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Part 18:

Her head tilted on one side, Alisha regarded David very thoughtfully. She had an idea, half-remembered from what Iry had said. She hoped he had told her everything. "Is that a challenge, David?" she inquired politely. "Can I consider it a duel?"

Bafflement on the aristocratic face for an instant. David had never really known her mind, and now was no different. All the dragon senses in the world couldn't give him compassion or empathy, or any of the human qualities he needed to truly know her. "A little after our time, little one, but yes, I suppose it is," he replied. Trying to figure out what she had in mind. In mind. Alisha smiled inwardly.

"Then I get to choose the place and the weapons, don't I?" she prompted.

Now Dragon Tiamat was staring with narrowed eyes before her face cleared and she leaned over to Matt, whispering something softly in his ear. He looked at the silver haired girl, then over at Alisha, bright-eyed and half-smiling. David seemed unaware of either of them.

"Very well," he said. "Though I doubt it will make a difference."

Alisha didn't know if it would either, but what was one more risk? "Do you know what dreamscapes are, David?" she asked and had the satisfaction of seeing him swallow hard. "The places where dream and reality intermingle. That is where I choose and as for weapons..." she forced herself not to show any of her nervousness, "minds."

"Done," he snapped out so quickly she was instantly suspicious, and a touch worried, despite the nervous tic twitching in his face. "Then let us begin," and his mouth curled up into the smile that would have had her swooning once, "now."

She felt an impact in her mind, the senses of her mind cascading and falling in on themselves and the world around her disappeared.

* * * *

Chatoya gasped as both of them seemed to ripple in shape like some futuristic programme, before they slumped to the ground, Alisha's eyes fallen shut at once. Her hair spilled onto the ground, the red hints in it looking like blood. Chatoya licked her lips nervously and pushed away that thought.

The witch clutched at Jepar as he started forward. "Don't," she hissed. "This is between Shar and him." She saw the fear - not for himself - in the lambent green eyes and realised that while she knew what dreamscapes entailed, he certainly didn't. "They're only asleep, Jep, or near enough that it doesn't make much difference."

He gave her a strange look. "Why are you whispering?" he pointed out reasonably, with a hint of the pedantic manner that more characterised her. "It's not as if they can hear." He shook his head. "And I know what dreamscapes are. They're dangerous." His jaw jutted out stubbornly. "People die."

Dragon Tiamat's smile was sympathetic. She knew more than anyone about dragon times and their abilities, even though she was a half-breed. "This is different, Jepar. This isn't dream manipulating. It's like..." she paused, searching for an analogy. "It's like virtual reality. It's not about pain, but power of the mind."

"Whatever happens," Matt said, the gold eyes glinting with understanding - he knew all about Alisha's past, of course - and quiet hope. "She won't get hurt."

"David loves her," Chatoya added, remembering how the aristocrat's grey eyes had burned every time he looked at Alisha. Unrequited love always hurt, but throwing a tantrum was no way to cure it. There was no way David would ever have been able to replace a soulmate; not from the look on Alisha's face whenever she heard Jepar's name. "He won't hurt her. Just us."

"I know," Jepar said gloomily. "But somehow, that doesn't make me feel any better." Then he frowned fleetingly. Chatoya wondered what was going on in that blond head: more, she thought, than anyone could ever know. "And I have a headache."

* * * *

Unseen winds blazed ice through her bones, screaming like a horde of banshees through the bare place they were in; it was something like a giant chessboard, black and grey with cracks running from square to square, below a twisting sky of sickly green and glowing gold lights. A mind's madness, David's madness.

He faced her across the crazy game board, looking deceptively normal, except for the hair that was flung back by the wind to show the three horns. "Shall we begin?" he inquired in such a controlled voice, utterly belied by the crack that suddenly yawned at her feet; as though his mind was trying to swallow her whole. She shuddered at the thought and moved sideways, away from the chasm.

"Why not?" she said conversationally, wondering how she could be so calm. Perhaps it was the thought that none of this was real...although death on the dreamscapes could obviously happen. "No rules...only tricks of the mind."

He laughed, and she started as his body exploded into that of a monster. "Then let's commence with this," he said, and across the dead land, leapt for her with a roar like the tide and an avalanche put together. Fast, furious, he filled her vision in a visage that was only too real.

Alisha closed her eyes - not in defeat, but in design - and thought of void, of earth falling away, of earthquakes and empty air. Beneath her, she felt the floor drop away and David with it, plummeting with a beast-howl of shock and fury. A little tendril of thought held her floating above him; disbelieving as the monster fell into a vortex that spiralled slowly below her.

The power she had wielded with little more than a casual thought, flung out as one might a hand in speech, shocked her. It was so easy. To do anything. To be anything.

A surge of blue in the mind-sky above and David appeared in front of her, holding a knife in his left hand. He drove it at her heart, smiling horribly in a rictus grin that caused his face to stretch and crack like something from a nightmare. The blade hit her body in a spike of pain before she could react, but in instinctive defence, her body collapsed into sparkling moon-pale mist, reforming behind him silently as a wraith.

Alert, he spun, the cracks in his face oozing. He was taking the loathsome face from an old nightmare of hers, trying to throw her off-balance. But Alisha was a little more prepared this time. She called to mind lightning; not the fire of a witch or the energy of a Wild Power, but natural white lightning and sent it streaking towards him in a fast stream.

It jagged towards him, the sizzling white of hot metal; all it hit was the mass of fire that glowed where David had stood, passing straight through him, before the flames folded in on themselves. Revealing a wildly changed David, with hair that flickered and danced in tiny conflagrations and pupils that wavered like smoke blowing over glass. And he was staring at her, surprise and respect in his eyes. He hadn't expected a fight.

"Well," he said softly, "it seems you have many hidden qualities." He moved before she was aware, hitting her with brute force that knocked her back. She fell hard and clutched desperately at the air as in a neat reversal of her trick, David pulled the ground from beneath her, turning into the cliffs around her home village. She caught a precipice with one hand and willed her back into curved dove-white wings, floating up in a strange parody of an angel.

But David was smiling. "However," he continued as if nothing had happened, "speed is not one of them." A bow appeared in his hand, an arrow already fitted to it that he fired in one fluid motion at her. Alisha panicked; it was all that saved her. She lost the wings and plummeted, feeling the arrow pass overhead with the sound of a breath. The impact with the ground hurt and before she could move, he had calmly kicked her until she could barely think. Blow after savage blow, designed to hurt and succeeding.

"Now," he said, leaning in, his face blurred and blackened from her painful vision, "let's stop this nonsense."

* * * *

Chatoya stood up, brushing dirt from her hands. "They've both got normal pulses," she said matter-of-factly. "In so far as dragons go."

"I can't talk to them telepathically," Cougar said grim-faced, his face looking more like a skull with the thinnest veneer of flesh overlaid on it, drawn with quiet suffering. "It's like their minds aren't even there."

"Sounds about right," Dragon said with a sigh. "Though I'm no expert on these dreamscapes."

Jepar was sitting by Alisha, looking worried, pale under his tan so Chatoya could see the four scars blazing across his face. "What do we do?" he said. "Wait?" Determination flickered.

"What else can we do?" Chatoya replied. They were just pawns in an intricate game that none of them would ever fully understand.

Jepar shrugged and, eyes pensive, moved to touch Alisha's dragon horns in a curious gesture.

"Don't!" Cougar, Matt and Chatoya all said in unison.

He looked at them, clear confusion on his face. "Why not-?" he began, then his voice trailed off. The cat eyes narrowed, as his voice became imperious. The son of a prominent shapeshifter house, Jepar had the authoritative attitude down, and he used it when he needed. "There's only two reasons I can think of why you don't want me touching her," he said angrily, sparks glowing like the fires of hell in his eyes. "And unless my subconscious had been hiding some serious mental problems from me, I'm no mad axe murderer." The witch felt frightened by his anger; she had never seen anything like this in Jepar before. As though something was being *unleashed*. "You *all* knew?" His voice grew louder with each word, losing the clear tones filed with laughter, becoming a snarl. "And you didn't *tell* me?"

Chatoya knew Jepar had something dark in his past. Cougar Redfern had tried to mind-read the shapeshifter once, for a bet, but had stopped abruptly. It had been as though there was a monster in his mind, he had told Chatoya later. "We all have secrets. I think his are on a par with mine." Chatoya had never been able to believe Jepar could hurt anyone. Now...she wasn't so sure.

"With good reason," Cougar spoke up. The only who had the arrogance to face Jepar in a rage that none of them had ever seen the likes of. A killing rage, Chatoya would have said of anyone else.

His eyebrows shot up. "Good reason?" he drawled, tones welling with sarcasm. "Well, I'm so glad it was a *good* reason - good enough obviously for you to let me stand by and watch my soulmate go off and get killed - and it was for *me*, wasn't it?" The last was said in a tone of quiet wonderment that washed away some of the anger. "You...you...*bastards*," he spat, seemingly unable to think of an epithet filthy enough.

"Have you ever thought," Matt Wolff said with the quiet subtlety that made him so thoughtful, "that perhaps there's a reason why Shar didn't tell you?"

The cheetah boy looked down at Alisha, mixed emotions on his face. He was about to speak when suddenly, a terrifying mental scream ripped through their heads, piercing like someone was dying. Chatoya clutched at her head, trying to erase the sound. The voice was instantly recognisable to all of them and when it cut off abruptly, Chatoya almost screamed herself in sheer fear for Alisha. It had sounded so close, although her body had never even moved in that deep sleep.

She stared at Jepar helplessly, but his mouth was set in a hard line that meant someone was in trouble. "Maybe there is a reason," he said with such calm, it was hard to believe he had been at all affected by that soul-killing cry. "But it doesn't matter." She saw the shapeshifter reach out and touch Alisha's cheek as if in a dream. Then his eyes glazed over terrifyingly and he was gone.

"Oh god," Chatoya said, rushing over to the shapeshifter. He looked dead, his skin gone waxen instantly, his pulse so shallow she could barely feel it. "How can he be so stupid? They're dragons."

"What would you do, if it was you having to sit there and hear your soulmate die?" Cougar said reasonably, though he was undoubtedly every bit as worried. His eyes were as dull as ever. Chatoya made a mental note to talk to Ria and get this problem sorted out.

"As I recall," Dragon said with all the tact of a stampeding elephant, "you stood by and watched."

* * * *

She had stopped screaming a while ago, forever, it seemed. David had pushed her under water that had appeared from the air, it was one of her own memories; of the lake where she had lived some hundred years ago. She had almost drowned in it once and the same terror came back to haunt her now. Telling herself it wasn't real did nothing.

She remembered Bhari's words, spoken casually at the time, but words she held to her now like a talisman. "If you decide to die, then you will die. Your mind will stop and your body along with it." She didn't want to die.

Yet he was holding her there. She *was* dying. Dying in water that had sparkled like crystal from above and below was a miracle world of aqua blue that seemed to move in patterns that were so lovely to her failing senses. So pretty.

She was dying. Dying under the pressure of hands that became like claws to her, forcing her away from the light into the depths. The sand trickling out slowly and her life going with it in the knowledge that no one could turn over the hourglass.

There was no blood, just the faint tinge of blue to skin that was otherwise unblemished. The pressure on her head forced her into the water that felt more like acid to burning, aching lungs. She couldn't think, couldn't even call up the power to slither away in a mist. Screaming inwardly, the knowledge creeping in inexorably that this was it, that the event she had never thought would happen, was happening *now*. And this time, death was forever.

Her eyes were wide, bulging with fear and the lake water stung them, but it was nothing compared to the itch for air, the screaming pounding desire for life. Life that flowed strong as her indomitable spirit. Even now, she tried to turn and push at him with muscles so weak they couldn't have moved a feather. Let alone a supernatural being with unthinkable strength and infinite insanity.

She tried to struggle, but in the water her movements were useless as if she had been tied up. Each kick, each desperate twist of her body only took what little air she had left.

Death became irrelevant as her mouth opened desperately in a reflex and water poured into her lungs through her nose, her mouth and pain was everything. She wanted to die, suddenly it had never been more welcome...surely nothing could be worse than this. And he sensed the weakness and hauled her out of the water so she could see his pale crazy eyes, unknowing that he was destroying what he had fought for so hard, but she had no voice to say those things and David was too far gone for that.

In her mind, she felt something link far away, a sort of connection that was instantly dimmed as he shook her hard. "Give up," he was saying in distorted tones. Raving like a madman - that was no coincidence, she thought sleepily, "or do we carry on this charade."

"Give up?" he repeated sneering. "Or do I have to try something different?"

She managed to make her voice work, but only silence was there. But dragons recovered quickly and already there was strength returning to her limbs, though the water she had inhaled burned like acid. A few more minutes, that was all the time she needed...

"Try this," someone said in tones filled with wrath and next thing she knew, David was moving away from her through the air in a perfect arc, absolute horror on his face. She knelt up, shaking slightly and saw one furious shapeshifter striding over to David, looking ready to murder him.

But David was back on his feet and grinning. "Well, well," he said. "Look what came to join the fun!" He pounced, his body sliding into a bizarre cat, with wild orange fur dappled with blue. Mocking Jepar, she suspected. And forgetting her.

By now, the pain was gone. It was with determination that Alisha walked towards David, who was prowling around the shapeshifter. Jepar was somehow avoiding him - he had to know about dreamscapes, she realised, as he managed to disappear and reappear with the ease of Bhari herself. Distracting David.

Jepar was dodging easily, keeping David away from Alisha. It wasn't hard for her to step up behind the enraged dragon and catch his head in her hands, but she hesitated to hurt him.

~ Two shall live and one shall die. ~ One had died. Bhari had died for nothing more than being human. David wouldn't die, at least, not physically. She closed her eyes for a second and sent a prayer to anyone listening before she shattered his mind with all the mental power she had left.

The blow shook the world - David's mind, she reminded herself - that they stood in. The sky tore in two and as the sky began to dim, so too did everything else. She looked up and her eyes met Jepar's, his eyes reassuring like nothing else could have been.

* * * *

Under the earth, the force of the mental blow woke something. It opened its eyes onto darkness, onto earth. And then it began to claw its way to the surface. It was old, it was older than it had any right to be and it was living on instinct. It travelled towards the light. Towards the house of a lone werewolf who hated his Pack. It knew only two things; that it was in a new world and that it was ravenous.

* * * *

David rippled out of existence like a guttering flame as his mind continued to fracture around them. As the dragon disappeared, Jepar looked at her and smiled. The humour was in the candid green eyes, but something else too. "We need to talk," he said with a touch of dark amusement. He shook his head and laughed. "Gods know we need to talk. About why you've been keeping this from me when everyone else seems to know enough to write a book. About him, about just why you're here. But not now," he forestalled her saying anything. "Back in the real world."

She bit her lip. He still didn't know what she had done. "In the real world," she said, avoiding his gaze. Where there was no disappearing. Where everything had to be faced.

* * * *

"Toya," Cougar said very quietly. A warning; the eyes watchful and expectant.

She looked around - David was stirring. She felt fear turn her bones to ice. The same frozen, fearful looks appeared on the faces of the others. His eyes opened very slowly, as though he was waking from the deepest sleep. At first sleepy, confused, they suddenly altered. Wide and blank, filled with an abyss. Cracked. He stared at them and snarled, cowering back with animal reflexes.

"What...?" Chatoya couldn't continue as he continued to glare at her with empty eyes.

"He's insane," a voice said. Alisha had stood up, detaching herself from Jepar as he too, woke up with the same sluggishness as David had. Her face was full of pity, but she radiated sedate power still. "I just...hit him with power and it did this." She shuddered slightly.

"You were right to," Dragon Tiamat said blithely. "He would have killed everyone - even you - without a thought in his anger."

"Was I?" she replied, her eyes still fixed on the dragon. "I don't know if that's true. I started this," she said sadly, face dark as a storm-filled ocean. "But I don't know if I can ever finish it."

Cougar Redfern snorted, his disdain breaking the silence. "Started?" He laughed bitterly. "I don't think you started anything, Shar. This began a long time ago. Did you decide to make him into a dragon?" He glared at her. "Maybe I'm just a vampire, but it seems to me that you're taking too much of the blame for this. And if you hadn't done this, we'd all be tasty char-grilled steaks by now."

Alisha gave them a ghost of a smile. "I think I know that somewhere. But...I need time to think, okay? I need to sort this out in my head." She shrugged, her eyes showing depths of pain beyond time. "I'll see you around."

* * * *

There was reverent silence for a moment. Then Jepar quietly left with Cern and Thom, his green eyes pensive, darkened with an emotion Chatoya couldn't quite identify.

"What do we do with him?" she asked, looking at David with compassion. That was all she could feel for something so pathetic.

Dragon grimaced. "We're to take him," she replied, as Matt gingerly hauled the gibbering dragon-man up, mouth curled in distaste. "There's...a place where he'll be safe from the world. And the world will be safe from him."

Chatoya couldn't smile. "I wish that place had been found sooner," she said. "He's done too much damage."

"It'll work out for Jepar and Alisha," Matt said in reassurance. "It usually does." Then he frowned fleetingly, something bothering him. "Though I hardly think the word 'usual' applies to either of them."

Dragon nudged him. "You saw what we were told," she said enigmatically. "*She's* never been wrong yet." Pityingly, she looked at David. "He's proof of that."

* * * *

Alisha had thought. Over and over, how it could have been any different and she was beginning to see that it couldn't have been. That somehow, the outcome had been inevitable from the moment David lost whatever small shreds of reason he had left.

And now she knew what she had to do. Show Jepar what had happened. All of it. She owed him that much. He would hate her for it. Inwardly, she had accepted that. But it was the right thing - the only thing - to do.

It was early morning when she finished thinking and debating and somehow gained the courage to walk over to his house. It took a huge effort just to knock on the door, and when the door opened, she knew how she to look. Absolutely ashen, lips trembling slightly. Jepar stared at her, concern outlining his face.

"You said we needed to talk," she said in a voice that shook. "I'd like to talk now."