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Chapter Thirty Six

I am so high, I can hear heaven.

 And in answer, Bhari only laughed. Laughed until she thought her sides would rupture, and her body leak out onto the ground. "What have we done?" she said, flinging out her hands with abandon. "We have remade the world as it should have been - we have set you free."

 Ryar was silent, but Bhari scarcely noticed.

 Oh, this was right - these new and serene times to renew old bonds, to create fresh ones. Without the political tides of their wonderful, deadly people to influence their actions. They were nothing on this world, only fragments of myths taken from the faded shade of memories. They were only themselves.

"Here we are again," she cried out to the world. Oh, how it would be, how exquisite and how thrilling. The four of them, exploring this unsullied, untouched world together; discovering the paths they once walked, and one another with it.

 "Here we are," came Ryar's voice. She stood straight now,  the violet eyes steadfast, but oddly sad. Sad? Why was there sorrow in her? "And here I, at least, should not be."

 "No." Fireblade, simple adoration etched on his face. "I was wrong. You were never meant to die-"

 "To cease upon the midnight with no pain," quoted Hael mildly. "Though there was pain, wasn't there, Ryar?"

 Her face was solemn. "The war brought only pain, boy. Whoever you are."

 "He is Hael," Bhari said, irritated. "Did you lose your sight as well as your fear?"

 A quiver to that camellia skin - so Ryar was still afraid. "I lost neither. And he is no more Hael than you are Bhari, whatever you believe. If you don't believe me, look! Look, and this time, do not turn your eyes away from the truth."

 She looked. She looked at the face of her old love, and saw only what she had seen thirty thousand years ago. The same laughing eyes, the same crooked smile. Nothing different. What truth was there other than Hael returned to her? She looked no further. There was nothing else that mattered.

 "The war was right." But Bhari heard her own unease, worse, felt it bite with firm teeth into her heart.

 "Strange how war becomes more right the less likely you are to die." The Water Drax turned away sharply, one hand rising to her face. "Or did you truly not care, Bhari? Did the bodies matter nothing to you?"

 When Hael was lost, nothing at all seemed to matter, she wanted to cry. But she held her tongue. He was returned to her now, and there was intimacy in his words to her, and that half-forgotten flickering, threatening humour. Half-forgotten.

 She had had to forget him. It was the only way she could survive.

 Bhari had never thought she needed him; she walked alone, strong and tall and proud over the broken glass and scalding embers of their lethal world. He had been a companion, if one that brought new sensations to her life, but no more. Only when he was gone did she taste the bitterness and loneliness of her life.

 "I...don't know," she said slowly, drawing herself back from the sting of those memories. "Sometimes they did. Does it matter, Ryar? It's done, it's gone - you can't bring back the dead-"

 But of course, you could. Her words faded under stammers, and Bhari could only stare at this woman she had thought so weak. Who, in the end, had been the strongest of them all.

 "We should all be gone." Ryar's words were pitying, implacable as the rain. "Bhari - my dearest, you died long ago. All you are is a few shreds of memory wrapped up in power."

 Hael's voice scythed across the night, and it was meant to cut at Ryar. "Leave it, siren."

 It was all going so wrong. It was meant to be joyful - it was meant to be a new start, a new world. But the animosity crept into the air piece by piece; Fireblade's flames were quenched, and Ryar stood with defiance in her relaxed shoulders and upheld chin, and something of Hael's easiness had iced over.

 And Bhari thought she felt new emotions creeping into her, slow as plants taking root. Only flickers, but when she looked at Hael, she seemed to see another face laid over his, one that was cold and indomitable, the face of a prince, chilled under the everlasting night.

"No!" Ryar stepped forward. "I 'left it' in the Burning Days, and my indecision butchered more people than I can even count. We cannot live in the past. I have lived there so long now...and it has brought me to this. She is not Bhari - of all people, you should know that."

 "What do you mean?" asked Bhari, incredibly confused.

 "Whoever you are underneath - I know you're there, I can feel you - is bound to him." Urgency in that simple statement, but it meant nothing. "It's her eyes you see through, and her voice you speak with. Bhari is just a ghost."

 The fingers that tipped up her chin were firm; she could not drop her eyes to hide her fear.

 "You will never be just anything, witch of mine," Hael purred with cool certainty.

 Bhari looked up into the eyes that were the olive, swelling green of rivers. In them, she saw something new - and unnerving - begin, a slight, daggered gleam.

 "I am no witch."

 The laughter curled up and around her, scrumptious and black as the shadows that their bodies threw. "No? Then how have you enchanted me? How have you made me want you so?"

 Boldness in the way she stepped back from his touch, and in the deliberate sway of her hips. Old, slinky motions, old enticements that felt simply right. Yes, she was only Bhari. "The wanting is all your own."

 That unsettling glitter in his eyes grew, or was it only that he had come close to her again, to rest his hands on her waist with unexpected possessiveness.

  It was like a lightning seed, spinning slow, spinning quick, and as it turned, it kicked off sparks that moved to settle at the outside of his iris. They were a flaring azure, that slithered inward as that lightning seed spread outwards until the green was subsumed, and only that amazing, unbearable colour lay there.

 Blue as the morning flooding over the sky in one supple, blinding wash.

 Blue as the ocean, ready to drag her in and tumble her through its riptides until she was nestled forever at its breast..

 Blue as a broken heart.

 Bhari stared at him, at the face that was so, so familiar - and yet with that simple change, somehow so much altered. His skin was whiter than anyone she had ever seen, and she wondered if the sun even touched him, or if he walked in some perpetual darkness, but...

 But whatever he might be, he was beautiful and dangerous, and she was drawn to the disrespectful slant of his smile, and the subtlety that had been Hael's too, slinking through in his voice of spun shadows. She knew - she knew with a sudden unpleasant jolt - that he too was familiar.

 And he was hers.

"Is it now, witch of mine?" he questioned, and his face was a little amused, but mostly it was shrewd and expectant. "Do you honestly think you know anything of what I want?"

  A memory burst in her head like a flower, unfolding into vibrant grandeur. His arms about her in a dark, empty night when emerald eyes had chased her through dreams and this cold, gifted creature had been her sanctuary. The prickle of his breath on her lips, and the unexpectedness tightness of his arms - he had held her tight, yet he had been refuge, not a cage.

 Not Hael. Never, ever Hael. Too chilling, too remote, with his bladed words and subtle games.

 "Yes," she said slowly, comprehending in one instant what had lain unseen for years. "Yes, I do."

 I know what you want: I have read your heart like scripture, I have caught your soul in my hand.

"But do you know what I want?"

 "For everything to be as it was," he answered, and there was a dry, icy scorn chopping the words. "For all the past to be undone, and the scars to scrub off like dirt - for the tears to be forgotten, and all those people you broke to be whole. How can you still believe that? Do you really think it can be as it was?"

 He wanted her to remember. Bhari couldn't have said how she knew it, yet she did. This was not Hael, and slowly, she was finding she was not entirely as she had been.

 The answer flashed in her head. He wanted her to forget who she truly was. Bhari was controllable, but the other one, the witch who was called-

Who was...

He kissed her then, just a light, teasing touch of lips on lips, but it washed the intrusive thought clean from her head. Ridiculous - she was Bhari, no one else. He stepped back to flash her that quirky, who-me smile.

 "Oh no, bane of my heart," she answered, and knew with a secret wonderment that the endearment was right - oh, it was exactly right.

 "No?"

 She reached across with one languid, snaking movement.

 "No," she said and drew his him to her with tender hands. "It can be better."

 His smile set her heart afire. This time, there would be no need for war to make her feel alive.

 Only him.

 "It will be," he said. "I promise you, witch of mine - it will be."

 But the words sent a jagged dread down her, for reasons she couldn't fathom.

 "I always keep my promises."

~*~

They came through the night like wolves running through snow, kicking up dust in their wake. Leaving trails on the world they weren't even aware of; the three of them, the world's most unlikely musketeers.

Judged to perfection, Blue Malefici thought, with just the scantest hint of satisfaction.

Combining the Drax's powers would need sacrifices; and the more powerful the sacrifice, the smoother the meld. Vampires and shapeshifters were victims to be desired, but capturing four such powerful creatures would be so - wasteful.

 Instead, they were running right to him.

 Ross. Lance. Vaje. Three of the most powerful Nightpeople in the world. Such ideal - such suitable - sacrifices. The absence of a fourth had been irritating, but he had set Sandrine to deal with that.

 Four victims.

 Just one, personal apocalypse.

And in a rare moment of abandon, he gathered his witch close in his arms and breathed in the soft scent that was all her own. A mix of soap and herbs, and the warm spice of her skin. He breathed her in like incense.

 The green eyes were too hard; without Chatoya Irkil's graceless naivety, some of the charm of her face was gone. Bhari's effortless confidence made her more beautiful. It was there in the easy way she twined her arm around his neck, tangled it in his hair.

That touch was sure, and deliberate, and skilled in a way his witch was not.

 And as she turned to smile at him so lazily, with that smile that said: I know I am beautiful. I know I am powerful. I know you want me. And I know you know all this too. There was none of his witch's futile anger, or careless words in that.

 And how odd.

 He didn't like it at all.

 Blue breathed out slowly, and let her go. Those narrowed eyes never altered a fraction; there was no melting of the sparkling ice in them at all and yet...

 And yet, he was remembering a promise he had made what seemed like eons ago, in a milder world.

 Judged to perfection. If perfection exists in an imperfect world.

~*~

 Lisa Ochai crept closer, barely breathing. The mists were choking, like breathing in scented smog. She scrabbled on hands and knees, listening to their voices to guide her.

 Jepar's shout bounced about her mind. Dragons, he'd said - plural.

 She was afraid. At least she would admit that, and then perhaps it would be easier to deal with this icy sensation that wound its way about her veins like slow cancer, poisoning her best intentions.

 Deep breath and send her thoughts forward like creeping vagrants in the night, winding through the fog of magick. The world seemed clogged to her tonight, as if every restless spirit and otherworldly being in Ryars Valley had been drawn here.

 And then she felt them. At the centre of it all, four towering infernos. They were painful to sense; for the first time in her life, Lisa saw how people had lain down and worshipped them as gods.

 Vast and blinding and beautiful, they were a dizzying combination of feelings. The crash of a thousand angels screaming prayers on high, the flickering light of fire miles wide, the tearing force of a hurricane ripping the world from its roots. Whatever they were, they were monstrous as they were wondrous, and she knew she would never be anything but dust to them.

 Lisa Ochai, who had lived one and a half thousand years, was reduced to a child before them.

She crawled through the mist on hands and knees, and didn't kid herself that it was to hide. They wouldn't even notice her, this speck in their blazing existence. It was because she was too afraid to walk among such glorious, horrific creatures.

 God, what must it have been like to be human in the Burning Days, when the world was filled with creatures like this?

 She couldn't let this overwhelm her. Toya was there somewhere, in amidst those dazzling dragons. She had to find her, and rescue her. Lisa shut her mind off from the dragon quartet; that way, she could feel she still had some control.

 As she crawled through the mists, hardly aware of the rocks scraping on her palms and knees, she drew closer to them all. Voices began to filter to her, strange and loud and confident. And - dear god - voices she knew.

 Toya?

~*~

"Why did you do it?" Ryar moved forward, and the way she moved was utterly unearthly. She seemed more of a shimmer through the air than anything, liquid moonlight flowing on the earth.

 "Because I love you." Fireblade's voice was throaty with pain. "Because you should never have died."

 "But I did," she answered, and a momentary tenderness was in those words. "My heart, I did die. You killed me. Why didn't you let me rest?"

 "Well," cut in Hael. "Correct me if I'm wrong, siren, but you weren't exactly at peace."

 "How do you know that?"

 The moonlight turned his skin to ivory, white as Ryar's own. But where she was the pale lushness of lilies and roses, he was the white of marble, of ice. They seemed alike, but Bhari dismissed it as pure fancy.

 "Ask the dolphin people, Ryar," he answered coolly. "They remember what you made, when you were desperate enough. When you were afraid enough. They remember the 'last hope' that you sent across the ocean. What's wrong, Sangager's siren? Don't you like the face of hope?"

 Not understanding, Bhari could only watch as Ryar's hands spasmed, her face grew drawn.

 "Must all my mistakes return to haunt me?" the Drax whispered, not looking at Hael. The clouds drew together overhead, thunder warnings that tightened the night about them.

 "Not all." Was that a ring of triumph in Hael's voice? "You can remedy one, at least."

 All three of them turned to look at him, even Fireblade on his knees with his shoulders slumped. And Bhari felt the tremor rise up in her; she knew what he would say. She knew it in a way she couldn't explain.

 "The war was lost when we were divided," he stated simply. Even more stunning than he had been in the Burning Days, with his unswerving stare and poise. "Apart, we were always less than we were together."

 "Together we only destroyed." Ryar shook her head once, twice.

 He only half-smiled, and the edges and angles of his faces were alleviated. The moonlight seemed to glide his face rather than chop across it, and there lay arrows of gold edging the azure of his irises.

 "We chose to destroy," he answered. "Do you think that is all we can do? Look around you, Ryar - look at this place. This is what was made; these waters are your tribute. All this, created by one man. With all of us, think what the world could become..."

 The images grew like clouds in Bhari's mind, swirling and spinning to ever greater heights. Trees exploding from the ground; rivers springing from beneath their feet. War quelled with the push and pull of the elements. It was utopia, formed in the idyll of their union. Four as One, and that One greater than the Four alone. It was heaven.

 It was a lie.

 Bhari didn't know where that thought had come from. How could something so wonderful be a lie?

 "I have seen what the world became beneath our hands." There was strength in Ryar's voice, and she met Hael's glare. "Ashes, boy. Only ashes."

 "Then let us be the phoenix." Above him, lightning danced across the sky in fantastic, jagged patterns. More and more and more until the whole sky seemed countless fractured shards. "For thirty thousand years, in your hearts of hearts, you longed for rebirth."

 The lightning was massing into one tight, blinding knot that even they had to shield their eyes from.

 And then it struck.

 It smashed down the sky like a spear, and Hael was lit in furious brilliance. He seemed alight, and Bhari actually reached for him with a cry stifled in her throat-

 It was gone, in a blink. He stood before them, untouched, unaffected. "Here is your chance."

It had caught them. That vision of bliss; Bhari realised that perhaps she had not been the only one longing for a new start, longing to turn back the clock. Maybe they all had. Maybe the war had changed them all. In Ryar's eyes, she saw an almost feverish look.

 "So many wrongs," murmured Hael, his voice persuasive and insidious.

 Look at his soul, not his eyes! a voice inside her cried. He can lie with his eyes, but he cannot lie to you...

 "The monsters we made - we can cure that. We made the shapeshifters; they drink from the source of our power. We can stem that source, and return their humanity to them."

 "The children.." breathed Ryar cryptically. Hael seemed to understand her words, though.

 "Yes - their descendants can be healed of what you did. You can atone, Ryar. The dead can walk again, peace brought to those who had none. Curses lifted. All that was wrong - changed."

 How wide and wondering Ryar's eyes were, her face soft and startled in its naivety. All the years of the war had not erased her naivety - her need to make some amend. "Yes..." she said. "But not with sacrifice. Not any longer."

 "Yes," echoed Fireblade. The fiery eyes burned brighter now, and met Hael's with acquiescence. "As we agreed. Whatever it takes."

 "So we did," said Hael amiably. "And you, Bhari?"

 No!

 She ignored the strange, crazy voice, walking away from them all as if she needed to think. She spun back, a challenge in her eyes.

 "And after?"

 "And after..." The promise was wanton and heavy in his eyes, a drowning azure. "It shall be us alone. And what was promised shall be."

 That was all she had wanted to know. "I am agreed," she said softly. "Bane of my heart, I am all yours."

 "Then let it begin here," he declared. "Let it start now. With us."

 He held out his hand, a purely symbolic gesture, and Bhari felt his power flare up and out of his body. A flickering, dark light, it flowed across his eyes like spilt oil. Blue was replaced by a river of black, waters of the Lethe, hell's oceans.

 She took his hand, so pale against her own peach skin.

 It seemed lightning bolts leapt between them, snaking under her skin with delicious warmth. She didn't recall that happening before. And she never recalled her power so eager to leap out and meld with his.

 Dragonfire echoed around her like a bass drum, heavy and throbbing yet incomplete. Her own power thrashed under her control and this time, she released it.

 The earth rocked under her feet, and she was aware of every inch of it. Every rock and pebble at her reach; if she wanted, she could rip an abyss beneath them and tumble them all into darkness. Trees and creepers and flowers were a different kind of strength, a slow, insidious type. She knew every strata of stone; her world was cushioned by them, steady and solid.

 Only Hael was a disturbance in it all, an open archway from her room of earth. She could reach out and take his power now, if she wished, and fling up huge storms of dust, whip earth into shape with the currents of the air.

 She was almost drunk on the possibilities.

I'd forgotten how wonderful it was. I'd forgotten it all...

His voice was the breath of a god, and it brought a thousand memories with it. I know.

I missed you, she told him. I missed you so much. Everything you were. Everything we were.

He drew her closer, his arms sliding about her waist in a strangely impersonal gesture. Hael had never been impersonal; with him, every touch mattered. He had loved to be touched, she knew that, and to touch; loved to toy with her jewellery and stroke her skin, and breathe in the scent of her hair.

 That's because this isn't Hael.

 The odd, annoying voice sounded almost impatient.

 Shut up, Bhari told it firmly.

 Excuse me? Shut up? Which one of us actually owns this body? Which one of us happens to be destined for the soulless killer you're cuddling up to? Are you completely blind - look at him! Does he look like someone you'd trust your dog with over the weekend, never mind your entire existence?

 Then the unsettling thing happened.

 For a moment, Bhari's senses lurched and she had the horrible impression someone was shoving her - at her! - trying to dislodge her. She actually felt as if she rose; for a moment, she was blind, her vision snatched away-

Hael's power blasted through her like a blast of arctic wind, and the thing was gone. Whatever it had been.

Be more careful, he advised coolly. There are all kinds of edgy spirits around. Magick draws them.

  Yes. A restless spirit. Of course.

 "Ryar," Hael said aloud. It wasn't a request.

 Bhari had to focus on the real world. The Water Drax moved in that lovely fluid way, and took the hand Hael held to her.

 Her power was cool, effortless as a flood but less than it once had been. It poured over Bhari in a green and grey mass, carving another doorway into her stone room, a gate to Ryar's soul. There was hesitation here, too many memories of misery. But as water met air and earth, that pain was soothed.

 I missed even you, thought Bhari, surprised. Yes, she had missed Ryar's delicacy, her sweetness that pattered through the connection like summer rain.

 The Water Drax sighed wistfully. How poised she was, her fear receding in a near childish trust. "I missed you too," she answered. "Even your awful temper."

 Bhari smiled; Ryar was remembering the time when the Earth Drax had kicked some pious little courtesan in the shin because he was talking over Ryar, and then tipped her drink all over his bald head.

 "Just me now." Fireblade stood, his hungry eyes settling on Ryar. In the connection, a whirl of feelings leapt. Fear and anticipation and wonder and sorrow. Other things too; too many to grasp.

 Energy crackled up around him in a blaze of orange and yellow before it began to change, as all their powers did. It darkened, into a smouldering black, and leapt towards them.

 And stopped.

 He was outside the three of them, unable to break into the link. Again and again, his power smashed at theirs, trying to meld, unable to. It was as if he reached across a chasm to them, never quite able to reach.

 They had never done this without sacrifice. They had never known it couldn't be done. She knew the theory; that blood contained all four elements and acted as both a gateway and a catalyst. Never had she dreamed it was true; she had simply enjoyed the ritual and the slaughter.

 "It can't be done," Bhari said aloud. "We need blood."

 "No!" Ryar, tearing her hand away, though her power remained joined. "Keep trying. We've just never tried it before, that's all."

 "I'm afraid that would be entirely futile," purred Hael. An amused smile curved up his mouth, the moonlight putting a shimmering sheen upon it. "We are born in blood, siren, and we die in blood - and we live in it too."

 "No!" Ryar pointed a shaking finger at him. "I will never be party to murder again."

 "And besides," put in Fireblade, sounding more like his old self - if a frustrated one, "where exactly are we to find four sacrifices? Are they going to just run into our arms?"

 Hael's chuckle was gentle and sinful. "Funny you should say that."

 "Is it?" The low grate of Fireblade's was a warning. Bhari recognised the signs of his fraying temper, even more furious than her own. "I find little to laugh about."

 "You'll have less in a minute," a new voice said.

 And out of the mists stepped three heavily armed men.

~*~

 Lisa froze.

 She was close enough now to make out the silhouettes of their figures. She knew Toya's easily, even if she didn't like the slinky way she was moving. And Blue's too; she'd recognise that proud stance anywhere.

 The graceful, quiet one was Ryar. The other - humbled, yet now bristling with anger, Fireblade.

 And they had been arguing. Combining their powers, only it wasn't working. That could only be good.

 Next they had started talking about sacrifices, and Lisa had backed into the mists a little more. She wasn't going to assume they were ignorant of her presence. Not when Blue was there. She knew better.

 Then from nowhere, feet had thundered past her in, so close she felt the air stir in their passing. The clink and clatter of metal, mingled with the absolute hush of Nightpeople stalking. And the voice had spoken.

 The husky, rough voice.

 Vaje's voice.

 And others: "Evening. I never thought I'd say this, but we're here to do some good."

 A light, Australian lilt. Lazy, almost merry, and she could imagine the icy gleam to Lance's sea-green eyes right now. He'd drawn something, some kind of weapon that looked suspiciously like her curling iron.

 She felt insanely like giggling. This could not be happening. It was crazy.

 Pause, then Blue's incredulous voice came up out of the darkness like the devil in a cloud of smoke. "What exactly are you planning to do? Send us all to perm in hell?"

 Fireblade sounded caught between laughing and growling. "Ross, Ross, please don't tell me that's an electric drill. I've heard of being bored to death, but you're just taking the mickey now."

 "Go!" The panicked voice was Ryar. The other three were closing in on the assassins, circling them like starving wolves. "Don't be stupid, you can't fight them - run, now!"

 "Sorry, lady." Vaje. Oh god, Vaje, what are you doing? Lisa wanted to shout. You dumb idiot. "We can't let you start another war. Some of us are still sufferin' from the last one."

 "And you think your..." That was Toya's voice, but Lisa knew something odd was going on. Blue was calling her Bhari - and she knew exactly who Bhari had been. "...your ladle is going to stop us."

 Lisa crawled forward to hear Lance hiss, "I can't believe you brought the ladle, for crying out loud."

 "It was a mistake," muttered back Vaje. He was mere metres away, and she wanted to snatch him away from this - but then the skulking shape of Fireblade cut in front of her, and she realised that would be stupid. She would provide their fourth sacrifice. "I was aiming for the carving knife. And what about you, O Hairdresser of Doom?"

 "I modified it," muttered Lance sulkily.

 The three assassins were drawing back into a tight knot, weapons facing out as the dragons ringed them.

 "Ready?" she heard Ross whisper, glee in his voice.

 Soft affirmations from the other two.

 They leapt-

 And a roll of power like nothing Lisa had ever felt slammed them to the ground. The dragons never even dirtied their hands; the three mercenaries were pinioned, flat on their backs against the earth.

 Oh god, Lisa thought. Oh god, it was that easy. I should go - what if they know I'm here, and they make me their fourth?

  No. I can't leave Vaje. I can't leave Toya. Whatever happens, I must stay. If only I can bring Toya back - somehow. I have to...but how?

 She knew a little about possession. A very little. The invader could be shocked out, if they could be distracted enough. If she could help Toya - distract Bhari somehow. What would draw Bhari's attention away - what mattered most to her?

 Hael. But that was Blue, ever on his guard. If he was careless for one beat...yes. That was all it needed.

 Thinking, wondering, she waited. And speculated what on earth could make Blue Malefici careless.

~*~

 Bhari eyed the intruders coldly. Strong, but so very easy to subdue. They looked familiar, though she knew she had never seen any of them before. All three glared at her and Hael like they were ogres. Idiots.

 "I can't help but notice we're one short," commented Fireblade dryly. "Those three are powerful - they'll work well, Malefici. But three isn't enough."

 "He's Hael," Bhari snapped out. "What is wrong with you, Fireblade?"

 "What is wrong with all of you?" Ryar stared at them. She was pale, her stare fixed upon one of the victims. The blond one, who kicked uselessly at the bands of granite Bhari had slung over their limbs. "I will not sacrifice anyone! You can forget this, boy. I will not be party to your - your mad little plan."

 "Won't you?" murmured Hael. There was an icy threat in it.

 Her eyes widened, and that old thrashing fear was there. " Hael, no, this is not what I intended."

 "Really?" he said, so coolly amused. "Same old lies, siren, same old song."

 Ryar shook her head violently. "I won't! Not any more - not ever agai-"

 Hael's power lashed like a barbed whip, and Ryar fell, crumpling to a pile on her knees. The sheet of silver hair shielded her face, but nothing stifled her cry.

 "You'll do what I want."

 There was a clean, hard line to his face - a cruelty Hael had never possessed. Who are you? thought Bhari, both afraid and impressed. Maybe Ryar was right; you are not my Hael...yet somehow, you're mine.

 Fireblade had cradled his wife in his arms, stroking her with gentle hands. But there was fire in the eyes lifted to glare. "You'll leave her alone, Malefici. She's forgotten, that's all...she's forgotten what we are."

  "No!" Ryar pushed at her husband with trembling hands. He wouldn't let go. "I haven't forgotten- how could I forget? I won't let you do this, I-"

 Fireblade's hands tightened until his knuckles were white and Ryar gaped. Not so gentle, after all, not at all gentle. The pressure he was exerting must have been utter agony for her.

 "This is the price, Ryar," he said tranquilly. "This is the price for us."

 "Us?" she began, but the words were cut off.

 Stop it, you idiot, Bhari wanted to say as the Fire Drax began to wrap his power about his wife, turning her protests to steam. You did this all those years ago, and look what happened - civil war, blood spilling blood, and only ruins left.

 "It's a small price, sweet," murmured Fireblade so softly. Soft his words, and hard his grip on her - Bhari found herself wanting to look away. This was wrong. In Ryar's face, she saw the defiance crumbling, fear of her husband greater than anything else.

 Maybe recalling his hands on her throat, and the fury in his eyes and the obsession that had dredged her from death. Despair quivered in that fragile countenance. A tiny whimper escaped her.

 Ryar's defiance crumpled, and the boy with the extraordinary blue hair, so bright and fierce and sacred...

 He smiled.

  But heaven, no, heaven don't hear me.

Chimera Part Thirty Seven

Did I need to place my heart in the palm of your hand
Before I could even start to understand?

 This just isn't fair, thought Vaje Chusson furiously. Every muscle in his body bulged, straining to break the rock that had flowed over his wrists and ankles. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

 There was supposed to be a chance to fight. One big, apparently hopeless battle. And even if you had picked up the damn ladle by mistake, your vastly superior enemy was supposed to have some small flaw, say, a full-frontal lobotomy.

  Well, that went well, muttered Lance morosely. He was still, routed. Why do I have these smart ideas like let's go down fighting? Why don't I ever say let's leave the country now?

  You did say that once, Vaje said broodingly, twisting his wrists only to shred his skin - but still, he'd felt the rock shift. Remember? In Brisbane? Then we got on the plane, and nearly got spread across the landscape in very thin pate because that stewardess turned out to be one of Daybreak's blasted fanatics.

  Oh, yeah. Still, it was a bloody stupid idea. I mean - dragons? C'mon, mate, you know I'm not that dumb. We're assassins - we don't go rushing in like this. But then, I didn't think she was like them.

 Vaje frowned. It was true. He was impulsive one, and Lance was the ice-cube cool thinker. And Ross was...was...well, high mostly. You're right - we don't go rushing in. That is weird.

  Not really. The new voice stung like bees, and Vaje had to crane his neck to see Blue wiggle his fingers at them in a little disdainful gesture. You've all grown very lax at shielding those vacuous spaces you call minds. Frankly, I thought better of you, Stormshot. Chusson's always been the weak one.

 Lance was ominously silent but his mind darkened until it was a setting sun in Vaje's senses, sinking into smog-filled clouds. Ross, however, supplied words enough for all of them in one long streaming tirade.

  Hush now, chided Blue with cyanide amusement lacing his tones. Just because you're going to be sacrificed for a higher cause...well, I lie, mostly you're going to be sacrificed for my benefit, but there's no need to be bitter.

 Vaje let his head fall back with a thump. You manipulated us?

  Precisely. Blue leaned over him, his eyes no longer that shocking blue, but a swelling, unholy black. By the way, Chusson...your girlfriend's out in the mist.

 Vaje's heart iced over. No...Malefici, don't you dare or I'll...I'll...

  You'll co-operate, advised the lamia lazily. I have no need of her. Of course, should there be any kind of...difficulty - well, I may have to offload some of my displeasure. Suddenly. Sadistically. Gorily.

 Vaje glared back him but kept silent. He understood. And idiot that he was, he'd behave. Even though he knew Malefici would probably hunt her down later anyway. He just couldn't bear to take that chance.

   She'll hear your death, continued Blue idly, tapping his foot on the granite chain. Likely able to break it with a step. Though one has to wonder if it will touch her heart. After all, she's seen so much pain.

 What are you on about, thought Vaje dazedly. She's a kid.

 Blue kicked the stone manacle and it shattered into fragments. Before Vaje could even wrench his arm free to try pounding the sneaky son-of-a-bitch, it was replaced by another fetter, this one invisible.

She isn't, murmured the vampire. Not that it makes any difference now, of course.

  Why are you doing this? Ross, sounding more puzzled than upset at the fact he was about to become the entrée at a dragon banquet. Bringing back the war isn't going to gain you anything. Lots of fun, he added brightly, but not a lot of profit.

 Blue only rolled his eyes heavenward. How naïve you all are. How very, very naïve.

 "Well, where's the fourth?"

 The strident voice belonged to Fireblade who was stood out of Vaje's eye-line. God, the coyote thought. I used to threaten my son with him. The big bad legend springing from fire and fear. And here he is.

 Big and bad as hell.

 Vaje redoubled his efforts to break his chains. Useless it might be, but he couldn't die easily.

 A measured, languid swivelling of Blue's head, and the famous Redfern disdain oozed. "Have a little patience, Fireblade. Or if you can't be patient, at least be silent and spare us all your endless droning."

 Fireblade roared with laughter. "That was Hael if ever I heard him!"

 Was Malefici looking startled? Surely not.

 Maybe he doesn't have as much control as he wants, Vaje reflected. Pulling all these strings; oh, he's good, he's good all right but I always heard tell that those who played with dragonfire got well and truly burnt.  Anything I can do to distract him has to be useful.

  At last, the fetter on his other wrist shattered. Again, replaced by air strong as diamond.

 Just another little distraction.

~*~

"Well?" Fireblade stalked over the ground, his arrogance cloaking him. Lisa could hardly believe it was the same man who had wept and begged. "I have waited millennia for this, Malefici."

 "Then another thirty seconds will hardly make a difference," was the detached reply.

 "How did you get this fourth, anyway?" Fireblade circled, his eyes flashing orange spikes into the thickening night. "Is this one going to come running?"

 "Not precisely." Blue was still, a blade of a boy in the ghostly moonlight that drifted between the thinner mists above them. "Set a victim to catch a victim. My assistant caught someone for us. A vampire. Powerful. Not a native either; one that won't be missed. Or so she tells me."

 "Why not just use your aide?" purred Fireblade. "No one's indispensable."

 Chatoya's - though Lisa supposed it was Bhari's right now - face was perplexed, not seeming to understand their discussion. The yearning in the witch's face when she looked at Blue was disconcerting.

 "Human, unfortunately," Blue threw out. "A shame; it would have been much more economical."

 "Human?" Toya stepped forward, one hand poised on her hip. That sensual sashay was not hers. "Hael, I thought we cured your fondness for these upstart mortals?"

 "Times have changed." Blue reached out nonchalantly, and Toya - no, Bhari - twined herself into his arms like a contented kitten. "But, my divine one, a mortal does not have the power we need."

 Fireblade's snap grated on the air. "And speaking of time, when-"

 But Blue Malefici's attention was not on him; it was focused behind the crumpled heap of Ryar, to the shapes forming in the fog. Not one, but two.

 They came out, one figure dragging the other. Battered, and bruised, and gaunt, it trailed like a broken-winged bird. The head was down, faint in the mist but unease knotted in Lisa's stomach.

 The first figure that emerged was only a girl - just a girl. How ordinary she was in this bold tableau of Nightpeople, how drab and dull. Yet there was a zealous light in her face, and she paused, proud.

 "Your fourth," she announced, and flung the second person forward from the concealing haze.

 Lisa gasped, the fog swallowing up the sound.

Cougar.

 And in that instant, she saw it - Blue's face, so briefly exposed, his grip on the dragonfire slipping.

 He didn't know! Lisa's thoughts screamed. He didn't know it would be his own brother! Now - quick, now, while he's distracted-

 She bolted from her hiding place, swift as a loosed arrow and exactly as she had so few days ago, launched herself into the air.

   Don't- she heard Vaje bawl as Blue's power flickered and waned in her senses. Rock groaned, fractured nearby as she flew, and she only dimly saw the coyote bound to his feet. Whatever had held him was gone and-

 Air slammed her backwards.

 "You little-" she heard Fireblade begin to say, and fire streaked from his hands in a glorious blaze at her.

 Lisa swayed, and icy winds pinioned her.

 But by then Vaje was springing effortlessly, his body streamlining into a small furred shape that leapt right in the path of that bolt.

 Oh nonono...

 He dropped, his side seared like grilled chicken.

 Ryar dashed towards him, horror in her face - and Fireblade caught her about her waist, fending off her single blow with a blast of power which made the air pop so loud that for a few seconds, Lisa was deaf. The dragon woman slid boneless to the ground, sobs wracking the air.

 Through it all, Blue Malefici simply stood, looking at his half-brother. The chaos about him might not have been occurring.

 They were only staring at each other, gold eyes and blue, so different - and yet, in this moment, so alike.

 And then Blue turned away with a dismissive gesture. His voice when he spoke was utterly collected, and pitiless as the stab of his eyes.

 "Is there a reason for this dawdling?"

 Lisa had never hated him more.

 The lamia boy turned his head to the human girl who had brought Cougar. "You've done well, Sandrine," he said mildly. "So I'll let you live today. Go. Now."

 Sandrine, whoever she was, went without a word, or anything but one vicious, hard glare at Cougar.

 A low growl rose from Fireblade like a volcano clearing its throat. "You released one of the prisoners."

 "Well, you didn't have to fry him, Fireblade. You just wasted one of our sacrifices," complained the evil, evil thing in Chatoya's body. "It's just fortunate that a replacement arrived."

 Oh my god. Lisa's thoughts were dissolving into pure panic. Oh my god, she will really kill me, she will.

 "Toya!" she screamed, pleading to the only person who could stop this. "Toya, don't do this!"

  Every memory she had of Chatoya, she slung them at Bhari like a stone from a slingshot. So many of them in fragments, of times and places and days gone.

 Bhari fought, her incredible power battering back Lisa like a gnat. But she wouldn't give up so easily; this was life or death now, everything depending on finding Toya buried in a dragon's power. Everything.

 Blue's voice sliced the silence. "Well, Bhari? You began the war - will you end it now?" A simple gesture in her direction, and Lisa knew what he meant. It would be the most sublime irony; that her closest friend should murder her in pretence of peace.

And then one memory rose to the surface, clear and whole. If anything could bring her back...

 She hurled it with the desperate of a last javelin.

~*~

 Bhari was confused, thrown by the flurry of action she had not expected. The girl had come from the mists with unbelievable swiftness, hidden so even Bhari could not sense her.

 Hael! she had screamed silently, horrified. Her grip on the connection slipped, and fell away. Dimly, she felt Ryar too wrench away.

Hael's power curled up like a tidal wave, shimmering faintly aquamarine in the air, crashing on the attacker. The vampire was trapped, pinned like a butterfly.

But that shapeshifter had snapped free somehow, and sprung right into Fireblade's lashing flame.

 Pungent smell of meat burning, and a sacrifice crumpled, barely moving.

 Blasted Fireblade and his heavy-handed approach to everything. If it didn't fall and worship at his feet, it was dinner, and she told him so. And then...

Images hit her like hail, whirling about her in a giddy carousel. Too many, crammed with smells and sounds and sensations.

Eyes bright and green, watching her with tenderness. The crisp sound of a British accent, this boy telling her eagerly about his day.

  The damp sound of a pancake hitting ground zero. A chorus of groans, and the frustrated clang of a saucepan on the sideboard. The vampire girl who had dashed from the shadows was pleading innocence, scuffing the pancake behind her.

 It was her, Bhari recognised, the vampire girl - Lisa, her mind supplied helpfully, doing this. She should make her stop this. She should...

The sight of a black-haired girl, desperately familiar, cuddled up with the British boy, and being relentlessly showered with M&Ms by the crow-haired lamia sitting across the room with a murderous glare.

The smell of hot chocolate, thick with foam and so laden with sugar the spoon would hardly move. Warming her palms, as she sat around a fire with these three; lamia and cheetah and vampire, many years ago. Yet there was someone missing, there was-

 No, I won't allow this! Bhari raged in the clogged, enclosed space of her mind. Get out!

 She pushed hard at this Lisa creature's mind, and knew with grim certainty she was winning. Yes, she would stop this, she would crush her, she would-

 The image blasted into her mind with such force, Bhari was physically rocked.

The face, chubby with the last traces of childhood, yet fiery in the stubborn line of the mouth, and the cascade of dark, dark red hair that was straight and smooth as satin. Red as the ground around her, the impossible cherry red of life carelessly spilt.

 Just because he could.

 The thought roared up in Bhari, bringing not a darkness, not banishment, but a new and overpowering personality. One stronger, made strong by a cruel world and a crueller heart to mirror her every move.

 Chatoya Irkil's cry scorched across those memories like a supernova.

  Because I let him.

Bhari felt herself washed away under that anguish, and the guilty thought echoed forlorn as a lone hawk, looping across this sacrosanct hush.

 Never again.

~*~

 Chatoya breathed in, no longer seeing through her eyes as if she looked at a distant landscape. Oh, thank Goddess, Bhari was quelled, a silent withered thing within the deepest corner of her mind.

 And then she turned to face him. Never again.

 Because of her indifference, because of her recklessness, Sonj had died. Because of Bhari's indifference, innumerable nameless people had died. In some way, both of those people lay in her now. Memories of old wars haunted her surely as memories of Sonj, dying in blood like roses.

 But now the power was under her control. It no longer fought her; there was a lot she had learned in that frightening sojourn as a passenger in her own body. How to treat her stolen dragon powers. How to use them.

 Blue's fearless eyes looked back at her; as icy and tranquil and pitiless as they had always been.

 "Yes," she said, quite collected, shocked at her own calm. "I will end it."

 Forward she went, slow step after step in Bhari's usual, slinking walk. Sway of her hips, and the devilish smile on her mouth that was not hers. She left it there, acting her charade to cold perfection. Past the dismal, bleak gaze of Cougar, fury in her heart for him. Past Vaje's crumpled form, blistered along his side.

 Past even Lisa, whose desperate eyes pleaded with her, but held hopelessness. Even she did not see through this sham.

 And then only he remained, and she still slid forward.

 So close there was not a hair between them, until she felt the snug slide of his arms around her, the satisfaction in his eyes that she was his, entirely his in any way he chose.

  She put her lips to his ear, and reached up her hands to caress that angular, strong face. Caging him.

 "My way," Chatoya whispered.

 And then she did something she would never have even dreamed possible if she had not, for those brief, alarming moments, been Bhari.

 She opened up the soulmate link between them like kicking open a door.

 Here she was, inside his very self, in that sparkling, beautiful place that was so dangerous. His mind was clean edges, sharp lines, yet filled with a clear light. And now she saw what she had been too afraid or too blind to see before; the shimmering shapes that moved under the ice, the dance of fires incarcerated, of warmth buried.

  "You can't bring the war again," she said aloud, her voice bouncing back as her reflection did in pallid, wavering form. "I won't let you."

 "Won't you?"

 He appeared from nowhere, a dark shape in his bright, blazing mind. On the jagged brinks, droplets of blood began to form and drip. The slick white floor darkened, oozing crimson consuming it.

 The scornful eyes looked her up and down. "Witch of mine, we have played this scene a hundred times before. You throw your futile defiance at me, I defeat you, and we put away our props until the next time."

 He walked forward, and shoved her.

 Her feet went from under her, and Chatoya landed hard on her hip.

 Above her, his face was striking, a mask of white and blue. "How determined you are," he told her. A small, feline smile flickered. "A pity it will do you no good."

 She reached for him, and it seemed a vast, painful force hit her-

 And the cold night air was on her skin; he had his hands over hers, and wrenched her grip from his face with incredible strength. His power smashed at her, on every sense she possessed until Chatoya thought she would melt into dust.

 From the depths, she felt Bhari begin to surface; she felt herself disappearing again. No...

 "Don't you know?" he asked, almost gently. "You won't win. You aren't enough."

 She was bowing under his might, even her dragon power crumpling under this vast invisible force. He could choke the air from her lungs if he wished, and he might. Suddenly, she was afraid he might, regardless of the cost to himself.

 Not enough...

 "Not alone," she answered, and reached to Lisa.

  Please? was all she gasped. The solid, bronze weight of Lisa was there then, pushing back against the windstorm of opal-edged azure that swamped her supernatural senses.

  You might have asked, a terribly tired, hurting voice muttered, and she felt the near-insignificant glimmer of Cougar's mind. The pain in it cut her, and fury only made her fling yet more power at Blue.

 The grim, angry lilt of Lance broke in. Need a hand? The double slam of sea-green and china-blue - Ross - weighed in behind her. They knew what it meant if she lost. They knew Bane Malefici too, too well.

 Unable to free herself from Blue's inflexible, excruciating grip, Chatoya raised her voice. "What about you, Ryar? Will you let them make you powerless again? Are you going to let them beat you? His promises are empty - you knew that when you ended the last war. Are you really going to help him start another?"

 There was a cry, shrill as a lark.

 And Chatoya felt Ryar beside her like the weight of all the oceans in the world, every shed tear, every drop that had slipped between cupped hands. For the first time, Chatoya glimpsed what Ryar could have been if her world had not moulded and damaged her so.

 Blue's eyes widened, astounded and dark as assassins and victims and soulmate alike stood up to him.

 For an instant, their powers were frozen, locked in tense, titanic battle-

 And his power was gone. For a moment, Chatoya strove to understand what had happened, and slowly it dawned on her.

 Blue Malefici had yielded.

 They had won.

 Staggered, she could only stare at him.

 He spread his hands gracefully, every move shadow-silken. "I concede."

 "You bloody what?" was Lance's contribution.

 Blue hiked up one eyebrow, mockery ripe on each word. "My glorious and articulate adversaries. You win."

He looked down at them all - they had won, surely, this strange union of people from across the world, and across the ages. A smash of colours and faces, from the wide and wistful violet of Ryar ap Sangager, to the indolent, curling smile of Lancelot Stormshot to that anxious stance of Lisa, her hands cradling Vaje to her.

 Chatoya stood in front of them, in front of this cluster who were all in some way hers, hers from the dark and shameful past, from the days when the last of her childhood had sparkled bright like morning dew, from the future she would forge with them, treading new paths and shifting old ones.

 And he - he, who had lost the gamble he had taken with such style and grace and brilliance - he only stood before them with his held high and proud as ever he had, with his blue beyond blue eyes moving over them, searching the faces of her friends and her followers and her fiends before that thoughtful gaze came to rest upon her.

 She saw it sitting so clearly in that azure silkiness, what Bhari had glimpsed with wiser eyes than hers. How had she been so blind as to miss it? How could she not have known?

 Maybe she had seen it, and been afraid.

 He was a creature to fear - every shred of sense she possessed told her that. The winter was wrapped around him as surely as the blood that soaked his past. He was cold, colder than ice, and colder than polar seas, colder than the dead heart of a star.

 So cold he burned.

 She met him, stare for stare, in the waiting silence, in the thick, comforting darkness of a night that had almost been torn apart by fire, never to heal. He would have broken the world in two.

 "My glorious adversaries," he repeated.

 And then his smile flashed as startlingly, as stunningly as the sun and those eyes blazed with a thousand shades of blue, sky to ocean, every blue the world could encompass. The laughter poured from him, a full, genuine sound that filled the empty air with delight, with mirth, with contempt too .Blue Malefici stood there and laughed at them all, dazzling and astonishing as ever he had been.

 They all stood and watched him. Chatoya was certain there must be some last trick, that he would snap his fingers and the world would crumple like tin foil.

 Slowly, his laughter died, and he stepped forward, something strange and disturbing glittering in his face. Step after step, with that boundless confidence in every movement, until he was in front of her.

 His hands clasped her face, and the rest of the world might not have existed except for him. He was warm with secret fires, warm with something that could never be broken or crushed. He should have been cool as china with that sunless marble skin, he should have been so many things but in the end, he would only ever be himself.

 Chatoya looked at her soulmate, and for perhaps the first time, thought she knew just what that might be.

 "This is the end," she said very quietly, so only he would hear. "You nearly had us all. But this is it. This is where it stops."

 The smile put the hints of colour into those slanting cheekbones. "Is it, witch of mine?"

 "The past is gone. Let it go. Let it rest." His touch was tingling firefly-light on her skin, sending frissons through her bloodstream. He couldn't make it easy on her, damn him - even now, he wouldn't. "The war is gone, and if you brought it back, you'd have wiped out a world. Is that what you wanted? The biggest kill ever. The one to end them all."

 Those extraordinary eyes widened, and one hand drifted to pull idly at her hair. It was too intimate, too tender for this moment and this boy.

 Behind her, she heard a sound that might have been Cougar trying to shout through several people's hands.

 "Is that what you thought?" There was surprise in his voice - surprise a cluster of sparks in the link between them. "Is that why you called in the cavalry?"

 "I didn't call them," she said flatly. "Three mentally unstable murderers aren't my idea of good support."

 He arched one eyebrow, but those startled flickers were only beginning to fade. "No? I hate to tell you, but girl scouts aren't much use, unless you're fighting the Cookie Monster."

 "Well, you've got the colour scheme right," she said sweetly. Point for her by the irritation that prickled nettle-like in her mind.

 His fingertips were stroking up and down her neck now, and unsettled, she recognised the gesture as Hael's.

 "Did you really think I intended to start a war?"

 This wasn't right. This wasn't how it was meant to be; he should have been defiant, or angry - not standing there with that quizzical, arrogant expression, not toying with her hair. Not fearless.

 "Didn't you?" she answered slowly, and the answer was there. All he did was look at her, and in that tranquil sapphire stare, she realised how wrong she was.

 Why would he want war? He knew that nothing would be able to stand in his way ,and if there was one thing, one blasted thing she should know about Blue - he didn't like life easy. But why else would he want the power of the Four? People who could change the world - who could change anything.

 It was as if she knew the answer, but had forgotten it.

 "I don't think it really matters now, does it?" he drawled, and suddenly his hand had tightened in her hair. Pain in tiny needles, but he hadn't put any real strength into it. Her neck would have snapped if he had. "Any other edicts you wish to issue tonight?"

 "I don't think you understood," she said clearly, and a half-remembered memory came to her.

 The dragonfire leapt up at her bidding, a half-tamed tiger within her, and it gave her a speed she should never have had. Arch back like this, and reach out to snap one hand about his wrist while the other pried free his fingers, the ground rippling up at her behest to knock his feet from beneath him-

 Blue was on his knees, his offending arm twisted up behind his back.

 She glanced up and saw they had quite the audience. An open-mouthed Lance was standing with one finger pointing at them, while Ross wore a smirk that stretched between his ears. Lisa had a definite glint of approval in those dark eyes, while Ryar merely watched them as if not quite understanding these rather odd people.

 "Can I applaud?" asked Lance.

 "Can I kick him while he's down?" was Cougar's growl.

 Chatoya ignored them all. Blue had turned his head to gaze serenely at her. She wanted some kind of reaction, but what she saw there wasn't right. Shock, yes, she had wanted that - but not this growing satisfaction, not a caged, wicked amusement that bloomed like a desert flower in his face.

 Still. It had to be said. "I didn't mean you stop playing with dragons," she told him, keeping her words low so the others wouldn't hear. This was between him and her. "I meant you stop playing with me. No more of this. I'm not your inferior, I'm not your toy, I'm not your enemy. I'm your equal, and I'm your mirror, and I am your soulmate, whether you like it or not. You can't change that."

 "I know that now." There was a wry twist to his lips, but he still held himself regally as a king on his throne. Even when he was on his knees. "What is it exactly you want from me?"

 More than I knew I wanted. More than is safe for me. More.

 "Yourself," she answered, and the words surprised even her a little. Yes. Himself. All of him - everything that made Blue Malefici disquieting and dangerous and thrilling, everything that had touched her world and changed it in ways that were frightening and wonderful. The shadowy softness of his voice, and the treacherous tides of his nature - she didn't want him to change from the flawed, sparkling creature that he was - she loved him for who he was.

 Oh Goddess.

 She loved him, didn't she?

 Oh Goddess.

 There it was. The truth she hadn't even dared think, out in the open, a vast and terrifying fact. Chatoya didn't even know she had let go of him, and stepped back. The world was shaken; there was her future dangling from a fraying thread in front of her and it all depended on hiding it.

 She had won, but he had not lost.

 "This is the end," she managed finally, staring at him as flatly as she could and terrified that he could see her soul as if she was turned to glass.

 His head was tilted sideways, and he was measuring her. He stood in one motion, to cup her face and draw her close until the air between them was shadow, until he had obliterated all else from her world.

 Oh please - oh please, don't see.

 It would be the deepest profanity if he were to know; it would be his triumph over her.

 I have given my soul into your hands and this is the end of me. Here is my undoing, here is my crucifix. Here are the nails - the look in my eyes, and the way I cannot breathe when you are this near, and this shivering.

 Here I am. Your sacrifice.

 "No," he murmured, and the thin rim of gold about his eyes flowed outwards, the sun exploding over the horizon. "No, only the beginning."

It's only when I lose myself with someone else
That I find myself.

Chimera Part Thirty Eight

Another day
  I call and never speak
  And you would say nothing's changed at all.

 Several days later, the small, enclosed world of Circle Strange was still hectic and wild, still thrumming with the sudden intrusion of a private apocalypse.

 A bit like a gatecrashed party, as Cougar Redfern later put it, only without the benefits of alcohol, and with debris on a rather larger scale.

 Shaken, shocked and extremely frazzled, no one knew quite how to cope. It was as though the sun had changed colour. The world was the same, yet cast in other hues, with strange new shadows and startling illuminations.

 Nothing had changed. And yet...it had.

~*~

 "You'll have a lovely scar from this," remarked Chatoya, unravelling Vaje's bandages with gentle hands. "And nice pecs, by the way."

 The coyote nearly choked. "Do you mind?"

 He was mostly in one piece now; every day since he had been half-burned to heaven, Chatoya had been gradually healing the mess of blistered and cooked skin on his side. The burns of dragon fire, it seemed, healed as slowly on Vaje as if he were human. She knew he was in a lot of pain - more than he let on to Lisa, who clucked over him like a mother hen.

  She glanced up, unaware that her wicked grin had something of Blue in it, confused by Vaje's sudden flinch and the flicker of unease in his eyes. "No. I'm enjoying myself, actually."

 "He's yummy, isn't he?" put in Lisa proudly from where she was flicking open Chatoya's bottles of home-made burn salve. "He's just being coy, Toya, don't take any notice of him." Her friend winked behind Vaje's back.

 Big change from the crying, furious creature who had been clinging to Vaje's unconscious form. Chatoya had never seen anything - not even Cern Akafren - affect Lisa so harshly. That night, the made vampire had been nearly hysterical, shrieking at her to do something, anything, just not to let him die.

 Chatoya had thought he might even die. The burn shot from his elbow all down his side, varying from angry, pustule-covered red to shiny pink, to liquid-filled white. When she searched for a pulse, she had found only a stuttering tap that was fading.

 But then Ryar ap Sangager had nudged her out of the way, her touch sure where her face was anxious. The Water Drax hadn't even touched the wound, only moved her fingers over it like a medium passing her hands over a crystal ball.

 And beneath it, the worst of the wound had faded, shrinking in itself like time turning back; of course, some old part of Bhari had whispered in Chatoya's mind, water is opposite to fire. It heals where fire destroys, but even the last Water Drax can't heal this completely.

 At last, breathing unexpectedly hard, Ryar had moved back, turning her attention to someone else. Lance, probably, though Chatoya had been too busy pouring her own power into Vaje by then. She'd not seen the Drax since, but intended to thank her when she did.

 Now, Chatoya fought to keep her face straight. "What? Stop noticing all this?" She poked his unscarred side playfully, and burst out laughing as Vaje snatched his T-shirt from the kitchen table to cover his chest.

 "You're treating me like a sex object," he informed them. "Now treat my damn wounds, lady, that's the only reason I took off my top!"

 Lisa snorted. "That isn't what you told me."

 The shapeshifter grinned, abandoning his show of false modesty. "Well, lass, that's different. You can kiss me better any time." He winced as Chatoya slathered liniment all over the half-healed burns. "The lads at Pursang will be impressed with this one. Beats Lance's jellyfish scars hands down."

 Chatoya risked a glance in Lisa's direction and saw her friend looking grim. She knew Lisa didn't approve of Pursang, but nothing was said. An awkward silence fell as she finished ministering to the coyote.

  "Well, you certainly won't be winning any beauty contests," she remarked lightly, trying to take the sting from the air. "Keep stretching, okay? Otherwise the skin will tighten and you'll find it harder to move on that side. I'm sure Lisa will help you with that," she added mischievously.

 "She keeps me busy." His smile was affectionate, and for a moment, Chatoya wished someone would look at her that way; that tender, private glance said more than the casual words.

 Unexpectedly cut by that envy, she gathered her belongings and went up to her room, because she could hardly bear to look at them. Hardly bear to see what she would never have.

~*~

One evening, days on, finally feeling sane enough to cope with it all, Chatoya went back to the Slones'.

 To her intense relief, she found Aspen conscious and apparently unscathed, clutching a bottle of beer in shaking hands. Sat on the front porch under the yellow glow of the light, kicking his feet against the rickety steps, he was almost the picture of cosy normality.

 When he saw her, the lamia went ice-white, his strange eyes filling with foaming terror.

 Chatoya paused, keeping a safe distance from him. She didn't know if he would run, or just try to pound her into tiny pieces. If it had been her, she would have been holding a chainsaw rather than a bottle.

 Long silence, as they stared at each other. Outside the harsh glare cast by the light, the world was reduced to ink blots and black velvet.

 "Are you...you?" he said timidly, half on his feet. "Or am I going to have to bludgeon you to death?"

  Chatoya grimaced. "I'm about as me as I get. And you really shouldn't tell me your master plan in case I'm lying."

 A sweet grin lit him. "Might not be my master plan. It could be a subter..sutter...trick. And you're the only person dumb enough to try and give me advice on how to stay alive."

 "Are you okay?" she asked, her eyes searching him for any signs of injury, any damage from where she had unloaded the dragonfire into him.

 He rolled the bottle between his palms, tilting his head on one side. "I had some interesting dreams for a few nights. And breathing was pretty hard for a few days after I got a lungful of whatever that was, but...fine. If you were trying to kill me, you did a lousy job."

 "Oh, thanks," she muttered. Slowly, just in case he did think she was lying, Chatoya clambered up to sit by him, listening to the rhythmic thud of his feet kicking the steps. "Um...Aspen..."

 He looked at her sideways, his smile slowly dying like a guttering candle. "Witch girl?"

 "I'm...uh..." Sorry I got possessed by the mad dragon bitch? Sorry I blasted a few thousand years of power at you? She didn't even know where to begin. It seemed crazy, surreal, as so much of her life had lately.

Aspen was looking at her with his eyes wrecked and wide, with the fluttering tatters of his hope in his face. It hurt to look at him too long, to see such heartbreak and to know he probably wasn't even aware it was there, naked to the knowing eye.

 She knew pain far too well not to see it in him.

 "I'm sorry," she said before she could stop herself. "I'm sorry for all the things that have happened to you. Most of all for what I did."

 I know you too well. Somehow, we've been thrown together too often; in that graveyard, in that café when you were shredded. I've gone to you - to someone I hardly know - for help when I couldn't ask my oldest friends. Somehow, we've become close without truly knowing each other.
 
 "What you did?" Aspen shook his head, smiling wanly. "It...doesn't matter."

 "It does," she protested, confused.

 "No. It doesn't. You..." He swallowed hard. "Do you know how long I was on that enclave? How long I wished someone would come and take it all away, someone would kill him? And he used to hear me thinking it, and then he'd come and he'd...he'd..."

 Words failing him, he ran a trembling finger over the back of her hand.

 Images, all tangled like a confusion of barbed wire, sharp and prickled and atrocious. Slashing at him even in remembrance, even though he was bathed in light, safe in this human world and human home.

 He lifted his hands to cover his eyes, as if he realised now how the broken pieces of his soul clung to them. Small shudders rocked him.

 A week ago, she wouldn't have dreamed of doing it but now Chatoya put a careful arm around him, and kissed his temple like she might have Jepar. It seemed like he really was a child, relaxing into her with a trust she found both gratifying and just a bit disconcerting.

  Gradually, the shaking stopped, and he peeked through his fingers to gaze at her. His dual-coloured eyes were a soft autumn gold, and the pure, almost familiar, blue of empty skies. "But you took all that away," the lamia said, as if he had never stopped talking. Very quiet, his voice, and rough around the edges. "You killed him. I can forgive you anything for that. Anything at all. Zapping me with a little bit of dragonfire isn't much."

 "Aspen, I didn't mean to kill him," she admitted now, guiltily. "If Blue hadn't..."

 He shrugged. "Doesn't matter what your intentions were. You did. No one else could do it. Not even Tam. Look, witch girl, don't worry about it." He even slung her a rakish if tremulous smile, bright as the three streaks of blond zapping through his dark hair. "Blue explained it."

 "Blue?" She was too surprised to say anything else.

 "Yeah. He came to see me." The lamia shrugged, a careful façade of relaxation. Only his white knuckles gave the lie. "He told me all about the Four, and I told him he should have let me have the powers."

 "What did he say?" she asked, too fascinated to ask the questions she ought to have.

 "He'd rather grope you than me."

 Aspen laughed out loud at her expression, at once stifling the sound as if he was afraid of who might hear.

 "Okay, that's a lie. I mean, he would rather, though he didn't say that, but you know that's not the kind of thing he says because..." Flustered, the lamia stumbled to a stop.

 "I know what you mean," she reassured him. "I think."

 "Well, what he actually said was that you were strong enough to handle it." His face was wondering, examining her from head to toe. "First time I've ever heard him compliment anyone."

 "Sure it wasn't his good twin?" she asked sourly. "I don't think Blue knows what a compliment is."

 "He knows. He just doesn't think they're very useful. That's why he's not much into friends either. Me and Therese are pretty much it. And you, of course."

 "He is not my friend," she pointed out almost calmly.

 The lamia simply looked at her. "No, you're more," he said as if agreeing something. "Toya..." The way he said her nickname was very tentative, as if he thought she'd snap at him for it. "Are we friends?"

 It was what she herself had been wondering. "I don't think so," she said slowly. "We're just..."

 "Destined to spend lots of time talking about Blue?" he said with a sly humour that surprised her. "Do you...think we could be friends?"

 Surprised, she looked at his anxious face, thin still, causing a pang in her chest. He looked too like Cern. "I...don't know," she answered honestly. "Maybe."

 "Because..." he continued, his voice becoming wistful and much quieter, "I've always wanted friends. I mean - ones who know about it all. Pursang, and the Nightworld, and Blue. I wanted to tell someone so many times. Tam doesn't like to hear about it; it scares her. But...it wouldn't scare you."

 "Oh, it scares me," she said dryly. "Witless."

 A timid smile grew at the edges of his mouth. "You're smarter than me then. T-toya - I'll help you with Pursang. With it all." His voice was earnest, briefly confident. "And even Blue. I owe you that much."

 "You don't have to do it because you owe me," she pointed out wearily.

 "It's not just that. I think...I think I do like you. I've never met anyone who stands up to Blue like you. You're good - even after everything he's done, you're good, and maybe you can do something with Pursang. Vaje'll help you, and I'll help you, and maybe even Ross will. He likes you...sort of."

 Chatoya had to doubt that. Ross didn't like her; he owed her. "You'll really help? But...why?"

 He ducked his head. "Because...because I'm sick of watching people die. I never really saw it, but I let myself be like him. Just hurting and hurting." No name. No need. It was reason enough. "So if you'll have me..."

 Those shattered eyes, open - and still, even after it all, still hopeful.

 "Of course I will," she promised, and meant it.

~*~

She didn't think the bruises would ever fade.

 Ryar rubbed her neck gently. Of course, those marks were long gone, where his hands had crushed, but inside, she was damaged. She felt battered and drained, as if she had fought a long battle only to learn it was not the end, but merely one of innumerably many.

 Maybe she could lie to herself for a while, and pretend it would be all right. Only for a while though.

 Sooner or later, the pain would grab her, roll her like a crocodile dragging her down to drown. Too many memories of words that ran into one long disparaging stream, of faces that were hurt or angry or cold, too many bodies flung and strewn on the ground. Carrion.

 She thought...

 She thought perhaps she should not be here. Perhaps she too should be among the pathetic fallen that had no dignity whatsoever, whatever the legends had conferred on them. Dragons dead, witches dead, all dead in her name and fighting her cause. So they had stood for what was right, what was noble - so goddamned what? They'd died just like anyone else.

 Time had made Ryar ap Sangager a heroine. But in her heart, she would always be afraid.

 Under the frosty morning sky, she sat before Fireblade like a student. Her long silvery hair covered her back, splitting to reveal the curve of her shoulder, her unicorn-white skin. The Water Drax was dressed too lightly for this world's winters, and seemed a piece of spring stepped into the valley.

 Home. All those years, not alive, not dead. And she was home again.

 She saw memories in it all, this place where Fireblade once had hunted, where she had tried to create a sanctuary and made only a pen. The fuzz of heather on the distant hills was the flushed purple of her eyes, a frail imitation of the vast bushes that Fireblade had once put there in a rare show of passion.

 "A woodland to match your eyes," he had declared so boldly, sweeping her into his arms. "So I can see them when I come home, and think of you."

 So you could see them when you came to me, from your infidelities, she thought now. Bitter, never sweet, those memories. So you could remember to lie.

Love and terror had chained her once, and if she turned her mind to the night of her rebirth, then too.

 Fireblade crumbled before her upon his knees, offering up his soul in penance, begging her. For a moment - a blinding, breathless moment - she had thought him truly changed. He had brought her back from death itself; surely that was sign enough?

 And then she had seen the truth of the bargain he had made. He would have let Hael - or Blue, that cold creature, bring back the shroud of smoke on them all. He would have let the war begin again.

 More than anything, always more than her, Fireblade had loved power.

That was why she had never let him - any of the Four - know the true extent of her own. Miserly, she had clutched it close and prayed they would never realise.

 Until that night, when Chatoya Irkil had called to her. When Fireblade had hurt her with his hands and his words and his power. She had done this terrible deed and made him the thing that sat before her..

 Fireblade, his eyes empty. Motionless. Locked still by the power she had hurled at him to break his grasp on her. She had made him a mannequin, freezing his soul as she might the seas of all the world. It was much the same.

 Every time he had cut her with harsh words, sliced her with his disparaging, or worse, bored looks, every flat slap of his hand on her face - all the anger and the injustice and the sorrow had boiled up behind her power and beaten him down like a tidal wave swamping an inferno. All in that one moment when she had ripped herself free of him forever.

The orange eyes were fires tempered, looking into a world no other could see. There was no expression on his face, only the features that were still familiar and impassive as ice. How well she knew the jagged parting of his hair, tumbled to hide the horns that sat upon his head. How well she recalled the calluses on his hands scraping rough upon her skin when he flung her down. Nevermore.

 Her terrible, secret crime.

 But she would shed him no tears. They welled too often in the damp depths of her heart for those she had lost to his hands. Her sisters, torn apart by violence. Her few precious friends, every last one broken bones and shredded flesh. He had done that.

 She had died gladly beneath his hands, thinking it would bring peace. Instead, it had brought only torment.

 Until he had stepped into her dreaming world. Lancelot Stormshot, with his daring sea-green eyes, stormy and subtle. Flicking his outrageous grin and casting quips like petals. Always questioning her, hungry to know. And oddly, the way his hair had felt under her fingers and the sun-dusted lines of his cheekbones and nose.

 Ryar breathed in shakily, shocked by how strong that memory was. And another tumbled onto it.

 Of the night the war had nearly begun again.

 Blue Malefici had turned, princely, and walked away from them all. Showing his back to them, careless and fearless. And Ryar had felt the relief roll up in her, the crash of tsunamis in her soul. No war. No horror. No more loss, only his surrender.

 And yet still, for all the carnage that had not come, too much blood had been shed. Feeling his pain like a knife edge, Ryar had turned to the coyote, burned and blistered on the ground. All her old healing skills had flooded back to her as if the long years had not yawned between their use. Here was her place in the world. Softening its ills, taking away its barb.

 Joyous, elated, she had spun to find this strange man who had trodden so lightly in her dreams.

 Lance had been slumped on the ground, rubbing at his wrists as if they hurt. There was a tenseness line to his mouth, a wary slant to his body she should have heeded. She didn't.

 Unthinking, she reached out a hand to help him.

 He looked at it, and raised flat, uncaring eyes to her. The seas after a storm, a deadly, ugly calm. "I don't need help from monsters," the vampire had said and smacked her hand away.

 The sound of flesh on flesh had echoed. Blank, she could only stare.

 "But I'm..."

 "Just like them," he said angrily, flinging the words at her. "So much for all your mighty morals, Ryar. When it came down to it - you would have let them kill me because you were too bloody scared!"

 Ryar had felt the pain well up in her. Her one ally in this new world - and he hated her. He loathed her.

 Childlike, she had run from them all, feet slapping on the ground, through the mists to the wooden struts of the pier. Along it, splinters snagging her skin, and she had dived into the water, her body melting into liquid. Vanishing to the one place she could forget in; days, she had drifted in its tides. Until now.

She laid her hand on her husband's head, felt him still as a crypt. Even in her senses, he was nothing, a flat grey nothing smooth as a sphere, locked in on itself. His hair was soft still under her touch, and she knew she was saying farewell to him.

 The place he had once filled in her heart was desolate and empty.

 She should have felt something surely, some gladness it was all over - she was free from him. Her love was scattered like ashes, not in commemoration, only inevitability. Surely there should have been some last lingering thought of their long life together, his wife, his sweetheart, his prisoner.

 But as she turned and walked away, to trail her fingers in the waters that were perhaps the only honest creation of his in this place of lies, her only thought was of someone else.

 Lance had turned from her. And she still didn't know why that was so terrible.

~*~

After it all, Chatoya felt intensely vulnerable.

 She told herself over and over that it could not be true. She couldn't love Blue - she simply couldn't. It was stupid and illogical and dangerous, so dangerous. If he knew, he would use it.

 And she couldn't shake the feeling he did know; that maybe he had known before ever she did.

Haunting her like a song, he seemed to appear in her life more and more. Strange encounters she kidded herself were chance, knowing they were not. Knowing there was some higher game going on that they were both playing.

 Knowing, and not knowing. Able only to wait.

~*~

Shamelessly, Lancelot Stormshot spied on Lisa's sitting room and its sullen inhabitant. He searched for answers, for the twist of blood that might show him the weakness in the appalling, intrepid being Blue Malefici was.

 Smoke drifted out of the window in wisps and ribbons, twisting skyward. The hand that held the cigarette was taut, white-knuckled. And the eyes, a wrathful gold, glittered ominously.

 "Hey...you're skipping school too, huh?"

 Cougar Redfern turned his head at the voice, but slowly, as if he didn't much care who it was. He was fitted in the gap between the wall and the open French window neatly, legs bent so the soles of his feet were perpendicular to the floor, his back perfectly parallel to the wall. It had to have hurt.

But anyone looking at him would have known he didn't care.

 "I'm flunking anyway. Might as well flunk in comfort," the vampire answered flatly.

 "You're smoking again?" Jepar Jubatus walked in carefully, as if he were afraid his head would fall off. Which, to be fair, he probably was. A massive bruise lay under the short sweep of blonde hair, a dull yellow by now. "Don't let the girls catch you. They're on a 'rid-the-world-of-evil' crusade lately."

 "Better hide your Playboy collection then," murmured the lamia coolly. His dark hair was mussed as if he hadn't bothered touching it since he'd got up, catching indigo highlights in the frosted sun. For a moment, he appeared eerily like Blue. "How's your head?"

 "Getting better," the cheetah shifter said, slumping down against the glass gratefully. "It would help if Tali didn't keep patting me on the head and asking if it hurts less this time. You?"

 "Can't sleep." The confession was calm, but the vampire's lips were tight, the words forced out. "Not sure if I ever will again. Why didn't we see it coming?"

 "What was there to see?"

 The lamia slammed the ground beside him. "I don't know! There must have been something - anything-"

 "There wasn't." Tired of eavesdropping, Lance strode in from the dining room. "Blue set the lot of us up beautifully. I couldn't have done better myself and believe me, I've had some practice."

 "What are you doing here?" snarled Redfern angrily. "Oh, by the way, thanks for not telling us what Blue was up to."

 "I didn't know," Lance snapped. "Just because I don't picket to ban the bomb doesn't mean I'm in favour of my own annihilation! Even Aspen didn't know, and he's the closest thing Malefici's got to a friend."

 "Yeah, him and Blue were always thick as thieves," muttered Redfern, his animosity fading. "At least, Aspen was thick, and Blue was a thief."

 Uninvited, Lance sat himself down, one knee crooked. "So what's changed? Aspen's still dumb, and Blue's just changed his goals. He used to steal food; now he steals all-consuming cosmic power."

  At that, the vampire grinned, if sourly, and the tension in the air eased a little. "What's changed is that he didn't get away with it."

 "What, you really thought he'd get by our Toya that easily?" said Jepar dryly, waving away clouds of smoke. "You know how determined she can b-"

 His words faded under the sudden hurt that seared Redfern's face. For a moment the striking face was cruel, rigid with pain, but it passed faster than a blink. Lance was confused, but took care not to show it.

 "Sorry," the shapeshifter said gently. "I just forgot."

 Cougar shrugged. "Don't worry about it, JJ, I seem to remember royally putting my foot in it when you two broke up."

 The shapeshifter half-smiled. "That's just you."

 "Wait..." Mouth agape, Lance looked from one to the other. "You both dated Chatoya? And Blue let her live...what's she got that I'm not seeing?"

 "Just..." Jepar shrugged.

 "Kind of..." began Redfern, his eyes liquid sunlight and hurting. "Oh man, I can't explain it." His tone said he didn't want to either. "Can we get back to moaning about my devious little brother?"

 Lance wasn't going to push it. He didn't particularly care what assets Ms Irkil was hiding under that innocent act. But he did care about just what had happened with Blue, that night.

 And he was not, not thinking about Ryar at all. About the look on her face when he slapped back her hand. The soft, shocked darkness of her eyes-

 "Yeah," he said flatly. "Suits me. Malefici's had it all wrapped up pretty as a parcel. Bastard."

 He wasn't thinking about her. He wasn't.. Not about that shimmering moonstruck hair, or the swelling curves of her body...

  "You don't like him?" Redfern sounded surprised. In the disdainful curl of his mouth, and the clean, sculpted bone structure, Lance saw a disturbing resemblance to Blue. But there was none of Blue's poise, only a stretched, angry tension in every line.

 The Australian shrugged, glad of the distraction. "Don't know. I respect him - professionally, he's untouchable. Personally - he's cold. But I guess no colder than the rest of us. He just never cared enough to hide it."

 "I'm not sure he knows how." Now, as he stared impassively, Redfern did look like Blue. The same blank features, the same sunless skin. "When's he ever needed to be anything but himself?"

 "And he's smart. Smarter than anyone else, and he knows it," Lance continued to grumble. He knew he was doing to keep his mind from other things. Other people.

 Flash of trampled violet eyes, desolate as he turned away.

 "So smart - but he's smart because he's perceptive. Reads people like you wouldn't believe."

 "Wouldn't we?" chorused Jepar and Redfern bitterly.

 He looked from the cheetah's battered face to the lamia's gaunt form, and grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. Forgot you'd been done over by Chronic Sonic."

 "Chronic..." The shapeshifter sat bolt upright, staring. "I called him that."

 Lance stared. "It's our nickname for him. We all call him that over in Pursang. Where'd you hear it?"

 The green eyes were wide and baffled. "I haven't. But it's a little too weird to be coincidence. So how...?"

 "He screwed you over," Redfern said, ash tumbling to the floor as he gestured. "Christ, Jepar, don't look so shocked. Messing with people is what he does. He got me for his sacrifice, he got you to hand over some dragon powers - he even got Toya, and she's his damn soulmate. None of us stood a chance."

Jepar settled back with an angry hiss. Something a little dangerous twisted under that open stare, and Lance found himself running over what he knew of the shapeshifter. Not a guy to mess with.

 "That's not true," said Lance softly. The smoke filling his lungs just wasn't soothing right now. Smoke, thick as the mists she had been reborn from with her shimmering skin that...no. He wasn't thinking this. "One of us did. And your Chatoya got lucky."

 Redfern smiled faintly. "Did she? I'm not so sure that Blue didn't let her."

The thought of Malefici surrendering willingly to anyone was about as likely as Ross becoming a Jehovah's Witness. And Lance hadn't had a copy of The Watchtower foisted on him yet.

 "I doubt it, somehow."

 Jepar shrugged. "Does it really matter? It's all the same now. We're alive. We're kind of okay, and I'm sure we'll have about ten minutes of peace before the next maniac comes along."

 "What do you mean, the next one?" demanded Cougar Redfern, with a flicker of wry humour. "We've got four damn dragons, three assassins, a female Renfield, a lot of uncomfortable interviews with the Elders coming up, not to mention the small matter of that whole raising-the-dead spell that everyone with an ounce of power felt. We've got more maniacs than the Lecter family reunion."

 "I'm not a maniac," Lance put in, only slightly untruthfully. "Just a murderer."

 "Round here, we don't differentiate," retorted the lamia, pointedly lifting his arms to display a rainbow of bruises.

 The Australian only chuckled. He'd had worse than that for less worthy reasons. "And Vaje isn't a real assassin - he's gone completely gooey over your vampire girl. Good thing too," he added approvingly. "Better than him moping round all the time."

 The other two exchanged looks Lance couldn't read well, but which had something of an older brother slant to them.

 "We'll see," the shapeshifter remarked. "But if he hurts her, he'll have me and Cougar to deal with. And you'll need more than a hair curler to fight us off."

 God, was he never going to live that down. "I was improvising with the tools to hand."

 "There's a chainsaw in the shed," Redfern drawled, tipping his head back against the wall. "And an electric carving knife. And any number of bats, planks and knives lying around."

 Jepar, Lance noted sourly, was fighting to hide a grin, and losing the battle.

 "But that didn't seem to put off that delectable dragon lady," continued Cougar pensively, with the starts of a wicked smile quirking his mouth. "What's going on there?"

 Inquiring gazes were turned on him. Asking the one question he hadn't dared ask himself.

 "Well, it's been nice having this manly bonding session," he announced hurriedly, getting to his feet. "But crime and homicide wait for no man. If you'll excuse me, I've got some maniacs to visit."

 Their looks said they didn't believe him, but as he paced out, Lance pretended he didn't care. After all, he'd be leaving soon. Leaving here. Leaving her.

 Her. Yes. He really couldn't put it off much longer, could he? One way or another, Ryar ap Sangager haunted him, with her smashed hopes littering her eyes, and her mouth so soft and inviting, and giving the lie to the monster in her breast. (And they weren't to be complained about either).

 He was so confused.

And I can't feel much hope for anything
If I won't be there to catch you if you fall.

Chapter Thirty Nine

Tears to break a backbone
Laughs to win a war
And people come and ask me
What I love you for...

He was watching her again.

Blue was leaning against the wall, ankles crossed, looking relaxed and approachable. His fingers were tapping a soft rhythm on the wall that she seemed to feel echo through her head like he was drumming at her soul. The starts of a smile were edging his mouth, and she knew - she just knew - that he was enjoying her unease.

 It was all written there in his eyes, which stirred with that dark and slow hungry look that made her stomach quiver.

 Chatoya clutched her books tighter, wishing they could somehow shield her from that disturbing stare. She dropped her eyes to the ground, stepping neatly round the clusters of people filling the halls. She was meeting Aspen for lunch, and didn't want to be late. Of course. Yeah. That was why she was hurrying, that was why she seemed to be moving faster and faster away from Blue.

 She threw a quick glance back over her shoulder - and he was gone. Half-disbelieving, she scanned the crowds, just in case he was doing the wacky, and being social.

 He was gone.

 Good, she told herself.

 She'd been waiting days for him to do something - for there to be some unexpected catch to his surrender that would send the world tumbling into oblivion. Instead, nothing. Well...

 Almost nothing.

 Chatoya seemed to see him wherever she went now. She went to the shops, and he was talking quietly with Ross, flicking her a single wicked glance before apparently forgetting her existence. Jepar took her out for breakfast, only to discover her soulmate and Lance playing chess outside the café, with Kirsty Ausner sat meek and mild on the floor between the pair. He'd say a cool 'hello', and even enquired after her health once, though there was more than a little sarcasm on the words.

 She went to school, and suddenly Blue decided to attend every lesson they shared with unfailing regularity. Several teachers had been stunned into silence at his appearance, and one had almost passed out when he handed in some homework.

 It was clear to her that he was playing some kind of game. It was even clearer that she didn't have a clue what it was.

 Chatoya found herself starting to turn around every time she saw him, to walk away rather than have to face his impersonal words, so different to his intimate, probing stare.

 And it unsettled her more than she liked.

 It stung her to see him, to see the flash of dazzling blue, drowning blue, and feel the skip of her heart like rocks over water. It caused a bittersweet pain to whirl in her chest when he said her name, when he said the most simple, stupidly casual things. No one should be passing out over 'your bag's broken'. No one should be made to feel giddy and equally angry just because he had even noticed such a trivial thing.

 Chatoya tried not to love him, she tried to deny it every time she saw him, but it was a lie. Part of her knew how utterly crazy it was - that he was deadly, and bleak as winter despair, and cruel. But the other part simply didn't care about that. It said: yes, he's all those things, but don't you see, he's more than that.

 It was slowly driving her mad.

 And she could only suspect he was helping it along.  

 Ever since that night, he delighted in running his fingers along her spine when they passed, in brushing back a stray bit of hair behind her ears if he felt like it. It was torture. And he damn well knew it was.

 And the rest of the Circle weren't taking it too well.

 The first time Blue wandered over, informed her in a bland and bored voice that her eyeliner was smudged, and then rubbed it off with his thumb, Cougar had been there. Only Lisa suddenly feeling the urge to hug the lamia had stopped Blue from being on the receiving end of an impromptu amputation.

 "I can't believe you just did that!" Cougar had hissed furiously, making a gesture at Blue's back that Blue returned without even looking round. The bruises had long faded from his face, but smeared violet shadows under his eyes said that maybe all was not, and would never be, right. "Lise, what were you thinking?"

 "I can't believe I just did that," muttered Lisa ruefully, sharing a tiny, embarrassed smile with Chatoya. "I think I was saving Toya in case you got a bit keen and killed her by mistake."

 Cougar had met her eyes then, and she could still see his hurt, childishly simple. Chatoya had never wanted to hurt him, never, but she had, and, oh... Oh, what a mess. "Not ever," he said shortly. "But you know that."

 And then he had stormed off, and sulked for the better part of the day.

 Lisa had taken it all in her stride, but then she had Vaje to worry about, who was more than a handful. His burns didn't stop him trying to pummel Lisa at every opportunity, and proved useful in playing up for sympathy, and, Chatoya suspected, some good old-fashioned lovin'.

 And of course, Chatoya hadn't told a one of them that she was in love with Blue.

 Even Jepar, who knew her best of all, hadn't realised. He gabbled about how happy Tali was now, and winced every time someone came near his head, and like the rest of them, muttered curses whenever Blue was mentioned. Sometimes she caught her friends looking at her a little oddly, but put it down to them hoping she wasn't going to turn into Bhari again, a feeling she whole-heartedly shared.

 Only Aspen knew, and she didn't feel comfortable enough with him to talk about it. It was Aspen Martin, for crying out loud. However hard he was trying to reform, he still had trouble using a knife to eat food with, rather than stab hapless assassinees repeatedly with.

 Chatoya glanced up and realised she gone right past the classroom Aspen had his lesson in, and doubled back hastily. Damn. She'd missed her locker too, where she'd meant to dump all her textbooks.

 If she'd seen herself, Chatoya might have understood the curious gazes of her friends. There was a new confidence in the way she moved, a little hint of slinkiness to her hips and waist, a subtle grace as she sidestepped the crowds. Bhari had left her mark in more than mere memories, more than sheer power.

 Books disposed of, she found herself late now, and half-ran down to their rendezvous. She knew Aspen didn't like being left alone any length of time - he'd told her that himself in a nervous voice, his hands twisting round and round in his lap.

 The classroom was empty, and she crashed in, chattering apologies and-

 "Really, there's no need to apologise for your ineptness," drawled Blue. "I make allowance for it now."

 No sign of Aspen. Only her stunning soulmate, quite comfortably lying on his back atop the teacher's desk, his hands under his head.

 "Where's Aspen?" she said suspiciously. She should go now. That would be the sensible thing to do.

 Blue sat up, clasping his hands round his knees so he was facing her. He looked...oh goddess, she actually thought he looked cute. This was getting chronic. "I couldn't help but notice you've been avoiding me."

 "That was the intention," she said as icily as she could manage. No guy should be allowed to look that good in a faded grey T-shirt. It just wasn't right.

 A soft, startling smile that was so utterly unlike Blue that it made heat corkscrew in her chest. No, no, please don't be charming. Be cold and cruel, let me kid myself that I hate you. "How unfair."

 "Unfair?" she echoed. "Blue, you've tried to kill me more times than I can count. You tried to start anapocalypse, what were you expecting? Floral tribute?"

 He wrinkled his nose. "Hardly my style, witch of mine. It was my understanding that you wanted to be treated as my equal."

 "I do."

 Lift of one shoulder. "Then pray tell, why have you been sprinting in the other direction the moment I do?"
 
 That was treating her like an equal? "I don't like you looking at me like I'm...meat."

 "Oh, I wasn't," he purred, that starving stare fixed on her again. "Not at all. Meat isn't quite so delicious. Or so..."

 One long look, down from the long braid of her black hair to the dusty tips of her strappy green sandals. His fingers tapping thoughtfully on his knees, that same infuriating rhythm.

 And that stare moving up again, so intense she thought she felt it tingling on her skin like the fading sun. Chatoya gritted her teeth, and tried very hard not remember how those fingers had felt tangled in her hair.

 "Tantalising," he said finally. "That top really is atrociously tight."

 "You're a fine one to talk!" she snapped, and realised it was exactly the reaction he had wanted. Oh, she just wasn't prepared for him to be flirty.

 "Considering we're supposed to be dating," he continued, amusement playing about the edges of his mouth, "I've seen...rather little of you."

"Well, you were a tad busy trying to destroy the world," Chatoya said brightly. Nastiness was the only defence she could think of. "Funny how time-consuming that can be."

 Blue rolled his eyes. "How many times am I going to have to say this? If I'd wanted to destroy the world, I would have done it by now." Damn him, he even managed to sound bored.

 And it was true. But Chatoya couldn't think of any other reason why he wanted the Four together, except for a tiny, half-forgotten doubt niggling at the back of her mind.

 "Then what do you want?" she said exasperatedly. "Stop giving me mysterious looks and riddles - I'm not..." She paused and rephrased the sentence. "I'm not that psychic."

 "Some time in your company," he answered smoothly, with the merest gleam of fangs. "I won't lie and tell you I don't bite...but I might not bite hard." He raised his eyebrows, giving her a suggestive look that had to be some kind of family trademark. "Unless you ask, of course."

 "You want to spend time with me," she repeated flatly. "Why?"

 He slid off the desk easily, and Chatoya only kept herself still by dint of too much practice. Personal space meant nothing to him; with one snaky move, he had wrapped his arms around her, and pulled her against his body so she could feel every line of it. Oh gods.

 His smile was unexpectedly gentle and sinful. "Isn't that obvious?"

 Chatoya became aware she was staring like an idiot. "I..."

 "And of course," he continued, his hands stroking circles at the base of her spine, "we should discuss our business...relationship..." Soft brush of his lips over her jaw, then her mouth, sending shivery tingles through her, a fine dusting of silver sparkles through the soulmate link. "The future..."

 The present's just fine with me, Chatoya wanted to say, but couldn't quite get the words out. She was fighting very hard against just melting right into this, snug in his arms and very much aware of his every movement.

 It's Blue. It's so incredibly wrong...it's crazy...it's impossible...

 It's heaven.

 Even as she thought it, she realised his breath was a little ragged, that there was the faintest of flushes on his face, that he really wasn't at all unaffected by this. Quivers were running through her, through the link like foaming waves chasing each other onto the shore, and his thoughts were all tumbled up in them, flashes of feelings and images that made her eyes widen.

 It was strange, realising she had this kind of power over him. Not much at all to do with Fate or destiny, and rather more to do with desire. Strange - and invigorating. And...leverage.

 "You were saying?" she murmured in the space between his kisses, trailing a finger along his neck in a gesture that, had she but known it, was entirely Bhari's.  

 "Was I?" he sighed, eyelashes flicking up so she could see that his eyes had filled with that heavy, shameless golden colour. "I thought I was kissing."

 He fitted deed to word, and Chatoya forgot what she had been intending to say or do.

 At least until the door crashed open, and a voice interrupted. "Blue, Marissa didn't want to talk to me at all, what are you on abou-oops..."

 She wrenched right out his grasp and spun to see Aspen Martin standing there, one hand barely hiding his grin.

 "Are you going to tell me this is wasn't it looks like?" he asked slyly, wiggling his eyebrows at them. "Because I saw where your hands were, Mal, and I'm not going to believe you. If you'd just wanted me to go, you could have asked, you know, instead of lying."

 "It's exactly what it looks like," Blue said, sounding as cool as ever. "Now get out, Martin, so I can get back to enjoying myself."

 Aspen was still grinning. Chatoya couldn't help but feel it was the first time he'd ever caught Blue doing anything that could be construed as normal. "Hey, Toya, any chance you'll let me know the embarrassing details? Just in case I'm ever short for money and need to blackmail him."

 The disturbing thing was, Aspen actually sounded like he meant it.

 "I doubt it," she said as calmly as she could, very conscious of Blue behind her, his fingers tracing idle patterns on her back. "I'm more likely to need to blackmail him than you."

 "Good point," conceded the lamia, his eyes wild and laughing. Chatoya could just tell he was dying to burst out laughing. "But still-"

 "Martin, out." Blue's voice could have slain a herd of charging rhinos at two hundred paces.

 Aspen left so quickly the doorframe shook as the door slammed.

 "Where were we?" her soulmate enquired.

 "You were playing games with me, and I was joining in," she said as unemotionally as she could manage. "I think it was an all-score draw."

 Behind her, Blue sighed. "Is there any way I can convince you my intentions are wholly impure?"

 She faced him, stepping out of his reach. Just because he wasn't threatening to kill her didn't mean he wasn't still searching for some way to hurt her. "If you expect me to believe you're after my body, you can forget it."

 "What, you're going to believe I want you for your personality?" Slow curve of his mouth, reminding her unfairly of Cougar. "Well, if lies it must be..."

 Inspiration was the flash of a flipped coin in the air. It might work...it might not. "Blue, I can live without your lies. Let's face it, I can get the full-blood member of the family with a lot less trouble, because even if he isn't my soulmate, Cougar's got more charm and more heart than you'll ever have. It can just as easily be him as you."

 His face was almost savage for one careless moment. "It had better not be."

 Chatoya shrugged, tired of it all. Infuriated at herself, loving him despite the fact he was such a cold, vindictive bastard. "What is it you want, Blue? I told you already - I'm sick of being messed around by you. Tell me what it is you want from me, and I may just surprise you."

 His eyes were the same liquid feral colour as a tiger's, but far too intelligent. Chatoya didn't  - would never - understand how she had been brought to this moment, to these feelings for him. From the moment he had walked into Ryars Valley, her life had begun to change.

 Not just hers. It seemed to her that he had altered everyone with his own special brand of vicious honesty. She saw flashes of ugliness in her friends' faces when they said his name; flashes of fear. Blue made them all afraid.

 Not just because he was eerie and brutal and fickle. But because....

 Yes.

 Because they saw pieces of themselves in him. Because it wouldn't be so terribly difficult to become something like Blue, to slice through the threads of civility and affection that bound them all, to forget the petty pickings of life. She'd seen inside his soul, heard his thoughts, and learned that they were only a distorted version of her own.

 In too many ways, Blue wasn't very different from her at all.

 The monster could be all too human.

 Too human in the look in on his face right now, in the way he had touched her. In the whiplash of his jealousy.

 "I don't know," he answered at last. Was that a spark of anger in his eyes? "I was endeavouring to find out."

 Oh. Oh. Was it really that simple? Could he really not be trying to manipulate her for once?

 "This...isn't really the place," she said weakly. "Unless you're planning to make mad passionate love to me up against the blackboard."

 Both of them turned to look at it thoughtfully.

 I really am getting like him, Chatoya thought.

 "It could be arranged," he said, his eyes that fraction unholy. "But if you can think of a better time and place, do name it."

 Chatoya frowned. "Are you serious?"

 "Utterly." Blue sat back on the desk with what sounded like a resigned sigh. "Witch of mine, I told you if you started something with me, I would finish it. I may be a sadistic murderer, but I keep my word."

 She didn't know what to say and settled for, "Well, isn't that virtuous of you."

 "Tonight," he said unexpectedly. "After all...didn't you mention something about a movie?"

 Don't faint, Chatoya told herself. He'll collapse with a raging fever any minute now. "I...did."

 He named a time, and much to her surprise - shock, she thought grimly later on - she found herself agreeing. A date with a murderer and her soulmate, who by unhappy coincidence, just happened to be one and the same.

 Well, it would be interesting. But then, liposuction would be interesting. It just wasn't an experience she wanted to have.

~*~

It hadn't taken him long to pack. And now he was fitting the keys into the ignition of his rental car, bags in the trunk, leaving for something new.

 He travelled light now, moving from place to place with reckless ease, leaving no trace of his presence except malingering memories. Ross couldn't remember the last time he'd owned a home. Plenty of houses he had rattled around in like a box of dice being shaken, but nowhere that had held a piece of his heart.

 Nothing that had ever touched him, really, except for the woman who had her fingers clutched tight round his heartstrings and didn't know it. Who probably wouldn't care if she did.

 And those words - Chatoya Irkil earnestly asking 'what do you want?' - so simple, the answer so sudden it had almost hurt.

 He wanted what he couldn't have.

 That one person.

 He didn't kid himself about her. Trifolia Rasmussen was cold - as she always had been, and nothing would change that. Those eyes would always be frigid and superior, regarding him as if he were some insect that had scuttled across her path. And her beauty would always be that sleek, pale perfection that was too chilly to invite anything other than appraisal.

 And he still wanted her.

 Deep inside, in bewildering daydreams, he wanted to smash past that disdainful act and make her see him. To break through the coldness, to make her vulnerable as she had somehow made him vulnerable, to see her bleeding and powerless. And at the same time, he wanted to be able to gather her up in his arms after he'd broken her into pieces, and put her back together, to invade the secrets in her smile. To see if she would crumble into him in the moments when even she must be helpless and hurt.

 He didn't understand it. Wanting to hurt her and heal her.

 But he only knew he was compelled to find her now, to know. After all the useless calls, and pointless answers, he had the one that told him where he could find her. Chatoya Irkil had kept her word, and thrown all Pursang's resources open to him.

 Everything that had happened to him in Ryars Valley mattered not a jot. All his thoughts centred around the future, about the possibility that he might find some small shred of salvation or destruction. He no longer knew which he was searching for; and no longer cared.

 One way or another, he wanted an end.

 He started the car, and left it all behind without a second thought.

~*~

He was sitting on the low wall running along the path to the doors, startling in the sunlight that never seemed to reach him.

 Sandrine admired him. Admired his skill with the kill, and his brilliant, frosty personality, and the deft way he turned aside doubt and challenge alike with a word or a gesture. Sometimes a violent gesture, but Blue Malefici never minded blood on his hands.

 And there was, after all, so much of it. She'd seen him drenched in blood, so he seemed a scarlet monster stepped out of hell to stab at their souls. His eyelashes clumped with it, his hair nearly black with others' lives, the gleaming azure of his irises alien against all that crimson.

 The consummate killer. Sheer perfection. And yet...

"I saw you," she said quietly.

 He turned, and threw her a single amused look. It was strange how she could look at him and see how much he had grown from the petulant, sharp child he had been on the enclave. Time had cooled him, had put layers of ice over his cruelty and indifference.

 Well, it had.

 Now, Sandrine was no longer sure. She had always thought Blue untouchable, a thing unmoved by anyone or anything on the earth. Bloodthirsty, sleek as a shark, he had cut his way through the world with no real rhyme or reason she could discern. And now - now, she thought that perhaps these last years had held a purpose.

 He had come here for her.

For his soulmate. Sandrine has seen her, and not understood how something as feeble as that witch could stop Blue Malefic. Chatoya Irkil was just a girl - a very ordinary girl, who had so very nearly been overwhelmed by the Four. Surely nothing to compare with Blue, weak in her power and weak in her heart. But then...somehow...she had fought.

 "You and her," she carried on steadily. She ignored the small flicker low in her heart. Envy...surely not. She was past all that. "What do you want with her? She's useless."

 "Is she?" Blue shrugged, and settled himself. "Maybe I have found a use for her."

 Sandrine snorted. "Finished fucking with her, Blue?"

 Something dangerous zinged in his eyes, a little thread of golden fire. "Take care, Sandrine."

 So. She had hit a nerve. How interesting - how strange and intoxicating to think that at last there was a string she could tug to make Blue Malefici dance for her. How ironic that he, with his careless words and careful cruelty, should be undone by someone so completely opposite to him. So against all he was.

 "Why?" she challenged recklessly. "She's your whore, isn't she? That had better be all she is, Blue, or people might think she means something to you. People might think she matters. They'll let you have a plaything. They won't let you have a lover."

 How many times had she seen that small, deceitful smile on his face - how many times had she seen him tilt his head in that unconscious gesture that was unusually endearing.

 "They?" he inquired, his eyes wide and dark although the sun blasted full into his face. "Or you?"

 "Does it matter?" she slung back, her tone exactly as bored and civil as his.

 His smile widened, baring his teeth. It wasn't a friendly gesture; Blue had no time for intimacy. In all the years she had known him, he had never once touched another human being with any intent other than harm. He never would.

 "Absolutely. On the one hand, I let you live. On the other, I let you live in unending agony."

 She glared. "Do you think your threats scare me?"

 "No," he said with breathtaking calm. "Because you think I plan on torturing you. Don't be ridiculous, Sandrine. I broke you years ago. Don't you remember?"

 Despite herself, she breathed in sharply, feeling the echo of remembered pain; a sudden cramp in her foot that was laced with small, insignificant-seeming scars. Recollections of his face, lit by fire and softened by smoke so he seemed some strange angel in that room where the only sounds had been their voices and the hissing of flames.

  "Yes," she muttered, the words a breathless gasp. Oh god, she was stronger than this.

"I also put you back together," he continued smoothly. "You're not afraid of pain - which would make you stupid, if you weren't so careful to avoid it - but you are afraid of other things."

 "Am I now," she said too sharply. He was doing it, as he always did, causing that thread of nausea to ripple up from her abdomen.

 She remembered times when Nightfire had let the other assassins play with her. Play. That was their word, their little joke: it was even their slogan. The human girl stupid enough to think she could be one of them. And she hadn't cracked; she'd stayed unflinching under their words with her mind empty exactly as Blue had taught her, locked inside herself.

 Only he had ever been able to break into her cage.

 And then...and then he'd taken her apart with cold methodology, indifferent to her pleas, her curses, her silence, her screams. Her bones had been snapped - sudden, slick sounds muffled under the dizzying heat of that room. And he hadn't cared. He'd watched, seemingly fascinated by the twitching of her shattered hands, his touch one moment tender, feeling the breaks inquisitively. And then brutal, wrenching harsh noise from her, and all the while talking to her in that immeasurably lazy voice as if he had all the time in the world to play out this game.

 Only him.

 "Yes," he said now. "And you  hate my brother so, now. But I remember when you two were stealing kisses in the maze on the enclave - and I think you remember too. I think...yes, I think maybe you hurt him to stop yourself hurting."

 She swallowed. That simply wasn't true. It couldn't be. Cougar had left her, he had abandoned her, and all that had been between them was nothing, nothing, nothing. It was washed away in blood, sown through with salt. "You're wrong."

 "Am I? We could find out so very easily." He shrugged. "I can make time."

 He had distracted her. Again. Ferociously, she tried to counter-attack. "I'm not the issue here, Blue. You and her are. What is it you want with her? Exactly what does she mean to you?"

  He smiled then. "I made her a promise."

 "A promise."
 
 "And I require your aid in keeping it," he said, and his smile flashed like holy lightning. "You may considered the debt between us cancelled."

 She stared at him, sure the ground had tilted under her feet. This she had not expected. Had never expected. "I...How?"

~*~

 For hours, Lance wandered round Ryars Valley, passing the day. He went to the café and ordered a lunch he didn't eat. Killed some time arguing with the Elders about compensation for his ruined car. He went back to Chatoya's house, where Cougar and Jepar were still talking, though they fell silent as soon as he came in; wrote some letters he'd probably forget to post, and did the million small tasks people did to avoid the one substantial task that was most important.

 And eventually, as the evening tumbled down in a flurry of chill winds and spattering rain, he went for a walk, wrapped up warm in a borrowed jacket and scarf Lisa had forced on him. She'd even told him not to catch a cold.

 The Australian had told her to bloody well worry about Vaje and stop mothering him.

 But he'd smiled as he said it. Funny, he'd thought her nothing but an annoyance when he'd first arrived.

Lance kept telling himself he would turn round. Go back. After all, he had nothing more to say to Ryar; hadn't he said it all that night? And somehow, he ended up at the lake.

It was all so different from last time he had been here. No luminescent mists, rolling off from the lake, no unearthly power quivering the air like storms being born. Only the blue-grey sway and slide of the water, and her, sat on the end of crumbling pier with her feet kicking in the lake and the straps of a borrowed top that was too big slipping off her shoulders.

He meant to go then. Really, he did.

"I figured you'd be here."

 Ryar started at the words he'd not meant to say, water splashing up with the flutter of her hand. For a moment, Lance was sure she was going to run - he thought he saw her entire body tense - but then the Drax turned quite calmly to face him. Although he knew without a doubt that she was every bit as solid and alive as he, she seemed a vision, a thing that would dissolve into dust and dreams if he breathed too hard.

 Maybe it was that she was so small. Legends were supposed be larger than life, not tender and afraid and so very human.

 Lance scuffed his feet on the floor, and then stopped himself. He'd given up that habit when he was a kid. "You can run away if you want," he carried on. "I wouldn't blame you."

 "I thought you did blame me," she said coolly, as if she thought none of her pain showed in those big violet eyes, or the tremor in her mouth. Her voice could lie, but she couldn't. "Monster, remember?"

 "I was a bit upset," he muttered. "I get a bit tetchy when people try to sacrifice me in the cause of ancient evil, call me Mr Angry."

 "Evil?" Some of the anger was gone from her voice. "Is that what you think I am?"

 It was hard to look at her. "Not now. But when you let Fireblade bully you into doing whatever he wanted? Yeah. Evil's as good a word as any."

 She flinched. Only a tiny motion, but he saw it, and it stung him low in his heart. "I've never been a fighter."

 He couldn't comprehend that. Lying back passively just wasn't his way, it wasn't the way he was. Whatever life threw at him, he'd catch it with both hands, and if it looked explosive, he'd throw it back. He opened his mouth to say so - and then remembered how impossible it had all seemed when she had left him to die. Hadn't he given up then?

 "You fought when you had to," he found himself saying instead. And more surprisingly, meaning it. "I...just...I guess I thought you'd be different. That you'd be like the stories."

 That she would be brave and beautiful and flawless and instead, she was none of those things. And yet...

She was shifting her feet in the water, just as she had been when he first saw her in the dream. Lance went to sit by her, pulling off his shoes with one hand and hissing at the glacial grip of the water.

 "What now?" he asked, unable to keep the rawness and the desperation from his voice. My tarnished legend, my dreadful fairy tale.

 Somehow, her fingers had become entangled in his, tiny thin fingers that he thought he would crush if he wasn't careful. Out of the haze of his dreams, he saw the strange deep coral of her mouth, and the unlovely set of her nose. Her hair was damp, but dry and floating at the ends. She didn't fit with his world. She belonged in a Raphael painting, with all the other legends.

 "I don't know," she answered slowly. God, the throb of her voice made him shut his eyes, just to concentrate on it. "This isn't my world. I don't know if I can belong here."

 His throat went dry. Don't let her mean what I think.

 He didn't know why it was suddenly so important that she stay. Common sense told him she belonged between the page of a history book, a safe, stale fable. A cautionary tale, or a moral. But sat there with her hand in his, small and warm, he realised he didn't care much for common sense.

 "But I can try," Ryar said with a sigh.

 "You're staying?" he blurted.

 Her eyes were quizzical, the tranquil dip and rise of the rides. "For now. This is home, after all." She kicked her feet so water splashed. "It wasn't very happy, but it was home."

She was staying. She wasn't going to kill herself out of some stupid misplaced idea about not belonging. A vast load was gone from him, lifted clean off. Oh gods. Oh thank all the gods.

 "You thought..." Her voice trailed off, and Ryar ap Sangager gaped at him. "Not again, Lance. Not ever again."

 The softest, shyest smile spread on her face. In that moment, she was gently lit, lit by altar candles that made her sacred to gaze upon, a piece of heaven placed upon the ground. And then she kissed the corner of his mouth. It was a very sisterly gesture, and he wasn't sure why he was both relieved and disappointed.

 "But thank you," she murmured, leaning her head on his shoulder. Quite casually, Lance put an arm around her, and they just sat, kicking their feet in the water and watching the clouds. He didn't think about it, or anything.

 Sat there, they could have been merely friends, they could have been merely lovers, but what they were, he didn't know.

 He didn't care much, either.

And like the blackbird on the wire
I will not take prey on you -
You would not want me to
For I'm too soft for such a thing.

Chimera Chapter Forty

So tired of the straight line,
And everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
And the storm keeps on twisting;
You keep on building the lie
That you make up for all that you lack.

 Strange how time seemed to circle around her again and again, a vulture waiting for her to drop beneath the onslaught of small tragedy after small tragedy.

All those years ago, when the world had seemed simpler, Chatoya had come to the Pack to ask them for help. Now she returned, as much for some way to distract herself from the disturbing thoughts of Blue as to try and help them.

 She knew the scruffy path well, overhung with creepers and nettles as high as her head. It was a cool, shady place that buzzed only faintly with flies and crickets in the late afternoon. School was done with for the day, and she was putting off the stash of essays for as long as possible.

 Fading hints of summer clung on the air; shrivelled yellow flowers were sprinkled in the thick undergrowth. As she went deeper into the ghost roads, deeper into the Pack's territory, silence intruded like the stealthy feet of a hunter.

 "Lo, witch."

 The boy who stepped out in front of her was easily recognisable; Romulus had a shifty, artful dodger air about him, earned after too much time under the hands of bullies for his small build.

 "S'pose you're looking for that mangy halfbreed mate?" Romulus bared his teeth, to show her the jagged lines of wolves' canines. "He ain't coming back to you, you know."

 "No?"

 When she didn't try to push him, Romulus relaxed fractionally. She'd healed him after too many of his routine thumpings for him to treat her as nastily as everyone else. "Don't think so. He's a better wolf than I thought he'd be."

 "Maybe he's a good wolf, but he's a better witch," she said. "You really think there's no chance at all?"

 The werewolf shrugged. In some ways, he reminded her of Aspen; the same small, nervous gestures hidden under angry aggression, but he was far tougher. Cougar had found that out after he chose to pick a fight with the wolf. When Chatoya was picking the remains of a wooden chair leg out of his elbow, the lamia had resentfully admitted Romulus was rather more defiant than he had bargained for.

 "I don't think so. He ain't going to admit it, but I reckon Cern likes hunting. And besides - him and Flick, they get on all right. She knows how to handle him - won't let him sit round dragging all of us down."

  "Can I at least talk to him?" She had to. Lisa had told her that Cern had wanted them all to abandon him, but Chatoya couldn't accept that. In a way, she'd walked into this strange mess  with Blue for him, when she'd struck the devil's deal for Cern's life. Something had begun that day in the bluebell grove, that was when the balance of power between her and Blue had first begun to slide inch by treacherous inch.

 Rom wavered.

 "If he's really as set as you say, it won't do any harm," she pressed.

 The werewolf's ash-grey eyes flickered, and then he stepped aside. "Go on then. You're wasting your time, but I ain't going to stop you."

 "Thanks." As she brushed past., he was already settling back into a crouch, watching the entrance for intruders. He looked like a wild thing, huddled in the shadows with his unkempt hair and dirtied skin. And maybe Cern was too.

 He must have known she was coming: Cern was sat alone in the clearing, on a picnic table with his feet on the bench. His arms were crossed loosely on his knees, and he didn't say anything as she perched on one of the upturned trash cans that formed part of the Pack's unorthodox chairs. But he was smiling.

 Not the secretive smile she knew; something sadder, and muted. Maybe he'd never be anything a shadow of the person she'd known, with his eyes bruised and wild.

 "Hey." She didn't know what else to say.

 "I know why you're here," he said bluntly. She heard a rasp slinking over the edges of his words, as if he were more used to howling than speaking. "And it's no."

 Chatoya felt almost wounded by those short words. "Are you at least going to tell me why?"

 He shrugged. Someone had given him an amateur haircut; the wavy mahogany hair was jaggedly short around his ears and neck. "Do you need me to?"

 "Stop evading the question!"

 "Fine." His smile snapped off. In those violet eyes, she thought she saw a quick green flare, like a cat's eyes catching the light. "I lost my soulmate, Chatoya. I lost the one person I thought was going to be everything to me - she was my world, don't you get it? And she died because of someone else's actions. She died because Blue wanted her to."

 "She couldn't have survived," she said simply.

 No more than Bhari could survive in this world: in these times, the balance had shifted. The Nightworld ruled with subtlety and iron fear; its own fear of having its monstrosity lit in a lightning world, human fear of shadows and strangeness. Not in blood and fire and rage, but in stealth, in patience, in threats.

 "No?" His fists flexed, as if wishing for claws. There was venom dripping from his every word. "Only because people like you say so. None of you tried to stop Blue - you let him do it. You let her walk into the fire. You didn't care."

 Goddess, how could he be so wrong, so shockingly, incredibly wrong. "You know that isn't true. Cern, she was made - for gods' sakes, she was nothing but a weapon - made to kill anyone whose blood wasn't pure enough. Jal murdered Ruby. She only let Jepar live on a whim. She tried to kill you, and don't tell me I don't care, because I goddamn well cared when I had your blood all over my hands, I cared when I spent the whole of that night trying to keep you breathing!"

"Do you think I cared how many people she killed? Do you honestly think I cared?" he shouted, slamming the table so hard that wood fractured delicately. "Why didn't you let me die? You might as well have done! Why didn't you just bloody kill me yourself?"

 How could he be saying this? Hurt and fury mingled in her chest until she felt as if they crushed her heart in a tight, burning shell. Words rose to her lips - a torrent, a flood, and she didn't care what she said: in the back of her mind, the dragonfire welled like acid, eating at the pain. Use it, Bhari urged, a subtle ghost. Use it, and grant him his wish. Ungrateful thing, pitiful little mortal-

 No! she thought fiercely.

 "Cut it out, Cern." The new voice, dry and uncaring, belonged to Felicity Serafine. She stepped into the clearing in her usual attire of shabby black that made her copper hair stand out so starkly. "Soulmate or not, she was an unmitigated nutbag. And you know it. Don't say you wouldn't have cared. That's a dumb lie."

 "Is it any of your business?" Cern said nastily, a flush dark on his olive skin.

 Flick only shrugged, casting a wry glance at Chatoya. "When you're screaming loud enough to wake me up - yeah, I reckon it's my business."

 Uncertainty flickered in his face. "I woke you up?"

 "Uh-huh." The werewolf grinned, rubbing away a bit of smudged eyeliner with her finger. "Lucky for you Donna sleeps heavy, or you'd be looking at the wrong end of an ass-kicking about now."

 She turned to face Chatoya, her face closing off now. The grey eyes were sleet hard, and most of the warmth in her voice was gone. She cares about Cern, Chatoya realised. More than he knows or guesses.

 "He's better with us, witch. Better off than he'd be with all your friends and their perfect little lives. We'll look after him. He's Pack now."

 Perfect little lives? She wanted to laugh, it was so ironic. So brutally and unknowingly cruel.

 "Yeah, it's real perfect," she muttered.

 "Whatever." Flick's every gesture said she didn't care. "Like I said, we'll look after him."

 No, you will.

 Very well, she would leave it - for now. But only for now. She wanted to tell Cern how much she missed having him there to talk to, how much she missed his wisecracks and his flirting. How much Lisa missed him too.

But Flick was stood there, a solid presence shattering any intimacy.

 "All right," she said mildly. "Cern...if you ever want me-"

 "I know where you are," he interrupted. "Thanks, Toya, but no thanks. I've changed too much, and none of you have changed at all."

 "Oh no," she said. "Of course not. We haven't changed an iota."

 "By the way..." Flick spoke up again, her expression quizzical. "You know anything about that big disturbance up at the lake a couple of weeks back? Some kind of spell or something - it gave us all a thumping headache."

 It was Flick she replied to, but it was Cern that she looked at, the anger rotating slowly in her ribcage. "That? Oh...it wasn't much?"

 "No," began Flick. "Sure felt like som-"

 "Not much at all." Chatoya overrode her ruthlessly. "Fireblade - you remember him, the terrifying legend who's real, by the way - raised his wife Ryar from the dead, and I got possessed by Bhari - you know, the other terrifying legend who massacred her own people and just happens to have a magickal connection to Fireblade and Ryar. And goodness me, what else happened in the midst of all that tedium? Blue tried to use us all to bring back the Burning Days by sacrificing Cougar, who'd been tortured by one of Blue's mad minions, and three other victims, and oh yes, Lisa nearly got fried by Fireblade, but don't worry, Cern, our bloody perfect little lives rushed in and saved us and we all sat down for tea and crumpets afterwards!"

 They were both gawping at her.

 She turned, the anger boiling hot in her cheeks, thumping at her temples, and walked away, unaware of the way the ground leapt up from her footprints, sprouting green where none had been before. Not even noticing Flick crouch down to poke at the new grass with a cautious finger.

 "No," she snapped, her words floating back to them on a twist of dragonfire. "Nothing's changed at all."

~*~

After Lance had gone, Cougar and Jepar were left alone. It shouldn't have been awkward - they'd been friends for years now, ever since this scruffy beat-up vampire had stomped right into the cosy little house Jepar's sister had shoved him in, and demanded to know why the hell he had to share with a goddamn shifter? Words had been exchanged, punches had been thrown and somehow friendship had sprung out of all the wreckage. No, it shouldn't have been at all awkward.

 But...it was.

 "You really okay?" Jepar said softly. "And don't mess me round."

 The honey-gold eyes flickered to him quickly, furtively, and then Cougar let out his breath in a slow hiss. "No. No, I'm not okay."

 The cigarette was put out on the brick wall in a trail of orange sparks.

"I don't know how I can be okay," Cougar said in a clipped, empty voice. "And I don't understand why. I know I'm not easy to live with, fine, I get that. But Christ, JJ, my own soulmate didn't want me. Ruby didn't want me. Sandrine didn't want me. And Toya..."

 The vampire fell silent, and Jepar could only sit there and wait. He didn't know what he could say that would make Cougar feel any better.

 "Toya would rather have my little brother." His voice was so bitter it almost hurt to hear it. One look at his face made Jepar look away, because no one was supposed to have all the anguish in their soul flayed open for the world to see. "She'd rather date that - that fucking snake than me."

 "Maybe she's got her reasons," ventured Jepar. The complex maze of his friends' relationships was enough to make M C Escher's eyes water, and his own head was pounding; all the aspirin in the world couldn't cure it. "She's running Pursang, Cougar."

 There was a delicate pause, and for a beat, Jepar thought Cougar was going to be calm about it all.

 "She's WHAT?" screamed the vampire, his voice so loud one of the neighbours peered anxiously over the garden hedge, through the wide French windows. Jepar plastered on a big, we're-all-okay grin and waved until they went away. Cougar was on his feet by now, glaring at murderously. "That's not funny!"

 "I know," the shapeshifter said wearily. He didn't understand how everything had become so incredibly confused - how it had gone from him, and Cougar, and Lisa, and Toya to this huge mess of people and punctured emotions, to this dark swirling chaos. "Believe me, I wasn't laughing either."

 "She'll kill herself!" shouted the lamia, stalking round the room so furiously, Jepar half-expected so see flames burst out on the carpet.

 When he turned, his fangs were white and shining, and his eyes drizzled fire like golden syrup. Oh boy. Cougar going off like a nuclear rocket was not going to help anyone, though Jepar had to quash the tiny urge to let him loose on Blue just to see what would happen.

 "How could you let her do it?" Cougar pointed a finger at him. "Of all the stupid things you've done, JJ, and I can think of a few-"

 "I didn't let her!" he interrupted indignantly. "She did it all on her own."

  "She's not that dumb." There was desperation in his voice. "Tell me she isn't that bloody stupid."

 You poor sod, thought Jepar. Cougar's face was absolutely ashen with strain, with needing to believe the Toya he loved was not so reckless or bold or - or dangerous. He hated seeing this, his two friends torn apart by something that was supposed to bring people closer.

 It seemed like since Blue had arrived, the world had become twisted into an uglier shape. He'd even made love sour. And Jepar thought he'd never hated anyone more.

 His friends - his circle and his sanctuary - were crumbling about him. Cern had walked away, chasing death in a hunting cry, and Toya had wrapped the shadows round her. Every day, Cougar was killing himself with self-pity and this crazy consumptive love. Ria was gone without a word to any of them, and it seemed like the world was colder and harsher than ever he'd dreamed.

 An apocalypse had passed by, while he was unconscious and oblivious, but destruction had still come to them all.

 "She is, isn't she." Cougar sat down, eyes dazed.

 Jepar shrugged. "You said it yourself - screwing with people is what Blue does."

 He regretted his choice of words at once. Searing jealousy in Cougar's eyes, burning him up from the inside out.  

 "I don't want to think about it." Cougar stared out of the window. "You know what?"

 I don't know anything now, thought Jepar tiredly. He wanted Tali. He wanted her to hug him, and crack some silly joke that would make him feel a little better, and even to whack him on the head and ask if it still hurt with just a touch of impatience in her voice. "What?"

 "I thought...just for a little while...I thought maybe Blue had it right." Cougar wouldn't look at him; only out at their garden, where the blood-roses were bright as bleeding promises in the uncut grass. "Maybe it was better just not to care."

 "It isn't."

 "How can you be so sure?" came back the challenge almost at once, as Jepar had known it would. They'd played this game for years, ever since Jepar had refused to tell any of them what he'd done that had forced him from his home, that had made him hunted among his own people.

 Jepar had always managed to rebuff or avoid the subject. Not from shame, exactly, nor from regret. He didn't feel much regret for what he did; and that was what terrified him. There was a streak of coldness in him, and he knew it was still there. If someone threatened the people he loved - yes, he'd cause harm for their sake. He'd kill for them. He'd torture for them.

 Looking at Cougar's face, he knew he couldn't just brush it aside again. Maybe Cougar was more like Blue than he'd believed or wanted; maybe the lamia was far closer to becoming that cruel and that callous.

 "You really want to know?"

 The lamia's eyes narrowed. "Of course I do. You're so damn mysterious about it, JJ, we've all been wondering. Can't be that bad."

 "I don't suppose it was." Jepar shrugged.

 Memories flooded him, as they always had. A throat, beaded with blood like rubies, maimed and limp in swansong. Her fingers, deeply sliced and mangled from where she'd tried to fight off the knife with her bare hands, all purpled flesh and creamy bone. One of her shoes half-fallen off, revealing blisters because she'd continuously worn shoes that didn't fit...

 He always remembered the most inane things about Vanira.

  "Some of the Nightworld killed one of my friends. She got messed up in something she shouldn't have. Bad luck. Wrong time - wrong place." He was amazed how tranquil his voice came out. He'd not been tranquil at all in those days; he'd been a bubbling stew of hatred and fury. "Everyone knew who'd done it, that was the crazy thing. They all knew, and no one did a goddamn thing. Even her own brother wouldn't."

 "Scared?" guessed Cougar, who was staring unabashedly. Looking at him like they'd never met before.

 "As hell," he said bitterly. Blood had clogged the air, though there'd been less of it than he'd thought. Screaming cherry-red on her throat and her fingers and face and one little smear like spilt wine on her new top that she'd been so proud of. "They weren't going to do anything. So I did. I went, and I found them, all hanging out in their bloody bar like they had something to celebrate, and I gave them what they deserved. The Blue Bar, it was called. Not such an accurate name, as it turned out."

 Cougar was looking distinctly uneasy. "JJ...you made the headlines. The Blue Bar Butcher...you're kidding."

 "Is that what they called it?" He shrugged. "What a dumb name. I never knew that. I didn't hang round long enough."

 There was faint, spinning horror in Cougar's eyes. Gold disturbed that sad, sullen hazel. "I remember that...one of my cousins...you made the damn headlines, even on the enclave. We all thought it was Nighfire. I even thought it might have been Blue."

 "Nightfire." Jepar laughed softly. "They came to my parents when I was five. Offered to take me off their hands. Said some witch had seen great violence in my life, that they could train it in the right direction. Of course, my parents weren't having any of it."

 "Nightfire wanted you?" The vampire's hands had tightened round his leg, his knuckles bone white. "You? I know they put out a bounty on your head - and that they wanted you alive. I never thought that might be why..."

 "The bounty's been out that long?" That was new, and startling; he'd not stayed long enough to know that.

 And he wouldn't have cared if he had. Too sharp, the memory of standing a room full of still bodies with his heart empty and numb, breathing hard and barely aware of the cuts and bruises covering him, his blood muddled with theirs. Their skin under his nails, their voices indistinct in his mind. Glasses of half-finished drinks still on the side, a single chair upended. And oh yes, like a half-forgotten detail, their blood cloaking him, sticky in his hair and clinging to his lips and it had felt so good, so goddamn good.

 It had been as if he had suspended every piece of humanity in himself. He had put aside his soul, for this impossibly pure and exquisite revenge.

 Maybe if Gatajri hadn't run in, the only time he had ever seen his inhibited sister out of control, it wouldn't have stopped there.

But her brilliant emerald eyes, the exact mirror of his own, had been a shock. A slice of reality in this nightmare world. And he had only stood there and stared, and felt - even now, he'd still swear he'd felt it - his soul flowing back into his body.

 She hadn't said anything.

 Long seconds, as the blood congealed on the floor and on his skin. Staring at each other, her golden hair tumbling about her for once, not pinned strictly back. Still damp; her clothes unkempt, her chest hitching because she had to have run here with every ounce of speed in her blood.

 She'd held out her hand, and he had taken it meekly. And she had led him out of there, just as she had done a thousand times when they were children and she was his all-knowing older sister.

 Just like the community had known who killed Vanira, they'd all known who took revenge for her. And yes...in some veiled, shameless part of their hearts, they'd blessed him for it. And they'd hidden him here, hidden him from the world and from a punishment he probably deserved.

 He was about to tell Cougar all of it, before he realised Cougar had picked it straight from his mind. The lamia's eyes were indescribable; filled with an intense emotion that it took Jepar a long time to recognise as fear

 Not of him. But fear of what it would mean if the vampire did let himself become cold and devoid and harsh, as Jepar had so briefly, as Blue always had. As maybe Toya was beginning to.

 "That's your choice," Jepar said quietly. "Yeah, it's easy to let it all go, and just forget. Maybe if you wanted, you could end up that way. You could hurt us - maybe you could even hurt Toya-"

 "Never." Cougar had snapped the words before he seemed even aware of it. Then he took a deep breath, and his eyes were that solid, fiery gold. "Never that."

 For the first time, it seemed as if the incessant, subtle grief for Vanira that haunted him had some value. "Good," Jepar said savagely.

 "Yeah," said Cougar thoughtfully. "I think it is."

~*~

 I thought the dark times were gone, Vaje Chusson thought, sketching lines in the condensation on the window as evening crawled in. I thought they were gone forever.

 Sure, they had been replaced by blandness, and the slick snap of murder, but the pain had been diminished. He remembered that pain still; it sliced him when he saw a waft of crimson hair, or the bold smile on a child's face that mirrored his son's too closely. He'd lost them both in bloodshed, and lost himself for a while.

 Time had eased his hurt. Yet more time had chilled his heart, until he'd thought himself numb. And then he had come here, and found, startled, that he wasn't dead as he had thought.

 Vaje shuddered, afraid.

 The skin on his side was still tight. The burns would just be another reminder of small tragedies, another scar for the list. Only this one hadn't been earned saving his own life.

 If he thought of Lisa Ochai, leaping out from the mists, it made his skin crawl. God, how could she have been so foolish, so thoughtless, so brave when she knew what was waiting for her?

 And now he had to face all the things he had been ignoring. For the last few days, he had let Lisa coo over his wounds, and he had flashed a macho smile and flexed his muscles, and they had both let themselves slide into shallow charades, and avoided the words that were important.

 That said: I leapt into lightning for you.

 That said: And you screamed for me when you thought I was gone.

 It was time to face them, he thought, because he would have to leave soon. What reason did he have for staying now? Business was concluded. He should - yeah, he should tell her now. Get it over with.

He found her in the kitchen, cooking a stir fry. The spicy scents of cinnamon and sizzling meat wafted to him, and the steam blurred her body into soft curves. It hooked his heart to see Lisa in such a simple intimacy, her head tilted to one side a little thoughtfully, and her gentle humming in his ears.

 Vaje Chusson stood, and watched her, his hands clenched tight at his sides because he was afraid of what he might do otherwise.

 The scars throbbed; even Ryar's healing hands, Toya's salves and skills, could not erase his trial of fire completely. Each time he closed his eyes now, he felt the ghost of scorching pain, the slam of uncaring ground.

 And each time he opened them, he remembered Lisa's shrieking cry, and, more telling, her too-tight clinging grip. Her hovering face. Most of all, he remembered how happy he had been to see her.

The thought that she might have been killed had been terrible.

 How precious she was. How dear to him, in a way he'd not felt in centuries.

 Don't do it, he told himself. Don't feel this way. Never again...I can't bear to lose someone again. I can't live through it.

 He must have made some small noise, because Lisa half-turned, her eyes wide and questioning.

 "Oh, it's you." Relief in her low voice, and something warmer, though perhaps he only imagined it. After all, he wanted so pitifully much to hear it. "I thought...I don't know what I thought."

 "You think, sweetheart?" he queried, trying so hard to keep his voice even and flippant.

 That was how they played it, wasn't it? No strings, no barbed emotions to drag them down. Just frolics and freedom and fun.

 But her smile was bright, not the tentative, polite - and insincere - smiles of so many people, but filled with tenderness. It made a tight tangle of emotions writhe in his stomach at the thought that maybe - maybe he was more to Lisa Ochai than a way to pass eternity.

 "Sometimes. When I have to." She tugged at one of the dark braids. "And I had to then. God knows I did."

"It's been a rough couple of weeks."

 Her smile wavered. "I was scared," Lisa confessed, and dropped her eyes. The bowed line of her neck was shockingly vulnerable. "Vaje, I was so afraid. Toya stood there, and she looked at me - and she didn't know me at all. She could have killed me then. She would have. And when you were...when you lay there...I was - I...."

 He moved before he could stop himself, and wrapped his arms tight about her. It was the only comfort he knew how to give, the only gesture that would not be cheap or false.

 To his surprise, she buried her head deep into his shoulder. This was breaking their unwritten, careful rules. This was knocking down the wall between them. No more pretence.

 With a tiny inarticulate sound, somewhere between a moan and a sigh, Vaje clutched at her back and leaned his head against hers. Her spine was curved under his fingers, arched into him with the burrowing need to block out the world.

 If he shut his eyes, there was only her in his arms. There was only this.

And it was too late not to care. Too late already, and he knew he was lost. Maybe he had been from the moment she'd stormed right into his world.

 He knew he was beginning to love her; it was the start of that feather-light tumble, dizzying and delirious - and oh so dangerous.

 But he only squeezed his eyes shut tighter, and breathed in the scent of her hair and drowned in the feel of her hands pressing at his shoulders, drawing him closer until she was his world, a world of touch and desperation and words unspoken.

 Her voice, when she spoke, was muffled.

 "Are you going?"

 It was the last moment - his chance to walk away unscathed. He could leave, and never have to face the despair of life without her. He would never love her, he would drift through the world as he had for so long, alone. His heart would be safe from the ache of love, the ache of loss.

 He would kill, perhaps, and sometimes think of a girl who'd thrown him to the floor. But it would pass, and he would be void and safe through time everlasting.

 It was his final chance. And Vaje coiled his arms tighter yet about her, fingertips digging into her skin. Maybe in farewell; he didn't even know until the words were out, the answer was there.

 "Not anymore," he whispered.

 So he would fall. There would be pain at the end of it, the sting of bereavement, the slow sad beat of his heart without her. He would fall, believing it flying while she was there beside him, and only when she was snatched from him, and he reached the bottom, would he see the end was dark and violent.

 Yes. He'd fall into darkness. But for now, he was content.

 Maybe that was all that mattered.

~*~

The only sound was the pad of her feet on the ground, the traffic a far off moan. The town was at her back, its comfortable homeliness further behind her with every step. She half-wished she was back in the house, watching old black and white movies with Lisa and Jepar like they used to. There would be some cheap junk food, and the usual friendly rows over who got the comfy chair. And of course, Cougar sitting in a corner making pithy commentary on every archaic phrase, inventing his own dialogue in any poignant silence provided.

 How bittersweet. Here she was, walking in the first thin veil of darkness - soft purplish hues at the edges of the sky - to do that exact thing with Blue. But she couldn't imagine the same warmth, the giggled comments, the hurled cushions.

 But she could imagine other, more intimate gestures that made heat fizzle in her stomach, and shortened her breath. Yes, maybe that was why she was going.

Actually, there was no maybe about it.

 The winds lifted her hair lightly, brushing cool air over her throat like the sensitive path left by cold lips. Chatoya ignored it; she seemed not to feel the onset of winter so much now, and she couldn't help but think the slick bubble of the dragon power in her body had something to do with it.

 The changes in her had become more apparent with every passing day. Her magick had always been a green growing force; it seemed now she had barely to thread her spells into the ground to make the plants spring up like a living army awaiting her command. The simplest things had become thoughtless; even the herbal teas she had made in recent days were so pungent, Lisa's eyes had been watering.

 "This isn't mint tea," her friend had remarked, wiping at her face with Kleenex a solicitous Vaje handed over. "This is homeopathic warfare."

 Her most basic spells were bursting with energy; flicking away dirt with a sweep of magick, she had raised a powdery cloud that an enraged Ross had walked into. When the dust had settled onto the floor, every surface was gleaming, and Ross had acquired a distinguished head of grey locks in a breath.

 The glare in his shiny doll's eyes had been frosty enough to make at least six countries mount an expedition to be first to the new Pole.

 Slowly, barely daring, she had begun to test her newfound strength. Spells she had found an effort had become nearly routine; the garden was a plethora of out-of-season flowers, glowing in every colour of the rainbow, a paradise of the exotic and aromatic.

 But there were other, less pleasant consequences.

 Her dreams now were wild and smoky, full of strange faces that whirled before her in glittering array. More than once, she had dreamt herself a goddess in a long lost land, her carefree mocking laughter ringing out across a world streaked and stained in carnage. The war of times gone had become her war; her loss.

 And Hael...

 Yes, she dreamed of Hael nearly every night. Chatoya found herself half in love with a man she had never met, never touched, never even glimpsed from afar. A phantom lover who drew gasps of pleasure from her in the haze of a clinging forest, whose every feature she could feel if she shut her eyes and remembered him, whose skin she had moulded under her fingers and whose warmth had fended off the coldness of the world too often.

 And more than once...more than once, his face would alter in her dreams and the eyes that were surely a cloudy playful green would change and chill, swirling into the impossible intense blue that she knew just as well; his skin would be pale and sunless, and she would find herself staring at another love. This one all too real.

 Like skeletons dug from age-old graves, she had unearthed another life, and it was consuming her with wormy slowness.

 The smooth tarmac was fading to a potholed track, and she knew too well the crevices in this road. There was the leaning tree, the bark scraped away where Blue had run his car into it. Glass still glittered like grounded stars in the threadbare grass, and maybe her shrieks of that night still quivered in the air. No traces of the wolves left, only the broken heel of her shoe flung aside like a mockery of Cinderella's slipper.

 Further on, long, long minutes walking alongside the murky stretches of the ghost roads. And then at last, she was there; she was turning that tight corner to find his house tucked away like a half-forgotten secret.

 She never hesitated; she never even thought about turning back. And Chatoya understood now that this unwanted and unexpected love could not be hidden any longer: that she wanted him to know.

 She wanted to throw it in his face like a gauntlet, and demand he answer her. So you've made me love you - so now what? Here's my soul, still whole, here's my heart, full of you, here's your revenge and it seems really quite sweet.

 Here's half your promise.

 And she thought...yes, she suspected that for all his games with her, he might not believe it. His words echoed too often in her mind, the dry bitterness in his voice. I don't think you're going to meet me in broad daylight, or tell me all about your day, or hold my hand in public. I'm the killer, the murderer. The monster. I'm the one they hate and loathe and detest.
 
 She'd never dreamed of anyone like him. Certainly never that she could love someone so utterly cold, who was all ice and blades. And yet...and yet, those hints of humanity, those faded glimmers of vulnerability had struck her deeply.

 Chatoya didn't bother to knock, but walked straight in. This was all hers somehow, as he was, as he would be.

 And there he was, sat casually on his floor with a can of lemonade open on the table and a book in one hand, apparently engrossed. The sight of Blue doing anything so breathtakingly ordinary was enough to make her stop short.

 All she did was watch, and gulp down his distracted expression; every detail seemed incredibly important to her. With his eyes fixed on the book, all the power of that practised stare was gone - instead she saw the curve of his mouth, caught in a half-frown, and the fragile curve of his eyelashes and the tiny, brooding lines on his face.

 "If you're waiting for me to finish," he said so suddenly she jumped, "you'll be here a while."

 "I...wasn't," she answered, and fought to hide a wicked grin. "I thought you looked cute."

 He looked up then, eyes blasting her like a polar wind. All the softness was erased, his expression wiped smooth and cold. "I looked what?"

 She refused to be fazed. "Cute."

 His stare didn't alter. "I heard what you said. I just didn't believe it."

 Chatoya was having a hard time holding back her laughter now. There had been a definite note of surprise in his voice. Now who was off-guard?

 And she thought: should I tell him? Wouldn't this be the perfect moment, wouldn't this drag his world from under his feet? And she opened her mouth-

 Behind her, the door slammed. Puzzled, she looked at Blue, but nothing showed at all - of course, she should have known it wouldn't. Was he expecting someone? But then...why...?

 He stood, leaving the book on the floor as a girl came in, her cheeks flushed from the cold and pushed past Chatoya into the room. And she stopped; she didn't even look Chatoya's way, because all her attention was fixed on Blue.

 What...

"Blue."

 The girl said it with a soft, knowing satisfaction, her face curiously alight.

 "Hello Sandrine," he answered simply, his mouth curling up in the heartstopping and utterly lazy smile that seemed to Chatoya a subtle sort of betrayal. That was her smile, the one he used for her alone. If he was surprised, the blue eyes gave no hint of it, only seeming to darken subtly, as if a cavern had opened beneath the surface. "So you're back again."

 "It's been a while." So curious, this conversation riddled with inferences and meanings Chatoya couldn't grasp; yet devoid of emotion. Both of them, stood there, watching each other with a beatific serenity. "Too long."

 A shrug. "Has it?"

 "Yes," she said flatly. "It has. Too long."

 And then she charged at him.

 The words of a hundred spells sprung to Chatoya's mind, sudden and frantic, but which, which, too many to choose from-

 The girl hurtled in Blue's arms and stood there, looking up at him with the same peaceful calm. And her soulmate - hers, surely hers - dipped his head and kissed her. Four lips meeting, and none of them Chatoya's.

 Oh no. A hollow began to widen beneath her ribcage, tearing open with a sudden, shattering certainty. He....he wouldn't have.

 Surely she should have screamed, or fainted, or wept at the sight of him kissing that other girl with his eyelashes fanned on those delectably sharp cheekbones, with his hands spanning her waist as though she were made of porcelain, with such utter, infinite care.

 Care he had never shown her.

 Her world crumbled in dust about her. Every dream, every hope that had been held to him like threads of a fragile web that she had been slowly, foolishly weaving about him, connecting them inextricably, every thread was snapped, but she was the one who had needed that support.

  She remained standing.

Her soul was on its knees.

 Blue drew his head back eventually, and he and the girl only stared, as though all the words that had never been said were not being said now, but still being heard. His eyes were a colour Chatoya had never known, not simply black, but black of the ocean in endless night, black of charred wishes, black of the abyss into which she fell.

 And then he turned, slowly, easily, a snake transfixing its prey - willing prey, oh, ridiculous, willing prey - and the most beautiful smile lit him like the sun striking into that abyss. Beautiful, cold, mocking, and if that kiss had been nerve gas reducing her to twitching and worthless agony, that smile was shrapnel to her, striking hard and quick.

 "I don't believe you've met Sandrine," he murmured, his eyes so immense and dark that they were almost lost, but she knew the only one to have lost was her. "But I have."

 The human girl watched her, her face as impassive as Blue's could be, and she thought; yes, they are alike. They belong together. There was something pitying in the girl's eyes, a shivering regret that made her lovely, a delicate allure that was barely visible, yet all the more precious for it.

 "Why don't you run along?" he suggested coolly.

 The hollow in her heart tore open in anguish and she could only stare, and feel tiny tremors start to shake her. Time passed, endless, disbelieving seconds, becoming not merely uncomfortable but painful as a tightening noose.

 His voice chilled until it was sparkling, clear ice. "Get out of my sight. You are not wanted here."

 "But I lo..." The words stumbled at her lips, and died.

 His eyes met hers, and she was swallowed into them, devoured whole by the depth of immortal, ancient cruelty, the utter lack of mercy or compassion, of anything but darkness.

 The words flew at her like wicked daggers that she could not dodge.

 "I never did."

 Time was frozen, awful, silent. And then she turned, empty of anything but that love like shredded violet petals, and walked to the door. Men had crossed no man's land like that, slow and steady and automatic, eyes vacant of anything but an overwhelming animal pain. Her feet seemed to stay still, and the world moved about her.

  I never did.

 She knew she would hear those words forever, and be blinded always by that radiant smile, but at least it would block out that betrayal, that sublime, exquisite, soul-wrenching betrayal.

 Four lips kissing, and none of them hers.

In the time that followed, she was empty. It was as if that image had been seared onto her mind; her soulmate, her treacherous, amazing love, kissing someone else. That one act, that one betrayal haunted her. Goddess, it was so simple  - so horribly simple, and it had opened a chasm inside her. His betrayal had sliced open the cage of her heart and out poured everything she was, every shred of hope and every savoured memory.

She was left empty. It was the only way she could survive.

 The cold didn't touch her on the walk back, though the road seemed endlessly long. Drag and slump of her feet on the ground, darkening skies that drew over her like a shroud.

 I am dead. I am hollow. The world is my tomb now, and you are my epitaph.

 All the pain of those first few moments had cooled about her like a shell, shutting her away from the world. Inside her mind, all thought had ceased except for that single awful scene. Over and over again it played, every tiny detail made massive under her desperate eyes.

 Play of light on his skin, so pale that greying shadows became pitch black. Terrible ordinariness in his hands, resting on the girl's waist. The quiet tick of the clock, playing the same instant again and again, minutes squirming under her skin like worms.

 Each time, a little more of herself washed away, out through the rift. Another thread, tied to him - snapped, gone. Every time she had stood up to him - meaningless, useless. In the end, he had won, as he always did.

 And in her mind, she felt an echo of her bereavement; not only had she lost Blue, but Hael too. Both gone from her, both lost to her. Each wrenching from her heart, leaving her fatally maimed.

 Chatoya had thought Blue's revenge would be devious and complex - and now she saw how easy it had all been.

 How easy she had made it.

 Goddess, what an idiot she was. What a stupid, blind idiot to think for one instant she had ever been anything but another piece of his plan, another way for him to pass the time.

  I never did.

 The words bounced around her empty self, all that filled her now.

 The days ahead were clear in new, indifferent insight. The future laid out smooth and headstone-solid. She, Pursang's heartless queen, casting her eyes over death and life alike, seeing no difference in the two. Still breathing herself, but a thing long buried.

 Pushed and pulled in political tides she cared nothing for, while her friends lived on in ignorance of all that had been - and had never been - between her and Blue. Not a one of them had ever known. None of them ever would.

 The world would whirl around her while she sat at its centre, an unchanging, barren being. Her body would rot around her, decaying around an empty husk. Her hair would grey, and her skin would fold and wrinkle, her powers would fade...

 As the days and the weeks rolled by, she drifted through her life like a leaf tugged to and fro in autumn winds. Her replies were vague and automatic; her heart lashed by the snug intimacies and closeness of the couples around her. When Aspen Martin met her, he no longer looked at her face, simply because he found the devastation there - a mirror of himself, once - too hard to bear. For the others, she forced her smiles and concealed her anguish, and they seemed not to notice.

 One day, she went back to Blue's house. She didn't know why; some feeble hope, some need to see him. Despite herself, she missed the icy azure blast of his eyes, she even missed the warm weight of his body in the chill, echoing depths of twilight. Worse still, she missed the purr and slide of his thoughts, melted-butter smooth in her mind.

 And she found his home empty.

 The door was open, the rooms empty of furniture. Nothing remained to show he had ever been here, except for a crumpled sheet of music wedged in a crack in the floor. He had gone, and it was as if he had never been.

 For some reason, it stung her. She stood there, breathing too fast for her slow walk, an odd nausea lurching in her stomach. Her face too pale, and her hands trembling, although she didn't feel it.

 He was gone.

 Chatoya became colder. The world became a vice around her, crushing her with the knowledge he was not there. Every word spoken to her, every gesture seemed designed to remind that he was gone. Cougar gloried in Blue's absence; in the cosy evenings, Lance and Vaje discussed it at length while in the high school, rumours hummed about 'their' Blue's sudden departure. And through it all, she sat, affecting indifference.

 And every instant, her heart fractured a little further until she was afraid the cracks would begin to show in her eyes.

 Inside, she was breaking apart. All her days were filled with Blue, every sense straining to recall him - his smell, his touch, his voice. Grasping at the smoky tatters of his presence. Except...

 Except for the dragonfire, that rose like bile to fill her. Hot, acerbic, it sizzled along her veins and out to the ends of her fingers, flushing her skin. And it whispered softly, of betrayals old and new together, of a solution so simple...oh yes, as sweet a revenge as that visited upon her.

 Why let the world whirl? Why not reach out, and grab it, tear it apart. Shake the mountains until they crumble to dust, bury the world in ashes and sand. Let the ground split itself and swallow him up, make the world his grave, make this feeling end.

 If she could not have him, then no one would.

 Beneath her skin, the dragonfire fluttered, little pulses, little nudges like an old friend dropping careless hints in conversation. It filled up the space where all of her dreams and desires had been, scalding and ancient. Power rippled through her, this time not Bhari, but the push of a power that was meant only to destroy.

 Yes, make his grave in the earth's airless clutch. Drown him in soil, and fill those blue eyes with pebbles. Hurt him as he has hurt you, isn't that fair? Kill him, and kill your love, let him rot-

 Become what he is, she thought with a cold tingle. No. Never. He wants me this way - he wants me broken, and angry, and just as goddamn stupid.

 And I won't let him.

 The dragonfire receded, flowing away and leaving her almost empty again. Almost. Except for this tiny flicker in the vastness, this candle that both lit a small piece of her soul, and showed her the dreadful shadows within it.

 I won't let him.

 She took a deep shuddering breath, and it felt like the first she had taken since that moment. In her stillness, it was a tiny earthquake.

 She would not be like him. She wouldn't let herself become cold, let the lives she controlled become mere numbers. If she stopped caring, it was as good as handing him the pulped shreds of her heart as a prize.

 Fine. He had won. Let him have this victory, but she would have others. They would all be sour, all be tainted by the remembrance of his words, but she would have them. Chatoya knew, she knew with devastating simplicity that in every second, she would feel the rift in her heart.

 Love had made her weak, and now loss would make her strong. Not hate. Hating him...oh gods, she couldn't truly hate him. She loved him too much for that, and that was the real tragedy. She could spit her words, and let anger drive it, but under it all would be love. Love spurned, love denied, love enraged. But love all the same.

 And right now, it tasted much the same as despair.

 It would be survival of a sort. She would continue in a life where her monster had vanished, yet somehow left her world a darker place. In her heart, she knew she lived only out of spite, only to cast her own feeble revenge.

 Only out of the faint, foolish hope it would be some immense trick.

 But in truth, she knew, it was no hoax. Her enemy had become her beloved, and her dreams had become dust. He had betrayed her, exactly as he had told her he would - and how often had he warned her? How often had she ignored him in arrogance and ignorance? Safe in her illusion that she was somehow better than him and immune to him.

 He had betrayed her, and she loved him. Even as the shadows rose up to strangle her, and his smile spoke of secrets and sin, even as he cut her with his words, she loved him.

 Yes. She would go on without Blue Malefici. She could live, by living a lie.

 The truth hurt far too much.

It don't make no difference
Escaping one last time
It's easier to believe in this sweet madness, oh,
This glorious sadness...
That brings me to my knees.