Kelekona Part Two

Ryars Valley:

Wherever he went, eyes followed.

Wherever he went, people followed.

It made working for Circle Daybreak very difficult. But Matt Wolff had always liked a challenge.

He had never quite understood how it was that one minute he arrived in Ryars Valley sent by the powers that be, also known as Thierry Descoudres, then next minute he was part of the popular people, his time demanded by everyone who called him their friend, his world made up of parties and superficial chatter that he loathed, his days dictated by fashion and frivolity.

And the funny thing was, the harder he tried to get away, the worse it got. He became known for his uniqueness, for saying things that weren't correct or proper...even downright rudeness seemed to go over their heads, explained away as 'oh, that's just Matt'.

It drove him up the wall sometimes.

And he couldn't believe that he was reduced to sneaking out of his own house at six in the morning to make a phone call, because the friends had taken over his house for the night.

He huddled in the phonebox, shivering at the damp bite to the air. Spring here always had a chill to it, as though the winter fought against the new life springing up all around. The phone rang, dim and tinny, in his ear, and he cursed and waited for someone to answer.

"Hello, Atlanta Confectionary, Jane Maurier speaking, how may we make your life sweeter?"

"This is Matt Wolff," he said politely. His hawkish eyes were squinting with sleep, and his red-brown hair was scruffy and needing cutting, but there was no denying the sumptuousness of his mouth, or the hard jut of his jaw.

"I'm sorry, who?" The voice was polite, and empty of emotion.

Oh damn, he'd forgotten the wretched password.

Making telephone calls to Circle Daybreak was not merely a chore, but an ordeal of memory and mind. They had more passwords than Matt had pores, and changed them every month without fail. Lists and lists of passwords for every operative you needed to speak to.

"Uh..." Oh hell, what *was* it? He searched his coat pockets madly, then remembered that the list of passwords was locked in his bedside drawer. "Look, I've forgotten the password, okay?"

Jane, a woman he spoke to every week without fail, said mildly, "I'm sorry, sir, I don't know what you're talking about."

Matt clutched the receiver and glared at it. If looks had power, the receiver would have exploded. "Jane, you *know* me. We talked this time last week, remember? It's six in the morning, I'm cold and I really don't want to be messed about on this stupid little system because I can't remember if I'm supposed to ask for a jar of honey or six boxes of digestives, okay?"

A long pause while he listened to the static hiss of the phone, then a resigned, crackly sigh. "God, Matt, if someone was bugging this phone-"

"*You*," he snapped at a woman thirty years his senior, "are bugging me. Jane, *please*."

"Oh, all right," she said grumpily. "Incidentally, it was six boxes of digestives. What's going on down there?"

Matt snorted, leaning against the side of the phone box. "Problems with the...cult." He didn't like calling them that. It smacked to him of teen horror movies and religious fanatics. "They're getting worse. They killed Therill Chusson a couple of days back-"

"Chusson? One second, Matt..." He could hear the rapid clack-clack of keys on the line. "Here we are. Fifteen...wanted for theft and fraud...believed working for the angels...disappeared from North Carolina two years ago...location unknown."

"About six feet under by now," he supplied helpfully. "What was that angels thing, Jane?"

"Well, funny that he should be one," Jane answered, sounding for the first time vaguely puzzled. "They're a fairly mysterious little clique. They've saved a number of Daybreak operatives from the Nightworld, but here's the bizarre thing - they've saved a number of the Nightworld from us. From what they've told us in the..." Pause, clack-clack. "One hundred fifty-six encounters here and two hundred and fifteen across the rest of the world, they deal in protection. But they don't protect everyone - we lost three guys, a good team, down in Maine last month. Angels saved the fourth, but left the other three to die."

Matt frowned. "Hidden agenda?"

"We think so. But it's damn well hidden. If Chusson was working for them, there'll be more angels there. The roving ones work in pairs. But there seem to be angels stationed in various cities. Groups of four usually - and we all know that where you are is almost sixty percent Nightworld - so see who he was friends with."

Normal towns were roughly one to two percent Nightworld. Ten percent was considered massive. Sixty...unheard of: which was precisely why Matt Wolff had been sent there. Daybreak had sent others before him - eight others - but one by one, they had all died or disappeared.

"That's easy," Matt said cheerfully, glad he could tell her something useful for once. All he ever seemed to have was bad news. "There's a big group of them, nicknamed Circle Strange locally."

"Names?"

He sighed, then rattled off the names. There was a burst of frantic typing, then Jane's voice said breathlessly. "You've just struck gold, Matt!"

"Huh?" he said. Circle Strange were a little odd, sure, but he'd thought they were just ordinary kids, like himself.

"Jepar Jubatus - shapeshifter - wanted. Chatoya Irkil - witch - wanted. Cougar Redfern - lamia - wanted. Lisa Ochai - made vampire - wanted. Cern Akafren - witch - missing person. Your little lot of Nightpeople are high priority. And I'll bet my last paycheque that some of them are angels."

Matt squirmed. He had known them once, a long time back. They'd been friends. But then things had changed, he'd gotten popular and they had drifted apart. He didn't like the thought that he might be responsible for handing them over to Daybreak. "Jane, they're nice people. I can't see why anyone would want them-"

"They seem nice," Jane said in a flint-hard voice. He had always imagined her as a kindly old-grandmother figure, but the voice didn't match up right now. "You watch your back, Matt. But find out anything you can about them...and sit tight. Bye." She hung up without another word and left Matt to glare at the phone and mutter curses about Circle Daybreak.

Sit tight.

Sit tight and burn.

~*~

Dragon looked up at the soft rap on the door, and carefully untangling her feet from where she was painting her toenails, called, "Come in."

Two people sidled in, picking their way over the junk scattered across the floor. In a matter of months, Dragon had been told, she had managed to accumulate more detritus than anyone else in the Amidefeu house had in several years.

Jon Baines stopped when he saw her and went scarlet. Puzzled, Dragon wondered why.

The other girl slapped a hand over his eyes. "Reve-*Lai*! Gods, girl, put something over yourself!" Lanaka Amidefeu - Dragon's many times great niece - couldn't keep the laughter out of her voice, while Dragon felt herself becoming more and more bemused. What was wrong?

She looked down herself, at the black bra and hot-pants that was all she wore. "What? This is basically what I wore back then."

Nothing could quite eradicate the way she spoke; there was an odd inflection on some of the words, and she found their stupid 'th' sound in 'this' impossible! Tiny signs that indicated English was not native to her, and that meant someone might recognise her. She was working hard to overcome them but the 'th' still defeated her.

"Oh, for a time-machine," Jon said, trying to prise Lanaka's hand from his eyes. "Aw, c'mon, we're friends."

"But this isn't back then," Lanaka said in her gentle, mellow voice. "And Jonathan Baines, no one is that good friends."

"Can it, niece," Dragon said loftily, and winked.

The Amidefeu witches were descendants of Dragon's mother; after Drax had been killed, Kallissa had eventually married again. Her children, once lost witches, had eventually found their way to the Nightworld and taken their place in it with pride.

Lanaka was a secure twenty-five year old, sole remaining child of parents who had taken a long trip around Europe and weren't planning on returning for another three years. She had the rippling silver hair that Dragon did, though hers fell straight and short, but the deep violet eyes of the Harmans. And where Dragon was stunning, Lanaka was merely ordinary.

And where Lanaka was a lofty twenty-five, and five foot eleven, Dragon stood a petit five foot two, and though she might have slept through thirty thousand years, remained a vivacious sixteen.

"Get something on," Lanaka ordered. "There are other people in this house, and they don't want to see you half-naked."

"They're all male," Jon pointed out, still trying to wrestle her hand away. "They so *do*."

"Huh," was the witch's only response. "I may have made this place a safehouse for all you little angels, but that doesn't mean you don't live by my rules."

"Enough!" Dragon cried, and rooted under the bed until she pulled out a heavy grey fleece that she slung over her small self. "Honestly, you two are so...impossible."

Lanaka took her hand away from Jon's eyes cautiously, and sweeping her long, flowing skirt about her, perched on an inflatable chair. "This junk has got to go."

Dragon tried to look sorrowful, hoping that would persuade Lanaka. "But I like it!"

"And, uh, speaking of going," Jon said timidly.

It was the first time she had seen Jon being anything approaching bashful, and it made her pause and look at his face. Tiny dewdrops of sweat beading on his forehead, a slight quiver to his hands and a speeding of his heartbeat that sounded like a tribal drum to her acute hearing.

"What is it?" she said suspiciously. "Spit it out, Jonathan."

"I'm leaving the angels." He said it in a rush, tangling and untangling his fingers.

He was *what*? But he was her partner, her friend, her fighting ally, he was one of the few people she could be *herself* with! "But..." Dragon mustered her thoughts around this gap that had appeared in the foundations of her new life. "Why?"

He squirmed uneasily. "Uh...you remember that lamia girl we rescued two months back?"

She snorted. "The one you gave your number and went all gooey-eyed over?"

The electric blue eyes met hers and she realised that Jon was deadly serious. No joking about from her lanky, prankster pal now. "Reve-Lai..." He never used her name. This *was* important. "She was my soulmate."

"What?" she screamed, fury rising up. Dragon threw the nail-polish at him. "You're leaving me for some clapped-out unproven unworthy un...un*anything* *Daybreak* ideal!"

Lanaka, she noticed, was mouthing at her to calm down.

The power flowed into her, the uncontrollable mass it always was when she got angry, and her voice slid up the scale until she sounded like a raven cawing at him. "How could you! You know it's crap, Jon Baines, you know it is!"

Jon stood up, very tall in the little cramped room. "It's not *crap*, Tiamat, it's *real* and whether you like it or not, I love her, she is everything I've ever wanted and I'm leaving to marry her."

"Oh, so you'll just forget about your goddamn duty and your responsibility and go, then!" she shouted.

He was leaving her, walking away from her like everyone did in the end. Like even her own mother had when she had shoved Dragon into that deep and endless sleep. Like her father, her dear, oh, how dear, he had been, had left her when he died. They all left her in the end.

"Yes!" he said, his mouth tight with rage, his face reddening. "It doesn't *matter* if you believe in soulmates, Dragon Tiamat or Reve-Lai, or whoever the hell you really are! They exist."

"They're fairy tales," she spat. "You'd turn your back on us, on all of us, for some *girl*. Some girl you barely know. And what if it goes wrong, huh? You won't be able to come crying back to us then, not after they wipe your memory. What if you die fighting for goddamn Daybreak? What if she finds someone else? You're going to trust to some stupid soulmate principle to save you? You're so stupid, Jon Baines, and you can't even see it!"

She felt tears, and swallowed them down. Maybe Reve-Lai, the Dream Immortal would have shed a tear, but Dragon did not.

He was silent, his face turned to granite. "I'm sorry you feel that way," he said in a queerly flat voice, and walked out.

One of her few friends, and she had lost him.

Wait, she wanted to say. Come back! I'm only angry because I'm going to miss you so much...

But he had gone, and she was left in her messy room, with Lanaka to try and offer the scant words of comfort she had.

They did no good.

~*~

Deadly nightshade, the witch mused as she examined her face in the mirror.

They had named her for it, Belladonna, they called the plant, beautiful lady. She was no lady, but as Bella Khordad, beautiful perfection, she was everything she needed to be to wrap the world around her little finger.

Her hair was long and black and lustrous. Like a crow's wing, it shimmered with oily highlights, and she thrust it back with neat hands.

"All the better to *strangle* you with, my dear," she murmured to her reflection. She had strangled a man with it once, and he had been so shocked, poor pretty little thing.

He'd looked like the one who had...hurt her.

"It was a long time ago," she told her reflection, "and no one can hurt me now."

She pursed her mouth and brushed burgundy lipstick over her mouth. A thin, viperous mouth, but she did what she could to make it lush and pouting with make-up. The real dark art.

Nothing needed to pale her face; it was already camellia-blossom white, and she frowned at the spots on her chin and rendered them invisible with a glamour charm.

The black clothes were perfect for her malleable gothic idiots. She knew the sort; the shy ones, the once fearful ones, the ones who secretly lusted after power over others. The cruel and petty ones, who followed her every word and got their power.

They called themselves Circle Doomfire, the human idiots, and laughed. And the *real* circle made their sacrifices, and let the blame fall onto them.

She picked up the circlet on her dresser, not gold-plated like theirs, but true gold. Gold that came from her...superior. The one who had made the plan, and who would bring it to beautiful and ripe fulfilment.

Her name was Bella Khordad, and she ran a cult.

She had terrified a town into submission.

And she wasn't done yet.

~*~

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today..." The boy shook his head, and glared with hot golden eyes at the others and then the minster. "Therill wouldn't have wanted all that crap. Oh man, I can't believe it took two fragging months to get him buried! God!"

The last was accompanied by a stream of cigarette smoke. The girl next to him gave him a hefty slap, snatched the cigarette and put it out. "I don't care how stressed you are, Redfern, we cracked you of that foul habit," she snapped.

"Screw you, Zara," he snarled sulkily, his mood turning as black as his hair.

Chatoya Irkil, witch, angel, peacemaker, sighed. "Cougar...Zara...*please*."

The tall boy and tiny girl obeyed. Around the grave, the others grouped there exchanged half amused glances.

"He's right though," a mahogany-haired boy said in a mellow, deep voice. Cern Akafren seemed permanently laidback, but Chatoya knew this had rattled him as much as anyone. "Therill didn't go in for rites and ceremonies. He'd have wanted...well, Smashing Pumpkins blaring, lots of anarchy-"

She shrugged, her moss-green eyes gentle. "But we can't do that. So...I guess...just say whatever you can think of." She looked at the priest, who gave her an understanding smile. "I'm sorry, sir...can we take it from here?"

A nod, and a quiet blessing from him that most of them took no notice of, for what use had blessings been of late, and he walked away.

"I'll start," Zara said with typical bluntness. The little human blinked her sky eyes once, eyes that held no tears but a fierce regret. She put a rose on top of the grave. "Rill...I wish I'd gotten to know you a bit better. You were a great guy, even if you were a pain in the ass-"

"Za-*ra*," Lisa Ochai hissed indignantly.

Zara grinned at the made vampire. "All right, Lise...even if you were a little fractious, I did like you for it, and man, you made a mean Screwdriver. I'll miss you, and hey, I hope they're playing your song wherever you are." She stepped back.

"Me next, I think," Lisa said quietly. The dark-skinned girl moved easily forward. Tears here, just sliding down her face a little. But her voice held steady, low and calm as a desert song. "They took you too soon, hon. But I hope I see you again." She wasn't one for long speeches, was Lisa, and she just put down the little bunch of snowdrops she had gathered out of the garden.

Cern Akafren said simply, "We'll miss you, Rill," and put a broken Smashing Pumpkins album in front of the headstone. "So no one will nick it," he added at the puzzled looks, and gave his charming smile that lit his violet eyes so effectively. Not a handsome one, their Cern, but amazingly charismatic and popular with the ladies.

Thom Ausner, their Old Soul sage, didn't say anything, but put an envelope by the flowers and the CD and stepped back, his jaw tight, eyes bright behind the spectacles. He had been good friends with Therill and looking at him, Chatoya thought he was furious.

Then Jepar, with his gold hair burnished in the sun, to put down Therill's favourite book, wrapped in a transparent bag. He muttered something so softly she didn't catch it, and there was a hard look on the carven face as he glanced up at the sky.

My turn, she thought, and wished it wasn't suddenly so hard to move. It was so *final*. She felt she hadn't known him enough, that she should have appreciated him more, and not argued with him so often, and not said the horrible things that everyone says over the course of time and friendship.

But she made herself take that first step, and that second, and that short third to put down the photograph with hands that were not entirely steady. All of them, but Therill in the centre, burning and lively, Therill with his cheeky, crooked smile and his ordinary, darling face. The youngest of them all, the only freshman among them.

"I wish I'd been there," she whispered. "I should have saved you."

She got up, and went back to them, but the pain was swallowing her whole. Jepar must have seen it, because he wordlessly put his arms around her, and held her tight.

Cougar Redfern was the last one of them. He strode forward, tall and proud and reckless, so, so utterly ravishing with a face that should have belonged to a dark god, not a teenage lamia boy.

"I didn't bring a gift," he said clearly. "So here's one for you now, 'Rill. We're going to get that goddamn cult, and we're going to kick Bella Khordad's evil ass from here to hell."

And she knew of course, that while being utterly Cougar and utterly disrespectful...he was right.

She saw it in her friends' faces, something hot and not entirely pleasant, and determined. Justice.

But you did bring a gift, she thought, and the pain didn't seem quite so terrible. You brought vengeance.