Well, that explained the antagonism at least. "No! She's a nice girl, and she may be Malefici's soulmate, but I don't want to kill her!"

Iager gazed at him imploringly. All right, I may have lied to you for the last week or so, but this *is* the truth.

The human looked just as perplexed as Iager felt. "Well, why *are* you here? It's not to pick bloody daisies, that's for certain!"

"Dark wants information. On Malefici - that's all. We've heard there's some big shake up going on in the Furies-"

"The *what*?" The human spread his hands, frustration raw in his gesture. "What have Greek legends got to do with anything?"

"Nightfire, K'Shaia and Pursang - we call them the Furies." It had been Tri's coining, he recalled with a pang. Early in their brief, rocky marriage - she had loved those stories, with their larger-than-life heroes and twisting tales. "There's something happening - and we'd like to know what, because when two thousand homicidal maniacs start getting edgy, it's time to put the crash helmets on."

The human even smiled a little, grim though it was. "I can understand that. Then...who are you?"

Iager hesitated. He didn't want anyone to know that, not here. This was his home - his paradise, his sanctum. Everything that he had been was tied into here, and everything he had become lolled in the sway of those shimmering lake waters.

And Ryar...her absence pervaded everything. He no longer slept, but slept alone. He did not walk without feeling the painful silence where her light steps would once had fallen. Each person he passed was a face that had not her sweetness, or her devotion or in the end, her strength. He no longer lived, but lived without her, and scarce lived at all.

Better to remain unknown, and keep the riddles of his heart caged.

"A dragon. A good one," he said finally, leaving the ambiguity unhealed. "That's all anyone needs to know."

Thom was silent for a long time, and only the whistle of the breeze and the slapping of the mere filled the air. "I think I believe you," he announced finally. "But I don't trust you, and if you're lying to me-"

"I know - you'll kill me."

Thom gave him a frankly startled look. "No I won't. I'll make sure someone more fireproof kills you. Believe *that*."

Iager did.

~*~

"Oh..." Chatoya stirred in his arms, and Cougar hastily lifted his head up, aware of just how much trouble he was about to be in, her blood, strong as death and desire, damp on his lips.

"Hey." Not so pale now, and her skin had a new, reassuring warmth to it. "Um...I think I should explain..."

Then her voice shot up an octave, grating on his ears. "Goddess! I, I, I - let me up, Cougar!" Her hands pushed at him, and bemused, he obeyed. She didn't sound angry, more...alarmed.

"Toya?" She was half-running to the door, her thoughts still a massed mossy tangle in his head. "Where are you going?"

"Not now, later!" she threw back, then paused and touched her neck. Blood, staining her fingers. She pointed at him, hand trembling. "We are going to discuss this," he was told in a taut tone that brooked no argument. Their thoughts split apart, cleaved like an apple by an arrow. "Later."

And then he heard the door slammed and was left sitting on the couch, not entirely sure what on earth had just happened.

~*~

There was a knot, a curling, twining knot in Jacqui's stomach that gyrated like a snarled-up snake. This - was not what she had thought.

She had moved the meeting - it should have been tomorrow - why couldn't it have been tomorrow, which never came? She had been too impatient, wanting with a gloating glee to see him vanquished.

Yes, she had thought Aspen might be scared - after all, he had rarely spoken of his family, and when he did, always with a fevered, fearful air. But he was not afraid now. He was beyond that; whatever had held him together during their long acquaintance had vanished, and he was falling into shattered pieces before her eyes.

She didn't like him. But no one deserved that.

Well, it's done, she told herself angrily, her hands ripping the files in front of her into strips over and over until only confetti was left. You did this, and now you can live with it, like you've lived with everything else.

And there was Aspen - his child's eyes with all their secrets spilling out so the world could see, the anguish, the fear, the hopeless and useless hate, there was Aspen with nowhere to go. His back to the wall and as Laburnum Martin drew ever closer, the lamia boy's bones seemed to turn to slush as he slid down against the barrier, and buried his blond-streaked head in his knees to block out the sight.

A victorious, empty smile was radiant on Bernie's face, and Jacqui could only hate him and hate herself, herself for being what she was, and doing what she had done - and would do again, because that was who she was. Ah, she regretted every malevolent act afterwards, but she didn't, wouldn't stop.

And then Blue stepped forward, his pupils two endless caverns.

"Get thee behind me, asshole," he purred, and black fire nestled about his body like a tame panther.

Bernie spun, disbelief sculpted on every inch of his fanatic's face, his pale and stern fanatic's face. "You..." he hissed. "You have no power over me. Have you forgotten that so easily?"

Blue tilted his cobalt head on one side, and the little enigmatic smile appeared, serpentine and filled with a spite that had been fed blood and life and still needed more. "Things change, Laburnum. People change. Except you. Still stuck in your rut, still threatening those who won't and can't fight back."

"I shall cast your soul into the fiery pit of hell," Bernie snarled, and the determination - the *faith* - in those words made Jacqui's skin rise in goosebumps. And in that second, she could believe that heaven and hell existed, though she knew neither did.

"I'll be sure to stock up on my Factor 50 then." Blue's eyes flashed - golden, pure gold, as if the fiery pits were already burning in his stare. "Next? Are you going to quote Revelations at me? Or some useless titbit of some equally useless prophet?"

Bernie mouthed, mottled red creeping up his neck. Not so elegant now, she thought. Not anything but a madman.

"For all your belief that you're holier than Swiss cheese," Blue continued, his arms crossed and his irreverent eyes spitting contempt. "You're nothing. Holy? You don't believe in any god. You believe you are one."

"Infidel!" Bernie's hand was clutching the crucifix. "Heretic!"

"Yes, yes," the lamia boy drawled, an angel of death in that still and self-assured stance. "We all know my church attendance of late has been disturbingly low, though I must admit my funeral attendance has been excellent."

"I should have killed you the moment I laid eyes on you!" the man snarled. "You're poison, just like your unnatural father was."

Fangs bared as Blue's smile widened. "My father, unnatural? Take a good look in the mirror, Laburnum, and if it doesn't shatter, maybe you'll see what would make anyone want to be blind."

"You are an abomination!" His hands made the sign of the cross, left to right, head to stomach.

"I am more than you will ever be," Blue declared. "And speaking of religious advice, here's one for you."

His eyes were so bright Jacqui couldn't look at him, but only sit riveted, waiting.

The door flew open, and she was stunned, destroyed - horrified - to see Chatoya Irkil run in. She halted, her face flushed and almost panicked - but still taking in the scene quickly with a single glance at Aspen, in that pathetic heap on the floor, at Blue, crueller and more formidable than he had ever been - at this man, this snarling, wheedling thing of man.

Bernie had heard the swish of the door at Chatoya Irkil's entrance, and faced her - the confidence oozing back onto his features as he saw her.

And then she spoke, her voice clear and low, and unforgiving as the night itself, with only the faintest of tremors to it.

"I know what you have done."

Witchfire leapt to her hands - and then Blue stared at her, and the witch girl met his eyes. Something seemed to pass between them, something that was not verbal but instinctual...and the witchfire slowly turned the oily curling black of dragonfire.

Bernie's eyes widened, and he took a step back. And another as the fire leapt, and danced, and strained towards him.

Blue's whisper sliced the air. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

Fire exploded, and Jacqui had to shield her eyes against the blinding surge of light.

When she opened them, a pool of melted silver was cooling on the floor, and the only sound was Aspen's soft, helpless whimpering.

~ One way or another
I'm gonna win you
I'll get you - I'll get you. ~

~*~

Chimera Part Eighteen

~ Something's going wrong inside of you
Burdens bearing down and seeping through. ~

Chatoya stared at her own hands, half-unable to believe the sheer power that had swarmed through her like a plague of locusts, the power hot and sweet and furious. Traces of it still loitered in her body, in her bones.

"You used me," she said finally, breaking the silence that had been almost sacred. She dared look up then, and meet the blue, blue eyes that were fathomless beyond mere mortal measurement. "You-"

"-weren't intending to kill him." Blue cut her off. He didn't move from where he leant against the counter she worked behind every weekend. "For all your fine words and righteous anger, you're no killer."

"I am now!" she snapped.

The sooty eyelashes dropped to mask his gaze, but she could still feel how intolerably amused he was. "You're taking it rather well, I must say. Perhaps you're not so terribly moral as you seem."

For a blink, she was tempted to drag that power right out of his soul and hurl it at him. But she had not used it; she had been used. Power like that...it had a will of its own, and maybe someone as contrary as Blue could cope, but not her. Even before it had arrowed towards that man, it had seemed to consume her.

But she turned away, thrusting back that stupid notion, and gave her attention to the scene before her.

And oh, Goddess. Oh...

Aspen wasn't making any sound now; he only had his head buried in his hands, knees drawn up to meet his trembling knuckles. It broke her heart to see the minute tremors rattling through his frame, and she only wished he would do anything but sit there encased in that small tight painful world.

Her feet moved of their own accord, and she knelt down by him and did what was most instinctive to her; she just put her arms around Aspen, the way she would a child.

He hit her.

It was a wild, impulsive reaction, just getting her away from him as fast as he could, but it knocked her back, and knocked her breath clean away. Her vision collapsed out for a few agonising seconds, but not before she caught a glimpse of his face.

And gods, if any existed, at the blank unseeing terror in his eyes, she could only forgive him and pity him.

Hell, she muttered silently in her head, biting her tongue to try and block out the pain in her jaw. Goddess, goddess, goddess, that *hurt*. Her teeth felt like they'd fall out if she dared speak, and she didn't want to think about the blood she could taste coppery and warm flooding her mouth.

~ Can you hear me? ~ she demanded loudly.

~ Like a convoy of agitated vultures.~ Blue's disdain was a holly-leaf green in her head, and as subtly stinging. ~ Correct me if I'm wrong, though you won't need to, but this vastly irritating link seems to be growing stronger. ~

How true - it hadn't even needed focus to speak to him. But it didn't matter. ~ Get hold of Tamara Slone. ~

~ Why? You think she can fix him with a kiss and the oh-so magical soulmate principle? You might as well try and stop a volcano with polystyrene packaging. He's broken, Chatoya Irkil, it's that simple, and I doubt there's anything on earth that will take that away. ~

She stared at the bowed head before her, and Aspen's legs bunched up tight, and the scars she could see on his arms that she had never noticed; they only showed now because he was icy-pale all over, as though he'd slid through the surface of an arctic lake and couldn't find his way out again.

~ No, but - it has to start somewhere. I can't just leave him! ~

~ Compassion will ruin you, witch of mine. You want to see the good in everything and everyone. There's no good in this situation. There's no saving grace, except that Laburnum Martin got to taste the poison he dealt out for one second. ~

That couldn't be true. She leaned forward again, gathering herself to move back, and touched Aspen's arm very cautiously. "Please don't hit me again," she muttered under her breath.

This time the blow flattened her to the floor, and there was an incredible pain lancing up her back. Chatoya stared at the ceiling, and heard running feet, and the high jingle of the bells on the door as someone shot out.

I don't think I'm ever going to move again.

The sheer *strength*! She hadn't even felt the impact, but a nasty numbness spread across her shoulder, and something creaked unpleasantly as she tried to sit up.

"You're a fool, witch of mine." Blue didn't help her up, but stood over her, eyes flashing with a dark, vicious mirth. "But not quite as much of a fool as you, Jacqueline."

As she struggled up to a half-slumped half-sitting position, Chatoya blinked, bemused by the rapacious delight she heard. Yes, the vampire girl was staring almost blankly at the pair of them. A heap of torn paper sat in front of her, and an unusual flush tinged the oval face. There was...something...

Something in Blue's mind, something that she had seen like a reflection in a broken mirror...

She was on her feet before her mind quite connected, and had to clutch onto the nearest table to keep upright, hair tumbling madly round her face. "You hired those wolves!" Yes, that was it, it chimed in her head like the final note of a symphony. "To - to keep me from Pursang. And you...you arranged this."

Jacqui's chin thrust out defiantly, despite the downright surprise in her voice. "And what if I did?"

"You evil, conniving..." Chatoya let off a string of words which she felt managed to convey effectively her rage, pain, and general state of mind.

The girl pushed her chair back, scraping it along the floor. "You two really are soulmates," she announced flatly. "She's certainly got your gift for words."

"Hasn't she just?" Blue purred, aglow with a secret satisfaction, a shadow lurking in her mind. "Here's your choice. Do you want to have Pursang - or do you want her to?"

You bastard, Chatoya thought with grudging respect. She had to hand it to Blue, or he'd take it anyway. You manipulative little-

~ Ah, ah! ~ he interposed coolly. ~ Answer first. You may...chastise me later. The frying pan or the fire? ~

She hoped with all her outraged heart he could hear the fury in her voice. "I will."

A hiss from Jacqui, and the gold rim about Blue's eyes swelling a little - but that was all the reaction he gave her.

"And as my first act..." She let go of the table, fixing her best imitation of Cougar's death-stare on Jacqui, and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her side and back. "You're fired. Preferably in a kiln at about three hundred degrees."

"I'm...what?" the Monaco girl whispered. Her hands dangled uselessly at her side. Instead of the petulance, the denial, the fury Chatoya had expected, the words seemed to have emptied her. "But - you can't."

"Read my lips." She glanced sideways at Blue, and nearly added she'd produce a translation for him if he was having trouble, but restrained herself. Cheap shots were his forte, not hers. "Get out."

The diamante clips sparkled as Jacqui shook her head slowly. "But where will I go? What will I do? Pursang's, it's all I've got. It's all I am."

A pang of sympathy struck her. What a terrible thing for anyone to say. But that didn't alter what she had done, and maybe what she would do if she could.

"Things are about to change," Chatoya said, and she recalled some of those other fleeting thoughts she had grasped in Blue's mind. Oh yes, she had seen enough to guess what Blue intended, even in those first few seconds before he locked all his thoughts into black and hellish secrecy. "Why don't you be the first one?"

"I..."

"Just go," she said tiredly. "Don't argue. You don't want to see me angry."

Jacqui cast an almost awed glance at her - then it flicked to her hands. "I already have," she said, and left. The silence was almost as heavy as the weight she now carried on her shoulders.

I should have left it. I shouldn't have done this.

But I couldn't have stood by and done nothing.

"Don't say it," she said flatly.

Blue arched one dark eyebrow, and shrugged. There was a distinctly feline laziness to the way he stretched his legs, and settled back against the counter. "Some things need no words."

Chatoya stayed standing despite the pain in her back. She would pay dearly for this later. "And some do. How *dare* you, how goddamn *dare* you use me like that?"

"Practice."

"You made me a weapon." Each word was spat out - the thought was bitter as raw coffee in her mouth.

"I can think of better things to make you, I'll agree." His voice arched with midnight promise. And then he glided forward, those easy fluid jaguar's steps until he was right in front of her, and filling up her vision. "Fine. I used you. I wanted him dead. He is. I suppose I owe you."

The memory of that brilliant light was engraved on her thoughts. "I don't just blow people to pieces."

"You can blow me to pieces any time you want, witch of mine." A vibration ran low and suggestive in his voice, and when he took her hand, turning it over in his own, it trailed through his touch too, disturbing her more than it should have. The scratches still raked deep on her skin, and she was ready to jolt back.

But he only ran his fingertips very gently, light as grass-seed tumbling through the air, along the cuts. Even that caused pain, but pain of a different sort; pain that held only a distant threat of more pain, disguised under a touch that seemed to imply contact of a different and far less innocent nature.

"Blood," he murmured.

An adder seemed to turn just beneath her ribs as he lifted her hand, his touch warm and smooth.

"Power."

To her shock, he kissed the inside of her wrist, where the veins met. And the traces of dragonfire in her blood were drained from her, drawn to the junction in the lodestream of her blood; she felt the hard imprint of his fangs in her skin, but he didn't bite her.

"But where," Blue continued, his voice a soft mass of shadows, "where's the reflection, witch of mine? You crept into my thoughts so very easily..."

"You thought of me." His touch was sliding idly over the palm of her hand, almost tickling. "Didn't you tell me once I was only a reflection of you? It's enough, Blue."

"Is it?"

His hand lashed suddenly, and there was a long shallow cut flaming on the edge of her palm. Chatoya snatched her hand away, sucking the wound to try and stop it bleeding, and considered giving him a hefty slap. But there was something in his stance which warned her he would be entirely ready for it.

"I'm thinking of you now, witch of mine," and there was something distinctly unholy sparkling in his eyes, startling as a scarlet-clad bride. "And nothing's happening."

She took her hand away from her mouth. "Yes it is. I'm annoyed."

"Hardly a cause for concern, or shall I call Nightfire and warn them I'm about to suffer an extreme bout of random sarcasm and general chastisement? By the way, you're dripping blood on the floor."

"Gods above, am I? Isn't it odd how that seems to happen whenever I run into you?"

Fangs shone softly in the light, and she realised his pupils had dilated, and he was breathing more deeply.

Of course, she thought sickly, he can smell my blood.

"In point of fact," Blue stated, and she clutched her hand close though it was pure madness to show fear. "I believe it was wolves who drew your blood last time. However...I won't deny causing you pain. It does *so* amuse me. And if you stopped running away, sweet Chatoya Irkil, maybe you'd learn to take the pleasure with the pain."

"Pleasure?" Angry eyes met unearthly ones. "Where's the pleasure in this?"

"Ah," he sighed, and tilted his head on one side. "There's the trick. It's in control, it's in not giving in to what you so very much desire."

"What's this, lessons to help me in hell?" Body hand-crafted by Harrods, she thought, looking at the dazzling and undeniably captivating face. Soul fed-exed by Satan.

Sparks jumped in his eyes, and he drew her wounded hand from her with easy strength, a strength that told her she surrendered or he broke the nearest convenient bone. "Or heaven. Take your pick, and your time."

He was blocking the soulmate connection again, in the easy way he had, but somehow...it wasn't quite working like it once had. No fire. No thoughts - but his feelings were vague shapes in her mind, like being in a dark room and bumping into the furniture occasionally.

"I'd rather take my leave," she said, but found herself being drawn closer as he tugged on her arm. Oh yes, here they were again, and here he was, doing what he wished, though she wasn't at all sure what that was.

There was no sound as he drew her hand up, staring at the blood that was trickling down her palm. And then licked her hand, and made her jump so violently that she nearly fell over.

"What are you *doing*?"

That curious colour was in his eyes - beyond gold, a shimmering pearly hue, white tinged with all the colours of the spectrum. "Am I going to have to draw diagrams?" he drawled, and folded her fingers over her palm, his grasp loosely about her wrist. Something was...

She opened her hand. The cut was gone. "What did you...?"

Chatoya wasn't sure, but thought his grip might have tightened a fraction. "It's a little known fact, but it isn't only vampire blood that helps healing. And I do believe your mouth is bleeding. Shall I heal that too?"

"Shall I just bare my throat? Or would you rather I lie back and think of Pursang?"

"I'd rather you lie back and think of me," he drawled, eyebrows arching into that spiky azure hair, and Chatoya found herself almost enjoying throwing words back and forth. Words were easier than weapons with Blue, though sometimes they cut near as deep. Something had changed; something had swung her way. "But I'll take that as a no."

"I'm surprised," she said bitingly, tones as pitch-black as her hair. "I didn't think you knew what it meant."

"Sometimes no means yes. Sometimes yes means no. Sometimes you ignore both. Here's another lesson for you, Chatoya Irkil - don't listen to the words. Listen to the silence - what they don't say is far more important."

She leaned forward, and spread her hand over his throat. Yes, she understood. We're more equal now - and you...you need me now you've manoeuvred me where you wanted. I saw that. And you know I saw it. "Anyone would think you wanted me to survive."

"We both know I have a vested interest in keeping you alive." His pulse throbbed under her fingers, slow and even. "And let me give you your third lesson. Keep your friends away. They're levers for anyone with a modicum of intelligence. If you can't keep them away - what chance do you have with your enemies?"

Determination flashed on her face, taut in her mouth. "I'm managing fine with you."

"Are you?"

She ignored him. It was easier the more she tried it. "I need to get in touch with..." The words tasted odd on her lips, tasted like blood and fear. "...my people."

His eyelids hooded his eyes, for all the world like a cobra pretending to slumber. "I can help with that."

And I'll be watching for the knife in my back every step of the way, she thought grimly.

~*~

Aspen was blind.

He was deaf, and dumb, and blind all over again, and only a deep trembling fear ran through him.

~ Did you miss me, son? ~

He was deaf, and dumb, and blind, and tainted, and Tam wouldn't want him, and couldn't have him, better that the fear should have him, or the pain should have him. Yes, the pain. That would block out the fear, and block out the world and block out the voice hissing

~ Did you miss me, son? ~

He didn't hear the car screech to a halt, or the driver that shouted at him, or even feel the sun blazing high above him. His world was ever dark, and cold, and bounded by stone walls that held soft whispers and empty hell. How stupid he had been to think it could ever be otherwise. Ah, how foolish of him to try and escape, how naive of him to think that he was ever anything but filthy and useless and wrong, wrong, wrong.

I'm all wrong, Aspen thought, and stumbled on, not caring where he went or what he became. He was right, he should have killed me when I was born. He was merciful to let me live, to let me breathe someone else's air.

I should be dead.

He knew somewhere that there had been fire - the divine saving fire he had so longed for all those years ago, wiping out the face that had haunted him longer than he could even remember. But the fire had come too late.

Where were you, he had wanted to scream at the witch whose name was a blur to him. Where were you thirteen years ago, when I was a person, when I was still real, where were you before I became *this*?

Where were you when I needed you?

He stopped, and fell onto the ground, and didn't care that it was cold and harsh and painful. What else did he deserve? He just curled up in the shady darkness, and curled up into that little stone world and cried very quietly.

~*~

Felicity left Cern with the Pack, smiling faintly as he elbowed Romulus out of the way to sit down and laze in the noisy, chattering circle. He'd not run off at all these past days, and even joined in a conversation and answered questions with more than two words. And she knew - she knew from the way his face would flicker round the Pack - that he missed his friends.

Flick dusted tiny leaves from her copper hair, and wavered over whether she should fetch one of his friends. As a surprise. Not one of the happy ones with soulmates. Maybe...mmm...that Cougar guy, though he was so unbearably obnoxious and would probably say the most inappropriate thing he could call to mind.

Or that Lisa chick. Cern always smiled when he talked about her, and his eyes were a little less sad. And Donna seemed to think well of her. Flick knew a lot of the Pack didn't like Donna, their erstwhile leader, because she wouldn't let them hunt any humans that came across their path, but she had her head screwed on right. Which was more than could be said for anyone who crossed her.

The Lisa girl, she decided, and cut through the wood. And she'd get some more eyeliner while she was in town. She kept running out, and it came off however she slathered it on.

She was near at the edge when she caught the sound.

It wasn't loud, and it wasn't physical. Flick's mother had always said that she'd excel both her parents in mental strength and since she'd come here, she'd found she could always find prey faster than the Pack, and ease out of trouble before it began.

And it sounded like...

Her short nose wrinkled. Crying? Here? Plenty of pain, sure, but weren't no one in the Pack who went in for tears.

Damn me, she thought, and changed direction, walking along the edge as it became louder in her hearing. There was something very unnerving about the sound; something utterly heartbroken, and almost childlike. Branches brushed at her face, and smudged her eyeliner further, and tore on her spiked collar, but she kept walking, thoroughly intrigued.

She kicked her way through the final few brambles in her way, and stared.

That boy...vaguely familiar, one of the Nightpeople who strolled round town. All hunched up, curled up in a foetal position with his hands over his face and pale as the little white powder she'd seen passed round her expensive friends.

Je-sus. How *do* I meet these people? Flick thought. She knew she should walk away right now. That boy was messed-up as all hell, especially if he was dumb enough to have a mental collapse near the ghost roads.

She should walk away...but she sighed.

"Oh boy," she said aloud.

He sat up, and scrabbled backwards with his hands and feet, his eyes bigger than a shot faun's. Faun's eyes, fox's face, she thought, looking at the narrow and firm mouth, if slack with fear now, and the long nose, and the pointed chin. Curiously delicate, and - this unnerved her most - utterly petrified.

"Hey, I know I haven't topped up the make-up this morning," she announced, not moving, "but I didn't think it was that bad."

He was quivering all over, and still crying, though he scarce seemed to notice, and all he reminded her of was the baby rabbit she had almost devoured last night - but instead, let go. Only to see Romulus snap it up in his jaws.

"You picked a pretty spot to sit in, boy." She pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one. Great ice-breaker, and besides, she needed something to relax her a little. This boy was spooking her. "You want one?"

A little rationality crept in his eyes. Better, Flick thought, though I wish those tears would stop. It's like no one's home, but the grief's still flooding out.

She threw the packet, but he didn't catch it. No reaction at all, just looking at - or was it through? - her. Not good. People either tried to catch what you threw, or they flinched back. The smoke was a comfort in her throat and chest.

"I'm thinking I know you," she said, her grey eyes sleet-soft. "Seen you round town, I reckon. Vampire, right?"

Nothing.

"You want me to guess your name, or do I get a little help?"

Still nothing. Christ, Flick thought, it's like someone's got inside that cute head and smashed him to bits with a mallet.

"Boy," she said gently. "You aren't in good shape. Please...help me out here. I'm real worried about you, and if I don't get a response, I'm going to just knock you out and take you back home with me, 'cause I'm not leaving you out here."

Blankness. Not a blink. He hadn't blinked at all since she came in.

"I'm sorry," she told him, and prepared to smash through whatever shields this vampire might have. But then...she realised. No shields. Nothing.

What a mess. What a poor godforsaken mess. Why don't you put up a fight, boy?

Mind an open book, and then am image grabbed her - dark, thorny, sending a gut-deep fear through her that she thrust away at once as a reflex. Surely no one could feel that and stay sane.

And she realised that maybe knocking him out would only be a mercy.

I know what mercy is, Flick reflected, and then felt something cool slide down her cheek. Oh god, am I crying for him? Yeah, I know mercy. It's when it stops hurting.

And she thought that when she knocked him out, there was relief in that tortured mind.

~*~

It was late when Chatoya got in, dazed by the brief resume and long phone calls she had just been subjected to. It had been...strange. She had rung the four people Blue had assured her were the first below her in the hierarchy and everyone had given her the same reaction.

"You're a bloody *what*?" had been the reaction of Lance Stormshot, his lazy Australian drawl startled into a shout. "You're pulling my leg!"

"Very funny," the laughing witch in Washington had said. "Now come on, Malefici, get your meal off the line and put Martin on."

The vampire in London had nearly dropped dead at her announcement that he could damn well fly to Ryars Valley and see for himself, just like the rest.

And as for Salvaje Chusson, who had just received unexpected promotion - he had snarled a very unwilling agreement and hung up with a distinct slam.

Blue had dryly assured them that he was not pulling any limb, nor did he have his calendar open at April the first, and that yes, she had managed to polish off Aspen in single combat. And after several minutes of sheer disbelief, they had all - reluctantly - agreed to present themselves in a few days.

Blue hadn't said a word as she hung up the last call, but watched her with a slender, inscrutable smile, and gestured her out. He was planning something, sure as the sky stayed up, and she didn't want to know what it was.

And the buzzing was back. The buzzing that slowly turned into sounds, and then words as she moved further from his home. But it was ignorable, and that was exactly what she did.

And now...she stood, hand on the door handle of Thom's house. There would be words with Cougar. She didn't know how on *earth* to start, though she had a good idea of how to finish, and she needed to go home and talk to Lisa, and apologise to Tali, and sympathise with Jepar over his black eyes and-

As she stepped into the sitting room, it struck her that things weren't quite right.

There was Cougar - his hazel eyes flared with relief as she walked in, apparently in one piece. And Thom. And Jepar, looking like a lost raccoon, and Lisa? And *Sean*? And a very, very sullen Kirsty.

"What's going on?" she said, looking from one unexpectedly serious face to another.

"Good question," Thom muttered, with a glare at his younger sister. "Kirsty? Care to start?"

"Take a seat," Cougar advised, and flashed his teeth. "And you'd better get some popcorn too - this is going to be entertaining."

~ Well, I don't want to bleed anymore for you
And to take away your hatred is more than I can do. ~

~*~

Chimera Part Nineteen

~ All your dreams will fall apart
Your fondest wishes too
And the fears you thought you conquered
Will be right here when they do. ~

"Who wants to start?" Thom said flatly. His eyes had gone as hard and opaque as clouded crystal, and Chatoya thought she had never seen the Old Soul so obviously furious.

"Gosh," Cougar Redfern said in gleeful piety, as Chatoya settled herself next to him. "It's almost like playing a board game. Can I be Colonel Mustard? And I think it was that no-good conniving not-even-Irish bastard," a contemptuous flick of his fingers in Sean's direction, who scowled darkly, "in the past, with oh, about fifty thousand tons of dragon power."

"What?" Chatoya blinked; Cougar's mouth was hard and almost cruel, and it shot a cool bolt of fear straight through her heart. "What are you talking about?"

"It's true," Sean said, and in his manner, something was a little different, something-

His accent was gone. The voice was different; huskier, with just a hint of Eastern European sharpness to the consonants, and deep as an underground lake.

"You're...a dragon," she said slowly. "Really a dragon?"

"Horns and all," he murmured, and brushed aside the messy hair to show her the cluster of horns on his forehead.

No human boy had those, and now that she knew, his amber eyes were no longer so warm and welcoming; in them lay a depth that came from something beyond age, that came from seeing hurt and pain and rage beyond measure and mere mortal pretensions.

"Well," Jepar said dryly, stretching out his long legs, "you seem relatively sane. You don't have any bizarre fixations on any of us, do you? Or anything likely to turn our lives into a feature-length story?"

Sean - though no, that was wrong, what *was* his name? - raised an eyebrow. "Don't flatter yourself. You're really not my type."

But somehow, it couldn't quite summon the reassurance she needed. He was a thief. A thief of someone's body, and someone's voice, and someone else's open amber stare, a thief of someone else's emotions and relationships.

What he stole was utterly priceless.

Her breath hissed in as the presence in her mind spread like a pool of ink, shining indigo and smothering her like liquid shadows.

~ No, ~ she said, and knew Blue Malefici heard her. The buzzing in her head had wilted under his presence - but then, it was only the humming hive of his thoughts heard distantly, and now, in the heart of who she was, he was overwhelming, no mere drone. ~ Not in my mind, Blue. Not now. ~

~ Priceless, sweet spellcaster? ~ that lazy, laughing voice asked, though there was little deference to it. ~ Something so great that it cannot be given a value - or something that has no value at all? Be careful how you use your words, for meaning is all in the listener's heart. ~

~ Who are you to speak of hearts? ~

~ Who are you to put value on a life? Which of us here is better qualified to judge? ~

There was a lightness to the words that didn't hide the force behind them. She had always believed your soulmate was your noonday sun, throwing your world into bright relief, and shortening your shadow. But Blue...Blue was an eclipse, blotting out all light and staining the world with darkness.

~ Leave me *alone*. ~

Something she couldn't interpret in his voice before that cool, blue-black venom left her. ~ Oh...I will, Chatoya Irkil. I will. ~

The exchange had taken a scant few seconds, unnoticed in the awkward silence that settled round the room, and Chatoya realised she had been staring absently at the four tight white scars that raked over Jepar's face, the legacy of the last dragon they had met.

"Who are you?" she shot at Sean, shattering the hush. "Why are you posing as Sean, and how did you get found out?"

Yes - there, unease flickered on his face like lightning in a far-flung sky. "Who I am doesn't matter."

"Then who you were won't matter either," Cougar snarled quietly, and Chatoya was shocked at the sheer ferocity in his gaze, bright and sharp. "I don't know what the hell it is, Toya, but it's not here for any good reason. In fact, it's here to kill you. After all - what better way to get rid of Blue?"

Her mouth fell open, and around the room, people sat bolt upright. All Jepar's languor disappeared as his bruised eyes threw jade sparks, and a long knife materialised in Lisa's hands.

"What?" she said in unison with the dragon.

"Actually, before you go into raging hysterics, apparently he's not." Thom gave Kirsty a little shake, adding cryptically, "Even my sister has more sense than that. He's one of Dark's minions."

The dragon drew himself up. "I'm no one's minion."

"Employee, then." The Old Soul's look said he didn't particularly care. "I rang up as soon as we got back, while Cougar and you were having a world-class glaring match, and Zara confirmed it." He grinned. "Dark didn't tell her, and from her voice, I get the impression she wasn't too pleased with him."

The rampant hostility in the room went down a few notches. Except for Cougar; Chatoya knew that stubborn expression, and it said he wouldn't believe it until he had proof. She could feel the tension in his long body, poised next to her, and perhaps normally she might have laid a hand on his arm, just to say what words would not, but she knew that under his lips, his teeth were stained with her blood, and their friendship was blemished with that betrayal.

"...said something about withholding conjugal rights from the poor guy for not telling her...but I'm getting off track. As she was so steamed with Dark, Zara did a bit of spying of her own, and found out who our dragon is and why he's here," Thom continued. "One Fireblade. Spying on Nightfire, Pursang and K'Shaia."

Jepar's breath hissed in. "What? No way! Fireblade's just a legend. My mother used to tell me bedtime stories about him..."

"Really?" Cougar said brusquely. "My father used to use him as a role model. Which tells me all I need to know."

The dragon lowered his head into his hands. And then the air was riddled with a series of creaks and screeches as his bones shifted. Chatoya pressed her lips together and tried not to listen.

He lifted his head.

There was silence. So this is you, she thought. This is all the truth you will give us, though for all we know, it's only another lie, another layer on a parcel that's no party game.

He was the golden-caramel of someone who had spent their life is a baking, roiling world; and now she saw his eyes were the impossible orange of lava spat against a night sky, matching the hair that was striped like a tiger's fur, short and bristling. He wasn't tall as Cougar or Jepar, but there was an unnerving sinewy strength to him, his skin stretched tight over his bones.

This was something made to hunt.

"I don't go by that name," he said, and there was a bitter edge to the words. " It's Iager now. I'm not that person anymore."

"We don't know that." Lisa spoke for the first time, her words slow and measured, but none the less powerful. Chatoya didn't dare look at her for fear of the condemnation she might be shown. "I've heard the stories too, and I know what you were. Working against assassins? I don't believe it. You are one."

Fireblade....oh, sweet Goddess. The tales resounded in her head, long and gruesome accounts her twin brother had told her with eyes aglow at the gore that all kids loved in their stories. Fireblade, who had been second-in-command to the last dragon King. Fireblade; the King's killer, slayer of witches, slayer of dragons, ever-thirsting. Fireblade, who had a sword that blazed against the smoke-streaked skies of that greatest of wars, hewing down all in his path. Fireblade, fled and thought dead, or lost, but gone either way.

Strange, she couldn't see that in the eyes of the boy who bit his lip at those words, as if they pained him. No, there was something - something so odd about his face that eluded her. Not Fireblade. Not the same monster, though perhaps a monster all the same.

A monster, for now then, who sought to unlock Nightfire's secrets. And Pursang's secrets - hers.

"I suppose you know about me and Blue, then," she said into the silence. "Reject of my affections and all."

No apology in the hellfire eyes turned to her. Gods, how could she ever have thought him human? "I knew. And I'll admit, I was cultivating your company in the hope you could tell me something. But I was not, *not* going to kill you. If I was, I could have done it by now." He smiled, and a dimple flickered in one cheek. "And besides, I did enjoy your company."

"Oh, how nice of you," she said acidly. "I'm glad my back didn't hurt your knife."

The caged fire in his eyes seemed to dim a little. "No knives here, Chatoya. If you think I'd hurt you, maybe you should be careful which way you turn your back. Same goes for all of you."

"I want to know just how you got here," Jepar said thoughtfully. "You can't tell me that Dark managed to uncover the convenient excuse of Sean on his own - Zara wouldn't have known, and there's no way Thom helped you - so how?"

The dragon didn't answer, but Thom did.

The Old Soul gave his little sister a shake. "Madam here has been playing games with all of us," he said grimly. "I doubt you know, but she's been making a little money on the side by a time-honoured method."

Cougar's golden eyes were hazy with bemusement. "Uh...isn't she a little young for-"

"Selling information," Thom said.

"Ah." A rakish grin grew slowly on the lamia's enticing face. "Well, nothing wrong with that. In fact, it's pretty smart, what with all the criminals round here-"

"About us," the human finished.

A horrified chorus of "What?" and one vindictive "I take that back!" as the metaphorical roof got hit.

Chatoya stared at Kirsty Ausner. Oh, she knew that under that angel's face lay a mind like a switchblade, but....surely she knew how *stupid* that was, how selfish it was, how incredibly dangerous it was.

"You're kidding me," she said softly.

Kirsty turned her face to Chatoya, and gave her a small, satisfied smile. Her eyes...they were cold as the Himalayas. It was too old for her, far too old, and almost frightening. And for the first time, Chatoya had the sudden icy sense of what Blue must have been like as a child. That was what she was observing; someone who gave life no value except monetary.

"You revolting brat!" Cougar shouted as Lisa hastily removed anything near him that could be thrown or kicked. "You horrible, repulsive child! Not only do you use my phone to make international calls, not only do you pour lemonade in my VCR, you put my life on the market!"

"Cougar?" Chatoya said, holding spitting and livid eyes with her own. "Not helping much."

"Or at all," Jepar amended. The cheetah shapeshifter had a rather stunning pair of black eyes, and a weary expression.

"I wasn't trying to help, Panda Boy," the vampire snarled, raking his hands through coal hair. "Christ! Even the kids here turn out to be extras from the X-Files!"

"Guys..." Thom interrupted. He had a firmer hold on Kirsty now, who looked suspiciously as if she was trying to escape. "That's not all."

She thought Cougar was actually going to go into orbit at that point. "No. Of course it isn't. What else - are there fifty thousand raving cannibals outside waiting to batter down the door and eat us all? Have we all been struck by a fatal virus? Are Westlife going to come round carolling?"

Chatoya met the emerald eyes of Jepar, and saw his mouth twitching. She turned her face away, trying not to laugh. Cougar had never realised that his explosive tantrums were not so much horrifying as hysterical.

"Not entirely," the blond human said. "She's not just been passing information to Dark."

Iager's eyebrows arched, and Chatoya realised that he knew as little as they did. That indefinable strange something about him struck her again and-

There were lines on his face. That was it. At the corners of his eyes, and at his mouth. Something that had marred him incredibly. Not joy. Some kind of heartache had come to this dragon and left its mark on him through all the long years.

"Who else?" Cougar demanded in a near-whisper, his eyes narrowed into two sunrise slits.

~ Uh oh, ~ Lisa said tautly. ~ I think he's going to flip. ~

The vampire had her hand on Cougar's arm, but Chatoya could tell that wasn't going to stop him. She did the same, and he started slightly, but didn't shift his gaze from Kirsty.

Thom exhaled slowly, and opened his mouth.

And then Chatoya realised that the buzzing in her head had gone utterly silent, which could only mean one thing, one unfortunate and certain thing-

"Me," a voice drawled into the silence, and heads turned to see Blue Malefici framed in the doorway, a faint derisive smile on his mouth. He slung a backpack at his feet, and Chatoya eyed it apprehensively. "I've come to pay my disrespects."

~*~

"Oh," a disgusted voice said, and Romulus sneered at the boy she was dragging. "By the fucking moon, Flick, why have you brought him here?"

Felicity Serafine dropped the boy onto the floor, and for one disturbing moment he could have been a corpse lying there with those deep-shadowed eyes and pallid waxen skin, like a burnt-out candle. "Why do you think, Rom? Found him in the woods. Not in a good state."

"Should have left him there then," the wolf said shortly, screwing up his blunt nose. "We don't need no trouble like him. He's a leech, Serafine, I can smell it from here."

"Well, we can all smell *you* from here too," she said pointedly, staring at his grubby, half-torn clothes and muddy face, "but I don't see anyone throwing you out."

Rom's flint-grey eyes were contemptuous. "You going to help every goddamn charity case that lurches in here?"

"Thanks," Cern Akafren said without looking up. "If you don't mind, I'm just going to lurch off and find something to eat that's cleaner than the crap round here."

Rom shrugged. "I wasn't talking 'bout you, halfbreed. You've got wolf blood. You're all right by me, even if you do have weird ideas. I'm talking about every other hobbling swan she's dragged on in."

Donna Ares glanced up, flinging back her mess of russet hair from her face. "I think you mean lame duck, lamebrain," the Pack leader said in her husky voice.

Romulus growled, and the sound was picked up and spread through the clearing. "Get him out."

Flick bared her own teeth, and laid the boy down on one of the sleeping bags scattered on the floor. "You don't like it, you get out, Rom."

"He's a parasite!"

"And you're a moron," she threw back fast, "but we don't comment on it. I'll fight you over this, Rom, I mean it." She had beat Rom in every other fight they'd had, and he knew she would do it again.

"There'll be no fighting." Donna's eyes were the same deep green as fresh-cut summer grass, but harder than frozen glass. "He stays. Don't look like he's going to cause trouble to me, Romulus."

"Yeah? Funny, that last wolf didn't look like no trouble, did she, when I bit her goddamn finger off, and look what she turned out to be!"

"Shut up." Cern's voice snapped out so hard it could have been the flick of a flail. "You have no idea what Jal was."

Rom obviously was not in a mood to take warnings from the arched, rigid posture of his body. Coiled, and ready to leap. "You think you do? Luna, she ripped you to fucking shreds, and you still got this big hang-up about her? Yeah, so she was your soulmate, but that ain't nothing to go by. You have to love her, but it don't change the fact she belonged in Bedlam."

Cern's eyes had a light to them Flick hadn't seen since he first ran to them. A dangerous, and curiously cold light that cast him in grim lines. "The only place you're going to belong is six feet under."

"Enough!" Donna snapped. "Take the testosterone somewhere else. Akafren; your wolf girl was nice, but nuts. Rom; you don't know the first thing about love and the way you're going, you never will so keep quiet. Felicity; he can stay. But you'd best go and find Tamara Slone - she's his soulmate."

He had a soulmate? Flick looked at the boy huddled at her feet as she stood guard for him. She'd seen him around - familiar somehow - but if he had a soulmate, why not run to her?

"How'd you know that?" Rom snarled sulkily. "She's vermin."

Donna's stare said that her mood was rapidly worsening. "Unlike you, I have friends outside this Pack. A little bird told me."

The boy's lips curled back to show his teeth and pink, gleaming gums.

"Very attractive," Donna said mildly. "No scurvy there, Rom. You have a problem with my choices, you can fight me or get out. In fact, even better, you can go and find Tamara Slone. No messing her around, no biting, no hitting on her."

For a moment, Flick thought he might refuse under the watchful, silent Pack's regard. But with a flurry of muttered and almost certainly unrepeatable words, he slunk away.

"Let's have a look at him," Donna said briskly. "Akafren, you're a healer. Get yourself over here."

Cern's eyes still held that churning, hazardous gleam, and Flick could see the leashed fury in his movements. Still stinging over Jal, she supposed, and more feral than he should ever have been. "I don't heal anymore."

Donna's brows hiked up into the curling elflocks that fell over her forehead. "You're in this Pack, aren't you?"

"Not by choice."

He left unspoken the truth they all knew - that he had wanted death, that he had wanted to take the dark road and plant his feet in the footsteps of his soulmate who had gone before him in a whirl of smoke and scorching. She had gone gladly to her death, and taken all the gladness from his heart with her.

"Choice or not," the redhead said a little more gently, kneeling down to examine Aspen Martin's face, "you're part of this Pack, and you do as I ask."

She lay two fingers under the vampire's ashen face, and turned it to look at him. There was a deathly pallor to him, and it seemed to Flick that she could read his terror even in repose.

"Oh, full moon madness," Donna sighed, and there was a note of exasperation in the words. "Of all the charity cases, why did you have to pick Aspen Martin, Flick?"

Aspen Martin...so this was the lost son, this was the child who flitted through the night under the cover of shadows and away from what could only have been a terrible childhood.

I'm a fool, she thought. Yes, she knew now what had caused that blank grief, she knew what could snuff out all the joy and hope and fevered animation in a person. She had told Cougar herself that Laburnum Martin had found his son.

We're the same, you and I, she told him silently. But he found you again.

God, I hope he doesn't find me.

"I didn't know who he was," she said in a voice that seemed to be a little croaky and harsh in her throat. "But...."

But I would have helped anyway.

"I can't see any wounds on him," Cern put in mildly; he too knelt down, checking the vampire's pulse, and frowning faintly. "But...his aura's shot to hell."

Donna blinked heavy eyelids, hiding the lazy, promising glint of her gaze. "In English?"

The witch rubbed at his temples, and Flick noticed a scrape running out from under the wavy mahogany hair. He hadn't even been healing himself. "Auras tend to be one or two colours. Like...you're a very deep green, a little gold-tinged. Flick's a kind of copper colour. Very strong emotions show up as other colours; lies are black, anger is red, happiness is white, that kind of thing. But he's....not like anything I've ever seen."

Long speech. Flick approved; it was the most he'd said in a while, and now he was focused on healing, his eyes had lost a little of that poignant and violet-frail anguish.

"What's he like?" Donna lifted an eyelid. "Doesn't look doped up. Take it you knocked him out, Flick? Someone's definitely socked the poor guy's mind - went through his shields."

"He didn't have any shields," she said quietly, and the Pack leader flung her head up, throwing back the twining red tresses. "Really."

Cern let out a low whistle. "No wonder. Ever done marbling? It's an art technique. My - friend," a subtle darkening of his eyes then, "Lisa, she's an artist. You mix up dyes in a tray then lay paper or whatever you want on top of them. Comes out as these fabulous rainbow swirls of colour. That's what he's like - a big mess of red and orange and yellow."

The healing was good for him, Flick decided, and wondered if she should try coercing the Pack into making him heal all their scrapes. It took his mind off himself.

"Anger," Donna murmured thoughtfully. "The other two?"

"Orange is...panic? No, fear," Cern said finally. "But not just fear - something deeper. I don't know if you've ever felt something in your bones - a hunch, a certainty - but it's that, only fear instead. Terror and revulsion. The yellow..." He stopped. "I've only seen it once before," he said softly. "I thought it was in a dream - but perhaps it wasn't. Not...not long ago."

Flick looked down at Aspen Martin, and dared to stretch out her mind to his.

It was like being drawn into a cyclone, tearing at everything and spinning it into a fast and dangerous mess; sensations besieged her, of darkness, of dank cold that bit at her bones and tears icing on her cheeks, of whispering and crooning voices, of stone and spiders and thorns or were they only things she couldn't comprehend?

She yanked her thoughts away, and swallowed down bile. "What is it?"

Cern sighed, and sat back. "It's madness. Pure madness."

~*~

Cougar was on his feet before Blue had finished talking and his eyes were a sunburst against the stark colour of his skin. "Get the hell out of here."

Blue didn't even deign to answer, but simply kicked shut the door and leaned back against it in reply. "I have some matters to discuss," he purred, crossing his ankles and looking almost comfortable in an atmosphere which even polar bears would have found somewhat nippy.

But Goddess, such a beautiful face, and so tranquil in the clear light. He was a winter's creature, and his season was beginning. Yes, he belonged among the towering skies, belonged among the whites and blues and blacks of arctic hell; walk with the winter, and the cold would surely freeze your heart.

Thom, who had been holding his sister in place, now curled her into his lap protectively and glared. Kirsty was clinging to her brother, and for the first time, Chatoya saw a flash of fear on her face. "Not with my sister."

"No," Blue agreed. "She is dealt with. My dear Miss Ausner, I feel the urge to point out that while I have no objection at all to selling one's kith and kin, I do not appreciate being one of many receivers. Nor was Therese - lovely lady, quite psychotic, runs K'Shaia - amused, and there is now a contract out on your head. It doesn't come into effect until you hit sixteen, but once you do, sweet is the last thing you will be."

The Old Soul's face was fiercer than Chatoya had seen it. Privately, she decided that if Blue could put out a contract to take life, she could put out one to save it.

~ Don't bother, ~ Blue advised lazily, and his hooded eyes where strange, empty worlds thrived, clashed with hers. ~ Assassins only know how to save lives by taking others. And don't glare so, you'll strain something, other than my patience. ~

The dragonfire leapt about his body like a clinging second skin, but this time something new came with it; in her head, a curious feeling, the strange sense of being able to hear voices screaming distantly, under a wealth of crackling that could only be a fire...

"I'm not in a mood to play today," Blue said quietly. And it was there, in the vicious blaze of his smile, and the snap of his words. "And I'm going to cut straight to the spontaneous cruelty; my soulmate and that dragon may stay. The rest of you - out."

Cougar looked like he was going to refuse, but Blue just raised an eyebrow and the sky outside darkened. Their faces had the same elegant bone-structure, but where Cougar was the golden glory of desert sunsets and shadows, Blue was the azures and snows of a highland sky, and she knew which hid the darker peril.

"Let's go," Lisa muttered, practically dragging him out into the kitchen.

"Lisa Ochai..." Blue's voice called her back, unwillingly though it was, the tribal girl's face defiant and proud. "If you must plot my imminent demise, have the grace to think a little more quietly, though evidence of any thought at all is a novelty."

Chatoya didn't protest, despite the worried glance Jepar shot at her, and the sirens in her own head which told her private meetings with Blue had led only to trouble so far.

The door snapped shut, and the three of them were left.

"Do you know who this is, Chatoya Irkil?" Blue purred, the breathtaking blue stare flicking at Iager with no respect or anxiety at all.

"Fireblade," she said shortly, not bothering to look at the dragon.

"Apart from that. A little of his history? His old name? Fireblade is how his name would be rendered in our time, though in his it was quite different." He spoke in a curious, mocking tone as though there was something she should have known but didn't.

Whatever he was implying, she didn't grasp it, and from the look on Iager's face, a look that was mistrustful, and mask-like, and brought by Blue's words, she didn't want to either.

"That's got nothing to do with any of this," the dragon averred tensely. His hands were kneading at the chair he sat on, almost like a cat. "I know all about you, Malefici. You and your stolen dragon powers." The boy leaned forward, and his voice hissed into the silence viciously. "I know whose they were."

"Do you?" Blue shrugged. "I neither know nor care. They serve their purpose."

Orange eyes leapt like an inferno. "I could kill you now."

"Try it."

She could feel the power in the room, knotting like the air beneath electricity pylons, until it seemed to press her down. "Don't try it," Chatoya snapped. "I don't want to be in the middle of a mile-wide crater, which is what happened last time a couple of dragons decided to take it outside."

"Your wish is my command," Blue drawled, and there was a nip to the words she didn't miss. "Very well. I want to make a deal with you, Fireblade. This ridiculous spying game ends; personally, it's rather amusing, but I've interests other than my own to look after." He meant her. Her and Pursang.

Iager looked every inch the dragon as one corner of his mouth drew up into a sneer. "There's nothing you could offer me-"

"Ryar."

The dragon froze, and Chatoya could only stare in wonder at the change in his face; pure shock, mingled with desperation, with a yearning that enlarged his eyes, and stopped the words fresh on his lips.

Then he shook his head in a blaze of black and flame, and only pathos and trampled hope lay there. "She has been dead for thirty millennia."

"A small technicality," Blue announced, and bent to pick up the backpack he had brought with him. "Rather like that lock you have on your window, witch of mine."

"You *broke* into my house?" What one earth could he possibly want that she had? There was nothing of worth in her room; well, nothing that he would take as valuable. Pictures, and books, and videos, the odd spell and-

The spell.

"I required something." And yes, she recognised with a curious dull feeling in her abdomen the faded, rolled parchment he drew from the bag. Not again. No.

"You can't." The words had flown her mouth before she could even consider them, and now she stood up, and simply looked at him. "No. I didn't agree with this before, and I don't agree now. I won't cast it."

"Your agreement is not required," Blue informed her icily. "Nor are your abilities. Fireblade is a Drax, witch of mine, and every spellcaster on this planet is descended from his kind."

She was drowning under the barrenness of his eyes, under the cold and bottomless sea that washed over her and tasted like blood and death. "No. By all the gods! Whoever this Ryar was, let her rest! She doesn't deserve-"

"She did not deserve her death!" The dragon's voice cracked like a chasm splitting in the earth, and dragged her eyes to him. There was an awful hunger in his face, in the stare that fixed on the scroll like it held the secrets of the heart in it. "Ryar...Ryar was everything."

"No one is everything," Blue said scornfully, "or anything."

Iager ignored him, and for the first time, Chatoya understood the legendary passions of these immortal inhuman creatures. Fire in their blood, and fire in their hearts; and for one fleeting moment, she felt a terrible envy for Ryar, though she was long dust, envy that someone should have loved her with such soul-striking devotion.

"Then you're a fool," he said, and Blue only arched an eyebrow. "You're as much a fool as I was before I met her. She was loyal to me until...until I destroyed what she held dearest beyond me, and even then she loved me, though she fled, and betrayed all our kind to the witches."

Age and sadness rolled in his voice like lions in the desert dust.

"I sought her," he continued, and she could almost see this boy, this thing made to hunt, moving through the ruins of a war-torn land, all fire in a land charred and seared. "When the battle was done, and so many were thrown into that death of sleep, I still ran from them and I ran after her, she and I the only ones still awake in a world that was a living nightmare."

His eyes closed, and his mouth trembled with regret; despite herself, despite all she knew him to be, Chatoya couldn't help the pity that surged in her. Pity not reflected in Blue, in the expressionless face, near boredom except for something that told her he listened as keenly as she.

"Days, I followed her," the dragon said slowly, hands pressed to his temples, head tilted back. "Long days, over all the spoiled earth, and across the bodies - so many of them, stinking in the sunlight and some of them dragons, some of them people I knew. Long days, but longer nights, with no stars and no moon to shed any light. By then, she knew I stepped in the shadows of her footmarks, and she knew it was hopeless but she still ran." He paused, and shivered abruptly. "Wherever she passed, I could hear the birds singing. And I silenced them all. One by one by one, until there was only her voice left to sing, and nowhere left for her to go."

Chatoya was silent, spellbound by the haunting, sorrowed voice. Scraps of rage, of long-gone desperate rage still clung to his words, and she understood how such passion was so deadly.

"I don't think I ever loved her until then." His head lolled forward, and Chatoya found his eyes pinning hers, dreamy and distracted but still striking in their force. "Until she stopped, and I found her waiting for me there, waiting with her hair loose and her feet trailing in the river. It wasn't far from here, this home we had made together but where I had left her alone, fool that I was."

The image blossomed in her head, and she realised that he was showing her the end of that vengeful, empty hunt. Of the girl who waited with such patience and such tender, tranquil regard for this dragon. Her hair fell like moonbeams pouring forth, and there was a great melancholy in her eyes that were deeply violet as the sky in the throes of night.

"For all that long hunt, and all through the war that sent so many of my kind into the sleep that has no end, I had hated her. And then I saw her..." A faint, bitter laugh escaped him. "I saw her, and I realised that I had only thought I hated her; I had only known hate before, hate and want and contempt. She was everything I had never been, and everything that could never have lived in the world I had wanted, and everything I had not known she was. Yes...I think I loved her then."

Words whispered, words that Chatoya couldn't hear but didn't want to, spoken between these two so long ago.

"I killed her." Anguish bright in his eyes. "I loved her, and I killed her. It's so much easier to hate what you love, and love it all the more. And I brought her to this place, and covered her body in the waters and prayed that one day I would hear her voice again. But there has been only the silence, and the emptiness, and memories."

He broke off, and shook himself. "And now...now you tell me that I should leave her be. I should let her rest. No. I would hear her voice. If it broke the sky into pieces, and turned the seas to smoke, I would hear her voice. Would you refuse me?"

Dumbfounded, Chatoya could only shake her head. Not in negation; simply because she had no other reaction. Yes, she wanted to say, I would. But...

But the choice, it seems, isn't mine.

Blue threw him the scroll. "Not at all. I suppose I should be grateful they didn't have tape recorders in the days of yore, or this would all have been futile."

The dragon was poring over the scroll, his face alight with that same fierce and destructive ardour.

"The debt, witch of mine," and Blue's voice caught her, devoid of all its mockery, "is paid."

But at what price? she wondered.

~ Eager to expose you
For the hero that you're not
And remind you in its lullabies
Of failures you'd forgot. ~

~*~

Chimera Part Twenty

~ I built a wall of tears
I built it straight through your heart. ~

Tamara Slone was nearly in tears by the time she was stumbling down the road, her eyes wide and blank and terrified, though not for herself. She couldn't feel him, she *couldn't feel him* and from the moment there had been that agonised, dying scream in her mind, only silence had taunted her.

She didn't know where Aspen was, and everywhere she had searched had been empty, and now she was trying home again in the faint hope that he might have run back there like the frightened, hunted creature he was inside.

Someone was outside the house!

Oh, please let it be him, this dark-haired guy examining the lock with careful concentration and-

It wasn't.

But he had spun at her approach, and this hard-faced, shabby boy looked her up and down with his hands jammed in his pockets as though he were appraising her at a cattle market. Romulus. The horrible one who had tried to grope her at a party and ended up walking strangely for a day or two after a well-aimed kick. The one Aspen said was a werewolf.

"No," she snarled, too worried to even be polite. "Not interested."

"Been looking for someone?" The insidious, oily tones of his voice threw fat on an already smouldering furnace. "You look so...flushed."

"Get out of my way," she said flatly, elbowing him out of her way to get to the door. Let Aspen be inside, she'd never let him out of her sight again, never.

"You should be more polite to me," he remarked, and snickered. "Reckon you might need me."

She ducked inside, calling out to him with her mind. Only the same woolly quiet that had filled her mind these past hours. Not at the Café. Not out with his friends at the half-pipe. Not by the lake. Next up would be Blue Malefici - and she shuddered at the thought of him. Maybe it was him - maybe he'd hurt Aspen because....god, who knew why Blue did anything?

"Only as an organ donor," she told him flatly, and slammed the door.

There was a crunch as it hit his foot, and he growled something happily incomprehensible. Then in a manner alarmingly reminiscent of the Shining, he thrust his face through the gap, and hissed, "Listen, don't shut the door, Donna'll kill me! I know where Martin is!"

There was a note of panic in his voice.

Tam flung open the door without any thought except simply, mon ange, and there was more snarling as it knocked him off his feet and onto the porch. "Where?" she demanded, dragging him up with a strength born of desperation. "Why didn't you say?"

His eyes were feral and rolling. "Come on. I'll drive you."

The boy edged away from her warily, rubbing at his spine. Nothing cunning about him now; only a little alarm at her face. Hurry *up*, Tam thought as she threw herself into the car and waited for what seemed like aeons for the engine to start. Hurryuphurryup!

"Is he okay?" she shot at him.

The wolf turned around in a sideroad, careful with the rusted and slightly battered Volvo. "He's alive, ain't he? Counts for okay with leeches."

She debated hitting him, but it would do no one any good. "Yes but is he *all right*?"

Romulus shrugged, and started back towards wherever they were going. "He was out for the count. Probably just playing it up, like all them vampires do."

Tam tapped the dashboard impatiently, ignoring his obvious prejudice. Let him be okay. "Can't you go faster? Christ, I thought psychotics like you were supposed to- *you're not even doing the legal limit*!"

Romulus' hands were white on the wheel. "I only just passed my test, I don't want a ticket-"

"I don't care about your damn tickets!" she screamed. "Go faster *right now*!"

"Look, I don't like going fast. It makes me nervous," he explained through gritted teeth, flinching as a car went past them. "Things like this are dangerous-"

Tam stared in a mixture of disbelief and horror then grabbed his forearm, ignoring his curse as the car jolted sideways. "If your foot is not flat to that floor in two seconds, I swear to god, there will not be enough left of you to take home in a doggie bag, no pun intended *at all*."

He took one look at her outraged, fanatical eyes, and her set mouth, and hit the gas pedal.

~*~

Iager was gone. Blue was gone. Chatoya didn't know where either of them were, and she didn't particularly care, unless it was at the bottom of the ocean, in which case she would crack open the champagne. And now she had another problem to deal with, a problem that slunk in looking extremely cagey, and with his eyes aglow with concern, surreptitiously checking her for wounds before he sat down.

"Lisa and JJ have gone home." Cougar broke the silence, but he was fidgeting constantly. "And Thom took Kirsty...somewhere."

"Any chance at all that it's Borstal?" she enquired tersely.

"None." His breath hissed in and out in their silence. It's my blood giving you breath, she thought. Your heart beats to my music, and your body dances to the rhythm of my pulse. "Toya...."

She thrust back her hair, and scrubbed at the two dark marks. "How could you? Goddess, Cougar, you know how I feel about this!"

His raven-spiked head ducked, and the lamia wove his hands together. "I...Toya, you were gone! You were this awful colour, and you were hardly breathing and I was so *scared*."

That shocked her. Cougar never admitted to fear. Scared...it was a child's word, and the eyes he lifted to her in near-veneration were foaming with golden brilliance; the eyes of that child who had worked and worked to try and help his brother, and who had shrugged away the bruise that must have left more mark than mere pain.

"Dear one," she said gently, and saw the golden brilliance break like waves, precious and powerful, "did you have to bite me?" A shiver scuttled along her arms. "I can't stand it. It's...horrible. You're so much stronger, you and Blue and Jepar and Lisa and Tali - you're all so strong, and if you wanted, you could make me some kind of toy. I have to trust you not to do that and this - this is the start."

"I know I shouldn't have," he said finally, misery unbridled in his voice and gestures. "But you don't understand, Toya. You've...changed. Blue's changed you, and you don't even see it. You just walk into danger now, and you don't seem to care. If you mind me preying on you," and the sarcasm twisted in his voice like a towel being wrung dry, "then why the hell are you messing around with my little brother?"

"Is that what this is about?" It cut into her head like a hot knife cleaving butter, and she heard the new agitation in his voice, and the way a shadow smothered the sun of his eyes when he said Blue's name. "Blue?"

"No!" Cougar snapped, getting up to pace the room with sharp and hungry steps. "Christ, Toya! It's about you getting mauled by wolves, and fainting all over the place, and running off without a word, and...and...other things."

"No, I don't think that's it," she said softly, her eyes trailing after each slamming stride, each energetic motion. "But I don't know what it is. And you won't say."

He stopped behind her, and she tilted back her head to see him lean along the back of the couch, directly above her. His voice was slow as agony, soft as memory. "Maybe I can't."

"I thought we were friends." Above her, his eyes seemed more brilliant, more bright in his shadowed face. Had any king ever been more imperial, or lonelier?

He breathed in, and his hands rested on her shoulders with a touch both light and yet with his words, heavier than all the weight of the earth's worries. "I thought differently."

"What is it you want from me?" she said, half-exasperated and half entranced by the heavy, haunting honey. Slow like honey, and heavy with mood; that was Cougar to the bone.

He drew back, and the shade he had cast over her vanished with him. She twisted to follow him as he walked around, over to the front of the couch and then sat, with a deliberation that made her uneasy. Cougar was not a thing of consideration; he was unexpected as a static shock, explosive as a landmine and slave to his emotions.

"I didn't know myself for a long time," he said, and his eyes were almost violent, combined with that long and lean mouth that was taut and near grim. "And then I realised I'd been...stupid. I guess that's nothing different, but it was a new kind of stupid."

Silent, she stayed, snagged by the curious, meditative quality of his voice.

"What do I want?" The dreamy, hazy light cleared into that gold sharpness; no longer the reflection of light in shivering waters, but the sun itself, life-giving and blazing and drawing all to it with a force that was born of massive fire and swiftness.

That moment was back; that fluttering, striving tension like an osprey fighting the straps about its legs, fiercer and more dangerous than it had been before.

"What do I want...?" he mused again.

Her stomach flipped neatly as a pancake as the vampire leaned forwards, and scrutinised her with an concentration near disturbing in its intimacy, its knowledge. Something raw, rash in his stare.

A desert had flourished in her throat, and at last she said uneasily, "What do you want?"

He cocked his head, and reached out to curl one hand around the back of her neck. The flush began, creeping out from her cheeks and up from her heart, the feeling that this was forbidden, and paradoxically strange yet familiar.

The contact drew them close, so close she was afraid to breathe in case something happened and that moment flew screaming, released. Gold filled her vision, sacrosanct and strong, and her breath was shackled in her throat, and prisoner to his answer.

"More," he said.

That moment soared free, the answer to a question she hadn't even known she was asking until now. Oh, Goddess. Oh.

"Cougar," she began, and stopped. His fingers on her neck were trembling, and she realised what it must have cost him to say that, and just how much it had cost not to. What a choice to have to make.

But her voice had exposed her thoughts, and she saw the hurt, hidden just as rapidly, pass through him.

"Don't tell me it won't work," he said quietly. His face was white, that tantalizing bone structure more pronounced. "Don't fling the clichés at me, Toya. I've thought, and I've thought, and I've tried not to, but I think I-"

She clapped a hand over his mouth. "Don't say that!"

His hand left her neck to wrap about her wrist. "What?" His voice was half-angry. "What? Don't say I love you?"

It stabbed her.

Not this. Please. Cougar had always been her snappy, angry friend, a charging crocodile that had switched itself into human form, and she had always felt safe with him. She could run to him with guy problems, and tease him ruthlessly, and enjoy his biting humour.

"But you don't," she told him softly, trying to tell herself this was not some surreal, peculiar dream; this was real, this was happening. "You've known me three *years*, Cougar, and you've never been like this before!"

"You believe in love at first sight," he threw at her, lines appearing at the corners of his eyes. "Why not ninety-first?"

Chatoya shook her head dazedly. "But Cougar...I don't feel that way about you. You're my *friend*!"

"I wouldn't stop being your friend."

It hurt her to say this, and to know that she would cause him pain; but it would hurt her more to lie, and pretend to feel something that she didn't. "Cougar, I can't."

"Do you love someone else?" he asked, and didn't meet her eyes as though it pained him to ask.

"No!"

He looked at her, and swallowed. Oh, she thought, dear one, you always think you're so clever at hiding what you feel, but your eyes can't lie. I'm sorry I had to say that, and I'm sorry I have to do this...but whatever else you are to me, be it sunlight, or anger, or woodsmoke, you are not my universe.

"It has to be that way...?"

She patted his hand. "Yeah. It does. But thank you for telling me."

"Did I mess up?" he asked in a near-whisper. "I shouldn't have said it, should I?"

"You should," she reassured. "At least I know why you've been so moody."

A flicker of a smile on his face, though it didn't glitter in his eyes. "Nah. I'm always moody. It's going to be hard. Knowing you know."

She chuckled. "Oh, come on, Cougar, you'll get over me! I'm not going to break anywhere near as many hearts as you!"

The long eyes narrowed, and his smile had a little more confidence to it, though there was something sad in it too. "Oh...I don't know, Toya. Maybe you'd be surprised. And if you change your mind..."

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I know who to yell for."

"I hope you're not talking about Jepar," he said deadpan, and the wicked tone was more her Cougar, if the melancholy curve of his lips was not.

"I think he's taken."

"No kleptomaniac worth their salt would steal him," the lamia quipped. She knew it helped him; it was easier, always so much easier to hide under words. To make people think it was all a big joke to you, that nothing mattered. She knew that it wasn't true, but she let it lie. If he could pretend not to feel, she could do him the courtesy of pretending it wasn't an act.

"Are we okay?" she prompted.

"Well, apart from having my heart ground into mincemeat..." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. It was such a childish gesture that Chatoya nearly forgave him the remark that smarted like a slap. "We will be. Just...don't flaunt any boyfriends round me, okay? I may not be able to restrain myself-oh, god, please tell me they didn't hear all of that."

It was then that she noticed the blond head peering halfway round the door, and no doubt behind him, Lisa was listening eagerly. "Come in," she bid them more bitterly than she intended. "Why not? Let's make this group therapy!"

Lisa sidled in, pasting an utterly blank look on her face. "Hear any of what?" she attempted guilelessly, coming to perch on the arm of the chair Chatoya was on.

Neither of them apologised; Lisa didn't hold grudges, and they both knew what they would say anyway, so neither needed to hear the words. Chatoya simply knew that the rift was healed, if not forgotten.

Jepar strolled in with his usual agile grace, balancing a tray of iced fruit juice drinks on one hand, and a basket of tortilla chips in the other. "Well," he said philosophically, setting them down on the table and collapsing onto the floor with a grateful sigh, "if we're going to argue about eavesdropping, no point in doing it on an empty stomach."

Cougar gave him a distinctly unimpressed glare and slithered away from Chatoya to swipe a drink, though she had the feeling that perhaps that was just an excuse to get himself away from her. "You could have had the decency not to listen."

"Didn't I say the same to you when Toya and I broke up?" Jepar inquired dryly. "And what was it you said...let me think...oh yes, you should know by now that I am utterly indecent on all occasions."

"I swear," Cougar said flatly, "one of these days, I am going to kill you."

Jepar grinned, and his eyes danced wickedly. "At least I'll get some peace." He put his hands up in mock-defence as the lamia started towards him. "No, all right! All doom, gloom and tombs from now on, I promise." Cougar contented himself with slumping lengthways onto the couch, leaving his feet close enough to Jepar's head to make the cheetah shuffle away a little.

"What's going on with you and Blue?" the African girl asked, leaning over to close her hands around a glass and nestle it to her, probably, Chatoya knew, so she wouldn't bite her nails. Lisa nudged her. "Are you...?"

"We make mad passionate love every night," she said gravely, and then gave Cougar a daggered stare as he half-sat up and opened his mouth to protest. "Come on, Cougar! Do you really think I would?"

"Well," Jepar murmured, "you know what they say about the Redferns. They put the fun in fungal infection." There was the thud of foot meeting neck. "Ouch! Can't you take a joke?"

Another kick indicated Cougar couldn't.

"Well, it's *true*," the shapeshifter muttered in defence.

"Yeah? Well, do you know what they say about shapeshifters?" Cougar flung heatedly, that long mouth curled in the mix of scorn and temper that gave him his quick, uncontrolled and sleek movements.

The blond boy swivelled his head, half-twisting to keep an emerald eye on the outraged Redfern. "They put the best in bestiality?"

The vampire blinked, and whatever he had about to shout was blocked by the unwilling smile that turned up his mouth. "All right," he conceded grudgingly. "Maybe the family does have a little bit of a reputation."

Lisa chuckled, and tapped her fingers on her glass idly, a mischievous cadence that Chatoya knew well in her voice. "From what I hear, hon, the Redfern reputation is not for little bits. And Toya still hasn't answered the question. "

Three pairs of expectant eyes turned her way, Cougar's a curiously intense colour, as though the sun's rays had been crushed into one tiny mass about to go supernova.

"Truly," she assured them, sighing inwardly, "there's nothing going on. And I'm not stupid. I remember what he is. I can deal with him."

"You know," Jepar said thoughtfully, laying his head on the back of the couch, "I think you can."

Cougar rumbled something beneath his breath, but they all ignored it. Three years of living with a vampire who had queued up several times when hormones were being handed out had made them impervious to any of his surly comments, or his vastly instructive body language, or his high voltage scowling.

"Do you realise," Lisa said wistfully, "it hasn't been just us in a long time?"

Gold eyes glittered, and cooled to the creamy hazel that was Cougar in one of his rare and less fraught tempers. "Things were good then. Apart from you two," a sly glance from Jepar to Chatoya, "hanging all over each other. You were *so* the match made in heaven, and I swear, I was *that* close to getting a match made on earth and some gasoline and using a little creativity so I wouldn't have to watch you being cute." He put his head onto his arm, and drew his legs up a little. "I miss Sonj. She understood me."

"No, she hit you back," said Jepar and dodged another viper-swift kick. "Hey! I need my spine in one piece, thank you."

"I was aiming for your voicebox." Cougar informed him regally. "Okay, maybe we didn't always see eye to eye, and she did keep throwing away my cigarettes, chucking water in my face every morning and making me do housework, but she didn't want me to be perfect."

"Ah, back to the time-honoured soulmate problem," Jepar said dryly.

The lamia quirked an eyebrow, and trouble tolled like bells in his voice. "Oh, yeah, like you have problems."

"You ever seen Tali angry?" he argued, stretching out his legs until the joints crackled. "Do you have any idea what she can do?"

All three of them looked at his black eyes pointedly. But Chatoya was intrigued; she had thought all was sweet and sunny in Jepar's world, like he himself was, and even though Tali was - a little icy, and there was something too knowing about her that came from eight hundred years of life, she had thought the pair were perfect.

"Maybe you do," the shifter acknowledged. "I just wish she wasn't a dragon. Alisha was...human. And she didn't seem so *distant*. Now - I think she's afraid of making a mistake again."

"Have you tried telling her you won't throw yourself off a cliff this time round?" suggested Cougar innocently, and Chatoya tried not to wince because the words were alarmingly close to those she had flung at Tali just last night. She hadn't known she'd hit so close to her heart. Or known that the heart was neither stone nor iron, and could be wounded.

"I told her I wasn't all that fond of stilts, never mind cliffs." He spread his hands, looking near-helpless. "She hardly seems to have any emotions sometimes, and I *need* emotions."

"Funny," Cougar said glumly, "I don't, and my soulmate has them in abundance."

"It could be worse." Chatoya half-smiled, because it was smile or cry with Blue. "You could have my soulmate."

"Or none at all," reminded Lisa, crunching a chip down. "Look, let's just accept that none of us are capable of having a happy relationship, and move on to how much money we're going to make out of our divorces."

"Divorce?" Cougar demanded. "Honestly, woman, you think I'm going to marry?"

"Isn't this the 'let's make a pact' moment?" Jepar said cheerfully. "You know, if none of us are married by forty, we all marry each other?"

There was a thoughtful pause.

"Is that legal?" Chatoya said, grinning at her lanky friend. "I'm not really into polygamy."

"How about just bigamy then?" Cougar gave her what was probably meant to be a leer, and she could see him trying to hide the pain and be his usual self, though his mood seemed mourning-black as his short hair. "Or if you want, you can be a slave in my harem."

"Oooh, try and stop me," she teased, but caught his little jolt of pain and hastily changed the subject. "Well, at least we can all be emotional cripples together."

The shapeshifter raised his glass. "Here's to total failure, utter lack of control, and an empty, hellish future."

Four glasses clinked. "Our lives," Cougar drawled, sharing that miraculous, lark-pure smile, and for a moment, they could have been back in that brief, peaceful summer three years ago.

~*~

Tam couldn't stop the little cry that left her lips as she saw Aspen curled on the ground, and pushed her way through the people standing over him.

God, she'd never seen him this way; so swan-pale and shadowed, mud slathering one side of his face from where he must have been lying on the ground, and smeared on his clothes. Her hand was not entirely steady, as she reached out and ran her fingers over one of the three white-blond streaks that shot through his hair-

His eyes opened.

They were wild and dark, and for a moment didn't know her. Images blasted her mind, terrible images that made her gorge rise, made her want to shut her eyes and shut out the world and shut out everything-

"You came," he whispered numbly, and he was shivering all over, hardly seeming to see anything but her. "You shouldn't be here. You don't want me."

"Of course I do," she said fiercely, and had to swallow hard as he sat up, and scrabbled back from her. His face was distraught, the face of that half-mad, half-shattered boy she had glimpsed truly only once before.

"No you don't." He shook his head violently, so violently she thought he might snap his spine and her hands twitched to touch him and comfort him. "You don't know how bad I am."

He believed it. That soft, broken tone told her he really believed it.

"You're not!" she said furiously, and held her hands out to him. "Aspen..."

He stared at her hands as if they were something strange and wonderful. "You don't want me," he repeated, but his gaze never left her hands. "You don't understand."

"Make me, then," she told him.

A whimper, spilling out of his mouth. It was a sound of pure terror, and he recoiled from her. "Don't say that!"

He wouldn't move, she could see that. And that meant she had to get up, slowly, feeling the eyes of the Pack on her and not caring a whit, and walk over to him, seeing him look up at her with something that sliced deeper and quicker than a knife; fear.

And then she knelt down, and watched the fear collapse into sheer fractured need, and hugged him, but he only shook in her arms, and lay his head on her shoulder. He was so cold, cold as if he'd been pushed down into icy waters, cold as death, and the only warmth about him was the tears sliding on her collarbone.

~ He came back, ~ he said hollowly into her head. His voice was flat and dead and awful. ~ Tam, Tam, my Tam, he came back. They killed him, she killed him, but what if he comes back again? ~

"He won't," she murmured, not understanding but only stroking his hair, and not the tight clinging grip that near-crushed her. She couldn't cry too, she couldn't, but she was, and she should be *strong* when he needed her, wasn't that how it should be?

~ But he will, ~ he chattered, the thought flung at her like a volley of arrows, over and over. ~ You don't know him, Tam, you don't know what he is and what he can do and what he will do... ~

"Come home," she pleaded to him. "Please, let's go home, and you know he won't find you there."

~ But what if he does? He'll hurt me, Tam, and he'll make me empty, and I don't want to be empty anymore. I wanted you, but he came back, and he's poisoned me, you shouldn't be near me- ~

Thoughtless, crazy babble that scared her, but he never let go of her. He had been ripped in half easy as paper, and nothing she could say or do would erase his fear. She could only do what she thought best, and that would not be enough.

"Come home," she said again. If she was home, she could deal with this. Home was safe, home was sanctuary, home was sacred. Her mother would know what to do, she always knew. "Mom will look after you, she won't let anyone in."

~ Home... ~ It was a brief harmony in that mess of discord. ~ I don't have a home. ~

~ You have mine. ~

She pulled him to his feet, helped by a copper-haired girl who slid over to help, shocked at how ashen he was. His eyes were no longer wild, but worse; drained, and near blank. It was as if whatever there was in him had been bleeding away, and now there was a mere shell left.

~ Come with me, ~ she told him silently. ~ It will be all right. ~

But she didn't know how it could be.

~ It's in the blood - running through my veins
The pain inside is driving me insane. ~