The Uses of Love

When she opened the door, Lisa Ochai was startled to see Blue Malefici standing there. He didn't seem the type to use something so civil as a doorbell; she imagined a lockpick was more his style. However, despite the fact the ground outside was crusted with ice, he wore no more than a T-shirt, and didn't so much as shiver.

 "Chatoya isn't in," she informed him, and slammed the door.

 It hit his outspread hand, and the impact jarred along her arm. He didn't flinch, but just looked back  her with those knowing eyes. "I'm quite capable of finding out where my own soulmate is. That infernal link may well ruin any games of hide and seek, but it makes other games far simpler. As it happens, I require a few minutes of your time."

 "I have nothing to say to you," she said, and hurled a mental bolt at him; it arced like a javelin, straight and sharp and smooth and-

 This impact, psychic rather than physical, rattled her teeth. Bruising pain shot along her jaw to dig into her skull at the temples, until black dots danced in front of her eyes. His mental shields were formidable, to say the least.

 Serenity emanated from him, and the slight, snaky smile he wore only infuriated her further.

 "I appear to given you the impression that this little...chat was optional. Allow me to rectify my error."

 The pressure on the door increased; she shoved back, using every inch of her supernatural strength. Sweat popped out on her forehead, and Lisa gritted her teeth. He might think he could manipulate Toya, he might even think he could threaten and intimidate the rest of her friends, but she was going to shut this damn door on his conceited face if it killed her.

 "Enjoying the exercise?" he enquired, needling her with the delicacy of an acupuncturist.

 She leaned forward, putting her shoulder to the door. "I don't consider getting rid of you an exercise. It's more of a public service." Her voice was ragged, but she didn't care. The door slid an inch closer to being shut-

 All the warning she had was the sudden heaviness in the air, and then she skidded backwards as the door crashed open. She ended up on her backside, glaring up at his smug, self-satisfied face.

 His eyes were black with the thrash of dragonfire, and to her senses, the air around him was oily and turgid. "Your manners are appalling," he said in such astounding hypocrisy that she choked on her response.

 Without waiting for her to get up, he sauntered into the lounge. Lisa raised two fingers to his back, and clambered to her feet, grimacing at the creak in her knees.

 "Whatever you want, make it quick," she said shortly. "I have better things to do than talk to people I dislike."

 One eyebrows arched. "How honest. Strange, for a lady who builds her life on lies."

 She didn't rush to fill the silence; no, she had learned the folly of such haste long ago. Instead, she let it develop like thread on a loom, refusing to grant him any leeway.

 He slithered onto the sofa with the easy grace of a panther, all liquid movements and careless grace. Cross-legged, he was an azure mockery of Buddha, hands on his knees and those hooded, sinful eyes watching her with distant interest.

 Alisha had once remarked that he was like a viper: his strange, detached sort of charm drew people even as the brutal beast beneath the veneer repelled them. Lisa could have told her that she was wrong. It wasn't his charm that drew people; it was his beauty, cold and naked as a sword held up to the light.

 And he was beautiful, she would permit him that. He had the same fine, defined bone structure as Cougar, all slashing cheekbones and arched brows, a good frame for his eyes, which were the same startling cobalt as a sky blasted by dawn. It would all have been too harsh, too brutal without the lavish mouth, which was full and soft.

 That, in truth, was what drew people: beauty and mystery, and yes, darkness too. It was hard to believe that beauty could hide such ugliness, hard for people to see the monstrous shape of his deeds when they were distracted by his flattering silhouette.

 She understood that. Once, she had been fooled by a man who would have put this boy to shame. If there was one thing Blue Malefici lacked, it was subtlety. He was clever, no doubt about that, and astute, but had he been born in a less flamboyant age, he would have found himself mired in a web of plots and whispers.

 Her soulmate had not been so beautiful, nor so cruel, but he had been so subtle that she had never really recovered from the damage he had done.

 And Lisa knew that this silky, sensual creature was entangling himself in Chatoya's heart in just the same way; she prayed it would not play out the same sterile end. Every word of caution she spoke went unheeded, and afraid that she would alienate Chatoya, she no longer spoke them. But she steeled herself for her friend's heartbreak, and somehow that was harder to await than her own heartbreak.

 "The lies have lessened with the years, I suspect," he mused, his tone intimate enough to rankle on her. "But it's the truth I'm interested in."

 "I doubt it," she said, a bite on each word. "How many lies have you spun Chatoya? What did you whisper to her to crawl into her life?"

 His eyes narrowed. "The truth, Lisa Ochai, stone-cold and ugly as it is."

 "We're not talking about you," she said coldly. "We're talking about her. I seriously hope you didn't bring love into this, because I know the worth of a Fury's love."

 "And what of your love, Lisanor?"

 She started: no one had used that form of her name in fifteen hundred years, and the last man to use it had spoken to her of love and betrayal, he who knew nothing of one and personified the other.

 "What worth has that?" His voice was low and bladed, scything across the air. "Should we measure it in lives? You threw enough away, after all. How many men died for your love on the killing fields?"

 "I did not begin the war," she snapped back, shocked that the old hurt could strike her heart as if it were fresh and bleeding anew. "You have Artos to thank for that!"

 He leaned back, settling into the chair. Satisfaction rolled from his mind, and purred in his voice. "I believe he goes by Alex, these days."

 He believed? If he ran Nightfire, surely he knew. "That was the first name I knew him by. But I expect he goes by several names, every last one false. You would know more about it than I."

 "Hardly. He left Nightfire shortly after you left him."

 That was new, and surprising. And nothing to me, she told herself. He is nothing to me, but a lost love and dusty memories, and the hardest lesson I learnt. "And you didn't hunt him down and kill him?"

 "In case you've forgotten, I was but a nightmare as yet undreamt," he drawled, his eyes soft and wicked under those heavy lashes. "Nightfire did attempt to find him, but by then..."

 "Another name, another face, another game, another place," she murmured. The litany sprang to her lips unbidden, as if it had lain beneath her tongue all these centuries, waiting to be spoken again.

 "Quite. In truth, many thought him dead. Until last month, at any rate."

 "Let me guess - he just couldn't crank out the same level of pain and betrayal without all you Nightfire pranksters." She hadn't realised how bitter his abandonment had left her. "You welcomed him back, air kisses and knives in the back all round?"

 "Knives in the back, certainly. Someone you knew once, I believe. Galahad? Big man. Good with a lance, fair with a sword, never happy unless he was killing something, horizontal, or killing something and horizontal," Blue murmured dryly. "Terminally dull. Now just terminal."

 Galahad. She had always avoided him; there was something frightening in his dark, wondering eyes. "Alex killed him?"

 "So his note said. Well, when I say note, I mean ten-page letter full of extremely boring emotional outpourings. Frankly, I much prefer the archetypical messages written in the victim's blood. They tend to be concise, at least."

 Charming. "What's this got to do with me?"

 Blue's gaze sharpened. "Alexandros wrote that he is repaying an old debt to Nightfire. It seems that he feels the little war you two caused was somehow down to us. A life for every life, he says. So tell me, Lisanor - just how many lives did you and he waste? I have a limited amount of buffoons I can allow your soulmate to cull."

 She stared at him. It made no sense. "It was nothing to do with Nightfire. He lied to me, and I left him. I went to the Saxons, and so he waged war on them. He convinced the Britons that they were reclaiming their land, that the Saxons had been allowed to invade too long, but in truth, he thought he could frighten me into returning."

 Blue's stare swept her from head to toe. "Were I him, I'd have tried to frighten you into keeping as far from me as possible. And while this is partly because you're a formidable enemy, mostly it's because you're a nagging shrew."

 Lisa gave that back-handed compliment the response it deserved. "I am a formidable enemy. Bear that in mind."

 "Yawn. I say yawn, because I can't be bothered to waste the actual gesture on you." His indolent tone did nothing for her temper, but she kept her face smooth as silk. Getting angry at him would serve no purpose. "Well, Alexandros is convinced Nightfire is to blame. What price is he asking?"

 She swallowed hard. It had been a long time since she thought of that battlefield and seen the true ugliness of love. "Hundreds. Easily."

 "Well, I have only ten idiots. Pity. I shall have to find some way to distract him. Nightfire did train him exceptionally well."

 "Yes, I know," she answered. They had emptied Alex of anything worthy, and left only blood and deceit and darkness in its place. "They taught him what he needed to know."

 His eyelashes dropped to hide his eyes, and she wondered how Chatoya found anything to like in that blank perfection. How hollow his emotions were, a sham he put on to facilitate his schemes. "And what was that?"

 "The pretence of love." The words were bald, as if all the pain Alex had caused had been stripped down to four sounds. So much, to become so little.

 He slid off the chair, tall and dazzling and ultimately, a sham himself. "No, Lisanor. They teach us the uses of love. But they do not teach us how to feel it, nor how to destroy it, or even how to fake it. Those, we learn for ourselves."

 For reasons she could not explain, his words remained with her long after every trace of him was gone.