Kelekona Part Three

Las Vegas:

Dragon sat in the café demurely, looking out over the busy mall. People scuttled below like bees through a hive, crowding and jostling and brushing by. Here, a little girl in tears and her mother shouting and pulling her by the hand, there, a couple, heads together in intimate conversation; a boy grazing past a group of teenage girls, and easily whisking a purse from one of their bags and moving on.

Vermin. Frittering away life, unaware of the creatures that moved through them, to her flames in a dark room, to them, nothing. The Nightworld kept its subtle, deadly secret well.

"The Dream Immortal," a calm and easy voice said. "It's been a while."

A young man took the chair opposite her, picking up the menu and examining it nonchalantly. In his immaculate suit, he could have been a young lawyer, though unusually for the vampire, his hair was a tousled mess. An inky black, it could have used a cut, slipping into his eyes and over the tips of his ears.

"It has, hasn't it?" she said idly, brushing at imaginary dust on her sleeve. The fur collar of her long coat tickled her throat, the silvery grey of wolf-pelt, and kept her warm in this cold human world - she was always cold now, now that the world had stopped burning. "Why am I here, Feivel?"

"Interesting metaphysical question," he quipped, making her frown.

"You seem chirpy today," she said sourly. "Usually it's all doom, gloom and tombs with you."

His eyes were a cool black, the gemstone shimmer of onyx, and they set off the Slavic face perfectly. Not for nothing was he known among the Angels as Shadow, but to Dragon he was - and always would be - Feivel, the man she had caught rifling through her possessions and hit halfway across the room before Lanaka burst in with a flurry of explanations.

"Funny you should say that," he said, and beckoned the waitress over. "Two coffees, Turkish, please."

"Turkish?" Dragon raised an eyebrow. "I thought you were an espresso addict, my dear vampire."

His laugh was always hard, edged with steel, as if it a sword sat where his spine should have been. He was full of laughter, this Shadowl, but so little of it was genuine. "Ah, you can't beat Turkish coffee, Tiamat. Black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love. Though we could debate the last ad infinitum."

"I thought you were all for love!" she pointed out, watching as he flipped open the briefcase and drew out some papers. "Last time I dared imply love was an obsolete mortal sensation, you nearly put a fork through my hand while you were waving it about so viciously."

The eyelids dropped, and shielded the dark lustre of his stare. His stare could stab you when it chose, and there was something a little unearthly about Shadow that not even Dragon could qualify today. It was odd, but if she had known any better, she would have said she felt threatened by him.

But no one threatened a dragon.

"Things change," he said casually. "Now, Reve-Lai-"

Her hand slammed over his, hard enough to make him wince, and silver eyes leapt like a dolphin flipping itself from the sea.

"You *don't* use that name." His mouth never lost the parchment dry smile, and to any onlooker, they would only have been a young man and a young woman having a romantic tryst. "I am not that person. I never was. And I should never have tried to be it."

"A slip," he said coolly. "But a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Change names like clothes if you will, dangerous delight, but never forget what you are. You are a dragon."

The words trembled in her mind, and for second, her world revolved with a dizzying splendour, until the glassy, airy mall dissipated into the flat sandy sprawl of a desert, the air rippling like ribbons in wind, and the heat a wonderful weight on her skin.

"You are a dragon..."

And the words were not Feivel's, but belonged to another. The voice was deep and warm as molten rock, and it slid over her ears with a velvet ease.

The hands on her shoulders swung her around. "Look around, Reve-Lai. And tell me - what do you see?"

"Sand," she had answered, a sweet and frivolous fourteen, but her hair still as untamed as ever, and her eyes the flashing silver legacy of her father. She had been afraid then - yes, afraid, and curious too.

A form darted in front of her, and crouched down to gaze up at her with fiery orange eyes that held nothing human. She had never seen eyes like them; eyes that looked her over, and set a value upon her, and told her that value was nothing at all.

"Your mother's been lying to us, Reve-Lai," Fireblade, most feared of all her kind, said softly. He gripped her chin, and turned her head back and forth. "You're a dragon, darling girl - and I suspect I know who sired you."

"Animals sire things," she had said stiffly, in her clear and high child's voice. Drawing her shoulders back, though she could release that mountain-strong grip. "Not people."

He had an astonishing face; the caramel-dark skin of a desert dweller, and a shock of orange and black striped hair that reminded her of the giant felines she had seen slinking through the northern jungles. Primordial, like fire made flesh, but with those carnelian eyes somehow colder than the icecaps floating in the southern drifts.

"I'd teach you differently," he said, and the stare was far less impersonal now, taking in the slender body, and the defiant, small face. He stroked her cheek with one finger, his head tipped to one side a little.

Reve-Lai slapped him.

He only laughed, and caught her angry fists as she tried to hurt him, her silver hair flying about her face as she fought against the firm grasp. "Oh, there's more fire in you than your mother would like, I've no doubt," he purred, and drew her into his arms. "And only fourteen too...you'll be a formidable woman."

His teeth, white as bone, bared and his voice dulled to an intimate whisper. "And maybe, little halfbreed," he murmured into her ear, and the deadly silken tones made Reve-Lai still, the fear rising up sharp in her. "Maybe you'll be mine."

"Let me go, Fireblade," she said, looking up at his face. Young, he looked, young and gleaming and strong. But there was the age of continents in his touch, and the first creature's howl in his voice. "I don't know who's been telling you stupid lies. My mother is right. I don't know who my father is."

"Very proper," he mocked and let her go, grinning rakishly as she sprang back like a fleeing deer. "You have the lies down perfectly. But by the silver of your eyes and the pricking of my thumbs, you're half-dragon, little Reve-Lai, and perhaps I'll tell your secret to the King, and wouldn't he like to know?"

Her teeth clamped onto her lip hard enough to draw blood. Her mother! And her father! "Tell him," she told him, summoning the arrogance that came so easily to a girl who had more power than the entire colony of witches she lived among. "Tell him, and when he finds you're wrong, King Kheoussan will send you to the fire."

Fireblade looked down his perfectly straight nose at her, his eyes so terribly, embarrassingly amused. "Kheo? Send me to the fire? You've a sharp tongue in your head, little darling, and it's the best weapon you possess. Be sure to keep it honed - and I, for the entertainment you've been - I will keep my peace about your sordid secret."

He tugged at a piece of her silver hair, quick enough to flit back before she could hit him.

"And when you've more years and more sense," he added, "come and see me, Reve-Lai, and I will teach what it means to be a dragon." His mouth curved in a smile that reflected the sensuousness pouring from his mind like the sea. "And what it means to be a woman."

Reve-Lai's stare was hard as his own, silver as the sea in moonlight and every bit as fathomless. Something in it made Fireblade pause, and watch her thoughtfully. "From your own experience?"

His mouth tightened. "Don't play the fool with me."

"Oh, it takes one to know one," she said bitingly, borrowing her mother's pet phrase. "Maybe you shouldn't play with me at all, Fireblade. Haven't you heard - my games are far more dangerous."

"You're a child still," he said scornfully. "And you fling words very well - little darling, if you ever fight with fists as well as with words, I shall perhaps deign to be concerned by you. But until then, remember who it is here that holds that power. And - don't even think of telling your dear parents about this encounter."

She never did.

"Yes," she said now shortly, dragged back to Shadow's obsidian's smooth eyes and easily handsome face. "I am. But I am not Reve-Lai and you will not use that name."

A casual shrug. "I will cater to your whims. And you will not use mine. Not in public. If a crowd can shield us, it can shield others too."

She stared into the flat and glassy gaze. Black, blacker, blackest. Secrets untouched, the eyes of someone who killed, whether the cause was good or not. "Very well, Shadow. Why am I here?"

A lift and fall of the thin shoulders; he was a creature of bone, beautifully angled and sliced like the clear sharp shadows that moonlight threw. The hands were slender, unusually so for a man, and if Dragon hadn't known better, she would have said there was a hint of claws about the nails today.

Strangler's hands, her mind whispered, and she thrust away the thought.

"Why?" he mused, and nodded thanks at the waitress who brought over the coffees. Dragon waited for the flick of his eyes to the human's throat, the way he always did, but today his polite blank stare remained firmly on the girl's face.

He waited for the girl to leave, breathing in the coffee with a long sigh.

"Heaven," he murmured and took a sip, throat moving as he swallowed A soft, slow sigh, obsidian holding the fey silver of her eyes, and she thought something stirred beneath it, something heavy and disturbing. "Worth every cent."

"Quit the small talk," she snapped, ignoring the pungent scent of her own coffee. Human drugs, nothing to her. "You're not usually this - this infuriating!"

Silence, made a weapon by his impassivity. Then he put down the cup precisely, almost delicately and smiled.

"Of course, dragon delight." A rustle as he picked up the papers and leafed through them, apparently searching. "Well, let us cut to the chase. What do you know about Ryars Valley?"

Was he trying to annoy her? "Nothing." She hoped her face let him know how incredibly irritating he was being. "Not a damn thing."

"Well, one secret remains safe then," he remarked. "Ryars Valley...a close-guarded secret among certain sects of the Nightworld. To the man - or at least, humanoid - on the street, it is nothing but a name. To the Council, a myth. To you and I...a reality, and a place that holds more significance than anyone knows."

Dragon wriggled in the uncomfortable chair. "Can you leave out the spiel and get to the point?"

She knew he disapproved of her interruption - Shadow was always ridiculously formal - but it showed nowhere. Perfect control, not even a flicker for her preternatural eyesight to pick up. He was getting better; usually she could pick up his reactions, though no one else had the power to do so.

"Ryars Valley is a town out in the scrubland of Nevada," he revealed. "And what is interesting about it, dragon delight, is that it is crammed full of renegade Nightworlders who've run there over the ages. And from across the world. There's a good ten thousand people there now, human and Nightworld. Around sixty percent of those are Nightworld."

Dragon couldn't help herself; she whistled softly and stared. "Sixty? Fire and earth, I've never known a place higher than ten!"

Shadow bared his teeth in a grimace. "Precisely. A good few have simply grown up there - descendants of fugitives. The place has been around since - well, one of their Elders is easily three thousand years old. In some of the more radical families - particularly werewolves - it's a good bolthole when they get up to more than their usual tricks. It was known to Circle Daybreak some years back, but they may have forgotten about it. Our organisation and others like us have always sent people there; it's concealed, it's full of people who won't ask awkward questions and most importantly, the Nightworld doesn't truly believe it exists."

"Why not?" She was leaning forward in her seat, transfixed by his words. "Surely when they leave-"

He held up a finger. "Ah. There you have it."

"Have what?"

A corner of his mouth tipped the cold smile into a crooked grin. "No one leaves. Those sent there are there for life. The Elders there are very keen on remaining hidden. There are powerful spells set around the edge of the place which alert them to anyone sneaking out. Humans, they allow to leave. Any Nightpeople require special dispensation - usually at a high price."

"And what does this have to do with anything?" she asked.

"We are going there," he said simply, and sat back, waiting for a reaction.

He got it.

"What?" she hissed, careful to keep her voice low. "I am *not* spending the rest of my life in some deadbeat town without a damn good reason!"

His look was withering. "I know better than to cage you, Tiamat."

Yes. He knew all about her fear of small, confined spaces after she had been enclosed in one so long. In those long perilous months of the war, her mother had smuggled her away in the tiny room, terrified that the rebel witches, fanatical and fearsome, would slay her half-breed daughter without a thought. Dragon had seen nothing but dank stone walls for moons beyond count, nothing but the same jagged shapes day after day until she knew every sharp edge and every nook. Long months of grieving for her father while slaughter raged across the land.

And when finally the word came that the last dragon loyal to them, Ryar ap Sangager, was dead, her mother gave up her hope and gave up her daughter to the clutches of a spell and a faint hope for a future.

Asleep thirty thousand years, dreaming true visions of the world above as was a dragon's gift; a dragon could walk the world, a soft-footed ghost unseen and unheard in their slumber. Dragon had watched while men moved among witches, watched as Maya Hearthwoman surrendered to the call of blood, as the Nightworld was formed and slipped into shadow, little more than a half-forgotten legend among humans. She strode among the first cities, over the bodies of countless casualties in countless wars.

The spell had not caged her, but that aching time before she was thrust into bespelled sleep had given her a hate of cages of any kind. Dragons were not meant for confinement.

"I guess you do," she said dourly. "How do you propose to get out of this valley then?"

Shadow's lips bent thinly upwards, though it could hardly be called a smile. "The angels have always had special...dispensation. We may leave and enter as we wish, for a small...tithe to their Elders. They have allowed us to hunt down many of our quarries and in return, they ask us a small favour now."

Dragon knew all about favours. Small favours here and there - yes, she'd met the odd Nightperson who thought they could blackmail her; she wasn't supposed to exist, let alone be awake and walking. Two had been angels, but as soon as Shadow heard, their haloes were snapped and their bodies buried deep.

"A small matter." Sarcasm, dripping from his lips. "A coven causing trouble."

"A coven?" Dragon laughed carelessly, ignoring the heads that turned at the charming, chiming sound. "They can't deal with that?"

"Not just a coven. They call themselves Circle..." He sighed. "Circle Doomfire."

"You *are* kidding me? Don't tell me they can't handle a bunch of Bram Stoker addicts!"

"They may be melodramatic," he chided sharply, "but not powerless. The Elders thought it harmless fun at first - you know witches, not happy unless there's thirteen of them dancing naked in the full moon."

Her lips twitched. Lanaka would hardly appreciate that; she'd never known anyone so prudish. "Well, nothing like a bracing wind to get you in the mood to jive."

"Don't be fatuous, Tiamat. Well, the Elders let them be. It was just some resentful vermin children playing Gothic games, with one witch leading them. But somehow - they've got power. From somewhere. They're a traditional little lot; adhering rigorously to all the old ways."

When this failed to raise the response he was so obviously waiting for, Shadow repeated:

"*All* the old ways."

Dragon looked at him blankly.

"Ritual sacrifice," he said slowly, drawing out the words as if they were sweet on his tongue. And as a slow tide of cold shock crept up from her feet, Dragon could have sworn she saw a wriggle of excitement in his eyes. "They celebrate the moon in blood."

~*~

Ryars Valley:

"Dammit Jane," Matt whispered down the pay phone in the ice-cream parlour, turning to give a bright, beaming smile and a wave to all his friends, "It's getting worse. No one goes out after dark any more and we don't go *anywhere* alone. It's killed the social life stone dead."

The moment the unfortunate words escaped him, he recognised the irony. Yeah, Therill Chusson gone, even if his friends pretended he had walked in on a burglary, and before him, Linia Selby, and before that Raine Tomber, and six other anonymous Daybreaker, and more humans who were only 'missing' but still, everyone knew that missing meant the cult had taken them and done - whatever they did.

"Oh, darling," the older woman said, her tone a touch impatient, "I'm sorry you can't make out with all your cheerleading darlings, but there isn't much we can do. We don't have the ability to deal with them. I shouldn't tell you this, but after the first died, we sent a trio down - very powerful, witch, vampire and shifter, used to working together - specifically to stop them."

Matt breathed a soft curse down the phone.

"Quite. But there's more trouble than them around. That little lot of yours are angels, and let me tell you, Matt, they're mean. Killers, all of them, I'll bet. Jepar Jubatus...he's lethal. I don't want you even to *look* at them, Matt."

Already disobeying, he glanced across to where the golden haired boy was sitting with his fiends, all of them noticeably downcast, pushing sundaes around in the dish, talking little and brooding much. He'd only heard good of Jepar on the grapevine - nice, but very weird was the consensus. Look, but god, don't touch that perfect face, there's something not quite right there.

"Listen," Jane continued, and he heard her typing something. "I'm going to recommend we get you out of there."

"I thought you said I was here for good," he said grimly. His parents had been pleased that their son had such an important assignment - from Lord Thierry himself - especially after the trouble that had threatened his life, and his future in Daybreak. He had liked the sound of it; quiet, intimate little place, beautiful and until the recently trouble, tranquil.

"If we pay the Elders enough..." Her tone was grim, and Matt realised that Jane was genuinely concerned. "I don't like this at all, Matt. It may take a couple of weeks of bargaining, but surely Lord Thierry will make them let you go. This assignment's too dangerous for anyone. I'm tired of the voices on the other ned of the phone changing."

"Okay," he said softly. "Thanks Jane."

"No problem. Keep safe," she advised unnecessarily, and hung up.

Jaw set, Matt went back to his table of laughing human friends, and slid back into his seat beside the pretty redhead who turned vague brown eyes on him and asked in her Southern honey voice just who he was calling.

Matt shrugged, and planted a smacking kiss on her nose that made her giggle. He did adore Sharla, despite her empty-headedness. "Ordering flowers for Lucy's birthday." Lucy paused at her name, and gave Matt a decidedly sultry look. She was a voluptuous strawberry blonde, but her single minded predatory nature was a little too unsubtle for Matt's taste.

"Oh, how cute," she declared, and whispered, "Are you two...?"

He leaned close enough to smell the peach scent on her fluffy red hair, and whispered, "Not ever."

The redhead snorted softly. "I didn't figure so, but we never know with you." Her smile beamed out, bright and trusting. "You're kooky."

Kooky. Yeah, that was as good a word as any. If he stared at her too long, the faint coloured corona would flare around her.

Matt was sure seeing auras wasn't normal. And most of the time, he pretended he couldn't see them. Not really. It was just - the lighting. Yeah.

"Well, you're-" he began.

And then the door was flung back, and Bella Khordad came in, bringing a fearful silence with her.

~*~

"Watch out kids," Cougar Redfern said in a tight voice, and Chatoya would bet the lamia was itching for a smoke. "The Wicked Bitch of the West just got in."

The other three followed his eyes. Bella Khordad; smooth and snaky in black, her skin a stark, impossible white. Magicked, Chatoya judged, but with such skill that she couldn't even feel the spell. Beautiful in a strange, cold way.

Narrow eyes, eyes that looked merely pale at first but on close examination - Chatoya remembered too vividly the witch thrusting her face close and hissing that Chatoya had best watch her step or she might take a fall, just like Raine - proved to have no colour in the iris, only white. Nothing to mar her eyes but a thin ring of black, and the jet hard pupil. Tight, low cut black clothes, front *and* back.. Slender, whippy arms and legs, but Chatoya had seen the pinks scars lacing that girl's wrists.

She'd felt pity at first, but later wondered if it had been suicide or ritual.

"We'll get her," Jepar vowed. No laughter to the emerald eyes now. "For Rill."

"Rill," Zara echoed tightly, stabbing at her sundae viciously. She'd not touched a bite, and even Cougar, the bottomless pit, had scarcely started on his food.

The tension in the room was almost palpable as Bella surveyed them all slowly, knowing exactly the effect she had. And every face her eye fell on held the same question - is it me that you want?

Chatoya didn't know what Bella Khordad wanted. All she knew was that the people who died either were or knew about the Nightworld. She didn't *want* to know what Bella wanted because there was only one way to find that out, and Chatoya had no urge to be a moon's gift.

Then with a flick of the black hair held back by a slender silver ring (playing at priestess, the angel thought with the tiniest piece of contempt), Bella turned, and moved towards the table where the popular kids were sitting. Chatoya knew them by sight, and some of them by name-calling.

And all those kids who were so damn confident anywhere else were reduced to the same paralysing fear as anyone else.

"Poor buggers," muttered Jepar beside her, and half-moved to stand.

Cougar caught his arm on one side, Zara on the other. "No," both said.

"Don't get involved," elaborated the lamia, his hazel eyes beginning to flick with gold flames, the way they always did when he was agitated. "We're going to get her, but on *our* terms. Not hers."

"She'll make mincemeat of you," the black-haired human added. She was lovely, with a wide, beaming mouth and the most incredible voice Chatoya had ever heard on a human. Even now, with just the merest hint of persuasion, it was enough to make Jepar drop back.

"Matt..." Bella breathed, and all the others looked relieved. Except for the redhead beside Matt, who reached out and clung to his arm as if that could possibly make a difference. "Matthew Wolff."

"How many other ways can you say my name?" the boy asked jokily.

Laughter in his voice, and that defused the tension a little. But nothing humorous about the hand under the table, crunched into a fist. Maybe the most desired boy in the valley; there was always one, wasn't there? The Prince Charming, the one you wanted to stop and say a soft hello, and to take your hand and declare you were who he wanted, not those more popular, prettier, smarter, more athletic girls.

He was it. Those long amber eyes, sleepy at first, but able to sharpen in an instant to focus on you with an intensity as flattering as it was tongue-tying. The snub nose, and the smattering of freckles over his pale cheeks; that messy, too-long russet hair giving him the look of a mussed fox, and a big, wide grin that sparkled unbelievably and often, and the defined jaw that made Chatoya just ache to run her fingers along it and up to his mouth.

"You know, there are places where they charge to look at someone that way," Cougar whispered a little grumpily. "Hey babe, you never look at me like that!"

"I should hope not," Zara said emphatically, hiking up an eyebrow. She and Cougar no longer dated, but both were a little possessive of one another. "Cougar darling, you're sexy beyond belief, and you flirt like most of us breathe - but you're a little too dangerous to do more than look."

His mouth curled. Yes, Cougar *was* dazzling. But it was an untouchable, ethereal allure. Cougar was dark, sleek fantasy. Matt was warm, bright reality. And besides - she'd seen Cougar's foul temper once too often to be cursed with it in any kind of relationship.

"You did more," he pointed out levelly.

"Hush," Chatoya said. "I'm trying to listen."

"...wanted to chat, really," Bella was purring, leaning over the table so Matt got a good glimpse down that low top.

"Slut," Zara muttered. "All she needs is a lift on her chest and the skiers will be lining up to go on the pistes."

"Say it much louder," Cougar said darkly, "and she'll hear. And believe *me*, I don't want her piste off."

"That was terrible." Jepar's voice was distracted, watching Bella. Lower than usual; he wanted to shift. Chatoya knew her lanky friend always felt safer in his cheetah form.

"...*do* hope you're not taken," the witch murmured with a pointed glance at Sharla, who glared back and didn't let go off Matt. She's got guts, Chatoya thought. But if Bella has anything to do with it, she may not have them longer.

"Not at the moment," answered Matt evenly.

"Gooooood." Silence, manufactured as everything about the dark witch. "And you'll make sure you aren't busy tomorrow."

"I am, I'm afraid," Matt said politely. "Prior engagement."

Jepar chuckled low in his throat. "Is it me, or was that a subtle version of I'm washing my hair?'"

"Cancel it."

"I'm babysitting for a local mother. It's the only chance she has to go and enjoy herself." The amber eyes were utterly fearless. "You're welcome to join me."

"If she promises not to eat the kids," drawled Cougar.

They saw only Bella's back and her body, swaying slightly like a king cobra. "I think not. Children and I...don't get on."

"Only because they try and push her into ovens." Cougar grinned appreciatively at Zara's pithy comment. The two of them could be relied to dice with verbal death any time.

"Some other time, then," Matt said mildly. Pause, and then his words made the four of them stare at him in aghast horror. "Have you heard about Rill Chusson?"

Bella stood upright. "Oh. Unfortunate." Oily voice. "Gutted like that."

And all Matt Wolff said, with incredible nerve, was, "I didn't know that."

Her laugh drifted up, slow as trickling poison. "I did." And as she left, leaving behind a shocked, silent room, Chatoya felt hatred strike right through her. God. She had done it, she really had and she *admitted* it, not caring.

"We'll get the bitch," Cougar spat.

We will, Chatoya thought grimly. But I'm so afraid it will be the last thing we do.