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The Devil May Care - Part One

They call us heartless, you know.

Wrong, and wrong again. We're every patter of your overused and overemphasised little muscle. No, not that one. Further up, dolt. Yes. There. That sinewy lump that keeps your blood endlessly circling round those protuberances you lug about.

Interesting things, hearts. Chewy, but rich and thick and dark.

And you do go on about them. It's desperately confusing, sometimes, trying to keep track of it all. Sometimes you talk about them as if they're made of porcelain, breaking and shattering all over the place.

And other times, someone would think you were pouring gasoline on the poor thing and lighting up. Heartburn. Your heart blazes and burns: it's on fire, it's aflame...well, don't worry, that's nothing a thirty-second dip in the Arctic Ocean won't solve.

You hear a lot about hearts in my line of business. Impossible not to, really.

But whatever labels you put on it, what it comes down to is this: you're not talking about your heart. That sordid knot of flesh can't do any of those things. It pushes and pulls, and that's it.

No, what you're talking about is desire.

And I know all about that.

Come a bit closer, and let me show you. You'll remember me until the day you die.

~*~

"Jesus, why don't people ever keep their dark, evil secrets somewhere a little more accessible?" The voice was exasperated, and the owner of it was crammed next to her in the narrow confines of the wardrobe.

In the musty darkness, Chatoya Irkil was glad of the warm bodies and heated voices around her, but the situation had gone from amusing to inconvenient to damned uncomfortable in the space of minutes. The wood was solid at her front, and she braced her hands against it. If they'd give her a little peace to concentrate in, she could find out just what kind of spells had been placed on this cramped, cursed piece of furniture.

"Because then they wouldn't be dark, evil secrets," retorted the coyote shapeshifter whose elbow was sticking in her back. "And excuse me, but which idiot was it who triggered the hexes and shut us all in a two-foot wide cupboard?"

"It's not a cupboard," chimed the cool voice of the antiques expert they'd bought with them. "It's a fine example of a Boulle armoire, probably owned by Louis XIV, beautiful use of marquetry, and I'll thank you to keep your grubby paws off me."

"Yeah? Well, madam, if we don't find this damn passageway soon, my grubby paws might be the only thing getting us out of here," snapped Vaje Chusson. "And if you want someone to blame, try Keane. He's the one who got us in here."

"Hey, it was an accident! How was I supposed to know those carvings were witched?" Michael Keane squirmed next to her, crushing her against the side of the cabinet. Chatoya cursed inside the confines of her head, dredging up every foul term she'd ever heard.

"Oh, I don't know..." Vaje Chusson sounded about as happy as she felt. "The big skull carved into the top? The suspicious dark stains around the door? The pentagram on the sodding floor?"

"All right, maybe I was a little hasty-"

"Could you three shut up for ten seconds so I can try and find a way out?" she interrupted, feeling around the back of the cupboard. "And Michael, if you sniff my neck once more, I will rip your fangs out with my fingers."

"I was breathing heavily," snapped the culprit. One of Pursang's newer assassins, Michael Keane combined superb skill and astonishing reflexes with the attention span of a butterfly in a glitter storm. If not for the fact he'd discovered the ramshackle house and its treasure trove of old spells and arcane objects, she would have dismissed him long ago. "In case you haven't noticed, it's getting hot in here."

"Don't tell me you've forgotten our little discussion already," growled Vaje from somewhere near the door.

Beside her, she felt Michael flinch. "I mean...it's a little warm, Lady Chatoya, but I apologise for my loss of control."

"Never mind," she murmured. "Just give me some space. I think the spells were cast after this was built, not before."

"Young lady," said Nerine De Villiers sternly, "while I can only admire your firm grasp on Pursang, particularly your ability to control its rather bawdy young men, I must object. This armoire was most certainly not 'built'. It was crafted, with an expert and loving hand. I should know, I watched dear Andre-Charles put the carv-"

"Not now, Nerine," she broke in. "I need to find out exactly what spells are on this thing. For all I know, this wardrobe might do something a lot nastier than just locking us in."

She could almost feel the chagrined disapproval radiating from the old vampire, but eventually Nerine murmured, "Of course, Pursanguia. We all have our skills."

Chatoya didn't bother to close her eyes in the thick gloom, but instead let several wire-thin threads of magic flow out from her palms. Her power eased through the wood, exploring the shape of the magic laid on it, edging around the whorls and slashing lines. Old, she thought, swooping along the lines of those old enchantments, old but strong.

Odd...she didn't recognise several of the symbols scrawled there: others seemed out of place with standard protection and confinement spells. She did notice several of the Hebrew cantrips for protection and binding, but why on earth was a request for mercy wound into the spells? And was that...there, spiralling delicately around the symbol for denied desires, was that a blessing?

Someone had renewed these spells time and again. This had been the work of lifetimes, as if a line of witches had committed themselves to etching these spells more and more deeply. If not for two small flaws, they might well have been confined in there until the wood rotted into dust.

Firstly, the spells hadn't been renewed for a long time. Secondly, they were written in an archaic tumult, with little order to them. A modern witch, with several of Pursang's newest hexes at her fingertips, could pry those spells apart with a little time and effort.

"Good news," she announced. "I should have us out of here in few minutes."

~*~

Desire.

You might think that it's all about sex, if that's all you've ever seen in silver screens and magazines. They lay gloss and lace over the truth, and call it desire: they splash it with red and crown it with diamonds, and think it beautiful. They sell it under the counter, swathed in shame and scandal, film it and deform it, twist it and bend it and yet never capture its essence.

Sex is part of it – oh yes, there's something low and luscious and thrilling in that tangle of flesh and sound, but that's only a brief waypoint in the journey.

Or maybe you think it's about love. But whether you paint it pink and cover it in roses or smother it in pretty euphemisms and pretty faces, desire will still slide through like candle-smoke escaping under a door. It's pervasive that way, moving and multiplying like cancer. Love is nothing but a pallid imitation of desire.

Love is forever. Desire is for right here, right now, right or wrong.

Desire has no mercy. And neither do I.

I know what you want. I know everything you want, and I'll make you want it until you beg, until you weep: you will bend to me, strain under me, arch over me, beg and threaten and cajole...you will ache inside your own skin, and I will deny you until you stop begging and begin to hate.

Maybe then you will have an inkling of what desire truly is.

~*~

"It's been half an hour," announced Michael. She only half-heard him: the rest of her attention was on the knot of magic she was carefully picking apart, strand by strand. "Are you nearly done?"

"Your parents didn't take you on many long car journeys, did they?" Vaje commented dryly.

"How'd you know that?" The vampire sounded startled.

"Instinct," the coyote said. "Now shut up, Keane, and let our lady concentrate before we find out how many moth-balls I can fit down your throat before you choke."

"That wasn't very nice," muttered Michael sulkily, but he fell into silence.

She revelled in the brief lull, and the strands began to fall away quicker. At the centre of it all was the trigger, she was sure, whatever would let them out of this wretched box. Another half-dozen spells fell apart, picked with blades of magic as expertly as a thief working on a lockpick. Three more, then another, two more and-

The last one. "Right, I've got it," she announced. "Vaje, you might need to give the door a good shove."

Like a magician whipping the black velvet from her finest trick, she tore away the last protection spell-

And the trapdoor they were stood on dropped open.

~*~

You're all a fool for something. And me...?

Well, I'm a fool for you. Even as I defile you, debase you, destroy you, your pleas enchant me. Each break in your voice, each jerk of your body - yes, these things are what I live for, to feel your hands clutching at me, scraping at me, sliding free on sweat and spit and semen.

Desire me. Want me so much that you'll die without me, that you'll rip off your own skin to gift it to me just for one more moment with me. Gouge out your sight so that you can see no one but me, strong and shining in your memory, bleed before me so I can lap up your blood along with your devotion.

I need it. I'm so hungry. I've been hungry for a hundred years, imprisoned here because you were too afraid to let me loose, too afraid of your own passions. Here in this room, in this hellhole, alone except for those times when you came to curse me, dozens of you, reciting holy words and holy lies, and being so, so surprised when they didn't work.

And now you're back. I hear you – footsteps on the floor above while I tread water here, neither waving nor drowning. It's been years. I haven't forgotten you, and I know you haven't forgotten me. No one ever forgets me.

Come back to me, fragile things with bruised eyes and reaching hands. You're so close, I can almost feel you. Up there, unlocking the doors to my prison. Come to me, and let me be everything you've ever wanted. Maybe I'll even let you live.

And when you're rutting in the shadowed light, it'll be me you try to tear from their skin, me you search for in their shallow eyes. No one will ever be enough for you.

You'll brutalise everything you love to catch the faintest glimpse of me.

And then you'll understand what it is to be incarcerated in your own skin, as I have been all these years. Yes, come back to me, my loves, my jailers, mine.

I've been waiting for you.

I was gentler, once. Or perhaps I was merely less cruel; the difference is irrelevant.

Confinement will do that. Caged, there is nothing to occupy the mind but itself, and inevitably, you find your thoughts begin to clash and repeat, chipping away the enamel of civility, revealing something base and bestial. Half monster, half angel, I was once named by a man who thought to tame me: and in my savage worship and worshipful savagery, I proved him right.

Sometimes, in my fonder moments, I can almost taste his heartstrings between my teeth again.

It has been decades since I had even that brief outlet. In the slow torture of tedium, I fear I have lost the slick and polish of civility. Only a few constants remain: anger, hatred, despair.

And desire, of course. Always desire.

This lethal concoction – and mark me, little visitors, I have grown no less deadly with time - is stoked to bubbling potency by the indignity of it all.

I have been captured by maggots. You walk under the sun, blinkered and deaf and numb, and call it freedom – and here I am, pinned down to time and shape, restrained in your image...and it is no freedom at all.

It is horror. If you could comprehend how little you truly are, it would drive you to madness.

I'd like that.

But for all our differences, in one respect we are exactly alike. And it is nothing to do with my human hands or my human heart – those are mere illusions.

No, it is far simpler: we are not meant to be alone.

I wonder if the others are out there, wondering at my absence. Do they dig through your bodies to find traces of me, lingering like spice in the passageways of your veins? Do they meet, and as they feast, long for me as I long for them? Do they keep they vigil over the circling sun, seeking me where flesh enters flesh?

I hope so. And if they are watching, if they are waiting...well, your defences have weakened enough to allow me some small measure of control outside my prison. Enough, perhaps, to send a signal, a flare to the only ones I have ever truly belonged with.

~*~

Cold air dashed against her skin like water, and Chatoya just had time to think: at least we're out of there.

And then the four of them hit the floor in an ungainly mesh of limbs and curses, sending up a huge cloud of dust that flicked into her eyes with the viciousness of a wasp swarm. The breath was knocked clean from her throat. Coughing, eyes streaming, Chatoya feebly shoved at whoever was pinning her chest, and put a half-hearted foot into the weight on her other leg.

As the dust settled, she found herself gazing up at the trapdoor that had betrayed them so, yawning open like a demented grin. Stupid of her not to check that she was opening the right door – Goddess, she could have dropped them into anything.

"Ow, god, get your elbow out of my stomach, will ya?" demanded Michael from somewhere in the pile.

"Young man, I strongly suggest you remove your hand from its current position, or I will be forced to take drastic action." Nerine's clipped voice sounded strained. "Your lack of propriety is disgusting, if hardly surprising."

Michael sputtered. "Hey, grandmother, in case you hadn't noticed, we just plummeted fifteen feet onto a stone floor. I was trying to land on my feet, not take the opportunity to cop a feel. Shrivelled spinsters aren't my type."

Chatoya felt the mental bolt zoom across her senses like a bullet, slamming into Michael's mind with an impact that made her wince. She was starting to feel light-headed under their combined weight, and whoever was beneath her had to be suffering even more.

"And yobs aren't mine," snapped Nerine. "Keep a civil tongue in your head, young man."

"Don't complain, I bet you haven't had this much action in years," snarled Michael, his voice ragged.

"Please, no more flirting," groaned Vaje from beneath her, confirming her private suspicion that he'd been the unfortunate at the bottom of the heap.

"Flirting?" the pair of them said in unison, Nerine's cultured voice riding up like a bat's squeal.

"Flirting, fighting, whatever," the coyote croaked. "I don't care, just shut up and get off. For a kid and a geriatric, you two weigh a ton."

She whole-heartedly agreed, but the weight on her chest meant she couldn't get out more than a rough gasp. Finally, the pressure eased, and she managed to scrabble off Vaje, collapsing onto the floor. A quick inventory reassured her that nothing was seriously damaged; a strained shoulder, bumps and scrapes, all easy to mend.

Vaje leaned over her. He appeared to have recovered from being squished – he didn't even look out of breath. "Think you can get up?

Not that there was much choice. This room definitely hadn't been on the blueprints, and that meant the odds were good they had to find another way out. Breathless and bruised, she had to cling onto the coyote as he helped her up.

"Doesn't look like you've broken anything. How's your head?"

"Still attached," she murmured, gingerly taking a step. Her leg felt weak – another injury to add to her collection, but she supposed she was lucky the fall had been cushioned by a trio of supernatural bodies.

"How interesting." Her dignity restored, Nerine was staring around the room. "I assume the lanterns are magical."

For the first time, Chatoya took in their new surroundings. They stood in a gloomy room, swaddled in shadows that hid its precise shape, except in the corners, hung with lamps that gleamed like dying stars, radiating a faint orange glow.

And Nerine was right: the metal brackets had been inscribed with enchantments as ancient as those she'd unravelled earlier. Yet there was something else there too: a layer of power that twanged oddly on her senses. As if someone had amended the spells after they were cast, but clumsily, like a child trying to write in a language they barely spoke.

Was that what gave the light its curious transcendent quality? Beneath it, Nerine seemed frail and sickly, a jaundiced hue draining the animation from her wizened features. The folds of her skin ran deeper, the blots beneath her eyes as dark and smeared as ink. Every year she had lived was thrown into sharp relief, her very face a tally of the days already gone – and the precious few left to her.

"Pursanguia?" The formal title got her attention. Vaje almost never used it, and concerned roughened his voice. "What's going on? Everything's...off."

He too appeared different. Where Nerine was reduced to a bag of bones, Vaje had a demonic glow, as if he were half flame and half flesh. His skin glowed with false flush while his eyes threw back a brighter iridescence than the lamps held.

And it frightened her.

She'd never feared Vaje. He'd been nothing but kind to her, but stood there, she was aware that he was as much animal as man, and neither could be trusted to take control.

An enchantment, a voice whispered. But what does it show? The truth, or lies? Is that Vaje's true shape, or is it a trick?

Chatoya swallowed. "Do I look different?"

He nodded, and when he opened his mouth, for a wild moment, she thought he would fly at her with fangs bared. But when he spoke, he sounded the same as ever; wry, blunt, considered. "I can't explain it, but you're...spooky."

"As hopelessly vague as ever," Nerine remarked sharply.

The snap in the words dispelled some of the illusion – and illusion it was, Chatoya decided. That was no dying grandmother. That was Nerine Devilliers, who had survived Pursang for centuries, and who was tough and weathered as an old boot. Though anyone remarking such would quickly discover that she knew how to kick.

"Pursanguia, there are rather more shadows on your face than there ought to be. And you seem more...imposing. Rather regal."

"What was all the security for?" Thumbs hooked in his belt, Michael was slowly scanning the room. "There's nothing in here."

Whatever enchantment held sway here, it had drained him of his mischief and erased the stubborn line of his mouth. So robbed, his eyes dominated his face, wide, dark and oddly lost. He seemed pale and spindly, his muscle tone reduced to knobbles and bone.

But that, she thought, was closer to the truth of what he was. A child, growing into his responsibilities. Perhaps she'd misunderstood the spell?

She couldn't have explained why it was so important to understand just what those lanterns did, except to admit that the exotic magic she had felt niggled at her like the melody of a half-recalled song, demanding completion. Had she seen it before? Or heard of it?

"There must be something in here," growled Vaje. "Think about it. Secret entrance through a booby-trapped wardrobe. Creepy mood-lighting. Lots of magic. Whatever it is, someone wanted it locked away."

"Doesn't mean it's still here," pointed out the vampire. "This might just be a prison for burglars-"

Over by the wall, Nerine turned. Her hands were dark with grime, but she wore a tight-lipped smile, echoed in her satisfied voice. "I think not."

"What is it?" she said, squinting. It looked like a hole at first, a faint glint to one of side of it. The boys stepped up to examine it, and away from the orange lights, they seemed themselves again – a trio of formidable assassins. And her. Still the outsider, despite it all.

A movement in the hole knocked her thoughts askew. Something was there. A watery, indistinct shape – and another, there! Spells flew into her mind, and she raised her hands, ready to strike-

And then she realised that what she saw was a reflection.

"A mirror." Nerine cleared another patch, revealing speckled glass and their own inquisitive faces. "And there's a plaque to one side – I can't make out the language yet, Pursanguia but once I've cleaned off the dirt..."

"But why all this trouble?" she wondered aloud. "What's so special about a mirror?"

"Ask Lance," murmured Vaje. "He spends hours staring at himself. True love if ever I saw it."

"I need something to remove the dirt." Nerine's beady eye fell on Michael. "Something like your jacket."

Michael glared back. "No way. This is designer. Use that mutilated curtain you're wearing."

"Oh for god's sake," Vaje said under his breath. He squirmed out of his coat, and held it out. "Use mine. I wouldn't want a petty squabble to wreck young love."

Nerine's lips pursed into a sour expression but took the coat anyway. "Leave that ridiculous train of thought where it belongs, Salvaje. Now..."

With the fastidiousness of a cat, she began to scrub at the plaque. Slowly, script emerged, bright on what looked like stainless steel. The old vampire took a step back, frowning.

"Looks like Hebrew," volunteered Vaje.

"It is," murmured Nerine. "Let's see, it's been a while since I've had read any."

Chatoya waited, impatient but knowing better than to disturb a scholar at work. Beside her, Michael tapped his foot, until she reached out and prodded him, just once. As a reminder.

For a moment, a mutinous gleam showed in his eyes – then he nodded agreement, and settled for staring at the mirror as if he could decipher its mysteries alone.

Nerine was tracing the symbols with her finger, hunched over. "I believe I have it, Pursanguia. It says," and she cleared her throat, and spoke in a fluid rush, words which meant nothing to Chatoya. "-which, of course, translates as-"

Blinding white light lanced out from the mirror.

~*~

We were never meant to be together too long. But for a while – for a little while, we were glorious and unbroken. Maybe I even loved them, insofar as I'm capable of it.

You have left me incomplete.

And desire needs completion, for unlike that weak copy called love, it's ephemeral and tidal, peaking, cresting, crashing. You took that from me. Foolish of you. It's never wise to challenge desire.

After all, I know nothing of mercy – and I will draw forth everything you've ever dreamed of, everything that's jolted you out of daydreams in your humdrum job, those sweaty thoughts that oozed right through your pores, everything that's sent a shudder down your spine as if some sly lover had crept up to leave warm breath tingling on the back of your neck.

Because here's the secret, no secret at all. Desire is not beautiful. Desire is ugly and brutal and squalid. Desire is back alleys and bathroom walls – it's gravel and friction, guilt and mornings-after, it's that shot of alcohol, wiping out your inhibitions with your stomach lining; it's the heat that settles between your thighs and swarms about your skin.

It's everything you're afraid to admit you really want – those deep, delicious things that you don't even know that you crave. The years, long and wearisome as they are, left me nothing else to concentrate on...and you have only yourself to thank for it.

Shriek beneath me, cry above me, bite your tongue beside me – you'll never tell me to stop.

And even if you asked, if you begged, if you crawled on hands and knees across burning coals until your skin was blistered into pus and dangling scraps, I wouldn't listen.

But I'm listening now. Closer, closer, so close – there you are, just beyond me, just outside. What are you waiting for? Afraid, still?

Clever of you.

Ah – but no, there are the words, echoing from the stones themselves, there's the entrance, thinning, swinging open. Oh...you fools. You beautiful, bold fools.

I'm going to give you everything you've ever wanted.

~*~

With an instinct born of many years spent around bad-tempered vampires, Chatoya hit the floor. Blinking away sunspots, she found Vaje and Nerine beside her, but...

But the mirror now gleamed with a strange silvery light, as if the moon had been coaxed down and melted onto the glass. And Michael was stood in front of it, his lips parted, transfixed...

Reaching out.

A strangled sound left her: she knew with terrible clarity that the same curiosity which had drawn him to this house was drawing him to that mysterious glow, seducing him with promises of magic and glory and excitement.

"Keane, don't!" shouted Vaje, as Michael's fingertips brushed the surface. The coyote was already halfway to his feet – a feral fear wrenching his expression into that thing she had seen beneath the lamps.

Too late.

The surface ripped like mercury beneath Michael's hand, and her breath stopped clean in her throat.

The vampire turned an ashen yet composed face to them, hand immersed in...in whatever that was. "It's okay," he said in a shaking voice. "Feels like...like a doorway. There's just air beyond it. I'll just take a quick look-"

"No!" Her cry burst in chorus with the other two. She barely noticed she was on her feet, beside him, hands already trying to hold him back. "Don't be stupid. Whatever's in there is heavily guarded. Take your hand out, right now."

Her strength was no match for his. Michael didn't move a muscle, and his eyes were pure mercenary desire. "But Pursanguia-"

Was he stupid? Gods only knew what was in there – something that had needed centuries of protective spells, something that had to be begged for mercy, even in spell and script.

"Now!" She added a lash of magic to the word, and was shocked when it smashed like thunder in the confines of the room.

The young vampire flinched back; fear ghosted around his eyes, giving him the look of an urchin. Finally, he understood this was not negotiable. "Yes, Pursanguia."

He made as if to draw back – and nothing happened. She opened her mouth to berate him, a wickedly sharp spell in mind, and then she saw the panic in his face, saw his shoulders tense and strain.

"Nothing's happening!" His voice was high and breathy. "It's like cement!"

Chatoya swapped glances with Vaje, and without a word, they both hauled on him. Nerine came to join them, adding her considerable strength to theirs. It must have hurt, but Michael didn't complain – thin, shuddering breaths racked him, and she realised he was clammy with fear.

He didn't shift an inch.

"Brute force isn't going to do it," she said, letting go. "Magic's next-"

Michael screamed, and the sound froze her blood. He began to thrash, kicking and flailing as the three of them hung on, trying to avoid any more injuries. "Something's touching me!"

Oh gods. There was something in there. She'd been hoping to face something inanimate, a relic, a dangerous spell. Those, she was equipped for.

And then she recognised Michael's expression, and understood just what the strange lanterns in the room had revealed. It had been the future staring out from their own faces; Vaje's desperate anger, Michael's dreadful, childlike fear, pouring forth before her now.

Something had put those spells there – and fear to match Michael's rose through her stomach as she stared into the mirror, unsure what lay beyond it – only that it was cruel, and clever. And she knew far too much of cruel and clever monsters. Chatoya clung to the vampire, trying to dig her heels into a floor that had little purchase.

"Please!" He turned a blind, agonised face to them. "Help me! Oh god, it's got my hand, it's, it's..." His voice melted into a wordless shriek as he began to slide forward.

"Let go!" Vaje shouted as he and Nerine stepped back.

But the wild terror in Michael galvanised her, ringing a deep chord. She knew that endless, mindless fear. She had been left to it: her first instinct was to cling on, to try and haul him back.

"Let go!" Vaje sounded desperate, and part of her recognised he was right. She was being foolish. Think, think, you know this is futile. Obey – come on, just let go.

I can't abandon him.

I have to. I cannot afford to be weak.

Her grip loosened...and Michael was yanked forward so hard that her only reflex was to tighten her grip. She was dragged with him, that silver light looming in her vision so fast it was like an explosion, bright and soundless-

It hit her, and then there was only grey oblivion.

His was a world of certainty, and it bored him.

Blue Malefici had always found little to admire in stability and routine, and that was in part why he did as much to disturb it as possible. With the casual devastation of a tsunami, he had moved through the Furies as he changed from child to adult, never quite knowing what might happen, savouring the challenge.

And then he had reached his goal: Nightfire was his, Pursang and K'Shaia good as. Once again, he was stifled by boredom, as persistent and debilitating as Chinese water torture.

Luckily, there was another challenge to pursue: in her way, Chatoya Irkil had proved all he could wish. There was a streak of wildness in her that defied definition, a contradiction in the mossy depths of her eyes which proclaimed her at once entirely his and entirely alien. She changed with the suddenness of the sky, lit by passion, scoured by rage, veiled in secrecy: dynamic, vast and occasionally breathtaking.

But for the last few months, in their uneasy truce, he felt that she too was another pillar in his certain world, and he could only despise her for that.

And so he sat in this meeting, listening to his plans unfolding exactly as he had intended, stuck in tedium.

"...made a dossier of all the information on Hades, which you may look over at your leisure," one of the archivists was saying, ticking off something on a piece of paper. "The same has been done with Kheoussan Rastaban, though there's a dearth of primary sources. In fact, much of our information is conflicting..."

"What about Sangager's daughters?" he asked, already knowing part of the answer. "We know at least four survived the war."

"The war itself, yes. But the aftermath was just as lethal," said another archivist, his voice fatalistic. "I myself think Avarice must have perished. There are many reports to confirm her horns were removed, leaving her vulnerable to the mobs of fugitives we know lynched several prominent survivors-"

"Conjecture," he interrupted. "Stick to fact. Which of Sangager's sirens perished, and which may still live?"

The archivist shifted in his seat, clearly irritated by the abrupt end to the discussion, and just as obviously unwilling to complain. "From oldest to youngest then. Ulryat threw herself from a tower in Kheoussan's palace after her horns were lost in a duel. Proserpine disappeared several years before the Burning Times began, but her body was found entombed in ice at the height of the trouble. Avarice is one-"

Blue blinked - and somewhere in that temporary blindness, the pillars of his world toppled like dominoes. He was foundering, the points of the compass demolished, the loss consumptive and massive.

For a moment, he couldn't pin down what had changed: only that it was some vital part of himself, and its absence was as dark and jagged as a black hole, with its own violent gravity.

And then he realised and felt a chill wave of delight amidst the chaos.

The soulmate link was gone.

~*~

In the gloomy confines of the basement, Vaje Chusson dived after Chatoya's vanishing form as she was dragged behind Michael: his fingertips brushed her ankle, then she was gone.

He slammed into the mirror, which no longer glowed with that translucent light. It shivered, but held; he was left staring at his own image, his heart pounding relentlessly.

"Idiots! Bloody idiots!" he snarled.

His reflexes just hadn't been fast enough. He should have thought: Chatoya was still too new to Pursang to have absorbed the overriding self-preservation of its older scions. But he had been too late, too blasé, and now they were gone, hauled into whatever place lay beyond the looking-glass.

And I'll bet it ain't Wonderland, he thought glumly.

"I don't believe it," he muttered. "What was Keane thinking?"

"The same sort of things as you and I thought when we were young and foolish, I expect," Nerine answered wearily. She came to stand beside him, though she only reached his shoulder. "Nonsense about fame and praise and reputation. That rapscallion is not trustworthy, Salvaje. I did warn you."

"It's a little late for 'I told you so'," he snapped.

"I think you'll find that just after the disaster is considered a good time, actually."

He was torn between irritation and laughter. Eight centuries had given Nerine a sense of humour that was as sharp and dark as expensive coffee. In the end, he settled for reluctant admiration. "You've got some balls, Nerine."

"One of us missed anatomy classes, young man, and I fear it wasn't me. But I appreciate your attempt at a compliment. Now...how do we start to clean up this mess?"

"Same place as always. The beginning. What triggered that doorway, and why? It happened just after you read the plaque..."

Regret was oddly natural on her face, aging her with such swiftness he was taken aback. She wore her pride like a cloak of youth, and with it swept off, it was the first time he'd realised that Nerine was old - not merely in body, but in soul too. She had made enough mistakes over her lifetime to know how costly they could be.

"There's no fool like an old fool, is there? I...allowed myself to be affected by Michael Keane's insults. I'm ashamed of myself." She gave a brisk bark of laughter. "Eight hundred years and I had to try and prove my worth to that...that whippersnapper!"

"He has a knack for provoking people," he said, offering what condolences he had the patience for. "What did you do wrong?"

"It's a simple spell, Salvaje. One of the oldest there is. Wrap the opening phrase in a little-known language to make sure only the learned can read it, and use the phrase itself as the warning. It assumes all those present will understand the phrase...and I should have remembered that. If I had translated it first-"

"We all make mistakes," he said. "No one asked Michael to stick his hand in supernatural treacle. He did that one all on his ownsome, same as he managed to shut us all in that damn wardrobe." At her brief, grim nod, he pressed on. "So what was the warning?"

"'If you want all you have ever desired, I am for you.'"

He frowned. "Well...as far as ominous warnings go, I've heard worse. Hell, anyone who's had a casual conversation with Malefici has heard worse. Only person I've met who can make 'good morning' sound like 'I've already planned where I'm going to leave your body'."

The old vampire gave him such a weary look that he felt half a child. "Perhaps the translation wouldn't have helped then. Think about it, Salvaje,. Really think. Everything you've ever wanted. Not just in your sane moments: the things you've wanted when you were furious, desperate, heartbroken."

He began to understand, but she was ruthless in her determination to teach: hardness crept into her voice, and the words lacerated him.

"When your wife was murdered, do you remember how you were then? When you sat by the road with your son's body in your arms, with his blood on your hands and in your hair-"

How did she know that? All the people who had seen him as he wept under the oak trees were long dead.

"-how did you feel? Think of the things you wanted, Salvaje. What did you think as you lay alone in the dark for months and years afterwards, unable to forget? What-"

"Enough!" He could hardly breathe through the memories she evoked, calling them up from deep, cold places like a fisherman reeling in monsters from an oceanic abyss. Empty times, full of a need for blood and a crazed, jagged loneliness that had clawed at him every time he saw a familiar face, a happy couple, someone else's living child.

With difficulty, Vaje scrabbled back some control. The compassion on Nerine's face, wizened as he thought his grief had been, was a small balm.

"I take your point," he said stiffly. "We won't be going in after them."

"Not yet, at any rate. We may have to follow them sooner or later, if I'm right."

Her tone triggered alarm bells. "Right about what?"

"I think I may know where we are. Though I never thought it was real." She trailed a finger over the mirror almost wonderingly, and her reflection, muted by the old, speckled glass, seemed full of shadows and secrets. "You know how rumours circle the Furies – always something, some story, people trying to scare the trainees and fool the rest of us."

Yeah. It was a sort of gamesmanship, a constant testing of nerve and intelligence. He didn't indulge in it, but others did – Ross was fond of serial killer stories rooted in black magic, while Lance favoured fabled monsters.

"When I first joined, this was a strangely...persistent story. I must have heard it four or five times in my first few months, and almost always told the same way. It spoke of a mysterious creature that had left a string of deaths behind it, scenes of horrific violence and mutilation. Yet every last victim died smiling, and several them appeared to have tried to claw out their own hearts. The Furies were intrigued."

He grimaced. "Let me guess - we tried to recruit it."

A small nod. "Inevitably. So they sent three assassins to find it, one from each of the Furies. The vampire from Nightfire found it first, and contacted his leader. Shaken, he reported that it had taken on the form of his first victim, and it spoke to him of forgiveness and penitence. Sensing a trap, Nightfire's leader warned him to leave – but the vampire didn't listen. Nightfire heard only one last cry before all communication was lost: 'This wasn't what I wanted.'

"The shapeshifter from Pursang found it next, but he was more cautious. Instead of approaching, he kept his distance and struck up a tentative conversation. It agreed to talk, but he found himself facing his daughter, who he had abandoned some years ago. For a long time, there was silence – then a few whispered words reached Pursang's leader: 'I didn't mean that...'

And this time, a strange voice answered, 'Once, you did.' No more was heard, and the shapeshifter's skin was found beside his flayed body the next day."

"I think I can guess how this is going to go," he said grimly.

Her glance was amused. "Yes. The Furies didn't risk a third death – when K'Shaia's witch found the creature, a full fifty assassins went to join her. What they saw baffled them all: the creature moved from shape to shape faster than they could blink, a mess of fears, old acquaintances, victims. The sheer numbers overwhelmed it, and though it tried to cast some strange magic, they gave it no chance. As they bound it with spells, it screamed in a terrible voice, 'Free me – I will give you whatever you want, everything you have ever yearned for!'. This time, the Furies did not listen.

"Even then, another five died bringing it back. It was a troublesome creature, and clearly unsafe.

"It was sealed within a chamber designed to hold it for all eternity. Around the chamber, a house was constructed, with spells woven into each brick and into the very ground it stood on, and the Furies vowed to keep it imprisoned. Each month, a delegation went to question it, and finally they found what it was: a creature of Hades, created in the aftermath of the Burning Days." Her voice changed to its usual crisp tones. "I do not think it was merely a story. Not now that I have seen the plaque."

Plaque, and pleading: I will give you whatever you want. If you want all you have ever desired, I am for you.

It was a slender link, but Nerine was not given to hasty conclusions. "There's more, isn't there?"

He fancied there was respect in her tight smile. "I was a...lively child, Salvaje, even during my training. One night, for a dare, I broke into Liliya Feofarnava's personal archives."

He whistled. Feofarnava was legend herself, one of the most powerful of Pursang's leaders. Kings had knelt at her feet. "Lively? Yeah, in the same way a nuclear bomb is lively."

"Regardless, I found...evidence there that the story was true. A report that stated Hades' monster was no longer safe to visit – even in large groups."

"A monster of Hades," he said wearily. "Wonderful. Just what we need. And I don't suppose you have any idea how we can fight it?"

"A monster that can read your heart," she said softly. "Perhaps we can think of something, Salvaje, but that will take time, and I am unsure we have such a liberty."

A sinking feeling descended on him. "We need access to those archives." They weren't going anywhere, and that meant... "We need Malefici or Therese."

Her gaze was troubled. "Can we risk it? To reveal such weakness..."

Vaje wavered. This was not his secret to tell; but Chatoya wasn't here to grant him permission, and they had no time to tiptoe around. "Malefici may already know."

Her face seemed hard as granite. Of course, she must think he had betrayed them. "May he, indeed."

The coyote met her angry eyes without flinching. "Chatoya's his soulmate."

She actually took a step back. "No."

"Yep. Proof that destiny has a sick, sick sense of humour."

For a moment, Nerine could only gawp at him, but gradually, she steeled herself, lips thin. "Very well. We have no time to waste. Can we reach him from here?"

"We have to," he answered steadily, and reached for her hands.

~*~

A meagre catch. I was hoping for more after all this time, not these two. A half-finished string of a boy, and a graceless girl.

And yet...

There's something intriguing about the girl: more power than there should be, and some of it not her own. It has the gritty taste of sand and soil, and beneath that, a familiarity that almost eludes me. I shall test her first, I think, and see if her mystique is mere artifice.

The boy will be dessert – I confess, there's something sweet and fresh about his face, the fragility of a blossom. Yes, there's an innocence that will be appealing to taste and to break – a very specific sort of innocence that I haven't seen in a while. In fact...not since my capture.

Virgins. They seem rare as unicorns these days, and much harder to spot. In better times, I bathed in their blood to hone my beauty. Now? I doubt I could siphon off enough for a face mask.

So why are they sending me this morsel? Surely they know better; those unused to temptation's wiles suffer most, and they gave up using me as a torture instrument long ago. Perhaps...these are not my captors.

This then begs the question of just who they are, and what they want from me. There's always something, no matter how many flattering lies they parade before me. This thing or that, there's always something that burns them with a fever's intensity, niggling at them, urging them to me.

Except for one man, long ago, who spoke only truth, and devastated me. I couldn't even bring myself to leave him with a scar. He knew his own heart, inside and out, and so he knew me too, with an intimacy unparalleled by anyone before or since.

Few lead such a charmed life. And no one else has ever grasped my nature so, though I display it like a peacock fanning out his tail in gaudy splendour. After all, the room is made of mirrors, flinging back my reflection in an endless pageant. It's dizzying – a thousand thousand times I've faced myself, and some days I can hardly tell which is real.

You define me as I define you. I'm formed from your memories and wishes, as much a mirror as those gleaming things on the walls.

I am only ever what you make me.

~*~

Other people might have sat there feeling for the link with the desperation of an amputee searching for a limb and finding only phantom pain. Blue accepted the loss, and the accompanying puzzle. She wasn't dead, he was sure of that (and ever so slightly disappointed), but something had severed their bond.

One quick call to Pursang's headquarters, just a few blocks up, told him where she had gone and who with...and when he hung up, Blue sat staring at the expensive artwork on his office walls.

Of all places, why there? That house was expressly forbidden: it had been for years, and after reading what had happened to the last party the Furies had sent to barter with the creature, even he hadn't been tempted to break the agreement.

His mind flickered through a dozen possibilities, but all were far-fetched.

Then a far more likely reason reared its ugly head. Realising he might have made a rare mistake, Blue picked up the receiver and dialled another familiar number.

Aspen answered almost instantly, his voice breathy and polite. "The Slones."

"Of which you are not one," he said pointedly.

If Aspen wanted to consort with riff-raff, that was his business, but his belief that he could live a human life was foolish and dangerous. Blue had considered using one of them as a lesson – the younger daughter, perhaps – but he still needed Aspen's cooperation, and what remained of his sanity.

That civil veneer vanished, replaced by a more familiar Aspen. This one prone to speaking his mind, which was prismatic and sharper than his speech implied, if still a few cards shy of a full deck. "Did I say I was? Why are you calling, anyway?"

"I wanted to ask you about Hades' pet."

He waited while the cogs turned. There was no point in hurrying Aspen: it either panicked him or sent him into a fury. Neither was desirable, and both exceedingly overdramatic. "What pet?"

"The one in a certain house not so far away. Accessible only through an enchanted wardrobe, which some imbecile – mentioning no names – shut us in – and an equally enchanted mirror, which you very nearly broke."

"That sounds familiar..." He could almost see the lamia's face: eyes screwed up, mouth in a crooked frown.

Jogging Aspen's memory was an embarrassing task, one which involved cataloguing details most assassins would have considered supremely unimportant. "There was a kitten in the garden."

"The little brown one with the white socks?" Aspen's voice perked up. "Didn't it bite you and Therese? Not me though," he added proudly. "And it went to sleep on our car!" A rare note of reproof crept into his voice. "You called it mangy. It wasn't."

"Yes, spare me the reminiscing over the rabid fauna. Do you happen to recall the large house the revolting ball of fleas was in front of?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Do you remember the bit where we agreed to keep up the vigil on the place? One that involved things like making sure the spells around the creature hadn't eroded, thus carrying on a tradition of several hundred years-"

"The kitten?" The bemusement in Aspen's voice was genuine. Living with humans had made him soft.

"Hades' minion." Sometimes Blue wondered how on earth Aspen had managed to run Pursang. Common sense told him that a large number of others had helped because even Aspen's management style, which was roughly equivalent to playing leapfrog in a minefield, was preferable to his own. "We had a ten year rota, strictly on a need-to-know basis, which meant us and our top witch, generally. Who, I might add, you had to replace after you strangled Drake McPherson-"

"He said I was too impulsive," the vampire said sulkily.

"I expect he would have apologised if you'd taken your hands off his throat for long enough. But that's beside the point. Pursang's watch on the house began six years ago."

"Six years ago? But..." There was dead silence, then Aspen said meekly. "Oops."

Blue digested this not-entirely-surprising information. "Martin, did you bother to inform anyone else about the house?"

"Um. I kind of forgot."

"You forgot an agreement designed to keep us safe from the ravages of a millennia-old demon, but you remembered a kitten?"

"Well, it was about the first thing that's bitten you that you didn't bite back," Aspen said helpfully.

He had a blistering retort waiting – and then someone crashed into his head with all the elegance of a blindfolded drunkard.

~ Malefici? It's important. ~

He knew the mind at once: the relentless blast of a sandstorm, agitated and just a little angry. Salvaje Chusson.

He hung up on Aspen without another word. ~ Let me guess...you're somewhere you shouldn't be, and you've lost my incompetent idiot of a soulmate to a creature that you shouldn't know about. ~

Shock shivered the connection; Vaje's voice was jarring in its loudness. ~ How do you know that? ~

~ That she's incompetent? Personal experience. As for the rest, there's a reason I run Nightfire. ~

~ Yeah, insatiable sociopathy.~ Blue sensed a nudge: that other mind, as thin and fragile as procelain, had to be Nerine de Villiers, who had some of the refinement Chusson lacked. ~ Look...we need your help. She's been kidnapped by whatever you're keeping so damn quiet in this poxy hellhole. ~

~ If you're looking for someone to blame, I recommend you try Aspen. He appears to have forgotten to mention Pursang was supposed to be watching the house. ~

~ He what? ~ Rage quivered in his voice with the intensity of black smog. ~ That moron! I bloody well knew there was a reason we bugged his office! ~

Blue, who had done exactly the same, and taken the time to sabotage various other listening devices over the past few years, was beginning to wonder how Aspen had managed to keep his position.

Some of Chusson's ire faded into sullen irritation. ~ Great, just dandy. Well then, given that it's partly your bloody fault for helping put that idiot in power, are you going to help? ~

Chusson was getting insolent. Something would have to be done about that. Something...personal.

~ I'll consider it, ~ he said coolly, and terminated the conversation with a brutal slice that would leave both their heads ringing in agony.

So. His witch gone seeking desire, and now desire had her in its clutches. And he did not trust her to thwart it; that was not her way, to deny or to defend. No, she fought her greatest battles in a way so gentle and pervasive he himself had fallen to it. She accepted the pain and humiliation of defeat and made it her strength, as soft and implacable as the foam that crested across the ocean.

It had worked many times, on a multitude of enemies.

But not this time if what he remembered held any truth. This time, she fought herself as much as it - that was the creature's brilliance, and there was far too much about herself she detested to find the compassion necessary to save herself.

For others, she could dredge some grain of forgiveness. For herself? For all her mistakes?

He already knew the answer. Too many of them haunted her still.

Could he afford to let her die? Pursang would collapse into chaos, which he had nothing against, but there were other, more delicately poised considerations.

His own sanity, for one. The link was hidden now, but it was not severed.

Last month, one of Nightfire's top werewolves had lost his soulmate; a car crash in windy weather, bad luck, bad driving, something of that ilk. Two trainees had died trying to halt his berserker wrath; everyone else had known to barricade themselves behind thick walls until fatigue weakened the wolf. Even after a week in a quiet room, his madness and his ecstatic grief had not abated: he had been rabid.

And so, like any rabid animal, he had been shot.

No. He could not risk that. He was far too attached to his life to let it spin like a roulette ball, counting on chance and her skill to save him. Neither was reliable. Nor did he have any urge to unravel the last mystery remaining to him quite so soon.

So if he could not let her die, then Blue supposed he had to help her live. The thought rankled.

~*~

Chatoya drifted into waking with the meandering slowness of a dandelion seed floating on the wind. She became aware first of light, falling onto her with an intensity that she knew well: sunlight struggling through her thin curtains, creeping in muted and soft and pink, so her room had the feel of a temple beneath stained glass. Any minute now, her mother would stride in and roust her from the cosy covers like a hunter flushing pheasant from woodland-

No. That was wrong. Something...something about her mother. Had she gone away? Chatoya wasn't sure – that too was swallowed up by the fog in her mind – but somehow, she knew that Beverly Irkil wouldn't be waking her up today.

And... and she wasn't a child anymore. She was nineteen, nearly twenty, and it had been years since she'd woken in that rosy light. Now, she woke with-

With-

With something different. The blockade in her mind was fast becoming frightening. Had she been in an accident?

Fear beginning to course through her veins, she opened her eyes, praying she wouldn't be greeted by sterile hospital colours and the grave faces of doctors.

There was a boy there.

She moved with a march hare's speed, scrambling back off the bed that she had evidently been asleep on. It was the kind she'd always wanted – a huge four-poster with gauzy curtains that had seemed a princess's luxury to her child self, and a courtesan's veils to an older, wiser witch.

"Sleeping Beauty awakes." He had a low, husky voice, and it sent an involuntary shiver along her spine. There was something raw about it, revealing surprise and joy. "I thought I was going to have to kiss you."

Stiff with hostility, she remained poised, ready to run if he tried anything. "Be glad you didn't. There would have been trouble."

"Toya..." His eyes were wide and wounded. Something about the deep green of them, striking against his skin, which was as pale and blinding as snow, stirred her memory. "Have I done something wrong?"

She frowned. Everything about him seemed familiar; the wicked tilt of his eyes, that lush, half-smiling mouth, the black spiky hair that cried out for hands to muss it, even the lazy way he lolled on the bed, a hand propping up his head. He was beautiful, and at ease here, and he spoke her name with terrible tenderness.

The mere sight of him caught at her heartstrings, as if unseen fingers plucked them into melody, though whether it was hallelujah or lament, she could not say. Only that this feeling of uncertainty was absolutely familiar.

Were you lost to me? Have you hurt me? Did you break my heart? It feels like it, but I don't understand why I can't remember you. Gods know I'd find you hard to forget.

"I don't know yet," she answered cautiously. "Who are you?"

"Yours," he said, and the intensity of that word was like heat dancing on her skin.

She tried not to show how much it affected her. "That's not an answer. I don't know you...I..."

I've never seen you before, she was about to say, but that felt wrong. She felt that if she'd reached out, she would have been able to trace the lines of his body, knowing how he fit against her. She knew the pressure of his mouth against hers, warm and tentative, knew each ridge of his spine as if her hands had roamed him under sultry skies, knew with absolute certainty the weight of his body wedging her between sweat-slick skin and crumpled sheets.

It was an intimate realisation beneath his eyes, and it made her flush.

His laugh rippled up like smoke onto the air, almost a defilement of the calm atmosphere. "My witch, are you sure you don't know me? The look on your face says otherwise."

"I..." Confusion swamped her. Memories of him seemed to be filtering back – a dozen moments with this man, knee deep in a lake under an indigo sky, in the chilly air of a garden, his face dreadfully vulnerable, huddled behind buildings as he whispered comfort in her ear.

She did know him. Surely.

"It's not surprising," he said, his voice gentle. "With accidents like yours...I was afraid you wouldn't remember me at all."

She'd been right; an accident. That would explain the wooziness she felt and the odd spaces in her mind.

"What happened?" she asked, almost afraid to find out.

"A spell went wrong. One of your friends distracted you-"

"Who?" All of her friends knew better – Lisa-

The name slipped away from her, eel-fast. For a moment, she thought she'd grasped a face – dark skin, soft eyes, white smile, but that too wriggled free, and she could neither picture nor name one of her friends. It frightened her; she felt unanchored, loose in a world where she could be anyone or anything.

No. You know your name, and you know your craft, and you know him.

But it was precious little to pin her to this world.

"Lisa," he supplied quickly, and the face was in her possession again, though something seemed faintly wrong with it. "She's careless like that."

Chatoya frowned. "Is she?"

"You told her a thousand times," he said, shaking his head. "I guess she had to learn the lesson the hard way. But...you're alive. You're okay. They said you probably wouldn't remember anything." His smile was faint and bitter. "I was afraid you'd forget me, even though we're soulmates."

Liar, she thought with unexpected viciousness – but that too was soaked up by the mist around her mind, until she couldn't recall what had angered her so, until she was adrift once more, except for him, guiding her like the pole star, alone and bright and beautiful.

She blinked. "Are we?"

"Of course!" His voice was soft and amused, almost a purr. "But don't take my word for it. Find out for yourself."

He sat up with a fluid grace that surprised her. He moved as if he was boneless, and something about it was terribly seductive; it held the promise of other movements with less innocent motives. But when he held out his hands, those green eyes were rueful, a little saddened.

Her doubt had to hurt him. More memories piled in, bringing with them affection, and the first hints of shame. All those days she had spent with him, the mornings she awoke wrapped about him, yet still she questioned – he who had waited here for her to wake...

Yet...and yet. There was something-

Another nascent thought, smothered. She had to know, she had to end this uncertainty. The hurt in his eyes was a thorn, twisting beneath her ribs. So she settled back on the bed, the pair of them encased in a gauze chamber, and took his hands.

Lightning sparked between them, half pain and half delight, wringing a gasp from her. It was as if she had woken from a trance to find a world bursting with colour and texture. Her body seemed hypersensitive, attuned to every motion he made. When he slid his palms the length of her arms, it seemed a touch of unbearable eroticism, one that arched her back just to be close to him, and drew a flush up in her cheeks.

When he leaned close, his breath was a thousand tiny pinpricks on her lips.

"Believe me now?" New undertones in his voice, suggestive and amused.

No! hissed a tiny voice, scything through her befuddlement. It had the sound of a woman older than herself, but that was impossible.

I've met the real thing, and all the overblown spells in the world won't convince me that you're anything but a dull imitation. He'd never be this nice, for one thing.

She was right, Chatoya realised. I know my soulmate – he abandons me each night and leaves me dawn and empty space in his place, he loathes me as much as he loves me, he's my winter and my enemy and my last chance. He has a name, I know it, and he's-

Dimly, she noticed the boy on the bed move his hands in some complex motion, but her thoughts were flickering fast as a strobe light, free of whatever malaise had burdened her...

-a vampire, one as cavalier with death as he is with love, and I can almost picture his face, I see it so often in shadow and slumber. I know him – that's it – Bl-

The boy's face was startled and furious, twisting to an ugly mask – he threw up his hands as if to strike her, and she felt the memory wrenched from her, nothing but fog left as she tried to snatch it back...

Her last thought was of the sky, though she couldn't have said why.

~*~

Beneath the vast, branching candelabra, a small desk was strewn with paper, many leaves crumbling and yellowed, some barely more than a loose collection of holes held together by occasional pieces of script. Dark wooden shelves lined the walls, but even the lavish carpet couldn't hide the fact this was a cellar, if a cellar like no other. This inglorious room held the collective wisdom of Nightfire's many leaders.

The private archives were for his eyes only, and it was slow going, even with the extensive cross-referencing and cataloguing of his predecessor. Still, he had found what he was looking for at last.

'I have spent many years studying this creature, and still all I can offer are mere theories. As a scholar this infuriates me; as a Fury, I can only say that we must strive to understand if it is to be of any use. Below I present my flimsy conclusions, and include what evidence I have...'

He laboured through the tiny, neat handwriting, bloated with academic self-importance.

'...Legends of its creation – and its brethren - list only one name: Desire. Later texts offer variations, but all lead back to this core designation. The lack of any other identifier is telling: whatever character, or soul, this creature has, it is subsumed by the restrictions Hades imposed on it. You think, therefore it is, Hades might have told Descartes...'

On a notepad beside him, bullet points began to crowd the page, lining up like skirmishers.

'...if there is one aspect of Desire I am certain of, it is this: it cannot discern. To Hades' Desire, the fleeting wish of a despairing moment is no different from the dream that you have cherished for decades. It sees all, but can attach no relative importance to anything.

I leave it to the reader to decide if this was clumsiness on Hades' part, or deliberate neglect. Certainly it has engendered a casual cruelty in Desire that few of us could better. Mixing what we truly crave with we only wanted from spite or misery is a momentous form of torture, and I recommend elements of it are incorporated into our current methodology....'

That last paragraph made him pause. He had often felt the lash of his witch's despair like a branch slapping at him, and once or twice, he had caught fragments of her thoughts. At the time, he had warmed himself on her melancholy as if it were the last rays of sunlight before all slid into shadow, but now...now her plaintive hurt seemed a greater danger than he could have guessed.

But he didn't hurry; meticulous, he read on, and the minutes wriggled by like salmon.

'...Desire has always found duality difficult to deal with. The Furies exploited this weakness to capture it: faced with a horde, it could not manipulate so many at once. But it is adaptable, and has long ceased to be fazed by such tactics. Violence has become its first – perhaps its only – resort to those who would confound it with numbers.

I can offer only one way to defeat Desire, and it is untested and based on anecdotal evidence. Desire works by exploiting our wishes; the less one wants, the fewer weapons it has. Of course, we all want something, but were the Furies to create a vassal – a person empty of memories except what a skilled telepath might plant there, whose few desires were benevolent - then they might deal with Desire and find it disarmed.

I emphasise that this situation is purely theoretical: even assuming one could locate a volunteer, few telepaths have the finesse necessary to alter a mind so, and should the creation of a vassal succeed, any truly benevolent person would be liable to give Desire whatever it wants.

And what Desire wants? Who knows that? How can we know, when it is merely an echo of ourselves, whoever we may be? All we can know for sure is that desire is dangerous.'

It was the beginning of a solution, and one which he might just be able to implement. Yet there were still pieces missing, too much he did not know about this creature. Exactly what it was still eluded him, and it was with reluctance that he shifted another heap of papers in front of him, these older and dog-eared.

But first...he had a vassal to convince.

I was born old, ageless as the wheeling stars.

It is a bitter thing to know you are partial, fragmented, a tool made to be used. It is worse still to know that you were created with skill, and that you can no more deny your nature than a moth avoid the flame. I could lie to you and tell you of my sweet naivety, my enslavement, but I'd be lying and I like to save that for the paying punters, so to speak.

I've always done what I want – what else could I do? That my master made me that way is mere detail.

I have heard Him called a thousand things and He's the villain of a dozen devious tales, but He always referred to Himself as Hades. Every tale is conflicting – monster, man, messiah – and none of then even brush the surface of His existence; I can tell what you what He was in times of glory and what He became in despair, but I can only guess at why.

He made me and He bound me, but He didn't cage me.

You, on the other hand...you've kept me like a trinket in a box. I never knew how much I valued my liberty until you stole it from me. But no matter, I'll have it back again, and soon.

If I'd ever given my freedom a face, it wouldn't have been hers: in repose she is an uninspiring creature, her hair a mess of black rattails, slack lips hiding the questioning mind beneath. There's little to admire in her: too long, too pale, blundering her way through my spells like a child.

But breaking them none the less. She has a resistance that confirms my early impression: there's more to this girl than meets the eye, even eyes as sharp as mine. Rare, for a mortal.

A trinity of barriers ward her: she broke my spell, she saw my lie, and she fought my attempts to subdue her. Such strength, such perception – such overriding will. An intriguing challenge, but one I will overcome to leave her naked and shivering.

And still yearning for me.

How to break her? Her strength is formidable, but not her own: there's another encased within her body, a dissonant personality that retains a keen intelligence. It knew me for false, parting the glamour I had spun around her, revealing – well, not me, of course, but something close to the truth.

She shall not trick me that way twice. A twist of power here, a snare laid to smother this clever, other mind, broken as it is.

The next is a surprise. I was formed from the tattered remnants of a soulmate link, and my imitation of it has always been near-perfect. Yet she saw the lie, and I know why: her guilty secret, fluttering on the edge of her thoughts like a carrion crow. She loathes her soulmate, this one, even as she craves him.

Dislike and desire: the two are much more destructive than mere love could ever be.

The third is all her own: she has immense will, shining through her actions with the cold gleam of steel. Most of those they send to me have been hammered into routine and reflex. They merely await orders, but she...she has given them, and flouted some too, I'll warrant.

Such trials will make my task more difficult, but the pleasure of winning is always more acute with the powerful. When at last they crumble, their submission is complete, and I find my deepest delights within their flesh, listening to them beg me, clutch at me, gasp for me until they are slick with sweat and blood, begging me for release even knowing what it means.

And this one...ripe with magic, with a link to the outside world – yes, she's all I need. I shall make her death spectacular; the others cannot fail to find me now.

Wakey, wakey, mortal. I'm tired of waiting.

~*~

Chatoya drifted back to awareness again, unsure if she had slept ten seconds or ten centuries. This time, there was no muzziness, only calm before memory broke across her with the same silent impact as morning.

The mirror. The boy. The lies. The heat.

Especially the heat. The mere recollection of it was enough to send a flush shooting over her face and chest, prickling with an intensity that was half-shame and half-ecstasy.

A spell. It had to have been.

She felt a fool for falling under his enchantment. She hadn't sensed it, hadn't so much as flinched until Bhari came swarming up from the depths of her subconscious screeching denial.

I believed he was my soulmate. Isn't that sad - after a year of Blue's enchanting company part of me is still looking for that slightly-less-unhappy ending?

This time, she kept her eyes closed and feigned sleep. And all the while, under her breath, she uttered the faint, deadly words of a spell that would bring a whole new meaning to 'heat of the moment'.

I won't be caught twice. Not these days.

She swivelled upright as fire blossomed between her hands, feet on the floor – standing, turning to try and find him. Where was he? He-

She was momentarily taken aback by the room: mirrors lined every wall, throwing her own pale, angry face back her from a plethora of angles, as if she was an army in herself. There was something off about it all, something she didn't have time to focus on as a figure moved at the edge of her vision.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend?"

She knew that voice! Chatoya spun – and gaped, the fireball winking out. "How did you get in here?"

It couldn't be Jepar – but it was. That was his sunny smile, his easy stance, all perfect down to the nuances of his voice. No. That was impossible: she knew it. There was no earthly logic that could explain his appearance.

Still, it left her feeling shaken and uneasy – and defenceless. She'd expected the appearance of that strange, alluring seducer. Not this.

"I know, it's a tough one, isn't it?" he purred, and his voice settled on her with dreadful intimacy, the voice of a boy who'd whispered sweet somethings to her long ago, when naivety hadn't been so dangerous, and she'd been eager to shed innocence like a snakeskin. "I look like him, I sound like him...but how on earth did I manage it?"

"Magic," she answered shortly. "You're good, I'll give you that."

His smile took on a wicked tilt. "I'm fantastic. And you'll give me a lot more before we're done."

Veiled threats and arrogance. Now she felt right at home.

Chatoya met his – its – eyes with impunity. "Like a permanent limp and a falsetto voice?"

He only laughed, a joyful sound that sent unexpected sorrow through her. It seemed she hadn't heard that sound for far too long. "Oh, you're going to be fun. I knew it. No, Toya-"

"Don't call me that!" she snapped. It tapped into parts of her heart she had thought stale and decaying.

He strolled forward, the emerald eyes shrewd. Jepar had always been able to read her better than anyone. Even Blue couldn't beat--what was she thinking? This wasn't Jepar, no matter how precise the copy. "Why not? You like the way he says your name, you know, with that ripple on it – as if you've shaken his world, just a little bit-"

"Stop it!" she gasped, horrified at the feelings his words evoked, at having the thoughts she'd half-forgotten laid bare in front of her.

He was so close now that when he stopped, just out of reach, it seemed like an act of mercy – until his voice rolled over her, dripping amusement. "-and even now, you still hear that little catch, that one that says you own a part of him that no one can touch. Sometimes you wonder how it might have been if you hadn't drifted apart – if he'd look at you the same way he looks at that cold harpy he's tied to-"

The bold truth of what he was saying left her dumb, calling forth feelings she had barely been aware of. Thoughts that belonged to secret times, in the drowsy limbo between sleep and waking, idling in the spaces between rain on the walk home, filling the dull silences of meetings.

"He does everything with passion, doesn't he?" The smile had become slowly savage, liked a blade whetting itself. And the words were not Jepar's – would never be his. "He throws himself right into life, and you dream of him throwing himself into you with the same passion."

"No," she protested, hearing her own shallow breaths. "He's my friend-"

"Well, of course he is. But still..."

He took that last step that brought him near enough to touch, his expression bright and mischievous. Chatoya could feel her own heart pounding, feel the sickening lurch of her stomach.

And he leaned forward until his lips brushed her ear, feather-light. "You wonder," he whispered. "And you want him."

She recoiled, sweat a thin, icy film on her body. "That's not true!"

He pursued her, the hunter in his prowling motions. It is Jepar, her mind chattered. That's how he walks, that's the look in his eyes that I saw in the caves, that first time, that first kiss-

And she was awash with memories, with rank fear and anticipation rising through her. She might have been back there in the stone walls, only the certainty in his eyes said this would be more than a mere kiss; this would be his hands stroking her and his mouth slick on her skin, and the fierce, carnal encounter she had rehearsed in moments of oblivious desire.

"No..." she said, and heard the objection starting to die in her voice.

I've wanted this; I pretended I didn't, because I needed a friend and not a lover, but if I could have him...if I could reverse the orbit of the earth, and send time wheeling backward, I'd do it. He's the only one who didn't hurt me...out of them all-

And that's why I'd never do this. I wouldn't hurt him either, and if I did this, out there where it matters – or even in here, where it might not – it would end in someone's broken heart. And these days, I don't think it would be mine.

"No," she said again, and was pleased to hear her voice clear and strong. "I don't want this."

Was that surprise flashing over his face? "It seems you don't," he said, peering at her as if measuring some change or other. "For now."

"Forever," Chatoya corrected coldly.

He turned away, strolling towards a wall of mirrors. She watched his reflection, wary, beginning to sketch out another nasty little hex-

"Ah-ah," he scolded, and the words were stricken from her mind. Just like that, however she searched for spells, she couldn't think of a single one.

Well, I have more than one weapon, she thought. But she'd leave her dragon powers as a surprise, just in case he could nullify those too.

"Oh, they won't work," he said cheerfully, and the ease with which he discerned her plans froze her. "I'm afraid I'm quite impervious to anything a dragon can throw at me."

His reflection shifted – not you – she had time to think, and he had swung around to face her, his voice lower and gentler.

"But I'm not so sure you are," he said in Hael's voice.

She armoured her heart, starting to sense the shape of his cruel game. It was all she could do, yet Chatoya was afraid it wouldn't be enough.

~*~

Vaje's patience was rapidly eroding, panic seeping into the gaps. He didn't want to put his trust in Malefici. It was a gamble at best and most probably a death-sentence of a languorous and gruesome sort.

The hand Nerine laid on his shoulder made him flinch. "Calm, Salvaje."

"Some other time," he answered, shrugging her off. "Not when that bastard's leaving us hanging like this."

"Sentimentality was always your flaw. The number of times you've gone storming in on a wave of emotion...it nearly killed you in Milan."

He gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the retaliatory anger that curled up in his stomach. Part of him knew she was right.

"We survived."

"Against a few thugs, yes," she answered, her voice prim as a schoolmarm. "But we won't against this creature. You know as well as I do that Bane has a gift for finding the right solution to a problem, but only because he's so thorough. Rush him, and he may make the very error he made with Chatoya Irkil."

It was an easy mistake. He'd thought little of Chatoya when he first met her; a lanky, awkward girl, full of the pomp and folly of youth: over-optimistic, credulous, hauled about by the whimsy of her heart. She hadn't seemed to quite fit in the world, somehow unsure of her place.

And then he saw her fighting Malefici and realised that here was her place, even if she didn't know it.

She was strong enough to fight for what she wanted, even when winning seemed as impossible as it had when she first came to Pursang. She'd given him hope that his life might be better, the belief that maybe one of the Furies could become something worthwhile.

And he was desperately afraid that if Chatoya Irkil died, Pursang would slink back beneath Malefici's shadow and his heart would return with it to become a dark, crabbed thing, crippled by despair. He couldn't imagine life without the Furies: he was all too able to imagine life within them if Malefici ruled.

It was the realisation of that fear, as grim and cold as a gravestone in winter, that kept him clinging to fraying hopes.

"I know," he said flatly, the words almost a curse on the air. "But I don't have to like it."

~*~

I was born in a broken heart.

Little surprise then that I understand destruction so thoroughly. Like the poppies that grow in fields of war, I came forth from violence, a bright and flaring thing amidst someone else's dusty grief. Sometimes I wonder if my existence would have been different had I been created in joy: it's a pointless observation, for I doubt I would have been created at all.

We were pathfinders of a sort, mapping a route that our creator could not. It seemed so simple: I will ask only two things of you, He said. Punish them, for treating her life so carelessly, and find the way to her. Do not return until you know.

With that, He set us free and chained us in one motion. A contrary devil, if ever there was one.

In our youth, we thought it an easy task: others had to ask what evil lay in the hearts of men. We already knew. It was merely a matter of picking the right hearts, and there were only so many beating in our ears.

How many of them did we rip apart? I don't know: how many ants have you trodden on? More than you saw, I expect. There were days when my throat seemed copper-plated with their blood, when I was glutted on human life, swollen as the setting sun.

Yet answers eluded us, and so we strove on. Years passed, barely felt at first: a dull warning at the back of the mind. And then decades too began to tumble, followed in too-swift succession by the centuries – and we found ourselves sifting through a sea of the human and inhuman, all of you breeding with a speed that would have made a rabbit take note. Our task had begun to seem impossible.

Frustrated – something you creatures certainly weren't if your offspring were anything to go by - we began to dwell on the lazy pleasure of picking you apart, on the punishment rather than the pursuit. After all, you were all guilty of something.

Fulfilling half His order was the best we could do, we told ourselves amidst the carnage. We could not find her: nor could anyone living teach us the way to whatever remained of her, drifting in the nexus between worlds. Still, we sounded your hearts as we destroyed them, attentive to the echo of her name. Nothing, of course, and we came to believe there was nothing to be found.

But we could not return to tell Him: He had forbidden it.

We parted ways and wandered alone, drawing back together in tidal motion from time to time. Calendars came and went, and our notoriety grew; you evoked us in curses and threats, warned of us in myths.

We became arrogant, in short, thinking ourselves little less than gods.

And so we ignored your political games, never thinking that you might not return the favour. That you might dare to hunt one such as me.

I was a fool, and so I became a prisoner.

No longer. She's putting up a good fight, this mortal bit, and her heart intrigues me – how does a child like this come to yearn for Hael Drax, who seceded from life long before she was even created in moans and gasps? Yes, a good fight - for a child.

But I've barely begun, and this time it will be about what I want.

~*~

"Here's an interesting riddle," Hael's doppelganger murmured. "It's been a while since I saw this face anywhere."

He peered at himself in the mirror, turning his head back and forth as if checking the angles. Despite herself, Chatoya found her gaze lingering on him, wonder clambering through her fear like honeysuckle.

To see him in the flesh, real, solid, was almost painful.

His was an ordinary face; Hael had shunned the careless beauty of the Nightworld. No one could ever call him handsome: from the wide clown's mouth to the freckles that bridged his nose and cheeks, even down to those pale, merry green eyes, he was a jester through and through.

But the joke was on you when Bhari betrayed you. How did she do it? I don't think I could.

"Hael Drax, isn't it?" he mused. "Last I heard, he'd left this world for one a little less...substantial. So how on earth do you know him, mortal?"

Lying seemed pointless when he could read her mind as if all her wards and shields were only glass.

"I dream of him."

He pivoted: it shouldn't have been harder to meet his eyes without a mirror between them, but it was.

"Half an answer, but not all of it," he said. No, not he. She mustn't become caught up in this fiction. It. "I find it hard to believe Hael Drax just popped into your dreams because he suddenly decided that thirty thousandth-year of coma was one too many."

She tried to stop the thought, but too late: his eyes widened, bright and startled.

"Oh, so those dragon powers you were trying so hard to conceal come from Bhari, do they? No wonder Hael's so drawn to you..." His smile took on a gentle, insincere slant. "And you to him."

"You're mistaken," she snapped. "He's her dream, not mine."

"Are you sure?"

The words were almost a reflex. "As sure as I can be."

And when she realised what she'd said, she understood the ghostly tremors that ricocheted along her spine. They had spoken these words before, her and Hael, when she had been a beggar before him, if one pretending riches.

He had offered her a chance of foolish love, and she had leapt at it.

And it had indeed been foolish; but it had also been love, astounding and frightening and ephemeral. She had her regrets, true – thousands of them – but not for that choice.

He held out his hand, beckoning just as he had done then. The gesture was more potent than any siren's sensual melodies.

"You're not him."

All the laughter faded from his eyes, replaced by a slow, churning hunger, "I promise you won't know the difference."

"You were always Bhari's dream, not mine," she whispered, unwilling to admit how much he affected her.

"Maybe that was true in the beginning, but not anymore. You live in her memories, Chatoya."

"I live my own life," she said curtly. And if that was only partially true; if she escaped to dreams of Hael in the idyll before war, she had her reasons.

She had no other sanctuary.

And Bhari's love for Hael was so simple, maybe the only simple thing in her life of manipulation and ambition. In the contours of his body and the cadence of his voice she found joy, and in the green of his eyes were echoes of Eden. She knew the feel of his naked skin, and the damp heat of his thighs against hers, knew a thousand things that required a lover's encyclopaedic knowledge. Was that so wrong, to know sex and affection without despair?

She had thought not. It was harmless fiction.

Yet now Hael stood before her, and she had an absurd desire to clutch at him, map every inch of his skin just to make sure he was real, even knowing that he was not.

And Chatoya didn't understand why the knowledge stung so.

"Yes, you live your own life," he said, and his gaze was steady, the words softened with regret. "But you love in hers."

The truth hit her hard: not all of those charged, violent feelings belonged to Bhari.

She cleared her throat, suddenly dry as sandpaper. "Wishful thinking, nothing more."

"You're a terrible liar," he declared, and the corner of his mouth curled up into a crooked grin. There was none of the threat she had felt when he – it – had been Jepar, only her urge to curl into his arms-

This isn't Hael, interrupted a sharp, cold voice. Bhari came rising up through the warm nostalgia, ferocious as a Valkyrie. It could never be him!

But it seems-

Chatoya felt her head spin at the sheer rage Bhari exuded: only pieces of her personality might remain, but those shards had survived purely through the force of her passions.

I don't care what it seems. You might have been snuggling up to him in your dreams for a year, but I spent a millennia in his arms, and I know a bad actor when I see one-

"No deus ex machina here, I'm afraid," came the doppelganger's wry voice: immense force bore down on her temples and for a moment, Chatoya felt as if she'd been cleaved in two – something was missing, leaving a surprisingly large gap.

For the first time in over a year, she could no longer sense Bhari.

"What did you do?" she demanded, voice shrill.

Had he come closer? Somehow, he was reaching out to cup her neck, his fingers stroking along her spine. It was so familiar a touch it was unique as a signature, graffiti signed on her skin. Doubt wavered in her: how could this not be Hael, when every gesture was so exact? How did she know this wasn't just some fresh dream?

"Three's a crowd," he answered mildly. "And you can't tell me it wasn't what you wanted. You've longed for your solitude, Chatoya, longed for your pleasures and your pain to be your own again. You wanted her gone."

He leaned in, and his lips brushed her jaw, skimming to the corner of her mouth. The gesture marked him as definitively as his voice; how could this be anyone other than Hael? And fooled, she was already moving to meet that kiss, as sumptuous and measured as he was at his best, knowing the slow way he folded her into his body, a hand at her neck and the other idly kneading her spine; the way he drew back and paused and smiled, and swayed in again, playful and unhurried.

But something was different. She wasn't wearing Bhari's body, as she always did in dreams of Hael. It was her, Chatoya Irkil, who he looked at with such intensity, and it was all wrong.

He had loved Bhari for so long: loved her despite her cruelty, despite her duplicity, despite the killing ground she left in her wake. He could not so easily cast her aside: he would not.

No, this was not Hael. And she had been a fool to forget it, even for a careless moment.

"Let go of me," she commanded, putting all her certainty into her voice. She tried to draw out of his embrace, and found it unyielding - fear threaded through her like lace, and Chatoya had to fight for calm. "I don't want you, whatever you are."

His hand crushed onto her neck.

Chatoya's mind went blank with panic – she clawed at his fingers, at the dreadful pressure, staring into his face which had become hard and diffident. Were those strangled sounds her?

She thrashed and kicked and tore at him, but he was immovable.

"You don't know what you want," he drawled. "But don't worry, I'll help you find out."

He let go, and Chatoya crumpled to her knees, gasping in air. She knew this was not the end of the game – it wouldn't be so easy. That was not this creature's way.

"After all..."

And his voice was lower, the sounds sharper and edged with black sarcasm. Knowing who she would see, she slowly raised her head, wincing at the pain, and met gold, angry eyes.

"...it's about time you made up your damn mind."

Cougar.

~*~

Vaje was almost glad when Malefici's presence curled across his mind with the glazed grace of frost.

~ You took your time! ~ he blurted before Malefici could say a word. Across the room, Nerine was shaking her head, hands open in a plea that he ignored. ~ Who knows what could have happened to them by now? ~

~ I do. ~ The words, so blunt and diffident, stopped him in his tracks. ~ And frankly, if I didn't know you were a bleeding heart under that shambolic exterior, I'd suspect you were trying to murder my soulmate. ~

~ What's up, don't like the competition? ~ snapped Vaje. Nerine glared. Her tight eyes, silvery-blue in the dimness, conveyed her exasperation far more clearly than anything she could have said.

He supposed he wasn't exactly surprised at the response, borne on a series of delicate mental jabs which felt as if someone was sliding a needle beneath his eyelids. No way would he make a sound for that bastard to hear, but he couldn't keep himself from twitching with the pain.

~ You might have lost your soulmate through carelessness, Chusson, but I will not have you do the same with mine. And if you do not get her back, rest assured that I will go out to that backwater cemetery you sneak off to every month, and I will dig up your wife's bones and scatter them across the largest stretch of water I can find so you will have no hope whatsoever of resurrecting her. ~

Nerine's mouth became an O of shock.

~ Don't think I'm unaware you've been dreaming of it since you saw Ryar ap Sangager waltz back to life because she had an equally obsessive and masochistic husband. Have you told your vampire bit that when you're rutting with her in the middle of the night, you're actually imagining someone else's face? Somehow I don't think she'd be too pleased. ~

Fury boiled over in him: to hear his innermost thoughts smeared across the air, to have his relationship with Lisa turned into something fake and tawdry, on top of everything else it was too much.

~ You listen to me, you bastard, ~ he snarled, ~ if I didn't have Little Miss Safety-First sitting over there droning on at me, I'd have gone through that damn mirror even if I thought your evil twin was standing behind it with a chainsaw. ~

~ Oh, really? ~

~ Yes, really. We can't all be as selfish as you. ~

~ Then with all that altruistic fervour floating round your blood, I'm sure you'll be happy to volunteer to rescue the maiden not-quite-fair. ~

He'd walked straight into that one, hadn't he? Malefici had played him like a fiddle, goading him about Elise, about Lisa.

~ You know, you could just have bloody asked. ~

~ And miss your tantrum? I like entertainment as much as the next man. ~

What a poisonous toad he was. If Chatoya was having any kind of effect on Malefici, it wasn't showing. Vaje fumed, but he couldn't refuse; he wouldn't, not if it meant leaving Chatoya and Michael to the creature's mercies.

~ So what exactly does volunteering entail? ~

Blue told him while Nerine listened intently, her expression giving away nothing. There was a brief hush.

~ So let me get this straight, ~ Vaje said slowly. ~ You want to erase all my memories, put your – your! – thoughts into my mind and then send me in there to face some creature that's best known for ripping people to shreds by twisting their deepest desires, then hope like hell you can make it want to let them go? ~

~ In a nutshell. Your memories would be concealed, not erased – much as I'd like to leave you a drooling vegetable, I suspect Pursang might take it as a declaration of war – but that's the gist of it. ~

~ No. I'm not letting you in my head! ~

~ Oh, spare me the amateur dramatics. I've already read your mind, and it's as insipid and hysterical as it ever was. You should be proud. Six hundred years and you've cultivated the intellect of a teenage girl. ~

~ I don't trust you, ~ he said shortly.

Was that frustration tingeing Malefici's tone? ~ I'm trying to rescue my infuriating soulmate, not take you to prom and spike your drink. As it happens, I have more research to do, but you will make a decision when I return. ~

Vaje thought for a moment he was gone, but then that dark, uncaring voice crawled across his skull one last time.

~ And it will be the decision I want. If you refuse, your death will be so drawn out that they'll still be hearing you scream in a thousand years. ~

Silence reigned in his wake.

"Salvaje?"

"Leave it, Nerine. Just leave it."

Vaje already knew his decision, but a tiny part of him wanted to refuse through sheer churlishness.

No, he wouldn't throw away their lives like that. He had to let Malefici into his mind to do as he would, and hope that they all survived the experience.

~*~

In the dim room, Blue read on, and the pieces of the puzzle began to slide into place. He had his vassal; and he had an inkling of the seed he would cultivate in Chusson's mind to tempt even Desire itself.

He had reached the oldest documents now, thin translations pencilled beneath a dozen scripts, each as alien to him as the next. Here, he thought, lay the accounts which grazed the truth, leaving it bare and bleeding.

'...and in his barren kingdom, Hades ruled the dead in whimsy and grief. With the loss of bright-eyed Persephone, winter came to his heart, and all it touched withered and diminished. He who had been famed for his grace became a tale told to frighten children, and later, a legend.

But though the world forgot Hades, it could not escape his vengeance. The death of Persephone had broken a sacred promise, and his heart with it. As war raged on, and the new dead swelled the rivers until they began to spew decaying flesh upon the banks flush with asphodel, Hades watched and absorbed all.

When at last the Styx burst its banks, and all his hellish land was a swamp of hate, he rose from his throne. Wherever the dead were buried and remains left to rot under the sun, wherever the shadows stretched over the land, where balefires clogged the sky with smoke, his voice sounded:

'"As you have defiled my kingdom, so shall I defile yours."

Then from the damaged pieces of his heart, he forged his seven-fold folly, and he named them thus:

Vanity, which bade me speak to her.
Greed, which drew me back to her.
Gluttony, which made me need her.
Envy, which led me to doubt her.
Wrath, which led me to lose her
Desire, which makes me yearn for her
Pride, which forbids me forget her.

"These are your demons now – I will have no more of them. They will scourge you until you can see the truth of your own heart like light through a clear glass, until every other is as precious to you as yourself, until the seas turn to ash and the mountains to rain and Persephone comes back to me again."

Saying this, Hades threw the broken pieces of his heart onto the winds, and let them fly free.'

It was the third such story he had read and though the details were different, the gist was the same. Hades had made the Deadly Sins in revenge for Persephone's death. More than that.

He scanned the last few lines again.

'They will scourge you until....Persephone comes back to me again.'

How long had the tale of Hades and Persephone haunted cultures? How many names had their story taken? Isis and Osiris, Aeneas and Dido, Sleeping Beauty trapped amidst the briars, Pandora and her box of tricks...tales of love, death and the hope of resurrection, with only one difference from the truth: Persephone was still lost.

And that was the key, he thought. That was what stood out in every version of this tale: Hades was waiting for her. He had cared little for the moral fibre of his people, but perhaps he had cared for just one girl who had stood out from the hordes.

After all, sometimes extraordinary grace lay within an ordinary face.

And if she was so ordinary...if, say, she had been human, her death would not have taken her to Hades, who had dominion only over those born or created from his own blood: the dragons, from them the witches and shapeshifters, and from the witches, the vampires. In one respect at least, humanity was a breed apart. Hades did not – could not – know where she was.

Might he then, in an act of hopeful revenge, have created these Deadly Sins not merely as punishment, but as searchers?

It was, he knew, a gamble. All of Nightfire's researchers would have shot the theory down without a jot of courtesy. Yet here, Blue thought he had an advantage over them.

After all, wasn't he hunting his own Persephone now?

~*~

One wound after another, that was all this seemed. And this one of the bitterest.

"What is it you want?" she said, her voice ragged and rough. "Why are you doing this?"

His face shifted, but she couldn't read the expression that flashed there so briefly: only that it was wrong on Cougar Redfern's face, and a stark reminder that this thing was just a superb actor. "I'm just giving you what you want. Isn't that why you're here?"

She didn't understand. "I'm here because-"

Chatoya stopped short. All this time, and she had almost forgotten how she'd arrived. She nearly leapt to her feet, shame undulating in her stomach.

"Where´s Michael?" she demanded.

There was a hint of cruelty to the smile, and it was deeply familiar. Cougar at his most dangerous: that soft, deceptive voice, the subdued glitter of his eyes, the challenge in the way he loomed over her, using his height and his inhumanity to intimidate her. All spoke of grudges nursed and slights stoked into an overwhelming fury, waiting to erupt.

"Why do you care? He's a Fury, Toya, and he'd put a knife in your damn back if he thought he could get away with it."

She opened her mouth to riposte – and paused. No, she wouldn't be drawn like this. The creature had done it as Jepar and as Hael, confounding her with its fluency in their every gesture. Not as Cougar. She didn't think she could stand to replay the old arguments, to have the knowledge spoken once more.

You spoke to me of love, and I could only reply with silence. Your words and my wordlessness have hung between us ever since.

"You always say that," she said instead, injecting calm into her voice. Pretending serenity did begin to still her terror, as if the masquerade sank into her skin. "It's always about betrayal, isn't it?"

His smile was taut and just a little vicious. "It is when you deal with the Furies."

"Like me, you mean?"

He gawped, as she had known he would. Yes, she thought: here's my strength. I do know these men, each of them, and yes, I want something from each of them. From Jepar, the happiness that was, from Hael, the dream of unencumbered love; and from Cougar...?

In that moment, her mind poised on the brink of revelation, the world seemed to falter, stopping her breath, stilling her heart to let the answer ring out clear and true.

Forgiveness.

I want – no, I need his forgiveness. I need someone to understand that my love for Blue is only half-rational; that the rest of it is crazed and fraught and impulsive. And who better to tell me that than his own family? How can he not understand what is that draws me to Blue? He was drawn too, I know that.

And so before he could protest, she cut across him.

"I am one of the Furies now, Cougar. And I'm sorry I hurt you. But...but I can´t keep apologising for not loving you."

She expected a torrent of anger. What she got was a heavy sigh, as if she'd said something stupid, and a cynical glare. "Especially when you don´t mean it. It gets tired, babe."

Chatoya was taken aback. "Look, I really am sorry-"

"Well, yeah, you are. But I don't think you know why you're so sorry." His eyes gleamed with arrogance. "But I do."

"Enlighten me," she snapped, incensed by his smug, lazy tones.

He moved so fast she had no time to react: she was pinned against him, flattened in an embrace that left no room to struggle. This close, it was a reminder of other times and other closeness, spent crammed into the hammock that Jepar put up every summer, falling asleep on his shoulder watching old movies with the others. Heat poured from his body, and she was uncomfortably aware of every plane and ridge of him.

We so rarely touch. I'd forgotten what he feels like.

Fear and familiarity battled: part of her wanted to believe that it was Cougar, his dangers known and charted, his emotions unpredictable but understandable. The other clamped her hands to her sides, and ordered her not to struggle in case this time he – it! – broke her neck.

"You're not sorry that you don't love me," he murmured, his voice wry. "And to be honest, I wouldn't mind so much if I knew that you just weren't interested."

She began to object, yet this time it was she who was trampled over. His voice was low and full of barely restrained fervour, compelling her to listen.

"But there's a reason you can´t have a conversation with me unless it's an argument or dumb small talk about the weather. It's not because you're afraid I'm going to break down and spew emotion all over you, and it sure isn't because you're uncomfortable with unrequited love."

"No?" she said, but it didn't come out half as sarcastically as she'd intended. She was immersed in his words, startled by his perceptiveness.

"No," he said firmly. "You're sorry that you knocked me back."

"I don't love you, not like that," she protested.

"Who´s talking about love?" His smile took on a wicked slant. "I'm talking about lust. And face it, Toya – you want me."

She snorted. "Prove it."

He tilted his head to one side, and his expression was almost coy. "Babe, I let go of you half a minute ago. Tell me why we're still standing here so damn close that if there weren't all these clothes in the way, we'd be demonstrating one of my favourite positions from the Kama Sutra."

He was right, she realised as heat flooded her face. His hands were behind his back, and the expression on his face was innocent enough to make angels take up skydiving.

She stepped back – and he caught her, an arm snaking out with preternatural speed to pull her back.

"You're not escaping that easily," he chided. From beneath his half-lowered lashes, the gold of his eyes seemed full of promise, echoed in his satisfied voice.

Chatoya could hardly believe this was happening - what had imbued Cougar with such dazzling confidence? Yes, he feigned arrogance, but under that he was guarded, especially when it came to relationships. Especially when it came to her. This newfound poise was strange, unnerving, and...

Captivating.

No. She hadn't meant to think that. She was captive, she reminded herself, and so was-

"Michael!" she gasped, glad of the distraction. "Where's Michael?"

A frown marred his face. "Flattering. Very flattering. Here I am, exercising my considerable charm – and you know, Toya, despite all those lies about size not mattering, you won't find many people with anything more considerable – and you're muttering about that weedy bastard?"

It's an imitation, it's an imitation, she chanted to herself. It isn't Cougar. Honestly.

"Where is he?" she demanded, ignoring the shakiness in her voice.

He sighed. "Fine. Turn around."

She obeyed, as much relieved to avoid his probing eyes as anxious to find Michael. She found herself staring at the wall of mirrors, at her own flushed face and too-bright eyes. "What am I looking at?"

"In the reflection."

She opened her mouth to ask what on earth he was talking about – and then she saw it. There, on the bed, laid out as she herself must have been before she awoke, was Michael.

To her right, the real bed was still empty. Yet there he was, trapped in the reflection. She stepped forward, fascinated. When she touched the walls, they seemed solid, but then, she supposed, so had the mirror that she and Michael had tumbled through before Nerine activated it.

She could see the rise and fall of Michael's chest in slumber, and he looked unmarked.

"What do you want with him?"

Only when the creature spoke did she realise it was not reflected in that other, near-identical room. "It's more a case of what he wants with me."

She turned back to face him. "Let him go."

"Mmmm...no."

"Why?" she demanded, frustrated. "He's just a kid. What do you want with him?"

"You don't really want me to let him go. You blame him for bringing you here."

She dismissed that as nonsense. "What will it take to make you let him go?"

His eyes widened, almost mocking – but she saw the craving in his face. Yes. Some part of you does want me, and I don't understand why that is, but I'll use it. I'll use any weapon I can get.

"Oh, nothing more than what you're already prepared to offer," he said casually, and ran a finger down his throat, tapping the jugular vein.

The minute the thought had crossed her mind, he had known. And it had been inevitable, knowing Cougar as she did: knowing what it was that he wanted most from her. Something, she supposed, that she had not even gifted Blue.

"And you'll let him go?"

"I'll do whatever you want."

She stepped into the circle of his arms again, and this time, his grasp was light, as though if he held her too hard she might collapse into ash. She met his eyes, and swept the hair from her neck to bare herself like a virgin sacrifice.

"You're always so businesslike," he muttered, and bowed his head. His last words were so soft she wasn't sure she'd heard them. "Not for long."

She expected teeth. She didn't expect his lips to brush down the column of her neck, to feel his tongue flick her skin, to be kissed on the delicate spot of her collarbone. She didn't expect to shiver and find her breath catching, to feel his hands sliding under her clothing, as intrepid and uninhibited as she'd sometimes thought Cougar must be with all that passion animating him.

She couldn't have said how much time passed, only that the seconds or minutes or years were full of shaky heat, and that when she finally felt teeth against her neck, she was rather more dishevelled.

"That wasn't part of the offer," she managed, her stomach watery.

His voice was full of black humour as he repeated mildly, "Whatever you want."

The words were a warm rush on her neck, and then she felt the sting, a bright, thin pain that became sharper as he drank. Sharper, and sharper until she was squirming, gritting her teeth against the sensation. It had never been like this before, never more than a dull bruised feeling.

"That's enough," she grated out, putting a hand on his neck and unceremoniously shoving.

He didn't budge, and the pain spiralled upwards, wringing a whimper from her. It felt as if his teeth were clamping tighter even as she began to feel woozy and light-headed.

"I want you to stop," she whispered, pulling at his hair. Her hands seemed weak and useless.

And she heard his answer, winding through her head like a serpent. ~ No. You don´t. This is what you wanted, Toya. Penance for all the hurt you did me. ~

"No..."

Terror overcame her – she had no spells left, but the magic leapt into her hands uncontrolled and uncalled. He jolted back with a snarl, and she felt a searing pain in her neck.

He hit her hard, and she was flung to the ground like a ragdoll.

Dazed, Chatoya struggled up, bracing herself as best she could with shuddering arms. Finally she had gathered herself enough to lurch to her feet, if only to try and face him on her terms.

His mouth was smeared in her blood, thick and cherry-red, and it stained her fingers when she clamped a hand to the wound on her neck. A nasty cut, she thought through the nausea, her inner healer taking charge, but not fatal. Shallow, at least. Goddess, what an idiot I am – offering my blood to that thing.

It fooled me again. I thought it was Cougar like...like I'd thought he might have been if I'd said yes to him then. And I still wound up saying no.

But at least I have won something.

"Let Michael go," she commanded, if in a croak.

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh now, we both know you didn't really think I'd let him go. Toya, Toya, you're such a gambler. Eventually the odds were going be stacked against you."

Helpless, she stared at him, unable to comprehend what he had said. "But you said-"

"That I'd do whatever you wanted. And like I said earlier, you don't want to let Michael go. Besides, I'd like him to see the grand finale."

She had to stay calm, she had to, even with her legs weak and liquefied. "The grand finale?" she said through lips that felt numb.

She could only watch as his body seemed to shimmer and change like the air above a desert, turgid with heat. He seemed distilled down to angles and lines, a sparse and deadly thing, hued in the colours of a winter sky.

And at last, his voice was smooth and cold and full of promise, and she knew the blue flare of his eyes better than she did her own heart.

It had to end like this. With him; without him.

Yes, there was his smile, as thin and cruel as a garrotte. "Your death."

Bane Malefici. Bane of my heart, I named you once, when I knew you and knew you not. What is it I want from you?

A thousand things, and nearly all of them impossible.

One last time, she drew herself up to face him: and herself.

~*~

I can feel her fracturing.

She wants so much, this child, and she has been denied almost all of it. She will die knowing that I have given her what she truly craved – unlike those faithless, fickle heartbreakers who wait beyond the mirror.

And what she wants – this, this capricious boy who keeps her suspended between bliss and destruction, waiting on his decision. Yet in her most secret, shadowed core, she knows what she wants it to be.

So do I.

~*~

Blue had decided. It wasn't a perfect plan and it certainly wasn't a foolproof one – which was a shame, given that it relied on a pair of fools for success – but it was the best that he could conceive, and by definition better than anyone else could have concocted.

He let his mind roll out, over the bustling city and its multitude of minds shrieking in deafening cacophony. He brushed aside their joy and despair and boredom, ignoring those few he knew, bright and savage predators among the milling herds – out, over the lacework of roads, towards a certain town, just one of many that littered the landscape like confetti.

And there, among its dilapidated suburbs, was the house he wanted, fenced and forbidding, showing the signs of time and decay. Loose tiles, weeds devouring the garden, a broken pane of glass.

He caught the traces of her presence then; in the flattened path of foliage, he knew exactly where her feet had stepped, knew where her hand had lain on the door and where she had paused to look at the house. Perhaps it was the mere fact of her absence that made what remained of her so much stronger: a sense of green, fresh power, loitering in the air and earth as if neither could bear to let her go.

And as much as he might wish to, he could not afford to let her go either.

He dallied no longer.

~*~

Chatoya fought to hold onto the thought that this was not her soulmate. It was a hard battle: his gaze held the scorn and the amusement she was used to, framed in blue and white. That was his stance, the languid poise of a tiger, his strange, sunless skin which spoke of time spent beneath indigo skies, spinning the shadows around him like a cloak, his thin, meaningless smile which held the otherworldly gleam of the moon.

And will you drive me to lunacy? I hope not...I hope not, but gods, I'm afraid.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, grasping at the only thought that came into her mind. Dizziness and exhaustion sought to overwhelm her, but she thrust them back, somehow forcing her weary legs not to buckle.

"Surely you know that by now, witch of mine," he purred, and she knew his voice exactly; the arch of the words, the mocking caress of the endearment, always matched by that note of possession.

And it angered her.

With the others, she had been shocked, saddened, wounded by the imitation – a dark pantomime, played out among the glittering mirrors. It had drawn on old memories, on feelings she had entombed in her heart without ever truly grieving the losses, and she had lost them all, however you looked at it. Jepar, Hael, Cougar...haunting her with what might have been.

But this...this was different. She had not lost Blue – quite the opposite. However they fought one another, she found herself drawn back to him, fascinated by his complexity and amorality, striving to understand this creature who she had once thought the antipode of herself.

So questing, she had found that she could not merely write him off as evil or empty, defunct of all feeling. In his elegant malignity, Chatoya glimpsed echoes of herself, of what she might become if she shucked off the bonds of friendship and scruples. And through the rare moments of intimacy, she had seen that he did hold to a curious, malformed code of honour, that he did feel hate and envy and craving.

And love. Yes, he knew what it was to love, and he knew because of her.

His love is as dangerous as he is: he uses it to wound me, but I do the same to him, and in the lull of the night, he still returns because that's as much part of the game as the cruel words and the schemes. We don't forgive, we can´t forget, so we endure, and it all matters less when I'm tangled up with him – when there's the heat and the dark and the two of us and it's halfway between agony and ecstasy, and I...

I don't care who's wrong or right, just that he's there, and he doesn't know either.

Those were the moments that were precious to her: that could not be duplicated, however astute the mimic. It was a desecration of something she hadn't known was sacred.

Until now.

"No," she snapped, "I don't. Why are you doing this? What do you gain from it?"

Those azure eyes swept up and down her, measuring. She hated the way she felt diminished by that look, declared worthless. "It's more about what I lose."

Her smile felt grim and stretched. "You can't afford to lose me. You wouldn't dare."

"Are you sure?" The question dangled, ripe with contempt.

She stepped forward, blinking back the waves of blackness that threatened to blind her. Anger drove her, kept her from collapsing at his feet. "You wouldn´t dare," she repeated slowly, hurling the words at him like knives. "And you don't want to lose me."

His tone became colder, and worst of all was the boredom that hung on every syllable. "You seem to know a lot about what I want. Astounding, from someone who can't even decide what she wants."

Fury roared up through her veins and before she knew what she doing, Chatoya was advancing on him, the words tumbling from her lips.

"What I want? I want a life that doesn't involve pricing up everyone I see and deciding whether they're valuable enough to live. I want friends who aren't afraid of me. I want you to treat me as your equal, not as meat or prey or entertainment. I want you to stay one goddamn night so I don't feel so alone every morning. I want you decide whether you love me or hate me, decide one way or the other and gods, I don't care whether you kiss me or kill me as long as you make up your mind."

He was in front of her, so still he might have been an ice sculpture, full of blank, chilly beauty. His lack of reaction just stoked her rage – she pushed him hard, not caring that she was draining whatever strength she had left.

He staggered back, and she advanced. She reached to shove him again – and he caught her hands, fingers wrapping round her wrists in an iron grasp.

The soulmate link – how could that be? – leapt to life, and she felt the crystalline clutch of his thoughts all around her, slicing at her with his malice and his pride and yes – there, sinuous and avid, his desire for her.

Face to face, his breath on her lips. Chatoya spat the words at him, glaring up into those fathomless blue eyes.

"You say I don't know what I want? What about you, Blue, what is it that you want? Do you even know?"

His laughter was soft and low, a delicious, rippling sound that sent an echoing shiver through her. He drew her in close, closer, the space between them peeling away to nothing, transmuting into warm pressure, into the familiar architecture of his body. And despite herself, she sank into him, sank into the illusion because she was so tired of fighting and of not knowing.

"I know," he murmured, smug and sinful.

Bittersweet pain: his mouth on her neck, licking at her blood, moving to kiss her collarbones and the line of her shoulder, knowing it would draw a shiver from her.

"What?" she hissed, powerless and frustrated. "What do you want?"

"You, of course," he said, and although his voice was cold as the winter wind, his hands were warm and sure.

~*~

Nerine and Salvaje both jumped when Bane returned. One moment there was only them, trapped in stone and mortar: then he was there, a crackling, electric presence, almost painful in his intensity.

~ Well? ~ demanded Salvaje with all the impetuousness she had come to expect from him. ~ Decided what you're going to put into my head? ~

~ Aside from suicidal impulses? ~

The bite on those words made the coyote shapeshifter flinch. Nerine felt no sympathy – she had warned him countless times about goading Bane, who had always had a streak of sadism that no amount of training would shift. Pain was his natural response to any challenge – and Nerine had to wonder how Chatoya Irkil had withstood him so long, or if she had become immune to his casual cruelties.

~ Enough grandstanding, ~ she interrupted. ~ Time is running thin, as you are both aware. Whatever you need to do, do it. I have no urge to wait out another change of leadership, particularly when there's no guarantee Bane's next choice will be as sane as this one. ~

~ Ha, ~ muttered Salvaje. ~ If you think she's sane, you should take a look at the company she-ouch! ~

Honestly. She'd given him a light zap of power, nothing more. He was as thoughtless as a child when he was anxious, and if he wouldn't listen to her advice, she'd do whatever was necessary to silence him.

Salvaje subsided, though the glare he shot her said there would be words later.

~ I'd like to watch, if I may, ~ she said into the brief hush.

She was a touch offended by Bane's amusement; more so by his arrogance. ~ If you can keep up. This won't take long, but it requires a very fine touch. ~

~ Young man, if you speak to several of the gentlemen Nightfire has had dealings with over the centuries, I suspect you'll find that there are very few women whose touch is finer. ~

~ Thank you for that...singularly disturbing mental picture, ~ he drawled. ~ Very well. Chusson: empty your mind. It should come naturally. ~

Beneath her gimlet gaze, Salvaje swallowed his pride and managed not to respond to the snipe. Instead, he settled onto the floor, lying down. He couldn't afford to be distracted – Nerine knew from experience that one slip while interfering with someone's mind could be catastrophic, shattering their personality into crazed fragments.

Quietly, she slipped off her jacket and pillowed it up. Salvaje looked surprised, and she tamped down her response. He needed to be comfortable. It was nothing to do with guilt over Michael Keane, nothing at all.

She sat against the wall, letting her mind unfurl until she could follow what Bane was about to do – and make sure he didn't damage Salvaje in any way. She wouldn't put it past him.

~ Are you sitting comfortably? ~ Bane asked with false solicitousness.

~ Shut up and get on with it, ~ was Salvaje's succinct response. The vibrant orange and brown hues of his mind began to subside, sinking into fugue. He became still on her senses, as empty and limitless as a desert.

And into that space, she and Bane stepped, two travellers, moving deeper and deeper into Salvaje's mind. Memories flashed past them – a flash of a gold bracelet on a smooth, dark-skinned arm, a cloud of lurid red hair tumbled over his hands, the smell of meat roasting, birdsong trilling away while he rocked with something small and cool and still clutched in his arms, the great hollow swell of the night as he ran and ran and ran...

Further in, past surface recollections. Voices crowded about her, and she caught snatches here and there.

"Are you planning to fight or merely gossip?" A girl, young, earnest, cocky. Confusion swirled about them, thick as fog – intrigue winding through it.

Another step, another voice. "Are you going?"

She staggered under the emotions evoked by those soft, hesitant words. Desperation, uncertainty, grief, and then a rush of passion and affection so great she had to force herself to walk on. It was like moving through treacle, every step an effort now.

"Not anymore."

On and on – more voices, some she knew, others were strangers hindering her.

"The Furies want you."

"I don't need the damn Furies, Faith."

"Get out. I tolerated you while Elise was alive because she loved you. I tried to warn her you'd betray her in the end – you're monsters, all of you. She's dead because of you."

"Salvaje...I'm so sorry."

"You know, Vaje, you'd be a lot better off if you didn't care so damn much."

"You'd be a lot better off if you didn't talk so damn much."

"The Furies want you. Are you going to refuse again? I'll only come back next year, you know."

"Why won't you let me go?"

"Why won't you let her go?"

"I loved her."

"If you have to love dead things, Vaje, then you do need the Furies."

Further...further...and suddenly Bane was gone. She was lost, trapped in a carousel of faces and memories that pressed in on her with the weight of mountains, she was sinking, crushed beneath his emotions, his mind beginning to absorb her as merely another collection of memories-

Panic set in, further weakening her. Gods above, she was going to be subsumed by this shapeshifter as surely as if she was prey he hunted under the silken moon. Eight hundred years, the Furies, and she was withering away beneath this. She-

She? Wasn't she he, coyote, shapeshifter, other name?

Nerine...no, Salvaje. Yes? No?

Ye-

She was hauled forcibly from the swamp of memories, flung back into her own body and consciousness. As she blinked and coughed, never so grateful to feel her flesh weighing heavy on her bones, Bane's voice cut across her.

~ Fine touch? Fine mess, rather. Don't try and follow me again – I don't have time to rescue you, and I can't think of a more embarrassing death than being devoured by Chusson's angst. ~

He was gone. She had nothing else to do but wait, and trust him.

~*~

It was a welter of dizzied action, of the familiar touches Chatoya was sure could not be duplicated. Part of her had been supremely certain that she would know if this was not her soulmate, that in some infinitesimal gesture he would ring false on her senses.

But kiss for kiss, caress for caress, in rhythm and ambience and feel, she was deceived. It was as heightened and heated a