Skip to: Part Seventeen - Part Eighteen

"Bloody hell," Cougar shouted above the black drumroll of the storm. "This isn't a storm, it's the goddamn oceans taking flight."

"There is nothing bloody about this," Lisa said shivering. "Is it me or this getting worse?"

"She couldn't have made it easy, could she?" Cougar persisted, oblivious to anything bar his problems.

No, that was being unfair, Jepar thought. Cougar was just trying not to think about Sonj. Failing miserably from the wretched look in the vampire's hazel eyes.

"No, she had to go and wreak havoc in the middle of a forest. And she has to be an all-powerful witch - and when did that happen, incidentally? I didn't see any superhuman powers snapping into existence until today - who has the emotional stability of a lemming on stilts taking a clifftop walk. Christ!"

"Don't swear," Lisa told him calmly. She seemed to have recovered her poise, though those coffee-dark eyes were steaming.

The vampire scowled, brushing rivulets of water away uselessly. "Since when have you been a Christian?"

"I'm not. But I happen to believe I should respect other people's ideals in case they turn out to be right."

"Ya-huh." The lamia kicked a branch aside with such force it splintered. "Save me the cute morals for that moment when I actually feel the need to die laughing." He flinched as he realised what he had said.

"Shut up, guys," Jepar said tersely. He could sense Chatoya now. Not only with his mind, but somehow he could feel she was nearby. And she was hurting. "Let's go a bit quicker, huh?"

He started as thunder cracked and felt Lisa grab hold of him as she nearly tripped. "What's going on, Jep? Cougar's right, Chatoya shouldn't have this sort of power. This is Night Wars magick."

"Not a clue," he said grimly. "Well...not much of one."

"Whoa!" Jepar found himself suddenly slamming to a halt as someone grabbed him with unmistakable strength. "What do you mean not much?" Cougar's eyes had the faintest glitter of gold in their depths.

"It's just...look, I don't know anything - I'm only guessing."

"What aren't you telling us, Jep?" Lisa joined in, her hair a flat cap against her head "Why?"

He teetered over telling them. But it was obvious they would wait for the Apocalypse if needs be.

"Look, my sister has this neat trick where she stops all her emotions completely with magick. Only problem is, sometimes it doesn't work and all the emotion she's been ignoring for however-long-it-is hits her in the face. Last time three people died, Chatoya's been acting the same way, I think the spell's broken, we're wasting time and I really don't want to talk about this."

He broke away and quickly began to force his way through the maze of trees. The roaring winds made it even more difficult, sometimes throwing him back two steps for every one he took.

Cougar and Lisa exchanged horrified glances. Then Cougar sighed and morosely elbowed the vegetation out of his way. "He's our friend," the vampire said gloomily. "Even if he is a suicidal bastard."

~*~

The storm was in her bloodstream now. She had long lost track of where she and her magick began and where the merciless fires of Nature began.

Her body barely existed for her. It was little more than a restricting shell, nothing when there was this.

To blaze across the sky in a trail of pure energy, to shout with a voice that could be heard miles away, to fly in twists of air that could tear humanity from its foundations. It was so good, so glorious, it made it so easy to forget that scene that replayed over and over if she let it.

Somewhere, somewhen, she knew her body was soaked to the bone by the torrents of rain that her magick danced and leapt in delightedly. Somewhere, somewhen, she knew that time and place existed and that there were other things that mattered too.

There was that thing she didn't want to know about. The scene with the red-haired girl who twisted and screamed and collapsed into a little pool of redness, of blood-roses.

As she shrieked across the valley skies, the elements she was lightly brushed across plants that would be blood-roses, dozens of them planted with another tender care. She took a handful of air and twisting it, uprooted every plant and flung them into the air.

She paused, and flowing into a knot of lightning, charred them into tiny, floating wisps.

It was easy. It was fun. It helped stop remembering.

And she saw other movement as she floated over the wood. It was a low-slung, slinking shape that moved with lithe motion. She fell with the rain, drawing close so she could see its honed canines and bright eyes.

And it was in her place. It was slinking towards that thing, that body that had been hers and hunger rolled out from its throat in a low growl.

She saw its muscles tense...beautiful, fluid rippling under its body.

It sprang.

She caught the wolf in mid-spring, hurling herself into the sweet white heat of lightning and crackling through it, feeling death catch hold of it like an iron claw.

And oh, it was good.

In that one fiery moment when its soul flew its body, she forgot everything, even who she was. There was no pain. There was no hurt; it was as it had once been for her, before the storm and the boy. Just that blissful peace, that velvet void.

She wanted more.

Just a little more. Just another moment of peace. The storm wasn't enough...it would never be quite enough because she still had to be herself within it; she still had to be Chatoya Irkil.

But to kill? To bring death? She could be anything she wanted.

She slithered into a tendril of air and dragged her essence along the current, searching for something else, anything else alive. Anything that wasn't shut in its shelter, away from her reach. There must be yet more easy...easy...what was it? Easy...

Prey.

~*~

Jepar was extremely surprised when ten-plus stone of furious lamia rugby-tackled him.

He hit the ground silently but painfully, the breath knocked out of him for a minute. He turn to yell at Cougar (it had to be him - no one else combined such gleeful violence with vicious accuracy in nearly breaking his kneecaps) and was startled to see the vampire crouching in the shadow of a tree that held no more shelter than the open ground.

He was even more surprised when Lisa clapped a hand over his mouth and put a blunt finger to her lips. Then she pointed into the gloom and Jepar caught his breath.

It had only been a glimpse, a glimpse of a blue-haired boy striding confidently away from the snarling nexus of the storm. But it had been enough.

What now? Even Lisa's coffee-rich mental voice was a whisper and in it, he could feel the delicate chime of her grief.

I'm not missing this chance, the dark tones of Cougar hissed. I owe him a debt. Son-of-a-bitch won't get away with what he's done anymore. I'm going to prove to him that blood is quicker than water.

Agreed. Jepar glanced at their faces. They were distracted. Good. He might be able to persuade them. But I need to find Toya. We'll have to split up.

Lisa's eyebrows arched, making her blink as more rain dripped into her eyes.

First rule of horror movies, the girl murmured. Never split up. We know Toya's alive, she's okay...

This is not okay! Jepar said as loudly as he dared. Blue was getting further from them with every step, but from what he knew, this guy was sharp and brutal. Alive and okay are not synonymous.

It's still a bad idea.

Guys, Blue is getting away, an agitated Cougar said, shifting anxiously in his niche, his hair soaked and gale-whipped. No time for this!

Oh... Lisa's face was hunted. All right. Who goes where?

Cougar, you take on Blue. He's dangerous.

No shit, Sherlock!

Jepar gave the lamia boy a single withering glance for that, emerald eyes filling with green and red lights in the gloom. I'll find Toya. I'm...the best one to talk to her.

Huh? Lisa looked baffled. No. I'll go with you. If she is causing this...she might be dangerous.

Jepar shook his head. He was scared. More scared than he could have ever imagined. No, he said softly. I'm the only one she'll listen to.

Two pairs of eyes trained on him, so intense he felt an absurd urge to shield his face or look away. "Why?" Cougar said, his face drawn with strain. Blue was far enough away for them to talk now. "Why you?"

He did look away then, not wanting to see their reactions. "Because I can understand. I know how easy it is just to let go and forget everything good the world's ever given you. It's so easy to stop caring and..."

He was drowning under the weight of his memories for one awful moment, seeing Vanira's face, that soft smile curling up her face. How he had reached out, shaken her, felt the warmth still hiding in her creamy skin, smooth under his touch and how locks of her thick brown hair had fallen onto his hand but she still hadn't moved. Still. Everything about Vanira had been still.

And then he had realised that Vanira, his Vanira was dead.

He had forgotten everything then. Forgotten who he was for a while, forgotten the people he cared about, forgotten everything except the anger and the grief.

"...and it's easy to start killing," he said bleakly.

Lisa was breathing very quickly. He could see the way her eyes widened and she kept her lips pressed together. Cougar was stood absolutely motionless, the only still thing in the writhing storm.

"You'd best go then," the vampire girl said tightly. "And...I hope for your sake she does listen."

I don't think she will, Jepar thought silently. I think I'm fighting a battle I'm going to lose but I have to try.

I can't give up on her. She's too much to me now.

~*~

Easily done.

Very easily done.

Blue Malefici could still see the stark, shocked pain in the face of the witch. He played it over and over in his head, relishing that moment.

I thought you would be a little harder to crack. You are, after all, my soulmate. My reflection. But now...I don't think there will be much of you left when morning comes.

Pity. I like a good fight. Maybe in a few years, you would have been worth my attention.

He didn't mind the storm now. It had been cold, not to mention irritating at first, but now, now he understood what was causing it and what was becoming lost in it, it was almost a pleasure. He loved the feel of it, like cold silk sliding over his skin, the winds like a thousands reaching hands and a thousand screaming voices, trying to plead with him, hold him, beg him, enfold him.

Nothing would ever ensnare him.

He was free.

That was what no one understood; that there were no rules that could bind him, no words that could quell him. The world was lying at his feet, waiting for him to walk all over it. And how could he resist such a tender gift?

And he loved the cruel irony of it; the storm she had thought to destroy him with was razing her from the inside out. An elemental knife cutting into her heart until her lifeblood spilled away.

Briefly, he turned his thoughts to the people following him. He could hear them crashing through the undergrowth, a tiny note of wrongness under the screaming of the storm.

Come into my parlour...

If he concentrated, if he sent his mind flicking lazily over the area like a boomerang, the gold-ice of frozen fire glittered in his senses and close by, the soft-almond of another vampire hovered there.

...said the spider to the fly...

His pace picked up, vaulting lightly over logs and moving through the path of thorns like an eel in water. A flash of blue eyes rimmed with gold as he glanced to the dark canopy above. Behind him, he heard those minds chasing frantically.

...come into my parlour, friend...

Into the small shelter of a deciduous tree, hands swinging him easily up through the branches until he was hidden in the foliage, dampening his thoughts so they couldn't sense him.

...and let me watch you die.

~*~

Jepar's feet took him along the ghost roads he knew so well. He had hunted here days ago; it seemed like eternity. Before Chatoya had come and his world had been thrown into a place of chaos and horror.

He was drenched and shivering within seconds, the rain beyond torrential, beyond the force of the monsoon. Hail rattled around in chunks the size of his fist that sliced his skin open. Remaining in the debatable shelter of the trees kept the worst off him, but with every step, Jepar was less certain that Chatoya Irkil would listen to him.

Rain washed away the blood that was pouring out of his cuts but the fall was getting thicker and faster. And Jepar knew he was getting nearer. Every sense he owned was telling him to turn back, to run and keep running until he was far away from this chillingly inhuman witch who could bring Nature to its knees.

Every sense except the one which remembered the person he knew.

There was a horrible ripping sound and he looked up to see a dark blur plummeting towards him.

He leapt sideways, hitting the ground so hard his teeth jolted and one wrist broke in a softer echo.

A tree had crashed down across the path. Just that one. Every other in the forest stood strong, though they bent and danced in the windstorm.

"This isn't funny anymore," he muttered through gritted teeth as he got up.

Not that it had ever been funny. Chatoya Irkil, with her soft, shy eyes and her dark secrets was no laughing matter. She was a mystery, sometimes so fragile that he was afraid she might snap in his grip, and sometimes so terrible, so powerful that the world she walked on seemed to flex to suit her.

But whatever she was, she gave her soul to the moment. Maybe that was why he loved her. Maybe that was why she was slipping away from him now. Instead of the steady whirlpool of her mind, he could now feel the faint moss-green-shadows of her touch all around him.

So faint it was a mere shimmer on the zenith of his senses.

Jepar kept on in the direction where than node of magick had been, every sense alert. He was just another shadow sliding through the gloom, the rain turning him into a blur of gold and dark. Except for those fiery eyes, which gleamed like the northern lights, the only colour in a storm.

A little ripple of sound in front of him, a little collection of shadows that pooled and wriggled into the forms of drenched, sullen wolves. Blocking the way.

Jepar looked at these unlikely trolls. Did they understand what was happening? "Let me pass."

"No way through to wolf-killer," a rough, female voice growled. The new Pack leader, Donna Ares, with her snaking red hair and striking eyes crept forward, human, her skin puckered in gooseflesh. Her Pack snuggled around her, warming her. "You want not to go that way, hunt-brother."

Wolf-killer? Someone had killed the Pack? And they weren't hunting them down...Blue. It had to be.

"There's no wolf-killer that way. Just a girl. Just a frightened girl."

"Wolf-killer that way." She stabbed a finger at him. "Only wolf-killer. No girl, unless wolf-killer is girl."

"Let me by, Pack-leader," Jepar ordered, letting the old arrogance of a highly-placed shapeshifter drift into his voice. Wolves understood tone. Sometimes words weren't enough. "Your wolf-killer has hurt the girl."

Donna eyed him carefully. Still more animal than human in her. "Your risk, hunt-brother. But Pack knows only wolf-killer waits down dark trails." The wolves yipped in agreement, but parted, shadows slinking away to let him by.

He was out of their sight, driving through the heavy curtains of rain before he heard that soft half-growl.

"Be careful, hunt-brother." Donna following him. "She's dangerous. Our wolf-killer has teeth."

He blinked; she was suddenly coherent. "What do you care?"

It was a fact he and the Pack didn't get on; Donna had only become leader over the past few days (Jepar had heard the news on the howl when he went hunting). Rarely, the Pack of Ryars Valley had become matriarchal; the last leader had been female and Jepar had broken her shoulder three weeks back.

"You're a shapeshifter. So am I, hunt-brother. But more importantly, you weakened Archani. Why do think I won the leadership fight? I owe you." Her heart-shaped face was solemn. "So listen to me, hunt-brother; your wolf-killer and your girl are the same. It was the lightning that killed Tsanus. And if your girl is the witch that the hunt-howl says she is, then it was her."

In her words, the message was clear. You're beyond your depth. Get out now; as one hunter to another. There are times to run. There are times to fight. But we are hunters and we cannot control the elements we hunt within. When the elements are against you...it's time to run.

He hadn't realised Chatoya would try to kill him.

If she even knew it was him.

If she even knew it was her.

Donna could see the thoughts flickering across his face; there was very little guile about this cheetah-boy, she decided. He was...and innocent. A fool. A romantic. Somehow apart from the shapeshifter races. Like her. She led the Pack; but they were not hers. Same race; different face.

And the innocent just laughed at her. He laughed in the midst of the storm. And said so gently; "Donna, I know."

He turned away, that gold hair turned dark bronze in the gloom, and walked the dark path.

Donna sighed. "Good luck, hunt-brother," she said.

You'll need it.

Walking the dark road...

Lightning searing up ahead, over and over and over until the earth could be nothing but a charred mass. The anger of someone who was barely alive, barely dead. Standing with one foot either side of the abyss and always, always the shadows waiting to catch them if they slipped.

You won't slip. You can't slip. I won't let you.

But as Jepar reached the clearing, the eye of the storm, as he saw what lay at its edge, he understood the power Chatoya Irkil had harnessed.

It looked like an ebony statue; black and shiny and almost perfectly carven. Its limbs outstretched in a display of sleek, predatory power, a sheen of black across those strained muscles. Agape, its jaws were perfectly formed and pointed like a ring of daggers, a dark Stonehenge to the sky.

And where that scorched wolf touched the ground, that smooth black surface had crumpled into acres of ash, ashes that swirled in the wind like a swarm of butterflies.

Oh god. He hadn't known she was capable of that. Fundamentally, he had thought it would be his Chatoya, the gentle, reasonable one. Not the fierce one. Not the cold one.

He stared at the wolf. It had tried to attack her. It had given her no warning. What if....But what if was a precarious sentiment to cling to.

~*~

Cougar and Lisa ducked through the woods, tracking his brother. Blue's pace had suddenly picked up, moving like a hunting leopard, and they had lost sight of him.

Where can he have gone? Lisa gasped, looking around anxiously.

A light, melodious laugh. And then Blue's amused, controlled voice flowed into their heads.

Why don't we play a guessing game?

The branches above them shook and both of them moved away. Then the sound was all around them as wind howled through the wood. And Cougar couldn't tell where his brother was, though he would swear he saw a blur of dark motion in the corners of his eyes every time he turned.

Left. A gleam of blue like light running over a dewy leaf.

How about over here, brother?

Right. The electric flare of eyes that were fiercely eerie, a pulsar in the dimness before they winked out.

Or here? That musical laugh. Find the shadow in the shadows...

Round and round and round he spun, trying to find that softly mocking voice.

Then again...that's so dull.

The wave of mental power was phenomenal.

Cougar feeling his head snap back hard with the pain, clutching at a branch to keep his balance as spots danced briefly in front of his eyes.

Lise? he said painfully. His head ached and pounded like the sea breaking against cliffs. It hurt even to turn and see the African girl lying on the ground, one hand curled in a fist.

"I can't believe you're still standing," that voice said mildly. "I'm impressed. Almost."

If he blinked again, and again, there was the slight figure of his younger brother, sitting on a branch and swinging one leg idly. The eyes that matched the moon's corona were glowing softly in the gloom, sending sparks bouncing from raindrop to raindrop in glitteringly miniscule fractured rainbows.

"Shame about your friend." Blue dropped to the ground and tilted his head, looking at Lisa. "Pretty thing. But she's a vampire. Beauty without strength is very little. Whereas strength without beauty..." He shook his head. "Your witch may not have much beauty, but for a moment there, I thought I might have to fight."

Cougar stared. The pain had ebbed, enough for him to move charily. "You met her? And she's still alive?"

"Unavoidable." A shrug. "There's more to that one than meets the eye. And the mouth."

Cougar began to size up his surroundings. There was no chance of him living if he didn't think of something and think of it fast. "I hope her blood poisoned you."

"Someone's bitter." Blue didn't seem to be bothered at all by the rain, ignoring chunks of hail that rattled around him and seldom sliced a short-lived cut on his skin. "And very nearly accurate with the insults."

Whatever his little brother was rambling about, it was making even less sense than usual. But it was stopping him from starting his usual variation on amateur surgery, so Cougar could only be thankful. In as much as he had anything to be thankful about. Stuck in the middle of the storm in a wood...

Wood. Even Blue was vulnerable to a good ol' fashioned stake in the heart, though Cougar could think of one or two places where it would do more good.

"Did you know there's a dragon winging its wicked way here?" Blue inquired lazily.

"What?" The black-haired lamia stared. But they don't exist, he thought hazily. I know Chatoya and Ghost-Boy thought they woke a dragon, but they're legends, jokes. Tales to frighten gullible kids.

"Just thought I'd warn you." Blue's teeth gleamed luminously. "I'd stay and watch the fun but...well, places to go, people to see. Horrible deaths to cause."

"You're...just going to leave?"

The look he got was withering. "Let me point out a few salient facts: I'm in the middle of a storm. I'm in a place where almost everyone I've met seems to have this bizarre obsession with killing me, and as a rule I can't help but feel obliged to return the favour - only this witch girl will kill anyone who makes a hostile move within about two miles of her."

"When has that ever stopped you?" Cougar demanded.

Blue gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I'd prefer not to be spread across the landscape in a sad little crater." Above, thunder roared as if confirming his words. "I'm cruel. I'm not stupid."

No. That much was true. Cougar had always suspected his little brother had far too much intelligence and far too little care. And the worst thing was that he had power too.

"Why did you kill Sonj?" Cougar asked softly. Shadows and firelight danced in his eyes and for a moment, the look on his face was so close to Blue's an observer would have been tested to tell them apart.

"The half-breed?" Blue laughed. "There's your answer."

"Because of her blood?"

Rage. Rage welling up like white lightning, cold and hot at the same time. It obliterated the pain in one swift swoop, sending energy raging through his bloodstream. Because of her blood. His brother, who was a half-blood himself, had killed Sonj because of her blood.

Just like he killed Ruby...killed her with his treachery, with his serpentine mind and calm cruelty. Always killing, death after death after death until one headstone blurred into another, until it was just another rose, another ghost of blood thrown onto the grave's void. Blood into darkness, time after time.

"Well, it wasn't for her money."

Around them the storm twisted. Blue looked up, as if he was listening. A faint smile crossed his face.

And Cougar moved.

Snapping a branch with one hand, ignoring the splinters that shot into his hand, running at full speed and slamming the stake forward like a sword.

Lightning seared down, so close its heat burned along his back, though the energy didn't touch him.

And Blue caught the stake. But suddenly Lisa was up, snapping her own makeshift stake with only a faint moan of pain escaping her, soft as the sigh of a butterfly's wing.

"I wouldn't recommend that," Blue said archly, eyes laughing. "Unless you want your witch girl to die."

"What?" Lisa stopped, her teeth bared in a beautiful, feral expression. Her hands were tensed on the wood.

Cougar was startled when Blue threw him and the stake. He landed on the rain-softened ground, some ten feet away but leapt to his feet, gold eyes glittering like sunlight through honey.

That small, satisfied smile. "If I die, so does she. You see...you seem to have misjudged the pair of us."

"What do you mean?" Cougar said guardedly. Was Blue controlling Chatoya?

That calm, even amused, voice saying words that sank like iron. "Your lovely witch is my soulmate."

His what? What was a soulmate?

Whatever it was, it had made Lisa's eyes widen and her nerveless hands drop the stake. "No."

It was another myth sprung to life, he recalled. The concept of two people whose souls were foils of each other, the people on either side of mirror, the yin and yang, two harmonies that together made a song.

"No, no, no," the tribal girl said, shaking her head so the beads woven into her hair clicked crazily. "They don't exist anymore. You and her...never."

That tiger's tail of a smile widening and deepening, his eyes mimicking it until they seemed to glow an ethereal blue, that of the impossible dawn. "Why do you think she's still alive?"

If it was true.... His brother, not a person but a creature, unchanged by time or death or love, forced into someone else's soul. Gods, how he must have hated it, have fought it in the only way he knew.

But he couldn't kill Chatoya Irkil. And Chatoya Irkil could never kill him.

"Get out," the African girl hissed. "Get out and never come back."

Blue hiked up one eyebrow, bowed to her. "My dear vampire, I will be gone long before the dragon ever reaches your home. But I have unfinished business here. And it's you. All of you."

The rain poured down and none of them moved.

"She's kept a part of me."

Cougar could see the image in Blue's thoughts, of a green-eyed girl with mourning-black hair and madness shrieking in her every word. A girl lost in a storm, dying not in sweet softness, but in fury and fire.

"After all...mirrors steal your soul."

That black-wreathed head thrown back, lightning blazing white trails beside her. The storm crashing, wrapping its power around her outstretched hands, arching like a dancer's but with far darker purpose.

"Even broken mirrors."

And a boy with eyes as still as liquid emeralds. Stepping forwards fearlessly, tilting his head up proudly.

"One day, I'll want my soul back."

The image disappeared like a gate dropping shut and there was only Blue looking at them with those eyes that stretched into cobalt infinity, predatory and filled with that long forgotten love of killing.

"Not today. But someday."

He turned and walked away. And understanding the power he held over them, the power he held over Chatoya, neither risked stopping him.

"Someday may be sooner than you think."

He slid silently into the storm.

~*~

Oh, oh, oh.

Joy and madness this, to rage in this storm, to glory in the energy. To feel the wrenching pain taken away as she scorched the earth, as she watched the pathetic things below her running away from her power.

Run...run. Let me hunt you, let me chase you, let me show you what I am.

She played with them. Sending little darts of lightning past, never touching them but watching as they exerted every last breath to escape. And just as she thought she might tire of this game, she heard a voice.

Chatoya?

It was a beautiful voice, thrumming like a mellow guitar but with subtle, powerful storm harmonies winding beneath it. It brought to mind days of steaming sunlight, of endless green fields and then...

The other thing. The girl, the one with the hair of spun blood screaming and crumpling.

No! she shouted back with everything she was. Hail clattered as she threw it as this one who made her hurt and feel that terrible pain again. Not anymore!

You don't belong here, the voice said. You know it. Please...won't you talk to me? All you have to do is talk to me and then...I'll go if you want. Every nuance said unless she obeyed, the voice would remain. The voice had eternity beside it, eternity that would outlast storm-power and defiance.

Talk. Say your words and then go away. Leave me to this. Words are too complicated. Lightning is clean and clear. Give me the lightning; leave the words for the people who need them.

No. Not here. Down there. He meant the earth. Back in that place of wilderness and pain.

Here.

What are you so afraid of? And the voice had changed suddenly. It was imitating someone, imitating them so cleverly that for a moment she was sure that it was that cruel, cold boy. Me, my witch girl?

I will never fear you! she screamed, and launched herself from the storm.

~*~

Jepar watched as her body, lying limp on the ground, drew up suddenly. The eyes were shut, her eyelashes stark black grins on her face. She was so pale...surely no one could be that white and live; her skin had the luminous, impossible shade of the moon and she seemed every bit as distant and painfully lovely.

Her eyes flew open.

They were like whirlpools, drawing him in. That dark, murky green that promised secrets, that held pain beyond mere grief.

"What do you want?" she said. In her voice, Jepar could hear the thunder, the crack of splintering earth.

You.

~*~

She stared at this strange boy who dared walk before her. To one side, there was that charred mass, that thing that had tried to destroy her.

It hurt so much here.

That scene, replaying itself. One little pool of redness, of madness, one life cut short by an unfair knife.

"You," he said calmly. "We want you to come back."

"No," she said. "I can't come back now. It's gone too far. It was so easy to start...but I can't stop now. It's gone too far. It's gone too far."

The boy shook his golden head. She had known who he was once. But hadn't those emerald eyes always been laughing, always been tender when they looked at her? Now they were fierce and hurting.

"Too far? When you can't see how far it is, then it's gone too far. Please, Toya. Please come back."

Jepar. That was it. Jepar Jubatus with his sunny smile and tingling touch. Who evoked that odd pain inside her because she saw the change in him and hated herself for it. Because this was her fault, it had to be her fault. She wasn't quick enough, she wasn't powerful enough, she hadn't cared enough.

"No..." She stepped back from him unconsciously.

He took a step forward, despite the hailstones she hurled at him in frantic defence. "I know what Gata did, and she should never have used that spell on you. Never." Cuts riddled his skin; he didn't retreat.

"Why does it hurt so much?" she half-screamed at him. "It shouldn't be this way. It shouldn't hurt."

"It has to hurt," Jepar told her, closing his eyes against the face of the girl who he had killed for. Vanira was gone. He had lost her long ago and he wouldn't lose Chatoya. "If it didn't hurt, we wouldn't be people. We'd be like Blue."

"Anything would be better than this!"

"No!" he said fiercely. "Maybe it hurts now, and it will always hurt. I promise you, there will be nights when you'll wake up calling out their name, hearing their voice, nights when no one will hear you crying and when all you want is to take a knife and stop it hurting because anything is better than feeling your soul being ripped away piece by piece. But you'll realise that you can't do that because then there will be no one left to remember them. And if you do that, then they'll be dead. And so will you."

"I just want it to stop hurting!" she moaned as lightning raked the trees around them in quicksilver swipes.

"So did I!" Jepar said angrily. He couldn't stop remembering now, Vanira filling his head with her wild laugh, her long, long throat and the rubies arcing across it... "It doesn't...it never stops. But I learned to live with it. And so will you. It just takes time, Chatoya, and that was what you weren't given. Time."

"No!" She shook her head wildly and her mourning black hair wriggled like snakes, framing her face. "I can't bear it! Leave me alone."

"Why?" He gestured to the chaos around them. "So you can be this? So you can live what's left of your life in a lie? So you can make me feel the way you feel now?"

Her breath caught and those eyes flared brightly with pain.

"You would, you know," he said gently, seeing that he had touched a nerve. "You're part of me now, you're part of my memories and you're part of my heart and if you die, I don't know who I'd be."

"Don't make it difficult." Her voice was despairing. And in her eyes, he could see the girl he knew. The one who was unsure and emotional. The one who lived for the moment.

"I can't make it easy," he told her. "I can't just let you go."

Pain, pain in that face that grown so pale, so inhuman, so lonely. "Then I'll make it easy for you."

He blinked.

And Vanira was there. Dear gods, Vanira. Her dancer's body poised as if she was going to leap through the air, her hands stretching to the stars as she had loved to do. Her arms arched above her head and her head thrown back to show that graceful neck.

And that line of rubies, that line of spilling blood. Vanira.

Jepar was unable to look away as his life splintered around him.

Looking into the past, looking onto a window covered by a spiderweb of broken lines. Looking onto his shattered, ugly history and seeing the glass separating it from his safe world fading until there was nothing between that time of blood and now.

Running...

But you couldn't run, you could never run from yourself. It seemed to Jepar like his life had been spent running in one way or another, running from the responsibility of his birthright, from the anger of his parents, from the coldness of his sister, from the searing meteor of a moment's rage.

His anger had made him someone he didn't want to be and even though that creature was subdued, it still lurked hungrily in the back of his mind, waiting with cold purpose and cruel hands. Always waiting for that one moment without control.

And here it was; he was staring at his past, his beautiful, bloodied past and feeling the world around fall away. Nothing else mattered. Nothing when compared to this.

Feeling that anger tight in his chest at the injustice of it all and that awful grief, like standing on the edge of a sheer drop and feeling his stomach lurch dangerously. Looking...hurting...remembering...

...'How do you do that?'

He had asked her that, hadn't he, and she had simply laughed and stretched those swan-sleek arms above her, arched one leg to meet them and balanced perfectly on the tip of her lean, strong foot.

And now her voice came drifting out the mists of a past he had tried to forget, still so innocent and ordinary, full of vigour.

...'I'm very bendy.'

They had both laughed, hadn't they? Two kids, but even kids could play at flirting, imitating the coy glances and meaningful words of their elders. Two kids, looking at life and making their own parody, a parody that in later times would stop being funny and start being merely right.

...'And you aren't human.'

The thickness of that coiling pale brown hair had given it away. And the melted-butter richness of her eyes with their pupils dark as if a drop of black coffee had fallen there. Those eyes, her strongest features against the mismatched strength of her mouth and the square set of her jaw that stopped her being lovely and made her purely astounding.

She had laughed and relaxed, sitting down on one of the sinkably-comfortable leather chairs his elder sister kept in her office.

...'You must be the younger brother.' A sly glance. 'I'm a werewolf. And you are...?'

...'Starving.'

... 'Cats! You're all the same. Roddy - that's my big brother-'

He had interrupted, seeing for the first time her face tighten with annoyance. She had loved to talk, sure enough, and interrupting her was a guaranteed way to wind up with one of those strong feet meeting your shinbone at high acceleration. 'Is he the one who's working out this contract with my sister?'

...'Yeah.' They shared a mutually disgusted glance. 'Grown-ups! They take ages over one simple little thing. Signing paper and talking and arguing over where to put a comma in some sentence.'

...'And they stuff us in some dingy little office,' Jepar had said, gesturing to the exquisitely furnished expanse, 'Forget all about us and expect us to sit around for hours.' He had rolled his eyes, grinned at this unexpected ally. 'I'm Jepar'.

A long hand held out, a strong grip and no-nonsense about her tone. 'Vanira Alhaz. Reckon our sibs are fixing us up for company?'

...'Yeah. Probably think it'll 'keep us out of trouble'.' Jepar mimicked his sister's cool voice. 'I'm never gonna get like that when I'm old.'

She had laughed then, that dreadful gunshot of a laugh that had never ceased to make him flinch, in all the days Gata and Roderick Alhaz shoved him and Vanira into that office to talk, to work, to argue and play-fight, to have the clumsy, sweet beginnings of a relationship, a werewolf and a shapeshifter in an empty, furnished room.

~*~

It had all gone so horribly wrong. Vanira had died, she had died with a line of rubies blossoming on her throat and Jepar had run away from that room that was as empty as the space in his soul where she had sat.

Yet half a year later, a witch called Chatoya Irkil had arrived, with her sorrowed eyes soft as moss and her smile shy and rare as a kingfisher. And again, he had been drawn by something he couldn't qualify at all, and again, it had gone horribly wrong.

He had thought he could make it right; that he had been on the verge of stopping this moment's madness. And then she had thrown this black sorcery at him, painting Vanira in front of him with dark magick. Reading his mind as easily as Gata had always been able to; but then, with this sort of magick, what difficulty could his feeble mental shields pose?

And there she was.

Vanira, with her head tipped back, pale brown hair shining in the light of a sun long set and those melted-butter eyes glowing as bright as the blood necklacing her throat. Stepping forward as if running through the endless routines of complex dance movements she learned each week. Arms too white, dead-white and bleached.

"She's gone," he said forcibly, blinking, turning from that grotesque twin of Vanira. "Don't throw my past back at me! Yes, I loved her and she died, but she is gone."

He raised his eyes from that horrible visage and stared at Chatoya, her green eyes defiant and cruel, glowing with unearthly lights. But in them, like the tiny fractures on ice, the first shattering.

This is her last defence, he realised. She's scared because even a little while without emotions is enough to make her forget how hard the world is. It's a long road we all walk, it's a lonely road and she's as scared as everyone else that the end will lead to darkness.

"Stop it, Toya," he said very gently and stepped towards her, ignoring the stark mirage that smiled and moved and even whispered words in Vanira's voice.

The fright in those green eyes overwhelming in its intensity, overlaid by a veneer of ferocity and madness.

He stepped closer, unaware of holding his breath as those moss-soft eyes filled his world, as he took hold of her outstretched hands, hands that held the threads of a storm to break a world, and understood what had been done to her.

Sonj's death, playing over and over in her head, locked there by a boy who had no compassion and no comprehension of love, hurting her so much that the fierceness and the flames was the only way to stop it.

"I just want it to stop," she said softly, the pain in her face beyond her years, beyond belief.

"I know," he said, still seeing that arching throat dotted with crimson. "So did I."

He tugged on her hands and pulled her closer until she was close enough to kiss, this alien creature who seemed to have stepped from a world of swords and sorcery, this grieving girl who didn't understand why her sorrow was breaking her.

"Let me help," he entreated, meeting those wild, crushed eyes with his own. "You're not meant to be this way. You know that."

"I know it," she answered, while the rain fell soft as fingertip touches. "But I can't help it, I can't!"

"I can," he said, not knowing if he could, but only knowing that stopping her from destroying herself in the throes of a storm was more important to him than anything. Than any crime, any sorrow, even the chimera of a lithe dancer with ruby blood on her neck. "You just have to trust me."

And while she stood in his arms, two figures through a gauzy grey curtain of water, the chimera of that dancer girl rippled and faded. But on the ground, on the place where her feet had stood, lay two footsteps, as if a giant lizard paused to rest a breath.

And like dragon's breath, the lightning tumbled across the skies.

~*~

"No, not now!" Lisa muttered as they ran along the main path that led past the ghost roads.

Shadows were separating, separating into the spectral softness of wolf pelts, the hard gleam of green eyes drifting towards them in idle motion.

"Out of my way," Cougar snarled as they blocked their way. "I don't have time for a dog-fight!"

"You can't disturb them," the brazen voice of Donna Ares stated. She stepped out from the disputable shelter of the trees and slumped against one. "Our hunt-brother is stopping this...hex-born storm."

"Could you please put some clothes on?" Lisa said. Cougar glanced over to see she had both hands clapped over her eyes. If it had been any other day, he would have been amused. Her values were oddly old-fashioned for someone born in the sixties. "I'm sure that can't be healthy."

"Actually," he murmured, gold eyes flashing, "she looks pretty healthy to me."

"Would you turn your libido off and your brain on?" Donna said coolly, but Cougar noticed she let the Pack encircle her, possessive and growling. "Listen to me, vampire boy. Your witch girl is losing herself. Pack knows that."

Soft growls and glimmers of cool wolf eyes. Grey fur slinking and shaking as they moved closer.

"We need to find them, please!" Lisa said. Her face was drawn tight with strain, its lines hard in the light. Not a tribal warrior, but a statue moving, all carven lines and calm stillness. "We have to help her."

"Leave it to the hunt-brother," Donna ordered. "He is only the only one who can catch her soul."

Cougar narrowed his eyes, watching the Pack leader with new respect. "How do you know that?"

"Pack listens and Pack learns, nightwalker," that husky, dry voice told him while her white teeth gleamed briefly. "Pack has more wisdom than the wise ones who make us outcast."

"That ain't all, is it though?"

Iry Lupine stepped out of the trees with his usual lazy smile, though it was somewhat dimmed. He was as thoroughly soaked as all of them, water trailing down his damp, creased clothes and shining on his blunt-cut face and tousled hair that even the rain couldn't quite flatten.

The Pack froze as one, and turned to face the new threat. Cougar could hear their mental voices, more animal than human, echoing one another.

Lone wolf...not-of-us...Pack-hater...not-of-them...ancient one...lonely walker...never-of-us.

"Oh, leave it out," Iry told them, cracking his knuckles. "'Less Jubatus gets his act together, we're all goin' to be lookin' at the business end of an apocalypse." His careless gaze brushed Donna. "What that charmin' creature ain't tellin' you is that they tried to stop Jubatus goin' through earlier an' didn't succeed."

"You watched us?" Donna Ares' savage eyes as flickeringly green as the light beneath sea water. Beautiful in their own way, Cougar decided, but drifting below them, hidden riptides. "You were told to keep away from Pack."

"Well, if your mangy Pack strolls past where I'm takin' a moment's break from my busy schedule of gettin' pneumonia an' hypothermia, I ain't the one who's goin' to leave." Iry raised an eyebrow, the effect spoiled by the water cascading down his face. "'Sides, if you didn't notice me, ain't no harm done. 'Cept to your pride, maybe."

This has to be one of the oddest situations I have ever been in, Cougar concluded, as he gazed around him. Pack, lone wolf, made vampire and lamia, all four enemies in other places, in other times, shivering and soaked in the unnatural torrent of a storm, united by what came down to curiosity.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Lisa asked, settling herself by a Pack wolf who snapped at her half-heartedly until she backhanded it across the muzzle. "Wait?"

"Guess so," Cougar said and sank beside her. "Think he's got a hope in hell?"

"In hell?" Lisa laughed, but there was no humour to it. "I think this is hell, Cougar. Having to stand by and watch while friends and family die. Having no control. That's what hell is."

Her face was drawn. With his preternatural vision, Cougar could see a muscle flickering in her cheek.

"Nah," he said, leaning back. "Hell is colder than this. Haven't you ever been to Britain?"

That elicited a laugh from her at least. The Pack however, stared at him with baffled eyes. Cougar ignored the young wolf - little more than a pup really - who huddled under his bent legs and watching the water dripping through the leaves above him, trying to guess which way it would fall. Silver drops, murky drops, dropping like stars and oil.

He was never right.

And that was it. No one could guess the future. No one could predict the twists of another's heart, the tides of relationships that could warp into storms. He didn't know if Jepar could bring Chatoya back from this half-world she had thrown them into. He didn't even know if Chatoya wanted to return.

I guess this is what they mean by blind faith, he thought glumly. I have to trust some sentimental shapeshifter to stop a witch who's not so much lost the plot as rewritten it and expanded it into a trilogy. To top it all off, she's my little brother's soulmate, and though he might be playing with a full deck, it's a marked one. And what the hell is Jepar going to do if he finds out?

"Got a question," he mumbled to Lisa. The monotonous drip of the rain was faintly soothing, once you ignored the gripping cold and sliding damp.

"Go ahead." She was idly scratching the pup under its chin, receiving an indifferent growl.

"Suppose Jepar does bring her back. You think she's going to tell him about her and Blue?"

He looked over to see the African girl frozen in thought. "No," she said finally. "I think secrets run in her family and she has nothing to gain by telling him. If all this works out. And that's a big if, Cou."

Cougar Redfern recalled a night when he had wondered if he would survive, and knew that if really didn't mean much. In the real world, if was practically a certainty.

"But if she doesn't tell him," he persisted, "...do we?"

She raked her hands through her hair, the neat plaits separating easily and the beads wound into them clicking. "I think we should respect her wishes, Cougar. If she and Jepar can be happy..." she shrugged. "There's so little happiness. Who are we to destroy that?"

~*~

"I trust you." The words little more than a sigh.

He smiled faintly. This creature who could have torn him into shreds without a thought, with her hands curled around his neck and holding on to him as tightly as he was her. "That's enough," he said as he had but a few days back in the darkness of a cave that seemed not merely miles but aeons away.

He shut his eyes, leaned his forehead against hers and felt that simple, childlike trust that came from the despair, the exhaustion in her soul. She had thrown every part of her into this storm to escape and now there was almost nothing left except that dreadful dark power that fed from her.

And in her head, he could see that scene replaying, each time another lash of the whip stinging blood from her back. Until he wasn't sure which thoughts were his, which Chatoya's.

Sonj Jameson, with her one eye determined and scared, stepping back. How that long cloak of dark red hair had swung and flown around her as she fell, and how her hands had curled and uncurled weakly.

And then that strange little smile as she looked up at her killer; not Chatoya but the boy whose soul had stepped willingly into a cage that kept the world away, that smile bright against the dozens of blood-roses that bloomed from her skin.

Now he understood how it hurt Chatoya, how deep it cut her because in her mind, the silver eye of that girl became the silver sheen of a knife in moonlight; the fell light of fire on her parents burning; the dreadful fear of himself dying, of the others dying. Because Chatoya had found it desperately easy to care for the strange Nightpeople who had looked after her and she was so afraid to disappoint them, to hurt them. And when she had let Sonj die, she had failed-

No, Jepar said fiercely, erasing the cruel replay from her head with one mental swoop. Pushing it back where it belonged, into her memories, not in her present. You have not, you have never failed us.

I must have. Her head dropping to his shoulder. I let Josh die. I let Sonj die. I would have let all of you die if you hadn't come. What else have I done but fail?

Dear one, he said gently, blinking away blood-roses. If you have failed, we all have. I let Vanira die. I tell myself that all the time. But I know that once she made her choice, nothing I could have done would have made any difference. She made her own choice.

And I mine. But my choices were wrong.

Your choices were not your own. Not recently. There has been dragon magick swimming your bloodstream, and where magick walks, dragons follow. But listen to me; your choice cannot change everything. Could you have stopped Blue from deciding to kill Sonj?

There was an odd hesitancy in her voice then, but he ignored it. I...don't think so.

It wasn't your fault, he told her. It never was.

A long pause as she heard the truth of that. Then she released that dark magick and he felt it flow away, back to where it belonged. With the spell no longer in place to hold her emotions back, the space that had allowed the dragon magick to grow and spread was gone too.

Wasn't it? she said ruefully. There was sadness there, but finally, acceptance. I don't know if I can ever believe that.

I can believe for the both of us.

Those green eyes lifted to his with a semblance of her old serenity. And what about your own guilt? How long will you mourn for her? How long will you blame yourself?

Vanira. Toya had taken that from his mind, the terrible picture that had haunted him these past months.

That wasn't your fault, she told him and even smiled a little, tremulously. She was unlucky, that was all. Nothing you did would have changed that.

He stared, astonished by this girl who he thought he knew and yet who seemed to change constantly, like a jewel leaping as the light moved around it.

Maybe, he thought, she had it right. Because he understood that perhaps he needed her, not to take away or to replace the memories of that arching dancer, but to teach him to accept them. And to move on. To live, and live without being subsumed by regret, blackening his days with the memory of her death.

We're all running here. I thought I would run forever, that it would never stop. I didn't see that it could. There was always one more ghost sparkling in the sunlight, one more unforgiving memory. And once you started to run, I didn't realise that you could stop. That you could make a new road to walk on, that you could make your own ending.

I still miss her, he confessed.

I think we should miss the people we lose, she answered, and he knew she was thinking of her own losses. But not at the expense of the people we still have. They love us too.

It was Lisa and Cougar he thought of then, and his solemn sister, who had risked so much for him. And this girl too, who had traced out the shapes of his grief and drawn some of that old poison from him. He thought of not the fearful past, not the uncertain future but of a new beginning, a certain now with a girl with black hair, a girl he held close and hoped never to run from.

She smiled amidst the softness of spring rain. They're waiting for us, aren't they?

He wasn't quite sure just who she meant, but either way, the answer was the same. Of course.