The wind changed, and brought change with it.

It was a chill North wind, blasting down from places of ice and emptiness, and he welcomed it back. Its arrival meant the last lull of summer was gone, and in the season of grey skies and shivers, he felt most sure of himself.

 Like a breath of winter, it slipped between the curtains, riffling the pages of a book lying on the floor, brushing his exposed shoulder in a warning touch.

 It woke Blue Malefici from idle dreams, and his eyes opened in the dawn light. For a moment, his irises were fuzzy and golden, but sharpened quickly into a hard blue. He should have slid from her bed and left then, but he lingered: unmoving, he left his arm trailing across her back, his cheek pressed to her shoulder blade, inexplicably soothed by the steady heat of her body.

Her mere presence was a small enchantment, but a potent one.

 The urge passed, and he withdrew from her, an expert in stealthy departures. He didn't even wake her, though the thought crossed his mind, wicked and fleeting, but soon the only trace of him was a depression in the mattress and a fading scent.

 He didn't look back.

~*~

 Promises, promises. He rarely made them, knowing well the value of a vow, and disliking obligation of any kind. Even so light an obligation as desire chafed, and so he banished the thoughts of moss-green eyes from his mind.

 But those he made, he kept.

 Except for this one, which he broke with vicious pleasure every year.

 He'd made the pilgrimage several times before. The journey was familiar; road after road passed him by, wide highways and city grids, a tedious routine of traffic and temper. More than once he found himself sitting on the verge as he waited for the engine to cool down, keeping a practiced eye on the clouds of smoke belching from the hood.

 After all, even the stolen powers of a dragon couldn't fix his old Fiat.

 In those periods of waiting, he read, crawling through "A Passage to India" with a pen and paper beside him, jotting down occasional words. When he tired of it, there was his own empire to tend to:

 "Mon diable, it's been a while," was Orelie Perette's greeting. Her phone voice was the low, husky growl of a woman who'd spent her life with smoke circling her lungs. Her heart was just as black, if less bogged down by tar.

 "So it has. Perhaps you can help me with a small matter."

 A brief pause before she spoke again, light and airy as a butterfly. "Well, of course, mon diable!"

 "I took the liberty of examining your accounts, and I was intrigued to discover several large payments which weren't from Nightfire."

 She was a clever woman, Orelie, and he respected her for that. Unfortunately, her intelligence was outmatched by her greed and her tendency to tumble into entirely impolitic relationships.

 "Mon diable, you must have made an error - my accounts are entirely in order-"

 "The accounts you have registered with Nightfire, certainly," he interrupted, amused by her evasion. "But I did find it rather surprising that you took out an account in the Cayman Islands after you ended your last affair-"

 The first flare of anger crept into her words. A passionate woman, this one, and apt to be careless if you roused her temper. "You ended it, not I."

 "Correct. You belong to the Furies, Orelie, and what you start, I will finish."

 Her next words were shaky, and he wondered if it was possible the fool woman still hankered for that waste of space. "He did not deserve that death. It was...it was needlessly cruel."

  "Last time I checked, you weren't working for the Care Bears. I would be honoured, were I you. It's exceedingly rare for me to take on tasks which have no financial reward, but I paid close attention to your benefactor. Take care that you don't attract my attention again."

 It had been a simple pleasure, that one, doubled by the knowledge his soulmate knew what he was doing and was repelled. Her revulsion held as much merit as the slow disintegration of the human's bluff façade; he had tasted that loathing in her kisses the next week, felt it in the tautness of her body, and yes, seen it naked in the flash of fear in his witch's eyes. It had added a spice to their encounters in some indefinable way; he savoured the sharp edges of her words, the rage in her surrender, which was really no surrender at all.

 He didn't know which he wanted more - her fear, or her hopeless love.

 "I..." Orelie's voice was steeped in fear. "I will close the account. It...it is a frivolous affair, mon diable, nothing serious."

 "The account is already closed," he informed her. "The funds have been reallocated to Nightfire. You will find you have immense trouble opening any new accounts. A new assignment is on its way, and I have explained to Kurt Schrader that you will be under his care from now on."

 A particularly nasty touch, that. Schrader and Orelie's affair had been notorious among the Furies as an example of why relationships should be kept strictly professional. Blue had made it clear to Schrader he was to use no poison that would actually kill Orelie; for all her flaws, she was an excellent tactician, and her ability to use sex as political currency had been useful more than once.

 "No, please-" Panic, crumbling into terror. "Not Kurt, mon diable, he will-"

 Pathetic. He hung up on her, irked by the thought that he had expected defiance. He had actually grown used to the stubborn obstinacy of his witch, maddening and imperceptive as she was.
 
 Sometimes, he wondered if his life would change when she was dead.

 She would die before him; that was inevitable and a boon. Often, he toyed with the idea of handing her to Nightfire to pull apart and play with, but he suspected his own ruin lay down that path. Stranger still, he found himself unwilling to let anyone else torment her. That was his privilege alone, her blood as much his as her own, her flesh pliant under his hands. Each time he did not hurt her, it was with the power of knowing that he could, of seeing himself mirrored in her eyes, reflected right down to her heart and soul.

 Some part of him valued that possession, that need to know her as his.

 The thought that he was hers never entered his mind.

 ~*~

The church was a spiky outline against the sky, a memorial to Gothic architecture's arches and flourishes. He paused outside, among the yew trees and the weathered headstones. In this rural village, the church stood at the centre of an ever-widening ring of graves and he wondered if the living ever considered that they sent their prayers skyward from a fortress of bones.

 The vast wooden doors were shut. After last time, he'd thought the priest might have learned his lesson. There was no fool like a holy fool.

 He rapped the heavy metal knocker on the doors.

 "I will not let you in, demon."

 "Not by the hairs of your chinny-chin-chin?" he called back, and there was something of the wolf to his smile. "Come on now, Father, you really don't want me to huff and puff, do you?"

 "I want you to leave!" It was an old man's voice, but had a hardness to it that spoke of a life less holy, of lies and hard knocks. "Go back to the shadows - go back to the Furies and rot, demon."

 "Hardly a very Christian sentiment, Father. But then, I'd expect nothing else." If he extended his senses past the flimsy barrier of the doors, the priest's fear poured from him, waves of grey and gold like drunken butterflies. "Let me in, priest, or start praying. It'll be about as much use."

 "Never."

 Some people never learned. And unfortunately for this particular one, he didn't have feminine charms or destiny to cushion him.

 Blue put one hand on the door, and called to the well of dragon power that lay quiescent, a black pool beneath his heart. It poured out from his skin like steam, and he shaped it with thought and will, using it to gather the air about him into a colossal fist.

 In his mind, Hael protested, old reverence curling up from a life Blue had not lived and did not care to relive. With a despot's ruthlessness, he crushed the ghost into silence.

 Blue drew back his hand, and currents of air moved with him, poised...
 
 He slammed his hand forward-

 The sheer force of the air blasted the doors backwards, twisting them from their hinges, splintering the wood with the sound of breaking bones.

 Blue strode into the church, strands of power billowing from him like Medusa's serpents.

~*~

 To the priest, stood before the altar, he did indeed seem like a demon risen from the deepest abyss in smoke and brimstone, a mismatched thing of beauty and cruelty. Each step seemed to defile the sanctity of the church, to make all the priest had striven for these past years a mere charade.

 I have repented, I have confessed, I have begged for absolution - I have renounced the darkness that crawls under my skin each night.

 If I am forgiven, why does he return?

 There was nothing human left in those eyes, nothing but his own sins, reflected back at him a thousand-fold, and it was dizzying, terrifying, a long tumble into despair. It seemed to him that fallen angels must have seen that same azure colour, the promise of new days - and it had been their last glimpse of heaven before it was denied them evermore.

He found himself retreating, but the altar was at his back, and he would not flee. If he did, then he would be truly lost: he would have abandoned the life he had tried to make for himself.

 "Nowhere to run, Father."

 "Don't call me that!" He spat the words, shocked at the bitterness he still felt. "You are no child of mine!"

 Bane stopped and sat on the pew in front of the altar, lounging on it as if it were a bed. "I'm well aware of it."

 The priest stared, trying to see the boy this monster had once been. Where was the child, strange and heinous, but full of hate, not this deadly, lofty calm? "Why do you come back? You've taken everything else from me - is it my faith you want?"

 "I want nothing of yours." A smile curved on his mouth, and it sent chills down the priest's back. He knew it intimately - knew that arrogant, eye-catching smile.

 The face of your family could be a terrible legacy, nothing more than a mirror to show you what you once had, hurling back pallid reflections of those who were lost. That smile was stolen, just as this monster had stolen their lives: his son and heir, his wife, his closest friend.

 Bane Malefici, his stepson, his curse. He should have murdered him when he had the chance; he should never have allowed the creature to live.

 "But you did."

 The priest froze. He had forgotten how easily Bane crept inside in his head, insidious as cancer.

 "We all make mistakes," he answered, trying to control his panic.

 Mine was to let my children sharpen their claws on you. I was too gentle. I should have let them tear you to pieces, drag every piece of tainted flesh from your bones and then nailed the rags and tags of you above the door as a warning.

 My God knows the shapes of vengeance well; He would have understood. Perhaps He will punish me for being so lax as to leave you alive, and if so, I will bow my head and accept it.

 "I don't," Bane proclaimed with astounding arrogance.

 "Your every breath has been a mistake," the priest snarled. "But continue in your way, monster, please, because your suffering in hell will be all the more terrible for it. You will burn and scream and weep, and in heaven, they will dance to the music you make."

 It is all the consolation I have had these long years; all the altar candles in the world can not outshine my loss. I believe in justice, and this fiend will answer to it. He must.

 Bane yawned. "Colourful. But a little unimaginative." Those hooded eyes looked him up and down, and the priest felt he was stripped down to nothing more than a price. "So tell me, when you get on your knees and pretend to submit to your God, do you lie to yourself that heaven exists?"

 "It is no lie," he answered.

 "No? And do you delude yourself that my dear mother resides there?"

 He knew his wife well. And in his way, he had loved her, if not with the torrent of affection and words the world seemed to demand now. She had been beautiful and treacherous and fickle as the ocean, and in those traits the blood ran true.

 "She must answer for her own actions," he replied, his panic subsiding. Here, at least, he was on familiar ground. "Mimosa always chose her own path, and I have no doubt she continues to make her own way. It will not be easy for her, but I think she will find her way to my son eventually."

 He was coming to loathe that low, superior voice.

 "Your son?"

 That hurt more. He had been able to reconcile himself to his wife's death. Mimi had offended as many people as she had charmed, and her easy malice had never been matched by any thought for the consequences. But Cougar...

 His son had inherited Mimi's face, from her black hair to those marvellously expressive golden eyes, but Cougar had been his heir. Someone formidable, someone ruthless, someone who would uphold the family name and never let something so dubious as morals stand in his way.

 Of course, he added silently, crossing himself, that had been before he had seen the errors of his ways, and turned to a better path.

 But then...then, when he'd lived in shadows, his son had been his future.

 "Cougar," he answered, his throat unexpectedly dry.

 "Oh, him. Sad to say, he's still very much alive."

 "But you said-" croaked the priest, who had once been Arbutus Redfern, a man disappointed time after time as his wife spawned daughters. Beautiful, uncanny daughters, to be sure, but every last one doomed to give up his name and his lineage.

 And then his son had been born, a Redfern to the bone.

"What I said, as I recall, was that I took away his life. No mention of death ever passed my lips."

 "I..." The priest felt his heart stutter, his faith drawing up around him like fiery wings. His son lived, the child he had longed for and mourned for, sent loving prayers night after night... No. It couldn't be true. "You lie, as you always have."

 "Do I look like a politician?" Scorn rode the words, but the priest was not fooled. There was a calculating gleam to this creature's eyes; before all else, he was not a Malefici, or even a bastard Redfern, nor a vampire. His soul belonged to the Furies, and gloried in suffering.

 "Your looks are a pretty illusion, nothing more," he answered. "And why should you leave my son alive? Mercy is hardly in your character."

 Something shifted across the creature's expression, but so quickly that the priest couldn't recognise it. "Oh, believe me, Father, it would be far more merciful to give him the tragic end he's so desperately hoping for. I don't think you'd approve of the life he leads."

 Maybe not now that I have left my old life, thought the priest who had once moved in the high echelons of the Nightworld, but if my son is all he promised to be; dark and terrible and powerful, I will not rue his choices. "You know nothing of my thoughts."

 "Really? Maybe I have you wrong then. Perhaps you aren't a man who wears his faith like a beggar wears a blanket when the winter sweeps in, trying to survive any way he can. Perhaps you would love to know that your son, the last heir of your blood, lives among humans."

 Camouflage, thought the priest. We all must live along them. Lions and antelope share the same grasslands, but the lion is still a predator and the antelope still prey.

 That low, baleful voice went on, and the priest listened raptly, desperate for the news, even from this vile source. "Perhaps it won't bother you that he found his soulmate."

 Why on earth would it? A woman to match his son, bright and cold, he would not-

 "Half-witch, and he couldn't even keep her. She left him, dear Father. Now he lusts after another witch, and he will not have this one either. His friends are half-breeds and outcasts, playthings for anyone who will have them, do-gooders seeking redemption or dullards concerned with nothing more serious than tomorrow's television schedule."

 Along with the words came a flurry of images, thrown at the priest in a telepathic carousel. The soulmate; a weak withered little wisp of a girl, her humanity shining out from her eyes. Another witch, this one with a tumble of black hair and fear in her face as she backed away. A shapeshifter who cared nothing for the hunt, a half-breed boy who chattered of school and parties, a human who appeared not to know his place, face after face that held nothing but banality, a crude mockery of the life he'd thought his son would have.

 His joy was curdling like old milk, rancid in his throat. Was this all his heir had made of himself? Had he thrown away his heritage so easily for that? For those people?

 You have returned my son to me only to take him away again, he thought dully.

 "Well, yes," came the answer, and the priest shivered at the unfelt invasion, his thoughts plucked from him like spring wildflowers. " Your hatred was getting monotonous, and if I want monotony, I'm quite capable of coming to your Sunday service. I like to keep our little meetings entertaining."

 Entertainment. Yes, he supposed that was all he had become, an old man growing older under a cassock, his existence reduced to a holy timetable of sermons and absolution.

 He could not keep the distress from his voice. "You have succeeded admirably."

 And then he had to turn away and press his hands to the altar, seeking comfort. It would not come; his emotions churned through him, disappointment, despair, rage, a bitterness so deep he could barely keep drawing breath.

In all the years of believing his son dead, his regrets had been for the promise of magnificence that had been denied. He had been so sure Cougar Redfern would change the world, bringing them respect and power. Seeking answers, he had come to his God, and he had managed a sort of uneasy acceptance, shunning the Nightworld that he felt had turned its back on his child when it failed to mourn him so completely as Arbutus did.  

 To find this was somehow much worse; the tragedy of potential unfulfilled. It was his son who had denied the Nightworld, living a worthless life among worthless creatures.

 And in the same time, this cuckoo in the nest, his poisonous, loathsome stepson, had risen ever higher in the Nightworld, until he had only to utter a name to change the course of a hundred lives. He had been well-named, Bane Malefici, death in the brush of his fingers or the roll of his voice.

 Bane of my family. Bane of my hope.

 I should have killed you the moment you were born.

 "Go away," he said to the air at his back. "Do you hear me? Get out!"

 He spun, angry at the lack of response, fumbling for his crucifix.

 No one was there.

 Again he was denied - he couldn't even scream at this monster who would not kill him, who would not leave him alone, who came back year after year like some hideous curse, wanting nothing more than to watch him suffer. Inside this shrine, he rotted away while Bane came back to poke at his wounds, to mock and then to leave him just enough hope to keep the game alive for another year.

 He was so tired of it all, so very tired, and afraid that one day Bane would return not with some new titbit of painful revelation but with a knife and that blasé smile, and he would see the true horror of the man they  had begun to call the Demon Fury.

 Priests were supposed to fight demons. But he had no weapons against this one.

 In front of the altar, he wept, unable to find the words for prayer.

~*~

 He whistled a merry tune as he left, the old priest's despair ringing in his mind like particularly catchy melody. Blue didn't think of him as his father and never had; he merely used the word as a blade, prying open the old man's defences like a grave-robber.

 It was a sweet satisfaction to see him crumbling under his eyes, destroyed by something so simple as his son's survival. Better still to be able to walk away, knowing that wound would fester. While he was far away, while he slept and dreamed of more pleasant things, Arbutus Redfern would suffer on, haemorrhaging hope as if marked with stigmata.

 The cold north wind chased him all the way back to his car, and Blue opened the window to let it whirl in as he drove. It brought the crisp sharp scent of winter with it, and he revelled in it, never realising that he drove a straight path back as if drawn by a lodestone.

 The wind brought change, but by the time a dark canopy of night had stretched over the sky, Blue would be back where he had been when the wind first roused him, changed and unchanging, tangled up in another promise that he had made.

 This one, he kept.