Kelekona Part Four

Lanaka Amidefeu caught Dragon as she was packing, angrily hurling clothes into a bag. The dragon was tight-lipped, pale except for two crimson bands that slashed along her cheeks. Words slipped from her lips, words in a harsh, vicious language that send ripples scuttling over Lanaka's skin like an army of spiders.

"Reve-Lai?" she asked hesitantly.

"I'm leaving," her relative snapped flatly. "Job."

Lanaka raised one eyebrow, and went to gather up a few bits the girl would need. Silently, she handed them over while Dragon stuffed them irately into the carryall. "Why else do you leave?"

No answer, only Dragon's busy hands.

"What's wrong?" she said gently, laying a hand on the younger girl's shoulder.

Strange she should think of Dragon that way; she'd lived thirty thousand years ago, yet Lanaka felt infinitely the elder. She saw her own childhood impetuousness in her, perhaps, and stifled a small smile at the thought. Goddess, she'd been the bane of the Amidefeus, stealing forbidden spells, luring the other witch children into her trouble, on one occasion managing to call up a wraith that had sprayed ectoplasm all over the house before her furious parents tamed it.

"Wrong? This assignment." Bitterness, Dragon shrugging her off. "This place. This *world*."

"Reve-L-"

"I hate it here!" Dragon burst out, spinning around so her hair scythed back like a gleaming silver blade. The eyes, that same unbelievable metal brightness, glared at her, hurting and angry. "I thought it was supposed to be *different*. Isn't that what everyone's told me?" She mimicked the tones of the angels she'd met effortlessly. "'Oh, it must have been so violent then', and 'Poor darling, you're so lucky to be out of those nasty times', all those ignorant *modern* people, telling me what a stupid barbarian I am, thinking I don't think and feel like you, telling me how goddamn good and how goddamn peaceful your world is."

Shocked, Lanaka held her tongue and let her rave. She'd never heard this side of Dragon before, though she'd seen the cynical slant of her features when she was lectured about her own times.

"Peaceful?" She flung out a small hand. "You call this peaceful? Fire and earth, look at you! Two world wars in one century, napalm and atom bombs and *chemicals* in everything, just killing yourselves artificially. And now, and now..." She drew in a deep, ragged breath. "Now I have to deal with a coven who are sacrificing people for, for *god knows why*! You like to pretend you're civilised, but all *civilised* means is that you practice your atrocities under cover of darkness and diplomacy!"

She stopped, chest heaving and the first tiny, wriggling shapes of black slipping into the moonlit silver of her eyes. The first shards of her dragon-self that were evoked by her pain and her rage.

"I..." Don't let her get angry, Lanaka counselled herself. "I won't pretend that people are any better now than they were then," she said simply. "I doubt they are. People are people, wherever you go. But...just like there were in your time, there are people who strive to make it better. Anyone who calls you barbaric...my dear and exceedingly great aunt," and the affectionate endearment made Dragon's lips quirk, "they're ignorant. And ignorant people are everywhere."

The girl gave a brief, sour laugh. "Don't I know it. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better if I'd never woken."

"Quieter, perhaps," Lanaka acknowledged with a flash of her violet eyes. "But not as interesting."

Dragon heaved her bag onto the bed, and began rummaging through her personal possessions. A copy of 'The Last Unicorn' was picked out, one of the few books that had held Dragon captivated for a day while she devoured its pages.

"It's me, isn't it?" she said, following Lanaka's eyes. "The loneliness. I'm like her. Just a relic of something that faded away long ago. People don't believe in me, they live in a world where innocence and purity are - gone."

"Not true," Lanaka murmured, and sat herself down to trace her fingers around the unicorn, running on the cover. "You're no relic, Dragon." Though you are lonely. Lonelier than anyone I have ever known. What keeps you burning so bright, apart from your pain? "Innocence and purity still exist. And the most important thing - the thing you should remember-"

Dragon's eyes were avid and intent on her, her face expectant.

The witch held up the book. "This," she said firmly, "is fiction. We live in reality."

~*~

A grumpy Dragon found herself cooped up with Shadow in his Land Rover for several long, mostly silent hours. The lamia - never chatty at the best of times - seemed even more morose than usual. At night, they switched places and she drove.

Dragon hadn't passed a driving test as officially she didn't even exist, but she had had several intensive lessons with the angels. More than once it had come in useful; Nightworld pursuers didn't care if they crashed or not - there was nothing that could seriously damage them in modern-days cars, after all - and anyone who couldn't put the pedal to the floor tended to end up with their fender in a wall.

Now, scrunched up on the floor of the car with a sleeping bag, Dragon wished she knew where they were going. They'd been driving for two days now, passing nothing but small communities strung out along the dusty and gritty roads and the odd motel. Ryars Valley - she'd looked in an atlas, but found nothing. How could it simply be erased from existence? Surely people must stumble across it?

Out of the window, a darkening sky hung as the landscape gushed by in a blur of faded browns and greens. Cars! They'd never had those before she went to sleep. But she'd seen them in her sleep, in the incredible prophetic dreams that were a legacy from her mother, just like she seen so many things, blurring by. Mostly it was the great events she saw - after all, they caused the biggest ripples in the pool of the future - but she could remember odd clips of dream that seemed to have no significance at all.

She had dreamed of Alexander the Great marching over Asia and Europe, of the Romans, years later, sweeping over the same area, of the great empires of China, and the Moguls moving into India. Her dreams had been smeared with war, in the crash of weapon on weapon and later, the yap of guns and the scream of bombs.

A shiver ran through her frame, and Dragon scrunched her body deeper into the sleeping bag. The colours the bombardments had turned human skies reminded her of the war that had occupied her childhood. There had been no explosives, only uncontrolled dragon power, pouring forth and searing all in its path. Only witch power, tumbling rocks like dirt, a child of dragon power that had grown and twisted into something altogether different, and gentler - but still with its own capacity to destroy.

Ryars Valley...the name - surely not...?

"Shadow?"

He didn't turn round, only his clean-cut profile revealing anything to her. Eyes narrowed on the road in the dimming sky, hands a little tight on the wheel. "Awake already, Tiamat? It's not your turn to drive for a while."

She scrambled out of the sleeping bag and into the front seat, a riot of little lithe motions, trying not to hit Shadow as she squirmed through the small space between the seats. "I know, but I don't need much sleep."

"Got enough of that, didn't you?" he said, and sounded curiously angry. "And you just a kid."

Dragon shrugged and buckled her seatbelt on with a snap. The clean metallic click it made pleased her somehow, as so many things this new world had to offer pleased her. She had spent hours just switching radio stations on the first day, until Shadow had snapped and threaten to break it next time they stopped.

"Guess so." She stared at the road ahead, at the small gathering of buildings. Another small town, another cluster of people far away from what people called civilisation, though it seemed to her that civilisation was only as many people as possible in the smallest space and the highest buildings possible. "Can we stop in a minute? I need some food."

He took his attention of the road to gaze at her blackly. "Want some food, you mean. There's no hunting for miles around."

"I ate before we left," she admitted ruefully. Raw meat from the butcher's wasn't a patch on hunting, but it was all a busy city had to offer. "But I would like some Pringles."

He snorted. "You and your Pringles! It's human food, not ours, Tiamat. You shouldn't try to be like them."

"I thought you were all for integration with humans," she pointed out levelly, eyes fixed on the growing lumps of the town. "I'm just doing my bit."

"You're denying what you are," he almost growled. "We can't deny what we are, Tiamat - we're hunters, and if we don't hunt, we don't survive."

"I'm half-witch." She wondered why he was arguing so - Shadow had always encouraged the angels to blend in, to do whatever was necessary to disappear among the anxious sea of humans all out there and all worrying. "Human food can sustain me."

"And you think you can ignore the beast within?" He was citing one of the Nightworld's more famous books: Dragon had read "The Beast Within" and been none too impressed by the way it spoke of feeding as 'the lust'. It made it into something perhaps darker than it was. When she wanted to feed, she wanted food, not sweaty coupling with some human.

"I think I can ignore that terrible book," she retorted. "Don't lecture me on what I am, Shadow - you have no idea."

"Don't I?" he said tightly. "I know what *I* am, Tiamat, and we're not as dissimilar as you'd like to think. The Nightworld puts on a good act, but that's all it is. An act. Don't forget that, don't think you can live a human life. We're apart from them - we're different, stronger, better-"

"Better?" She caught the word like a fish snapping at bait. "That's not your usual line."

"Maybe it should be," he countered, his tone sharp. "I've been around long enough to see things the way they are, Tiamat. The fact is that we are supernatural - that's their word for us. *Super* natural - beyond what nature is to them."

"What are you suggesting?" she said tartly, spearing him with vexed silver eyes. "A return to the good old days, when humans were our slaves?"

"Why not?" he answered in a soft, insidious voice. "If there is ever a time, it is *now*. Look at the world, look at its people! Soft, civilised *man*. We could do it, Tiamat, you and I. They think the dragons are dead; the Nightworld has glutted itself on civilisation just as man has. They are unprepared and vulnerable."

Shocked, silent, Dragon stared at his face, as impassive as ever. If she looked too hard in the jet black eyes, they seemed to soften, become slick and greasy as the rainbows glancing off oil puddles.

"Well?" he queried, the word like the flicker of a snake's tongue, tasting the air. "How about it, Tiamat?"

~*~

Matt Wolff grimaced as he knocked on this door, a house he hadn't visited in a couple of years and where he wasn't at all sure of his reception. When the door opened, and he found himself looking at the tall figure of Chatoya Irkil, he smiled awkwardly and hoped.

"Matt?" she said with a little dip of her eyebrows, a faint flush climbing up her face. "What are you - I mean, why are you...I..."

Then she gave a startled laugh, and spread her hands.

"It's been a while," he admitted, and his smile became more genuine. He'd been friends with the little group known locally as Circle Strange when he first arrived here, but they'd...drifted apart. "Listen, I was really gutted to hear about Rill - he was a good guy."

Her moss-green eyes darkened fractionally, and Matt was almost sorry he'd mentioned it, but he had liked Rill in the brief time he'd known him. Definitely a nice kid. "He was. He didn't deserve what happened."

"No," he said, and they both stood silent. "Toya, can I come in?"

She shook her head a little dazedly, and her hair, a lovely soot-black that seemed soft as powder, fluttered around her face. Matt had always felt a little sorry for Toya because she wasn't a pretty girl, and it was an insult the people who didn't like her - some of whom, he was ashamed to admit, were his 'friends' - flung at her. And he knew that she knew it, and maybe regretted it. How unfair to be plain in a world that demanded beauty and physical perfection.

"Of course!" she said, and stepped aside, beckoning him in. "Sorry, I didn't mean to keep you standing on the doorstep. I just wasn't expecting you."

"Lisa still living here?" he asked as he entered the hallway, shrugging off his suede jacket and slinging it over the banister. "Hey, you've redecorated." The hallway was a new, icy blue, and a gorgeous, wild painting hung on it, a Jackson Pollock style of splattered paint and drips.

"That?" She turned and gave him her kind smile. Toya was the kind of person he had always felt he could tell anything. "Oh, we did it a while back. Yeah, Lisa's still here - it's her house! Come on in - do you want anything to drink?"

"No, thanks..."

As he walked into the airy sitting room, with its chairs and big squashy cushions to slump on, and tables covered in mats and magazines, he felt a sharp pang. He'd loved the intimacy of Circle Strange - all their houses had been stuffed with places to sit because where one of them was, all of them liked to be.

It had hurt a little when he'd walked away, but he'd had to; as soon as he realised that he couldn't be friends with these people and work for Circle Daybreak. He knew they hadn't understood, exactly, and he'd never wanted to lie to them, but Circle Daybreak had saved his life, and surely he owed them for that.

"Toya!" a new voice, low and feminine, from the kitchen. "Who was it?"

Chatoya collapsed onto one of the chairs with a grateful sigh. "Come and see for yourself!"

Matt waited tentatively, trying not to pick at his fingers - it was a nervous habit that he couldn't seem to crack.

The girl who strolled in through the door opposite the French windows was Nightworld elegant, with a toned and lean frame; milk-chocolate skin still had the healthy glow that matched the energetic, fluid movements and bright chestnut eyes. Myriad rainbow beads dangled at the end of the hundreds of plaits she had woven her hairs into, and they clicked softly as she stopped, and stared.

"Hi Lisa," he said, trying out the smile again. "It's been a while."

The made vampire recovered from her shock, and gave a distinct 'hmph'. "Nice of you to drop in," she commented a touch sourly. "Get lost for two years, did you? No wait - we're not good enough for your popular friends, are we?"

Matt tried not to wince. She was a wonderful friend, but a dangerous enemy, and with that cutting edge to her voice, she made him feel about two feet tall. "You were always good enough for me."

Her expression said she didn't believe him.

"In fact," he continued, looking at Chatoya for support, "that's kind of why I'm here. I want to explain why I...had to..." Stumbling for the words, Matt found there wasn't really any tactful way to put it.

"Ignore us?" Lisa suggested, her hands on her hips. "Push us aside? Avoid us?"

"Well, yes, but - no!" He stood up, agitated. Even after all this time, he found he still wanted their approval, their friendship. Damn it, he didn't like being what he was now - neither fish nor foul; unable to pretend he was just a innocent human, but potentially too dangerous to be part of this crowd. "I had to, okay? It was me or you, and I didn't want it to be you."

A single styptic blink. "You're making no sense at all," the vampire commented.

"Ease up on him, Lise," was the gentle objection of Chatoya, not as fierce as Lisa yet with her own tranquil strength.

"Just because you..." Lisa's dire mutter trailed off.

Just because she what? Matt wondered, but in the silence, now was the time to tell them, before Lisa unnerved him completely.

"I work for Circle Daybreak," he said flatly.

Chatoya cocked her head, surprise and interest lighting up her face. "Really? For how long?"

He inhaled, uneasy at having to confess he'd hidden the truth from them for so long. "Since I came here. That was why I had to...ignore you, push you aside, avoid you." He threw Lisa's words back at her, feeling angry himself. "I told them I'd met some 'safe' Nightpeople, you know, to reassure them, and they wanted names. And you'd *told* me that you were - sought after. So I had to get away from you, in case they sent someone to visit."

"Well, it does make sense," Lisa said coolly. "But don't you think you could have told us?"

"You didn't seem too keen on Daybreakers," he murmured.

We could have made an exception." Chatoya's voice was even a little amused, and he remembered how he'd never been bored with this set of friends, and he'd never wanted to be anywhere else because nowhere else could ever be as fascinating as anywhere that contained the Circle, not with Cougar's combustible temper bubbling beneath the surface, and Lisa always up for a challenge, and run-ins with the local werewolf pack...

"Daybreak, huh?" Lisa looked hard at him, then her stance relaxed a little, and she came to park herself on one of the comfy cushions. "I can believe that. You're just about noble enough and dumb enough for them."

"Thanks."

"My pleasure." She waved a hand at him. "So why are you here now - don't tell me you were suddenly struck by an urge to confess after two years."

He accepted that wryly. "Bella Khordad."

Both their faces closed off like shutters had fallen over them. "That bitch," snapped Lisa through clenched teeth.

"Yeah - well, that bitch has taken an interest in me, for some reason."

Lisa smiled tightly, but the anger in it was not directed him, much to his relief. "Hate to tell you, Matt, but you're a bit of a hottie. You've grown up pret-ty nicely. And I'd guess you're her next bit of fun."

"She did Rill over, didn't she?" he said in a low voice. He'd suspected...but he hadn't been sure until he'd seen their reaction.

God, how could she? He didn't like Bella Khordad much - there was something plain creepy about her, and he detested the way she tried to control people through fear, but he wouldn't allow himself to be intimidated by her.

"Yeah." Lisa's eyes were cold, and she could have been a goddess in that moment, worshipped in blood and dust. "She goddamn well did."

"He was a mess," Chatoya said softly, her voice catching a little, and her chest starting to hitch. She'd always been the gentle one to Matt, everything a Twilight witch should be with healing in her hands, and sweetness in her soul. "She...she played with him. And I wish it had been quick, but it wasn't. I just-" Her voice trailed off.

"You just what, hon?" Lisa murmured, her expression melting fractionally.

The witch raised those mossy eyes, dryad eyes. "Lise, why didn't he call us? Rill was a shapeshifter, *she*" and there was no need to ask who Chatoya meant, "is only a witch. She shouldn't have been able to..."

"I don't know," was the thoughtful answer. "Maybe she witched him."

Chatoya shook her head distractedly, and Matt wished he didn't have to see the distress on her face. He was sure Toya had never seen anything gruesome in her life, and it must have come as a shock to her. He]'d been in Daybreak too long to avoid a few nasty confrontations. "But I would have felt the remnants of the spell. Magick hangs round. He was..." She swallowed. "He was still warm when we got there."

"Don't torture yourself over it," Lisa advised. "We'll ask her before we gut her." Her voice was iron-rigid, and Matt came as close as he ever would to feeling pity for Bella Khordad.

"Why Rill?" he asked. "I was thinking about it, and...well, Rill's a nice kid. He's never done - did," he corrected painfully, "anything to anyone. Even the grapevine agreed he was low on the weirdometer."

He couldn't be sure, but he thought Chatoya shifted slightly, uneasily. He couldn't be sure, but years as a human among the Nightworld had made him good at reading people, because he was good, or he was dead.

Lisa only spread her hands. "Because she wanted to is the only reason I can think of. She doesn't like us." Her tone suggested the feling was more than mutual, and Matt hadn't doubted her intention to kill Bella. Oh, Lisa was capable of it all right. "Though she seems to like you."

"Hah!" he muttered, keeping an eye on Toya. Just in case. "She just likes my reputation."

"Keep it clean, keep 'em keen," the vampire supplied dryly. "Why come to us?"

"Advice, and help," he said. "Daybreak can't do anything on this one. I don't dare turn her down, but I don't want to be a list of obituaries in the next edition of the Valley Chronicle. So I thought...you guys, but I'll understand if you don't want anything to do with me."

"You know we'd help," Toya cut in firmly.

"Besides," mused Lisa, fingers tapping her chin. "It gives us an opportunity. Especially if you don't mind...helping."

The witch glared at Lisa. "We are not using him as bait!"

"Why not? If he gets our help, it seems only fair we get something in return."

Matt interrupted before it escalated. "I don't mind. Daybreak wouldn't approve...but...I knew Rill. I liked him too." He'd played basketball with him, and Rill had understood what it meant to be outside Circle Strange, more than the rest of hem, he'd thought.

Chatoya's look told him that she thought he was nuts. Lisa's did too, but it was approving. Matt's reflection would probably tell him he was nuts, but he'd waited too long ,watching people die while Bella Khordad played her games, watching the town shrink under fear - watching, and waiting, patiently reporting and never seeing anything done. And if he was next - no, he wouldn't be passive anymore.

"Maybe you shouldn't do this," Chatoya pointed out quietly. "Look...help might turn up. Things - have a way of doing that."

"From where?" argued Lisa. "We don't have guardian angels, Toya!"

Toya's eyes widened, but she only said evenly. "I'm just saying that you never know."

"Until you try," Lisa capped, ending the argument.

I can't believe I've offered to do this, Matt thought. I've just stuck my head on a platter for Bella Khordad.

I'm nuts.

~*~

"I don't think so, Shadow," Dragon finally managed to answer levelly.

There was silence, aside from the wind rushing through her open window. Then he laughed, and she felt a fool for being so...afraid? Yes, it had been fear. For a moment, she had been looking into her own past and seeing the uncaring eyes of dragons long gone.

"You pass the test again, Tiamat," he chuckled. "Still on the right side."

Slightly offended, she snorted. "I may be a dragon, but that doesn't make me the untrustworthy fiend you all seem to think."

"Some were," he said lightly. "Maybe some still are."

They stopped at the next smattering of houses and a few shops. No familiar brands here; none of the yellow Ms that Dragon had seen sprung up everywhere like a plague; no Walmart, no Taco Bell, only a dusty grocery store that called itself Trduy's Store, and a petrol pump that Shadow stopped at. She dropped into Rita's, and knew at once that the proprietor was a witch. She dusted her curling hair over her forehead to make sure her horns were concealed, and hastily plucked some Pringles, her favourite vice, and a couple of drinks in case Shadow decided to dismount his high horse and lower himself to supping on 'mortal' fare.

"Afternoon, I'm Trudy. Passing through these parts?" the woman inquired lazily as she rang the items through the till. She looked forty, a comfortable matronly forty with sensible clothes and good-quality jewellery. But the eyes were a bright grass-green, untouched by age, and her movements were still easy and deft. "Pretty bracelet, girl."

Dragon glanced at the jet dahlia set in silver. "Same colour as that picture behind you, ma'am," she murmured quietly, nodding at the gloomy black dahlias in a pot. "Yeah, just passing through. What part of the world do you come from? Your accent isn't from round here." She thought it seemed familiar, as though she had heard it in a dream.

"I was born in Germany," the woman said mildly. "My parents fled the Holocaust. Even such as us aren't built for concentration camps." Her lips tightened. "Lost some family there, girl. Lost some faith, too."

Of course. The Holocaust had rung through Dragon's dreams for too long, a long scar along history. "I don't suppose you could help me with some information, could you?" she asked, picking up a magazine as well and throwing it onto the counter.

"Depends what it is," she answered amiably enough.

"Have you heard of Ryars Valley?"

The woman paused, and her face hardened. "It's not far from here," she said tautly. "That where you're headed?"

"That's the one," she agreed, counting out money from her wallet and trying to make sure she didn't give too much again. She'd tipped a taxi driver a hundred dollars once, before she got the hang of money.

"I'd keep away, if I was you." Dragon glanced into a face wary and worried. "I've seen a lot of folk pass through here, but I've not met any who've come back from there. There's...stories. From one witch to another - go home now."

"I..." Bemused, Dragon paid, and gathered up her items. "Thank you, but I won't be there long."

The witch didn't look pleased, but only said, "As you will," and gave her her change. Dragon had the feeling as she walked out that Trudy was only too glad to see her go.

"Ready?" snapped Shadow as she got back in. "Or shall we stop for tea and biscuits while we're here?"

"No-o," she said uneasily. "Let's go." She just wanted this to be over as soon as possible.

In a way, she would get her wish.