Safe Haven

Part One

Iliana Harman stood in the center of the spacious bedroom with her arms stretched out to each side, and closed her eyes. She felt beautiful. She was dressed in soft blue silk, the bodice tied to her torso with strings of tiny satin flowers. Her arms and hair were strung with pearls. At her throat was a piece of polished rose quartz, shaped like a tear-drop. Each article brought her a little deeper into the world, made her feel more a part of it, heightened her expression and connection to the energy swirling around her.

The room was silent and soft with candlelight. Iliana felt the moist wood of the knife in her hand as she brought it out in a slow circle around herself. It had been her great aunt's athame once, and she felt the power from it heating her arm. Old power, old wisdom. Spirits that recognized the tool and flocked to her, believing in her command almost more than she did.

Barely parting her lips, she wetted them and whispered, "Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, I call you from both here and there. Through fresh bread and sweetened wine, I tempt you to this Circle mine."

The room moved around her, shifted subtly beneath her feet, and when she opened her eyes the ring of candles were releasing a smokey shield that cut her off from the rest of the world. She sensed the loop of power than surrounded her circle, and in the smoke she thought she made out a weaving prism of color.

"I am here," she whispered. "And the time is now. Attend to me."

Water rushed in her ears as if she were standing only feet from a river. Presences stroked the tight muscles in her shoulders, reassurances, offers of assistance. They were formless, bodiless, but they carried age and personality. Long-dead people, transcended to beyond her comprehension, reached for her.

They were comforting. Some days, with her family so far away and Grandma Harman dead, they were the only thing that kept her sane.

She fell to her knees, suddenly humbled, and folded her hands in prayer. "Thank you graciously for your attendance," she told them, her voice almost inaudible.

The alter had been a gift from the Circle Chimera, the cup from Circle Midnight. They had all been too happy to find her, know she was safe and that she was willing to dip her hand into the darker arts. The alter was rich cherry wood, sanded and polished to a beautiful finish, then burned with the symbols of the elements, Circle Daybreak, the Wild Powers, and her name. The goblet was beaten silver, wrought with vines that bloomed precious stones and wound themselves into an elegent pentagram.

They were both beautiful gifts. Iliana knew she didn't deserve them, but she hadn't wanted to appear ungrateful.

Oh, sometimes she didn't feel grateful.

The goblet had come with an indentacle libation cup, a tiny replica into which Iliana poured a tablespoon of wine. It was sloshing white wine, and it flickered like melted gold in the cup.

"Please accept this as my offering to you," she said, and settled herself beside the alter on a round, beaded pillow.

She didn't know why she had called this Circle. There was no magic to be drawn and directed, no holiday to uphold. She just needed...to be with something.

The Circle always made her quiet. Not tired or trite, just calm. Here, she could look rationally at the world and her life. Sometimes she didn't like what she saw, but it was always clear, and she always knew that the forces beyond her control, those that had sent her into this life and those that would take her out, were near. They understood her as no one else did. No human, except perhaps a soulmate, would know her on the level these spirits did, with their arms stretching out like willow trees all around her.

Two candles burned on the alter, and between them lay a censer of white sand. Iliana had carefully set a ball of clear quartz atop the sand earlier, knowing that it was a very sensitive piece of stone and might help her find what she was looking for. She took a few deep breaths and let her eyes rest, unfocused, on the ball's shiny surface.

Her mind quieted. The voices, the background music, they began to fade as she relaxed. Power bobbled around her, like floats held underwater, trying to push her to the surface.

Blue Fire rose hot in her palms. "Down boy," she whispered. Wrong time and place, she wasn't here for destruction.

The tension in her hands dissipated, and she took another deep breath. In the center of the crystal ball a spark lit, flaring first red and then pink. She smelled smoke and her eyes burned, but she blinked a few times and the stinging faded.

Before her was a picture, a drawing made on watery glass. Alex, her baby brother no longer, sat in the sand box staring at his hands. They were dirty, caked with grime, and he frowned at them.

A few feet away sat a freckled kid turning rapidly red in the sun. The warmth was also melting her lime-greem popsicle, and she drew the sticky liquid off her arms in long, slow licks.

Alex seemed to consider a moment before thrusting his hands under the popsicle. When enough juice had collected in his palms, he offered them to the girl.

She tilted her head, unsure, and Alex smiled. Iliana knew that smile, she'd used it a hundred times to get what she wanted, and it didn't fail her brother now. The girl obediently began licking the sand off Alex's hands.

Iliana couldn't help but laugh. Alex looked around, obviously aware that something was happening but unsure of it's exact nature, and then smiled again. They never got to see each other; he recognized her anyway.

From behind, there was a pounding, and Iliana felt herself rocked violently back into the real world. Wards flared on every side, a natural and unstoppable reaction to danger. She spun on the floor and saw through the hazy circle around her that the bedroom door had been flung open and a shadow repelled from her sacred space.

"Dammit, that stings," Mona Mastry cried, climbing off the floor. "Turn those off, Iliana!"

"Turn what off?" she asked.

"The wards!"

"Oh." She concentrated and let her spirits know that Mona presented no threat. The smoky curtain between them thinned and finally faded away, leaving only the lingering scent of cedar. One by one, the candles blinked out on their own.

Mona, who appeared to be no older than fifteen but was at least a century old, grabbed her by the upper arm and immediately started hauling her toward the door.

"Wait!" Iliana said, "what did I do?"

"We're evacuating the compound," Mona told her. "There's a helicoptor outside."

"Huh? I'm leaving?"

"Yeah."

"Don't I need to pack?"

"Now's not the time to be shallow."

That stung. Iliana stopped dead in her tracks and dug her heels into the carpet. "Shallow?" she said.

"Don't fight with me," Mona replied furiously. She picked Iliana up by the waist and set off down the hall at a steady run.

As they were flying through the common room, they met up with Jez, Morgead, and Delos, who all looked hassled and confused. "What's going on?" Iliana asked.

"Didn't you hear the alarm?" Jez snapped.

Now that she looked around, she saw the caged red bulbs blinking in every corner of every room they passed through, and heard the lingering vibration of a wailing siren that had recently been turned off.

"Security breech," Morgead said, shoving the dark hair out of his eyes and kicking a panel to open the secret door in the wall. "Somebody knows where we are."

"Where are we going?" she asked.

Jez grinned. "Outside."

Then they were flying through corridors, secret entrances, up the stairs to the earth's surface and out into the broad daylight. Jez, Morgead, and Delos all groaned at the first touch of the rays, but Iliana couldn't help smiling as she turned her face us to the sky. Mona was behind her, pushing her shoulders and saying, "Move, Loni, keep moving," and Iliana was just realizing that she was still barefoot and dressed like a Victoria's Secret model on a bashful day when the shots started to ring out.

"Damn," Morgead said, his voice bright with surprise. He shoved Jez to the ground and threw himself on top of her, and Iliana felt Mona land atop her back, all bones. She grunted pitifully, very aware that the forest floor was covered in pickers that would rip the hell out of her silk dress.

Above her head there was a whistle and a thunk, and when she twisted her head she was able to see an ugly black bullet lodged in the tree beside her. For the first time since Mona had burst into her room, she felt more afraid than she did annoyed.

Images from all those civil war movies she had tried so hard to avoid watching in school came back, clear and vivid. She froze, paralyzed, and pinched her eyes shut until red and blue pictures flashed behind her lids.

She could hear Jez and Delos yelling to each other. "-if it means we're going to get our asses kicked right out of the game?" Jez hollered.

Make it stop, Iliana thought frantically, as more guns were drawn and the shooting grew even louder. Somebody masculine and much heavier than Mona added his body to the pile, and Iliana wondered if she would smother to death before she was shot.

"something something only going something confirm our location," Delos called back. "something wasting something something."

"Crawl," Mona whispered in Iliana's ear. "Get up on your hands and knees, Ray and I have you covered."

But her stomach was twisted so tightly she couldn't even untuck her legs. Panic flodded her head, making it pound.

"something tactical inefficiency," Delos finished.

"Screw that," Morgead said. "Somebody do something!"

"Iliana, you've got to get to the helicoptor."

Nope, she thought. Nope, nope. Don't have to move. Not even here.

Delos shouted in pain, and her left arm went numb. Then both her legs. "Jez?" Morgead yelled. "Wake up!"

This is not happening, Iliana thought. I'm not even here.

And suddenly, she wasn't.

"Stop squirming, Jez," Morgead snapped as Iliana came to. "You're making this harder."

She opened her eyes and found that she had been dumped unceremoniously on the floor of the helicoptor. Her head was throbbing and black spots floated briefly in her vision. The hem of her gown was stained with blood in big brown circles.

Jez was stretched out on the leather bench, and Morgead was crouching on his knees beside her. Delos was gritting his teeth and carefully pulling wooden splinters from deep in his arm. Mona was dabbing at the blood that was still pouring out of Jez, alternating between the gunshot hole in her head and the flesh wound in her leg.

"Why am I always the one who gets beat up?" Jez asked. Her voice was grim, and Iliana could tell she was in a lot more pain than she wanted anyone to know.

Ray and Ginger were sitting at the back of the helicopter, which was about nine feet from the front. There wasn't exactly a lot of room to move around, and Iliana was starting to feel claustrophobic when she glanced out the window and gave it up in favor of good old fashion fear of heights. She coughed, aware that her chest was covered in bruises and her right elbow had swollen up to the size of a small orange.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Ah," Morgead said, glaring at her. "Look who finally decided to grace us with her presence after almost getting us all killed."

"What?"

"Jez got shot in the head," Delos explained. His tone was less hostile, but far from friendly. "I got knocked out with a baseball bat. They needed you to use the blue fire."

The guilt hit her like a slap across the face. She glanced at Mona, hoping there was some other explanation, but Mona just shrugged tiredly. "I wouldn't have minded a little help at that point," she muttered, and pressed the cloth back Jez's head.

"But we did make it out," Iliana said.

"I got shot in the head!" Jez nearly shouted at her. "Don't give me that all's well that ends well crap!"

"Hey, calm down," Delos told her. "Loni paniced, it happens. She's right, we got out, it will go differently next time." He glanced at her. "Are you okay?"

Iliana realized with a horrible flush that the bodice of her dress was torn fully open, and she was only covered by a thin layer of beige silk. She bit her lip and drew what fabric she could over herself.

Delos dug under the bench and handed her a red emergency blanket, which she gratefully wrapped around herself.

"Dammit!" Jez shouted suddenly, pulling away, and Morgead sat back on his heels and sighed furiously.

"Are we going to get it out or not?"

"Not, if you're going to use the bloody tweezers."

"If it were going to kill her," Mona pointed out, "it would have already. You may as well just let her body force it out."

"Fine," Morgead said. He threw the tweezers, which were the size of industrial chop sticks, toward Ray and Ginger and sat down on the floor against the wall. There were scrapes all over one cheek, blood caking his clothes, and Iliana couldn't recall ever having seen him look so tired before. Even the night they'd been abducted by werewolves, he'd had a little good cheer afterward.

Now he just looked tired and pissed, and like he needed a long shower. Iliana wouldn't have minded a shower herself.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Safe house," Mona replied. "You can get cleaned up, and then we're sending you all in different directions."

"Somebody knew we were there," Morgead said darkly. "If they tracked us down once, they can do it again."

Mona shrugged and didn't reply.

Part Two

Quinn was already on the scene when Ash arrived. "Thrush, take the northern woods, Stone, go with her," he said, directing guards and volunteers into the outlaying lands. His face was grim, but the white silk shirt he was wearing was unstained.

Ash noticed that the compound doors were wide open, a sight he'd never seen before. Plainclothed guards were running in and out, carrying long wooden spears and silver-bladed knives.

"Hi," he said, coming to stand beside Quinn. The day was overcast, but especially dark in this patch of shade.

Quinn glanced at him. "Where's Tern?"

"On his way. What happened?"

"There was an attack on the compound."

"You know who led it?"

"We don't even know who was behind it. As far as we can tell, the Night World wasn't responsible."

Ash ran a hand through his hair. "Who cares about the Wild Powers besides Daybreak and the Night World?"

"That's the question."

His gaze caught on a young man in a wheelchair sitting a hundred yards away. He was leaning forward, running his hand down the side of a tree and peering through his thick glasses.

"Who called Zion?" Ash asked, surprised.

"I did."

Ash glanced at him. Quinn's expression didn't change. "The Wild Powers were inside when the attack began," he said evenly. "But rather than hitting the front door, which from the outside appears to be the only door, they went around to the south-west corner. It was like they already knew that there was a second door, and that it was weaker than the front. Jez sounded the alarm once she realized somebody was trying to come through her bedroom wall, since even she didn't know there was a door there, and Mona managed to get everybody going out front before whoever was attacking got inside.

"They used guns with metal bullets instead of wood or silver-tipped. They attacked in a small group, instead of storming the way the Night World would have. And once the Wild Powers were in the helicoptor, they stopped fighting entirely and retreated. Any Night World group would have stayed to kill as many Daybreakers as they could have."

"You're right," Ash said, "this is weird."

Quinn arched an eyebrow. "You doubted me?"

"Hello, Ash," Zion said, rolling up beside them. "How are you?"

Zion Yarrow had become an unexpected friend during the past few months. His glasses softened his sharp, unflinching eyes, and at first his thick head of black hair gave the illusion of health. He was brilliant, funny, and insightful, despite the fact that neither one of his legs had ever grown.

Although Ash still hated to admit that the human were better than Night People at anything, one thing he couldn't argue was their superiority in tolerance of the physically deformed. Ash hadn't had an easy time accepting a vampire in a wheelchair, whereas all the humans who met Zion dismissed his condition as easily as a bad hair cut. Less than perfect people weren't allowed into the Night World, most of them were killed at birth, all traces of their short lives erased and forgotten.

Of course now he was grateful. He and Zion had a lot more in common than he’d realized and was turning out to be a true friend. Over the difficult past few months, especially since Tern had moved into a quiet apartment on the edge of town, Ash needed him more and more.

"I'm doing all right," Ash said, not really wanting to talk emotion with Quinn's eagle eyes on him.

"Good," Zion said. "Quinn, I may know who did this, but I need someone else to look at this."

"Who?" It was obvious from the frown on Quinn's face that he wasn't thrilled with the idea of bringing in anyone else.

"His name is Daniel MacMarnine. He's Chimera."

"You think the Chimera may have done this?" Ash asked, startled.

Zion answered slowly. "I don't want to jump to any conclusions. But I think Danny should come look around."

Quinn didn't even argue, a sign of his grudging admiration for Zion. "Give me the number."

Ash and Zion found a comfortably out-of-the-way spot to sit while they waited for Daniel MacMarnine. Quinn had returned to commanding the herds, and now that they were ready to begin carrying stuff out of the compound, it looked like rain was imminent.

"Nina hasn't called?" Zion asked.

Ash shook his head. "I don't think she's going to."

Zion considered. He had a young daughter of his own, but although Yanna-Beth lived with her moth, Zion saw her at least once a week. "Don't give up hope entirely," he said after a moment’s thought. "Girls are funny about babies, they're over-protective but they’re also desperate for father figures. She'll call when she's ready."

"Or else she won't call."

Zion reached out and brushed his fingers over the top of the blond head, something Ash wouldn't have tolerated from anyone else. From around the side of the compound came a long, lanky figure with his head down, walking as if disconnected from the scene around him. He knocked his shoe on a knotty tree root, then glanced up, surprised.

"Hi, Tern," Ash said when he reached them.

He and Tern had grown apart over the last year, not out of any anger or hurt, but just because their lives were moving in different directions. They were still on good terms but they saw less and less of each other.

Tern sat down beside him under the tree. "It's starting to rain," he noted, ignoring Zion not out of rudeness but simple distraction. Goddess bless the man who could keep Tern's attention.

"Iliana's going to be mightily pissed if we get all her clothes wet," Ash agreed, watching two made vampires drag a costume rack stuffed with clothing across the grass and into the U-Haul in the parking lot.

"Zion," he said, "will your chair's motor die if it gets wet? We can go inside."

"That's all right. It was designed for use on motor boats."

Ash glanced at him. "I thought you were getting around awfully fast."

Zion merely gave him a twinkling smile. He was perpetually ill, but today he looked less edge-of-death; aside from the high spots of color in his cheeks, his visage was healthy. Ash was surprised--two weeks ago Zion had been unable to get out of bed on his own, now he was rolling around as if he owned the place.

They sat under the tree as the rain started, a much softer patter than the ink-ribboned clouds had hinted at. Quinn found some clear tarp to cover Iliana's clothes with, and by the time Daniel MacMarnine arrived an hour later, most of the Wild Powers' possessions had been loaded into the U-Haul.

Daniel was bland in the face but sharp in the eyes, and he didn't seem bothered by the rain. Ash guessed him to be in his late twenties, although with all the witch anti-aging solutions floating around these days it was hard to tell. He reached out to hug Zion and kiss his temple, a classically intimate Chimera greeting despite the fact that Zion had spent most of his life buried in either the Vermont woods or the London slums and hardly ever mixed with his father's people.

Zion made the introductions and Daniel glanced around. "So this is where you were keeping the Wild Powers," he said thoughtfully. "Did you know the senses of the land were dampened when you chose this spot?"

He directed the question at Quinn, who answered, "The committie considered everything."

"Here, Danny," Zion said, "I'll show you where the marks are."

When they had left, Ash glanced at Quinn. "Dampened?"

"Some plants have auras that are more easily influenced by their surroundings. This particular spot is almost disinterested in the compound and what's happening inside. It makes the Wild Powers harder to track." He added after a moment, "Or so I'm told."

"What are they looking for?" Tern asked, gesturing at Zion and Daniel.

"There's some plastic melted into one of the trees in a Runic symbol. Zion thinks it may mean the Chimera were involved."

"Wouldn't that mean we should keep Daniel away?" Ash asked.

"If Zion says he can come, he can."

"Zion's half Chimera himself," Ash said as a joke, "he's probably in on it."

Quinn looked at him oddly, but before he had time to make an inevitably stinging comment, Tern broke in, "I don't think the Chimera would do something like this."

"You'd be surprised what a pissed warlock can do," Ash muttered.

Daniel and Zion returned quickly, neither one smiling. "You've worked with Martin O'Bach before, haven't you?" Daniel asked.

Ash felt that grim ache in his gut he felt whenever Marty's name came up begin to twist.

"We know him," Quinn said evenly.

"Call him. Tell him it's an emergency." Daniel's sharp eyes flashed as if he was annoyed that they weren't moving already. "Do it now."

Part Three

Iliana opened her eyes when someone began to shake her shoulder. "Loni, come on, wake up," Delos was saying. "It's time to get off."

She glanced around and was relieved to see that they were on the ground and he didn't mean parachuting. She didn't think she could have taken that.

The helicoptor had landed in the front yard of a quaint, lovely home. The windows were frosted picturesly and the boughs of the ever-green trees blocking all views of the yard bent gracefully with the weight of snow. Iliana licked her lips, wanting chapstick. How far north had they gone in those hours in the air?

Delos was already setting her down when she realized there were two feet of snow covering the earth. "Wait, stop," she cried, and he sighed as if exhausted with her whining. "I'm wearing satin slippers."

She realized how shallow it sounded the moment she said it, but what she had really been trying to tell Delos was that her feet were going to freeze if he put her down.

"Screw your slippers," Morgead snapped, and knocked her onto the ground.

Iliana had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from swearing at him. Her skin caught instant fire from the cold and she was half buried beneath a white drift.

"Morgead," Mona exclaimed. "Knock it off."

Iliana felt a small, iron hand grab her upper arm and she was pulled roughly to her feet. Mona might not want her to freeze to death, but she was hardly in the mood to be motherly.

She sighed as she scampered inside, her toes shrieking every step. She did miss being home , being able to do little things like lay her head on her mother's shoulder while they watched television. She was well-cared for by Circle Daybreak, but she was hardly loved.

The front door was thrown open and a dozen black-jacketed body guards rushed out. Iliana sighed again as they gathered around her, wondering where they had been when she'd needed to be carried from the helicoptor.

She was ushered into the house, and a small sense of comfort returned at the distinct scent of cinnimon and cloves. The blond pine floors of the entrance hall shone beautifully even marred with gray slush.

She glanced up, and was startled to see a lovely young man wearing a well-chosen gray sweater through the doorway to the next room. "Is that Ralph Lauren?" she asked, almost disbelieving her luck.

"It's Stephen-Kirk or something," Morgead told her in annoyance, "and Lauren isn't staying."

"What?" She glanced at him, then back at the guy. He was so well-groomed, he stood out like a pillar of taste amid the Wild Powers' mosaic of American white trash. His hair had been cut recently, but done so as not to be obvious. It fell, thick and brown, neatly behind his ears and brought out the natural creme shades in his complexion. He wore a gray cable sweater--definitely Ralph Lauren, Iliana decided--that drew attention to his perfect shoulders, and slacks that made his legs look longer than Iliana suspected they actually were. Unnoticable socks, loafers that were more casual than wing tips but didn't scream Native American, and a small, handsome watch completed the outfit.

It was unnatural for im to be here. Someone had obviously put time and thought into his clothing and this house.

Her attention was drawn away when a huge man came down the staircase. Huge was the only word Iliana could think of, she suspected he was about seven feet tall and had the shoulder-span of a bald eagle. He didn't match the house either; he was wearing a tee-shirt that was much too small and bunched around the arms, and his lovely creme hair had been hastily braided down his back.

"Mona," he said, reaching out a hand to the tiny woman. "What chaos! Come on in, you look exhausted."

He shoved the door shut, and Iliana was relieved to see one of the guards type a code into the security pad. His friends dispersed themselves around the house, leaving a little more room for the Wild Powers and company.

"We're only here for a few minutes," Mona said. "Then I'm leaving you with Iliana and dropping the other two off elsewhere."

She self-consciously smoothed her hair. What a relief, to be left in this house of good taste.

Jez sat down on the stairs, rubbing the hole in her head. Iliana found it indescribably creepy that Jez was walking around like that.

"No," the huge man was saying. "Don't be absurd. You stay here with Iliana and I'll make sure Jez and Delos are all right."

Iliana glanced back through the kitchen doorway and found that the well-dressed boy was watching her. He met her eyes and smiled slightly. She couldn't tell if it was a Glad-You-Didn't-Get-Killed smile, or a Oh-Cute-You're-Wearing-A-Costume smile. Either way, she couldn't help returning it.

"Dear God, Jez," the huge man said. "Look what's happened to your head."

"Wouldn't have happened if Iliana hadn't decided to faint in the middle of a battle," Morgead informed him.

The huge man glanced at Iliana's wrecked visage and smiled sympathetically. "Lauren!" he called into the kitchen, and another well-dressed person emerged. She was in her early twenties, Iliana supposed, with strawberry-blond hair and a cool expression.

"Lauren, this is Iliana Harman. Iliana, this is my daughter, Lauren Cambridge. Lauren, would you mind showing Iliana to one of the upstairs bathrooms? And if you could maybe loan her some clothes."

Iliana glanced between them. Daughter? No. The huge man appeared to be younger than Lauren was, and she was getting that I-lived-through-the-civil-war vibe from him. But if they wanted to play house, it wasn't her business.

Lauren was a perfect diplomat. She smiled and reached out a hand to guide Iliana upstairs.

They passed three closed doors and a bathroom upstairs before reaching the master bedroom at the end of the hall. The carpeting was soft green and matched the elegant eggshell-white paint on the walls. Rather than cheesy K-Mart family photos, expensive Degas and Vermeer prints had been tastefully framed and hung. Although Iliana wasn't entirely certain that a couple of them were reproductions.

"This is my room," Lauren said, opening the French doors and leading Iliana into a paradise of a bedroom. "The bathroom is over there, clothing is in the closet, take whatever you like." She smiled. "Make yourself at home, and give me a call if you need anything." She touched a small wall unit. "I'll be in the kitchen, just use the intercom."

Alone, Iliana glanced around and then went into the bathroom. Real porcelain, everything. She turned on the shower and the room began to fill with steam.

She sighed. Heaven.

An hour later, clean, pressed, and in all-together a better mood, Iliana emerged from the bedroom to find Jez and Morgead in the bathroom down the hall, again attacking Jez's head with a pair of tweezers.

"I told you," Jez was saying, "there's a nerve or something right there. It's very sensitive!"

Morgead appeared to be at the end of his rope. His eyebrows were touching. "And I'm telling you, the bullet is tied up in something."

"Yes, my brain. Which doesn't want you to pull it apart."

They both became suddenly aware of Iliana standing in the doorway, and glared at her. "Sorry," Iliana muttered, and ducked out.

Just as she was turning away--while Morgead was kicking the door shut--someone came out of a bedroom at the other end of the hall. She was bundled in sweaters, and her hair had grown, but it only took Iliana a moment to recognize the girl who had once saved her life.

"Nina?" she asked.

Nina Rosette's head shot up, and she started to back into her room when Iliana grabbed her wrist.

"What are you doing here?" Nina asked. Her color was terrible, Iliana noted. The slightly darkened skin that she had always admired had turned a grainy, pasty color and there were shadows around her eyes large enough to hide marbles in.

"What are I doing here?" Iliana repeated. "What are you doing here? Ash has been frantic since you left."

Nina released a faint moan and lifted a hand to her temple.

"Oh," Iliana heard someone say behind her. "I didn't think you would wake up before dinner."

She turned around and saw the well-dressed guy standing at the top of the stairs. "Who are you?" she asked.

He extended his hand. "Stephen-Kyle Cambridge. You're Iliana Harman?"

Iliana nodded. Stephen-Kyle. Very classy for a double-name.

"Are you okay?" he was asking Nina.

"I woke up when the helicoptor landed in the front yard," Nina told him ruefully. "Finally I gave up trying to go back to sleep and got dressed."

"Sorry," he said. "I should have warned you that guests were arriving."

"I thought you had to stay at the compound," Nina said, glancing back to Iliana.

"You two have met?" Stephen-Kyle asked.

"She saved my life," Iliana told him.

"At the time I think you were more pissed that I was stealing your glory," Nina pointed out.

"Jez and Morgead are around here someplace, if you want to say hi to them."

Nina's small smile vanished, and she swore under her breath. "Come here," she hissed, and backed into her bedroom.

Stephen-Kyle and Iliana followed her, closing the door behind them.

Nina's room was smaller than Lauren's, probably not even half the size, and less decorated. Aside from the curtains around the window and a stack of books on the bedside table, it looked as if Nina hadn't done anything personal to it.

Iliana sat down in a high-back chair and Nina sank into the mattress. "How long are you guys going to be here?" she asked.

"Jez and Morgead and Delos are leaving in a couple of hours," Stephen-Kyle provided. "Iliana is staying indefinitely."

Nina exhaled in relief. "You can't let any of the others find out that I'm here, okay?"

"Why not?" Iliana asked.

"I don't want Ash to know where I am."

"Why not?" she asked again. "He's really worried about you and the...."

For some reason the words wouldn't come out. She glanced down at Nina's stomach, which had swollen to just the point where a weight gain became obvious pregnancy.

"I don't want to see Ash," Nina was saying tightly. "I don't want him to know where I am. As far as you're concerned, you never saw me here, and you have no idea what happened to me after I left Cross Bien."

Iliana shook her head. "But why not? All he's done is worry since you left-"

"Don't start," Nina broke in, her teeth clenched. "Don't start telling me how I have to go back to him. You're wasting your breath."

The room was silent for several moments, and Iliana looked back toward Stephen-Kyle. He was watching Nina with concern, not prodding interest in her situation, just a sweet concern that Iliana found touching. Nobody had looked at her like that in probably a year.

At first they had all been so thoughtful. The witches had been around every day, anxious to educate her, support her, discover the talents along side with her. When it had become obvious that Iliana wasn't entirely comfortable with her abilities and would rather explore them in private, they had been gracious. And then less gracious. And soon a little resentful. And finally they had stopped coming around at all.

Yeah, it hadn't taken long for the glamour of having the Witch Child to wear off. And Iliana realized right along side them how shallow she was compared to the generations of witches before her.

"Iliana," Jez was calling in the hallway.

She could hear Jez opening doors, and jumped to her feet. "Don't worry," she said to Nina, and ducked into the hall.

"I'm here," she told Jez.

Jez had changed her clothes, but a trickle of blood was still coming down from her head.

"You couldn't get the bullet out?" Iliana asked.

"It'll fall out with time. But it's giving me a hell of a headache."

She glanced Iliana up and down. Her mood had dried, as if she were tired of being tart. "I just came up to tell you that Morgead and Delos and I are leaving."

"Oh, okay."

Iliana wished she had something smarter to say. She always felt like such an idiot with Jez, so grossly unsure of herself.

"I'm sorry," she burst out. "About what happened today. I know I let everybody down."

Jez sighed. "Forget it. You're not really a Night Person, you're not used to having people attacking you."

Not a real Night Person. Just an imposing, superficial human Circle Daybreak was obligated to keep around.

Jez gave a limp smile and Iliana felt the knives in her chest begin to twist. "And don't worry about Morgead," Jez added, turning and starting slowly down the stairs. "He always gets pissed when I get hurt. It's just his protective streak."

Iliana watched Jez walk into the entrance hallway, knowing that the older girl was certain she had made everything right with the stupid psuedo-witch upstairs.

She brushed the tears out of her eyes and realized with a start that Stephen-Kyle was standing beside her. His eyes drifted in the direction Jez had gone and he said quietly, "What an insensitive bitch."

Iliana started at him a moment before she started laughing.

Part Four

Ash met Cafi Dana in concorde C of the Rachel International Airport. He hugged her because she was a huggy person and he didn't want to hurt her feelings, being careful not to squish the arm which remained rigidly bound to her chest.

"You look great," he told her reflexively. She actually did; the last time he'd seen her, the arm had been propped off her torso with a metal bar as if she were constantly giving a turn signal.

"Thanks. You look dreadful."

He smiled grimly. "Still into that honesty thing, huh?"

"Always."

She ran a support group for people living without their soulmates that Ash had attended for a while. He'd stopped going mostly because he didn't want to talk about Nina, or how she left him the minute she realized she was pregnant. He had a hard enough time talking about Mary-Lynnette, let alone his current girlfriend.

Maybe it was ex-girlfriend now. He hadn't heard from her in over four months.

"What's his flight number?" Cafi was asking, tugging at the slip of paper in Ash's hand.

"TWA, flight 666."

She grinned. "You're screwing with me."

Ash smiled, more fondly this time. "United, 848. It's coming in at gate twelve, I already checked."

She talked idly as they walked to the gate, seemingly aware that Ash didn't want to discuss himself. "Marty's a huge success in New York," she told him. "In the last month alone, the Times has accused him of redefining the duet, the short opera, and the C chord. He's battling off full scholarships from Oberlin, Juliard, the Paris Conservatory, you name it. Everybody wants him. Personally, I think he's kind of blown over by all the attention. Until January he was virtually unknown."

"I didn't realize you two were close."

Cafi gave him a funny look and held up her good hand. In the fresh airport lights, a small pearl shone on her ring finger.

Ash stopped dead in his tracks. "You're engaged?" he asked, stunned.

"For three months now." She chuckled. "Come on, we're going to miss the landing."

They started walking again. "When's the wedding?" Ash asked.

"We've tenatively picked a date four summers from now, when we both have our degrees, but everytime we see each other we end up a hair's breadth from running off to Las Vegas."

It occured to Ash suddenly how long it had been since he and Mary-Lynnette and broken things off. Her brother had made it clear to Ash that Mary didn't want to see him anymore just two days before Martin O'Bach's soulmate died. Isis shat, had it really been move than a year ago? Now Marty was getting married, Mary-Lynnette was apparently working for God, and Ash had an incognito girlfriend and baby.

He ran a hand through his hair. No way was he ready to be a father.

They stopped at gate twelve just as flight 848 pulled to a half beside the window. The crowd of people waiting in their stiff chairs began to get up, bustling around like birds shaken out of a tree, and Cafi turned to Ash with darkness at the corners of her eyes.

"Whatever's going on here," she said, "Marty's going to be in danger, isn't he?"

Ash looked at her face, saw the strength there. She had been a rock for so many people, he just wanted a little of that tranquility to come back to her. But he wasn't going to lie.

"I don't know," he told her honestly. "Probably."

Cafi nodded and her eyes went to the floor. When she lifted her head, she was smiling seemlessly and stepping forward to wrap her fiance in a warm hug.

Ash barely recognized Martin O'Bach. He looked nothing like the frail, edge-of-death boy he had met a year ago in Saint Brigid's Hospital. It was as if that stick figure had been stripped of its illness and padded down with wet clay, buffed up to the picture of health standing now before him. Hair like beautiful mahogany fell past Marty's ears, skin obviously as soft as down, and tender green eyes that knew but wouldn't push.

Ash bit the inside of his cheek. Marty probably didn't even know he looked like a different person entirely. He was probably still angry that Ash and company had managed to get his soulmate killed.

Marty met his gaze over Cafi's shoulder, and all fear vanished. Too much heart to be bitter any longer over Shale's death, too much wisdom not to realize how he must have changed.

Releasing Cafi, Marty extended his hand. "Hi, Ash," he said. His voice was as smooth as honey, nothing like the rough croak Ash remembered from a year ago. "It's good to see you again."

No pulsation of sickness in the viens running under Marty's warm skin. "You, too," Ash said, surprised to realize he meant it. That had been the worst weekend of his life, but seeing Marty with Cafi, smiling and whole, took away some of the sting. The wounds were no longer raw.

Ash was quiet as they walked to the cafe in the center of the airport. Marty had nothing in terms of luggage besides the duffel bag he carried with him, dismissing Cafi's admonitions that she could carry it for him. They reached the table where Quinn, Tern, Zion, and Daniel sat within a few minutes, and Ash watched as Marty greeted each of the others. Quinn's response was flawless, polite but vaguely disinterested, Tern alternated between startled and uncomfortable. Zion and Daniel Marty hugged and kissed with that odd touchie-feelieness the Chimera reserved for each other. Ash pushed a second table against the edge of the first, and borrowed a few chairs from the smoking section.

"So what's so urgent that Marty had to fly in from New York?" Cafi asked, stirring a Sprite with her straw.

Everyone looked at Quinn, who lifted an eyebrow and replied mildly, "Daniel was the one who insisted Marty be called."

Daniel fiddled with the paper napkin in his hands, tearing it around the edges. "The compound where the Wild Powers were staying was attacked this morning," he told Marty. "At first they thought it was a standard Night World attack, but Quinn noticed some odd markings on a tree nearby. He called Zion, Zion called me. I suggested we fly you back."

He stopped. After a moment, Marty prompted, "Why?"

"Daniel thinks Nicholas Early may be responsible," Zion said shortly.

No one responded, and after a moment Ash realized the significance of the silence. "I'll bite," Cafi said finally. "Who's Nicholas Early?"

"He's a Chimera I grew-" Marty began, when Daniel cut him off.

"Used to be Chimera," he snapped. "He's nothing now."

Marty leaned back in his chair. "Apparently he's something, if he's attacking Wild Powers. What makes you think it was Nick?"

"There was a plastic circle melted into one of the trees," Daniel told him. "It had an E in the center."

"Echidna," Marty said, and the group fell into silence again. A few tables away, a bunch of drunk businessmen laughed too loudly and a delay was announced over the intercom. Ash wondered what they were doing having a conversation like this in an international airport.

Quinn shifted in his chair. "All right," he said, "you're losing my interest and the mystery has worn off. Not to mention that we're wasting time. What do Nicholas Early and Echidna have to do with the attack?"

For the first time, Ash saw a flicker of annoyance in Marty's seafoam eyes. "Haven't you learned yet that there isn't always a better place to be?" he asked, his tone bordering on tart. Without asking permission, he took a long swallow of Cafi's soda and replaced it on the cocktail napkin. Cafi didn't protest.

"Nicholas and I grew up together," he said. "We were friends, he was the closest thing I had to a brother. But he was...dissatisfied with the earth, I guess. I don't know exactly what he thought. He was sure he could summon a new magic, based in machines and computers and plastic. When he was fifteen, he left Tata Acasa with a following of fifteen others to start something called Circle Echidna. Five of the members have come home over the last four years, but other than that, we haven't heard from them."

Daniel, Ash noticed, had reduced his paper napkin to a pile of snowflake-like bits. He and Marty both seemed disturbed by the mention of Nicholas Early and Circle Echidna.

"Do they have any real power?" Tern asked. "I've never heard of people drawing energy from plastic."

"I don't know," Marty said, at the same time Daniel said, "No." Their eyes met and Daniel glanced away.

"They might," Marty said. "They have something, that's for sure. And if Nick is behind the attack, then I'm the one you'll need to help you find him."

"Why you?" Quinn asked, still smarting.

Marty's expression grew distant and dark, as though he were looking at approaching storm clouds. "Because I was his second in command."

Part Five

Iliana thought light was a marvel. It had been so long since she'd lived in a place with windows to the outside world that each shadow and ray of sunset felt like an answered prayer pressed into her hands.

She sat in the darling kitchen with its white and blue Dutch tiles and bay window and watched Stephen-Kyle throw together what smelled like a splendid stir-fry. Grahme, the huge man, had left with Morgead, Delos, and Jez, insisting that Mona stay and recover. Lauren had gone with them also, inviting Iliana to stay in her room as long as she like.

Mona had gone upstairs to sleep, and Nina was sitting across from Iliana in the breakfast nook, working on an intricate needlepoint. Alternative played softly from a tiny radio perched on the windowsill above the sink.

"So how long have you been here?" Iliana asked, more interested in making some sort of conversation than she was the answer.

"Since I left," Nina answered after a moment. "Thierry said I could stay here."

"I'm happy to have you," Stephen-Kyle told her. "Lauren's always in Europe, and Grahme's never home. When he does come back, he brings his girlfriend with him, and we don't get along real well."

"Are you really his son?" Iliana asked.

"No, my parents were killed when I was very small. Grahme adopted me and Laur. He's like six hundred years old."

Stephen-Kyle shook his head slightly, as if the thought were inconceivable. He caught Iliana smiling at him and returned the expression, then dumped a bunch of raw chicken into a skillet.

"This will only take ten minutes," he promised, as the scent of seasoning salts filled the room.

"How've you been?" Nina asked Iliana. Her voice was lower in volume than Iliana remembered it, but somehow no softer.

"Okay. Life doesn't change much around the compound, and Jez makes so much fun of me when I shop that she's taken all the fun out of it."

She cringed as soon as the words were out. Not just shallow, but whiney, too.

"I don't think Jez has much room to talk," Stephen-Kyle said, startling her. "Were those pants from Gap's '94 collection or straight from the army-surplus flea market? And the hat, ugh. She looked so homeless."

Iliana stared at him, and Nina cracked a smile. "I see we've found a match," she murmured.

"Are you gay?" Iliana heard herself ask.

Stephen-Kyle tiled his head reflectively. "I just thought I was well-read," he replied. "But I suppose anything's possible."

"He's not gay," Nina told her. "He happens to be able to dress. And he has classy taste in art."

And he can accessorize, Iliana added mentally, noting the watch on his wrist. Not at all flashy, but made of finely crafted leather and real glass.

"By the way," he said, "I've been meaning to compliment you on that outfit you were wearing when you got here. I'm sure before the explosion it was beautiful."

Genuine pleasure went through Iliana's body, and she felt her face flush. That was all right, she looked terrific with a little rose in her cheeks. "Thanks, I made it myself."

Stephen-Kyle glanced up from the peppers he was chopping. "Really? I'm impressed. It reminded me of a Louis Ditaene I saw a couple of months ago, what with the silk flowers and all."

Oh, oh, oh. He knew Ditaene. The designer was up and coming, still widwly unknown except by those who truly followed the medium. And this really good looking guy cooking her dinner knew about Ditaene's love for silk flowers.

Iliana watched Stephen-Kyle pitch the peppers into the stir fry and mix it around. "How long have you lived here?" she asked.

"Eight years. Before that Lauren and I lived in London with Grahme and his girlfriend, but when she decided she didn't want to see him any more we moved here."

"Where is here?" Iliana asked, suddenly realizing that she didn't know.

"Les Biach, Ontario."

"We flew all the way to Canada?" she exclaimed.

"Where were you before?"

"New Mexico. I must have slept on the helicoptor."

"Small miracle, that," Nina said.

"There was sound-proofing inside," she explained. "How did you end up coming from Cross Bien all the way here?"

Nina's eyes lifted from her needlepoint. "You mean what happened after I took the second test and realized I really was pregnant?"

"Yeah," Iliana said weakly. "Then."

Nina shrugged. "I called Quinn. He called Violet. Violet explained the science behind it, and then Quinn gave me the number for Circle Daybreak's help line. Two hours later I had a plane ticket to Ontario and an offer to stay here as long as I needed to."

"But why did you have to leave?" Iliana couldn't help pressing.

"Because-" Nina stopped short and put her cross-stitch down abruptly. "Because I don't want to have kids with Ash. I feel like a bitch for saying it, but I don't."

There was silence in the kitchen, and then Stephen-Kyle said, "Neither do I!"

Nina and Iliana turned to look at him, and he grinned sheepishly. "He's a nice guy, and it isn't like I'm not attracted to him, I just don't know if he can give me the kind of emotional support I'd need during pregnancy. I mean, one bout of morning sickness and he'd probably go running."

If Iliana had said it, she knew it would have backfired. But coming from Stephen-Kyle, with that light smile on his face, the words had no accidental sting. Nina only laughed gently and got up to pour drinks.

"Ash is an unusual name, isn't it," Stephen-Kyle mused as he dumped stir-fry onto three plates.

"For a human," Iliana agreed. "I know...two, three, four vampires named Ash."

"It's less conspicuous than naming your kid Eucylaptis," Nina pointed out.

"There are boys named Ashley," Stephen-Kyle said. "Would that count as a derivative?"

"I think it has to be a real plant."

"My grandmother's name is Ashlyn," Iliana said. She hadn't realized she was going to speak until the words were already out and she could hear how random they sounded.

Neither of the others seemed to noticed. "That's a lovely name," Nina said. "You probably miss her, don't you?"

Iliana nodded. "When was the last time you saw your family?" Stephen-Kyle asked.

She had to think. "It was about sixteen months ago."

"Sixteen months?" he echoed.

"Yeah. They're probably being watched, so if they came to see me the Night World would know where I was."

"But still...Lauren and I hardly ever get along, but I still can't imagine what it would be like not to see her for so long." He paused. "And living with Jez and Morgead, you must be horribly lonely."

Iliana laughed nervously, only to see that Stephen-Kyle was quite serious. He focused on her with the same concern she had seen directed toward Nina earlier that day, the same intense desire to put right and heal. It warmed her inside and out.

"What's wrong with the table?" Nina asked suddenly, startling Iliana out of her Stephen-Kyle glow.

"Huh?" she asked. Then she looked down and began screaming at the top of her lungs.

The table had melted like ice cream in the sun, turning to a thick, rubbery goo more than an inch deep. Nina's glass of milk teetered before falling. Iliana's screams increased when she saw the glass bounce off the table top and right itself.

They were all on their feet within two seconds. "Mona!" Iliana shouted.

Then the entire room was in motion. Huge strips of wall paper peeled back, still clinging to webs of glue. The chairs began a frantic quadraped tap dance. The breadmaker hummed, roared, and burst into flames. Track lighting hanging from the ceiling exploded.

Nina swore and Iliana recognized the slant of her eyes from the night they'd spent trapped with werewolves. Stephen-Kyle just appeared startled.

From the other room came the yelling of body guards. Shots were fired outdoors and on the other side of the bay window appeared a willowly figure. He wore an olive green robe emblazened with a gray image on the front. Some sort of lion or other beast reared its head back, revealing fangs as dangerous as any lamia's.

"Get down!" Stephen-Kyle cried, and Iliana felt his hand on her shoulders. He threw her to the floor just before the refrigerator crashed on its side. The radiator coils on the back waved about like arms, and the door flew open so close by that some of Iliana's hair was caught under it.

From the doorway came Mona's voice. "Get her out, Stephen!"

A cupboard bottom dropped out, throwing canned goods everywhere. Immediately, a dozen of them launched into the air and flew against Stephen-Kyle's legs with suicidal force.

"The window!" Nina cried over the sounds of crashing and Mona screaming at the berrage of plastic utensils flying at her.

Stephen-Kyle took the time to ask, "What the hell is going on?"

"Just move!"

Too late. The phone launched itself off the wall and Iliana felt pain burst like a fireball in her right temple. Stunned, it took her precious seconds to realize what was happening, and by that time the twisted phone chord was already tying her wrists together and then lynching them to her neck.

"Help," she squeaked breathlessly. "Help me."

At the edge of the counter, which was dipping up and down like a loosened diving board, four circular hot places had risen up from the stovetop. They rolled back and forth on their edges, dancers in Las Vegas-quality unison.

Iliana tried to call out for help again, but the rubber chord around her neck dug in suddenly, blocking her airways completely. She struggled, kicking in all directions, and watched mutely while the window curtains leapt down on top of Stephen-Kyle, effectively blinding him.

Across the room, Mona was trying to fight her way past the oven and the wire egg beater that was leaving red whip lines on her cheeks.

Iliana began to roll helplessly over the floor. She shoved one leg out in front of herself and realized that she was being pulled deeper and deeper into the refrigerator. The phone chord simply wrapped itself around her leg, too, and continued to wind back and forth between the upper and lower shelves. Her fingers knotted uselessly under her chin and cold air rushed over her skin.

"Get it off!" Nina shouted, and there was a wild crash of metal on metal from nearby.

Iliana braced her free foot against the back of the fridge and locked her knee. Her eyes met with the eye of the mechanical beast, that flickering light bulb in the back corner that glowed steadily brighter as it pulled her deeper into its grasp. Her tangled leg was pressed against the frigid white plastic, the digging teeth of the chord making red marks on her blanched skin. She clawed uselessly at her throat, feeling her face flush with lack of oxygen.

Not this time, she thought. This time I'm fighting, this time I'm going to hold my ground until it's over.

Then an eight pound jar of pickles smashed itself on her knee and she screamed silently. Blood and brine rushed over the smooth plastic and her knee buckled. The tension left the phone chord so fast she was sucked almost instantly into the refrigerator.

Her face hit a vegetable drawer and the right side of her body was soaked with freezing, stinking pickle juice. The chord loosened, as if it knew it had won, and Iliana's legs were jerked into the cheese box. "Help!" she screamed again, dry and hoarse but audible.

The light bulb grew even brighter, blinding her and sending daggers of pain into her eyes, and the door rose powerfully off the floor.

She knew that as soon as that door closed, the light would go out, and whatever this demonic appliance had in store for her would begin. Her eyes strayed to the bulb again as her body struggled futilely against a chord that continued to wind itself even tighter around her.

A bottle of ketchup was still wedged in the shelf on the door, and it knocked against Iliana's knee, drawing fresh pain, as the door pressed closed.

Then, a shoe appeared.

Stephen-Kyle's face as he kicked the door open was that of a human sick of being at a disadvantage and willing to make up for it with more than a little violence. His loafer came crashing down so hard that the ketchup bottle exploded and the plastic shelf shattered, and then his other foot wedged itself past Iliana's head and demolished the lightbulb in the corner.

"Nina!" he cried, "I need a knife."

Iliana could see the floor covered inch-deep with bits of broken plastic and wire. Strangely, they were still moving, trying to form a complete weapon, and succeeded only in running into each other like confused ants.

Stephen-Kyle fell to his knees just as the chord tightened intolerably around Iliana's neck again. "I've had about enough of this shit now," he muttered as he dug into the rubber coating with a steak knife.

Behind him, Nina was holding the toaster oven with two pot holders and using it to beat the hell out of everything else in the room. Between bashes, it tried to eat her hand.

The pressure on her wrists was released, and Stephen-Kyle grabbed Iliana's hips to drag her out of the refrigerator. The wire was still wrapped around her legs, but it was mostly limp, just knotted up on itself. It was at her neck that the electronics were still working, still tightening.

Stephen-Kyle pushed her head back, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the oven door snap down in front of Mona. "Dammit," he hissed as he tried to worm his finger under the chord. "Nina, help me get this thing off. She's suffocating."

They didn't see the oven racks pop out, hitting Mona's shins hard enough to crack them. Nina ground at Iliana's neck from one side, Stephen-Kyle from the other. Above the kitchen door, a rolling pin that had been swinging crazily finally dropped, and Iliana heard the sick crunch of scull cracking when it hit Mona's neck.

She tried to point, tried to make them look at Mona's body crumpling, and the oven door folding down to catch her. She tried to draw their attention away from the cord digging into her neck and back to the small vampire's body as it was sucked into the hot metal cube.

Her knees were trembling, and the room was beginning to gray when she saw the oven door clang shut. Nina gave a final jerk and the cord snapped into harmless pieces, which fell to the floor. Iliana stumbled and fell. Her hands landed in broken bits of plastic which were all too happy to slice at her soft skin.

"Mona," she gasped. "Get Mona."

"What?" Stephen-Kyle asked, and she pointed.

"Oh god," Nina whispered.

Mona's body had been crammed inside the oven, her face pressed up against the glass window inside. Metal coils had wound themselves around the unit, trapping the door shut, and before any of them had time to move, the silver-scored dials above spun. Flames exploded within the oven, Mona's eyes flew open and she was already screaming before the fire caught hold of her hair and her clothing.

Her screams rose to inhuman heights as she thrashed about in the womb of the oven. Her flesh burned off in sticky patches, her blood boiled brown stains all along the glass window. Heat wafted across the room to Iliana's still cool skin, and her ears were filled with that horrible, unfiltered screaming, a kind she had never heard before.

Gunshots from the front room, and the pressure of the burning body caused the oven window to burst outward. Mona's screaming stopped abruptly as her head forced its way back into the air. Eyeless, dripping blood and ashen bile, the scull burned bald like a badly shaved Barbie doll, and still flames suckled on her skin, licked at the tongue rolling out of her open mouth in an obscene French kiss.

Iliana heard a horrible noise and realized she was moaning deep in her throat. Beside her, Nina lifted a piece of chair and threw it into the bay window.

"We've got to leave," she said.

Stephen-Kyle was shaking his head. From the living room came another commotion, doors being beaten at, locks being torn apart.

"She's dead!" Nina shouted. "We've got to get out of here!"

But Iliana couldn't move, couldn't stop staring at that terrible cracked flesh being sliced open by the shards of glass. The screams still rang in her ears.

"There's time, we have to move now. Stephen, they're coming in the front door. They're here for Iliana."

His voice lifted in weak but lucid reply, and Iliana felt his hand close around her arm, trying to draw her to her feet. It was then she saw Mona's corpse trying to swallow, and it was then she passed out.

Part Six

Ash found the entire situation far too similar to the one from a year ago than he would have liked. They were in a van, the TAQ team, Marty, Marty's girlfriend, and an out-skirts Night Person, driving through the Tyderock Mountain at night, heading to face an enemy they knew almost nothing about. All Ash needed was a quart of some alcoholic's blood and a few new jokes, and it was Cristona's healing all over again.

He could tell Marty was thinking the same thing by the way he held protectively to Cafi's hand, as if he were determined not to loose the girl this time.

They'd left Daniel MacMarnine back at the airport. After a heated argument that didn't eselate to blows only because Marty was by nature a pacifist, Danny had announced that he wanted nothing to do with "that psychotic cult-leader." Ash assumed he was referring to Nicholas Early and not some other member of their group.

The sky was weakening into night when Quinn announced that he was going to stop at the next hotel they passed. All of them were tired, having each missed eight hours of sleep at one point or another during the day. It was almost two hours before the sign for the Hampton Inn appeared and Quinn turned off the interstate for the tiny town of Lovely.

He sent Ash and Tern into the lobby to check prices, pointing out that, "Circle Daybreak has better things to pay for than Swedish down pillows."

The hostess was a drippy woman in her early thirties. "Hi," Ash said. "We need rooms for six."

She shook her hair, the legs on her pink flamingo earrings clicking together. "We've only got one room left," she said.

"Huh?" he asked. "We're in the middle of nowhere."

She scowled. "No, you're on the sight of over two-dozen alien visitations. The largest UFO conference in the country is being held here this year."

She pulled open her frumpy orange cardigan to reveal an even more offensively colored tee-shirt reading, "Proud Parent of an Alien-Human Hybrid."

Tern covered his laughter with one hand, while Ash just groaned. "You can try Red Roof," the hostess suggested, pushing a phone across the desktop.

The Red Roof Inn, which was the only other hotel in a seventy-mile radius, had only one room as well, and it was furnished for one guest. At least the room at the Hampton was intended for three.

"Explain to me again how we're all going to fit in here," Quinn said as they piled into room 124.

There was a double bed, a single, and the last two cots the hostess had been able to find. One of them had its head stuck in a closet.

"Uh, well," Ash said. "I guess Marty and Cafi can take the double, Tern and I can squish up on the single, and you and Zion can have the cots."

"Ah," Cafi broke in, "I don't think that arrangement quite works."

Ash glanced at her, waiting for an explanation, but she didn't speak. After a couple of second it down on him; Marty and Cafi were engaged but not sleeping together.

How delightfully quaint, he thought with a grimace.

He and Tern ended up sharing the big bed, which was fine with them since they'd been friends since the second grade. Quinn took the cot stuck partially in the closet, Cafi got the other one. Marty and Zion bedded down in the single, insisting that there was no problem with space. "Since I don't have legs," Zion pointed out, "I'm more like an over-sized Cabbage Patch doll than a person."

Ash was just about to suggest that somebody turn off the damn light when Quinn read is mind and said, "I have to call headquarters first."

Ash sighed and rolled over. He could see Cafi a few feet away, asleep above her covers. She snored very lightly, a sound which reminded Ash vividly that he was in the room with a human.

He caught sight of Marty moving his hands swiftly at the end of the bed. Zion turned to look at him and asked, "Do you think Nicholas will attack us?"

Marty wiped his palms on his pants. "No, this protection is from dreams. She has a lot of nightmares."

Ash glanced at him curiously. "How would you know that?" he asked, and was surprised by the pity in Marty's smile.

"Don't make so many assumptions, Ash," he said. "You might be wrong less often."

Ash turned away, resentment rising in his chest. After a moment he realized that the anger wasn't directed at Marty but at himself. He was the one who had slept irresponsibly with his girlfriend and gotten her pregnant.

No--not quite true. They'd had no way of knowing that the medication she took would actually make conception of a human-vampire child possible. He would have taken precautions if he'd realized he needed to.

Probably.

Amazing how much more serious he felt these days. He remembered the night it happened, in the chair in his bedroom, and how he'd forced her to take that home test only a day later. It had come back negative, and he'd breathed easier until Nina used the L world.

Not Love.

The hotel room began to close in around him and he got up wordlessly. Ten minutes later he found himself in the parking lot with his heart on fire and his head throbbing like the pulse in a captured deer's throat. He'd been trying not to think about it. He'd been doing really well not thinking about it.

"Where are you, Nina?" he muttered. "What the hell were you thinking when you left?"

She'd left this insane note on the counter. It read, Ash, just forget I was ever here. Cold cuts and all. I'm sorry. Nina.

He'd been trying to figure out what "cold cuts" was supposed to mean for the last four months. Was it some hidden reference to his race? Did it mean she had just dated him hoping he would buy her stuff? That she had gone out to buy some meat and gotten lost on the way back?

He hated this. He had enough angst in his life with Mary-Lynnette, and all the safety he'd thought he had with Nina dissolved in less than a week.

"Ash," Quinn said from behind him. "Are you really hunting or just having a panic attack?"

"Uh, the latter I think. What do you want?"

Quinn didn't reply, and finally Ash turned to look at him. His friend--if and when he dared call Quinn a friend--would have been a black silhouette to human eyes. But Ash was able to make out the sharper planes of his face, detect the missing curl in Quinn's lips.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"There's been another attack."

Ash tensed. "The Wild Powers?"

"Iliana."

"Is she..."

"She's missing. There are signs of a struggle, but not violence enough to imply that she's been seriously injured. But there are two other things I need to tell you."

Ash swallowed and steeled himself. "Give me the bad news first."

"It's all bad news," Quinn said bitterly, and then with softness, "Mona's dying."

The moon's glare increased dramatically and Ash closed his eyes. "Isis shat. What happened?"

"She..." This seemed hard for even Quinn to say. "It appears she was trapped inside an oven and set on fire. Mother Cybele is with her, she says it's only a matter of hours. Mona hasn't come to since it happened."

"An oven?" Ash echoed. "What kind of sick bastard puts a little woman like Mona in an oven and fries her?"

He wanted to rage about this, make it the epitome of cruelty and injustice in the universe, but Quinn was ominously quiet. "There's more," he said finally. "Maybe you should go into the woods."

"The woods?"

Quinn was already floating forward, and Ash had little choice but to follow him. They moved quickly until they were a few hundred yards from the hotel and he could hear the buss and bustle of night life all around him.

"What already?"

Standing this close in a telephone booth-sized clearing, Ash came to a disturbing realization: Quinn was trying to soften whatever blow was about to come. That alone was enough to tie his stomach in knots.

"I have to confess to something first," Quinn said. "If you want to punch me, I'll block you, but feel free to try."

"You're killing me, Quinn."

Without further preamble, he said, "When Nina realized that she really might be pregnant, she came to me."

Ash blinked. "What? Why?"

"She was scared. I imagine it's frightening to know that a being several times more powerful than you are is growing inside your body. She asked me if I could find her a place to stay where she would be safe, if anything went wrong."

"Wrong?" Ash echoed.

"If...If it turned out the baby wasn't as sympathetic toward its mother as Jez was to hers."

"If she had a monster," he filled in. "She went to you so that you could help her if she gave birth to a monster baby."

"Ash," Quinn said darkly, "don't take it that way. She was terrified. Things got out of control, for both of you, and she came to me for help."

It was starting to click in Ash's head, and as Quinn had predicted, the anger was rising. "What did you do?" he hissed.

"I called Violet. She did some tests to confirm. I called Thierry. He put her on a plane to Ontario, and she's been staying there with Faren Grahme's children ever since."

"You knew where she was this whole time and you didn't tell me?" Ash shouted, finally understanding why Quinn had brought him out to the woods for this bit of news. "How the hell could you do that? You knew I was worried. All this time I thought she might have run off and killed herself some place, or tried to do one of those awful home abortions with a coat hanger, and you never let me know that she was living the sweet life as one of Thierry's pet projects?"

Quinn took an instinctive step back as Ash's hand shot out to shove him. "Chill out, Ash."

"This whole time it's been, Oh Ash, you know we're friends, even though I hate you and I tried to have you killed once. Don't worry, Ash, she'll come back, everything will be fine."

"I'm warning you," Quinn said. Ash was forcing him deeper into the woods by then, they were dancing a duet between the tightly spaced trees.

"Never mind that I knew all about how you killed your soulmate's mom and I didn't say a word, when I could have royally screwed you whenever I felt like it."

His head wasn't even attached any longer, it was floating above his shoulders in a thick red cloud. Quinn was still on the retreat, but guarded, and his own expression was becoming darker by the word.

"You devious prick," Ash went on. "You really are Hunter's son, aren't you?"

Now Quinn's eyes flashed silver, and before Ash knew what had hit him, he was laying on his back among the pine cones, spitting dirt out of his mouth.

He blinked and grimaced. The anger ad gone out of him as soon as the cool dirt touched his face. "Finished?" Quinn asked.

He nodded.

"Good, because I'm not done."

"Please tell me you didn't feed on her."

Quinn ignored him. "When the compound was attacked, the Wild Powers were helicoptored to three different locations. Iliana was taken to Grahme's house in Ontario."

It took Ash a few seconds to understand, and when he did, his head shot off the ground. Something inside him started to scream. "What about Nina?"

"She's missing."

Ash climbed gracefully to his feet. "We have to leave now."

"Tern's already checking us out."

"How did they find Iliana?" Tern asked, swinging the van door shut and jumping into the passenger's seat.

Quinn barely waited for him to climb all the way inside before they were pulling out across the dark parking lot. "Nobody knows. They're moving Jez and Delos again, just to be safe. Marty, you know more about this group than anybody else. How do you think they did it?"

Marty had somehow ended up sitting on the back bench with Ash, while Cafi and Zion shared the middle one. "I don't know," he said, his face wan. "If you registered a flight path for the helicoptor, then I assume Nick just broke into the computer system and found it. He's good at stuff like that."

"How long do we have to drive?" Ash asked.

"Another four hours at least," Tern called back.

"And," Marty pointed out, "we don't even know if they're still at that address."

Ash sighed and leaned back against the seat. Cafi was already asleep, her fragile human body making the decision for her, but Ash wasn't sure he could calm his mind enough to rest. Somehow the fight had turned personal again, not just a race to save nameless faces but one of his own as well.

If Nina was hurt, if her blood had been drained or the energy of her spirit, if there was so much as a scratch...

Ash knew one thing: there would be violence.

"Tell me about Nicholas," he said to Marty, close to an hour later.

The witch was sitting with his back against the window, quiet but not asleep. He opened his eyes, the same light seafoam Ash remembered from the tragedies a year ago, and with the same serenity behind them. He’d thought before that Marty’s calm came from having spent years being sick, from giving up on life, but now he realized it was just the way Marty was. Something either his Chimera father or his Circle Midnight mother had given him that ran deep in his veins. A passiveness that lent itself to power. He blinked thoughtfully a few times before speaking.

"Nicholas and I grew up together. Not the way you and Tern did, it's different with the Chimera. We lived in the same house, just a couple of rooms down the hall from each other. Kids who visit always say it's like summer camp, everybody sharing rooms and eating big group meals. But...it isn't impersonal like camps are. We just have larger families.

"Nick's mom is part of Circle Midnight. Sometimes the unpopular female witches come to Nebraska to marry Chimera, martyr themselves for the sake of the line. Usually once there are kids the mother will leave with any girls. If something should happen to the mother, the kids are sent to a female witch coven to be finished properly once they turn eleven or twelve.

"So Nick didn't see his mother or his two sisters very often. They moved out to be with Grandma Harman and sent cards once or twice a year. I know a lot of boys with families like that, although my father says there aren't as many as there used to be. There are four wives living at Circ Gri, and two more at Tata Acasa, and three of them will probably go back. I know Cerridwyn isn't planning to return to Circle Twilight, even though she has two daughters. And my cousin, Karina, simply refused to go when Grandma Harman called for her.

"Nick was close with his mom, though. I think it hurt her to leave him behind when she went to California. We used to talk about mothers together, me and Nick." He glanced at Ash. "Mine died when I was born, remember?"

Ash nodded, although he hadn't remembered.

"So Nick and I had that in common. I moved into the main house when I was seven because I needed constant supervision, and because I coughed so hard at night that I kept all the other kids awake. Nick and Tristan and I had a lot of sleep-overs in the big house, and we discovered all that magic you become aware of when you hit puberty. For Tristan it was animals, people included. He could talk to them and they understood even if he didn't get the words just right. He had a way of making things understand him. I thought that because I was sick, that meant I wouldn't have magic, but I started writing music then. Just little, stupid things. Baby stuff, but it passed the time, and Jody would play it for me.

"Nick's thing was water, changing temperature, flow direction, rain, sleet, hail, snow. Nothing massive, he was young, but he used to sit around flushing toilets without touching them all the time. Tristan and I thought that was hilarious. After all, we were twelve. Anything having to do with a toilet was funny.

"Then one day Charlie pointed out that flushing a toilet wasn't really using the power of water, but some kind of telekinesis. Nick was really annoyed, because he'd worked hard at perfecting his flushing skills, so he took the lid off the toilet tank to see for himself. It turned out that he wasn't moving the water at all, he was moving the flush mechanism inside the toilet.

"So we all just figured that he had double talents, one for making it rain, one for telekinesis. It wasn't unusual for somebody with two witch parents to have a number of skills.

"Nick came up with a different theory. He was very scientifically minded, he wanted to be a chemist at the time, so he started doing experiments. He dug up some dirt and put it in a pie pan, and then he poured a bunch of rubber cement into a second pan. For two weeks, an hour a day, he sat at the table with those pans and envisioned them on fire, just flames shooting out of them in all directions. He used electronic thermometers to keep track of their temperatures while this was going.

"When he was done, the results appeared more than conclusive. To him, anyway. The rest of us weren't sure what they meant.

"The temperature of the dirt was an average of four degress warmer when Nick was concentrating on it than when he wasn't. The rubber cement was an average of nine degrees higher, and that's not including the day when it shot up seventeen degrees. Nick decided that was an anomaly and chucked the data.

"He came up with this theory that things men created artificially shared the same bond with humans that the earth shares with mother nature. That somehow in the act of creation, we bind their energy to us. It was a good theory, if he'd been older, people really would have listened. As it was, everybody mostly ignored him for the next year.

"Except for me. I learned how to listen when I was young, really listen to people with an open mind. And Nick had so much to say. He talked about bees, the workers and the queen, and who was stronger, the supplicants or the creator. He drew lines between nature and humanity. Waterfalls were nature, but pianos were humanity.

"I wasn't sure about the piano thing. I'd spent too many years by then trying to quench pain with song to believe anything except that music was Divine. Finally, Nick said, 'It is Divine, Marty. It came from you and you are it's creator, and Mozart was an incarnation of God."

Marty stopped talking and glanced at Ash again. "Is this making any sense to you?"

"Not really," Ash admitted. "Nick thinks he's God?"

"No. He's not a fanatic. At least, he wasn't when I knew him. He...believed that in the act of creating something--anything--he was building Divinity around him. He built plastic, and so he became the God of Plastic. He had the ability to command it as Mother Nature commands the earth.

"I got really sick right after my thirteenth birthday, sicker than I had ever been before. Tristan had moved to Circ Gri by then, and we didn't see each other as often. Nick seemed to understand that I was going to die, and we spent more and more time together. He was determined to save me with that he called 'second generation magic.' I was starting to discover true faith in humanity magic, I began seeing the romance in light bulbs and shampoo and polyester.

"About a year and a half later, my cousin, Karina, was in an accident. Karina is...she's like a light in Circle Chimera. She's funny and smart and loves being alive, and she loves us enough that she decided to stay when Mother Cybele offered to train her. She was in this terrible car crash, the driver was killed instantly but Karina survived. Chris was Tata Acasa's healer then, he's a certified MD aside from being a witch, and he ran his hands over her once and said there wasn't a chance she would survive.

"We took her home to the big house. Chris did what he could, which was very little. Nick locked himself in his room, sure that he could find a second generation spell to heal her. It wasn't just for Karina, he wanted the glory and the respect he always thought he deserved, too, but he did have her best interests at heart.

"By the time a day had passed, she had started bleeding. I mean, just bleeding out of every orifice in gushing spurts. She screamed until she lost her voice, and the whole time her father and Chris knelt next to the bed praying for her to die already and the agony to end. I remember sitting in my room, hearing her screaming through the walls, and when I went into the living room, some of the blood had leaked out under the door.

"When the bleeding finally slowed to a trickle and her throat was too raw to scream with, my father said that I could go inside and say goodbye. She's five years younger than I am, she was ten at the time, and tall for her age, but during that day she had shriveled. The skin on her arm sank so deep between the bones that it looked like a hot dog bun.

"I knelt down next to her father, and she opened her eyes and whispered, 'Mi-e frig.' It means, 'I'm cold,' in Romanian. Her skin was filthy and crusted with blood, the sheets were soggy with it, and it soaked my elbows when I leaned over to hold her hand. I said, 'Mi-e cald,' 'I'm hot,' and closed my eyes. It wasn't even something I thought about, I just closed my eyes and my skin got hot. Karina started to shake and my father thought it was the death rattle everyone talks about. He tried to make me leave, told me to give her father a few last minutes, but she was holding my hand so hard I couldn't pry it away. I was covered in sweat and Karina's blood and the heat was swimming all around me, and then I realized that she had started bleeding again, from her mouth, her nose, her ears. She cried bloody tears, and then she started screaming again. Her voice was like sandpaper, but she kept screaming and clenching my hand, and this time instead of trickling off the blood clotted like it should have. Her crying dissolved into clear tears. I passed out on the floor.

"Dr. Chris told me later that my temperature was above one hundred and eight. He sent me straight into the ICU, kept cramming orange juice and strawberries down my throat. When I was awake, all I could do was choke down these intolerable herbal milkshakes he'd prepare, in between swallowing steroids. By the time I left the ICU, eight days later, Karina had made a full recovery.

"I got home and Nick started telling me about his latest test, something to do with hand-crafted copper satellites, and I realized I just didn't believe in humanity magic any more. Or maybe I did believe that it existed, but I couldn't follow it. I had always been too sick to consider any natural talents I might have had when it came to magic, but that night Karina almost died, something rose up in me that wasn't of my own making.

"At that point, Nick had made real progress. Like spoon bending on a grand scale. One day he made me tuna fish without using his hands. I would have brushed it aside as simple telekinesis, still rooted in earth magic, except that he was able to change the vary nature of the materials. He could make books melt into puddles of plastic, turn silk into dust. The changes he worked on objects weren't just physical, they were chemical, like he was rolling over molecules with the brush of his mental hand.

"What was more amazing was that he was teaching others to do it. Humanity magic is easier to perform, because you're your own source of power. It's already inside you, you don't have to draw it from the earth. Once Nick was really able to prove what he was doing, people flocked to him. He felt betrayed that I didn't want any part of it, hurt, and he shut me out. I shut him out, too, I wanted time to find myself again. I was a born-again Chimera Wiccan, and it felt good.

"I was well enough to spend a few months with Grandma Harman. I guess we hit it off, either that or she just didn't knock me around because I was sick. Thea and I became very close, I caught up with some of the female Chimera who had been sent away. Meanwhile, at home, Nick started fighting with August, who was domnitor, our leader, then. Nick was sixteen and hot-headed, and he pushed further than he should have. He took offense at everything, I know that without having been there, and he felt oppressed when no one was trying to hold him back. Things got blown out of proportion. Nick tried to defend himself and ended up saying hurtful things that offended people. A lot of bad blood was created.

"My father called me home to talk him out of leaving. I arrived the night before he and sixteen others were going to fly to Montana and start their own circle, Dr. Chris among them. I was surprised at how angry he was at me, it hadn't occurred to me that he resented my not being home to stand up for him. We fought all night, and in the morning he went to the airport more determined than ever to leave and not look back."

Marty stopped again and sighed deeply. "That was four years ago. Five of the Chimera who left with him came back eventually, the others we hear from once in a while."

Zion, who had been drifting in and out on the bench in front of them, turned and opened his eyes. "What about Karina?" he asked.

"She just placed fifth in a state-wide equestrian competition," Marty replied, smiling faintly. "Cafi wants her to be a bride's maid at the wedding."

"Do you still heal people?" Zion asked.

"It was a one-time thing, I think. I tried again, of course, tried to hold onto my grandfather, people in hospitals. Myself. But it didn't work. Whatever wanted Karina to live had just used me as an instrument."

"Have you spoken to Nick since he left?"

Marty shook his head. "But he isn't a fanatic. He always-" He stopped short and laughed softly. "He always used his powers for good, is what I was about to say. But what I mean is, he isn't a cruel person. Just passionate. I don't know, it's been a long time since I saw him. Things might have changed."

"Everything changes," Ash heard himself agree. "And nothing does."

Marty and Zion both glanced at him, surprised to hear a bit of wisdom coming from the local playboy. Ash shrugged and leaned back against the seat. He'd read that somewhere, and it had never seemed more true. People came in and out of his life, people he loved, people he hated, but he was always alone in a crowd. He changed his life but he remained directionless. No amount of reading would make him more certain of himself.

"Oh, shit," Marty whispered, all of a sudden, and Ash opened his eyes in surprise.

"Quinn! Did you say they flew the Wild Powers out of the compound on a helicopter?"

"Yes."

"That's how Nick's tracking them. He doesn't need a flight plan, once he's touched the metal, he can follow it anywhere."

"You're saying that as long as Delos and Jez are being moved with that helicopter, Nick can tell where they are?" Zion asked.

Marty nodded. "They're being transported by a homing beacon."

Part Seven

Iliana woke up to the sound of her own teeth chattering and cringed. She had fainted again, hadn't she?

The world was white all around her, punctuated by a few sagging-branched evergreens. She was on her knees in the snow. One of them, the one that had been attached with a pickle jar, was aching, and the blood had turned faintly pink around her pant leg. Despite the pain in her knee, in her throat, in her cold hands and ears, she felt strangely calm, reassured.

She brushed her fingers across the top layer of flakes and smiled. The snow didn't melt when she touched it; either it liked her or else she was freezing to death.

The scene was so peaceful that Nina's hand grabbing her arm came like a slap to the face. "Come on, we've got to keep moving."

For the first time, she noticed Nina and Stephen-Kyle on the snow beside her. Stephen-Kyle was breathing great gusts of cloud into the air, Nina was staring out into the surrounding woods as if unaware of her own shivering body.

That can't be good for your baby, Iliana thought, and felt immediately disgusted with herself. Why was she such a judge of everyone and everything? It wasn't like Nina had come out here without a coat on purpose.

"You can run?" Stephen-Kyle asked.

Iliana got to her feet. The skin on her knee burned but held her weight without a problem. "Yeah."

"Then let's go."

He helped Nina up, and they started scrambling through the woods. Between distant trees, Iliana could no longer see the house.

"We need a plan," Nina said, as they came to a deep ravine. Part of one ridge had been washed down, forming a sort of twisted staircase down fifteen feet. Iliana hesitantly followed Nina down.

"Run?" Stephen-Kyle suggested.

"Those were Night People. We can't out run them. We're lucky we've gotten as far as we have."

Iliana stumbled over a hidden branch in Lauren's borrowed pumps. Why was it that whenever she had these little adventures, she was wearing the wrong shoes?

"They were witches," she put in. "Most of the male witches are in Circle Chimera."

"Haven't they sided with Circle Daybreak?"

"I don't know. I....I've never heard of witches doing stuff like that."

"It was very Ghostbusters," Stephen-Kyle agreed. "Should we wait for the coming of Goser?"

They both glanced at him, and he gave a light-hearted grin. "Somebody's got to keep things from getting fatalistic."

"How do you hide from a Night Person?" Nina wondered out loud. "Iliana, what are your weaknesses?"

Iliana didn't quite understand. "I'm shallow," she said softly. "I'm a coward. I always pass out during a fight."

"You're not a coward," Stephen-Kyle told her. "I almost passed out, too. What we saw back there..."

He shook his head and swallowed, and Iliana could see the images of Mona's head lolling from the oven window flash behind his eyes. It had been horrific beyond anything else she had ever witnessed.

"Not personal weaknesses," Nina said dismissively, as they climbed down into a ravine. "How can I trick a witch? Confuse him, mislead him. What weapons do we have against him?"

Iliana tried to think and got stuck on the word weapon. "I am a weapon," she said suddenly. "I have the blue fire."

"I thought you weren't supposed to use it except during the Night Wars."

"Well..." She shrugged. "Forget it, I'd rather break the rules than get killed."

"No," Stephen-Kyle said unexpectedly. Iliana glanced at him, and a particular hardness had come into his face, as if he were thinking of things far away. "You don't break those kinds of rules."

"What, you'd rather die?" Nina asked. "We can't outrun them, we don't know any way to trick them, and unless you're holding out on me, we don't have a phone to call for back up with."

"It's a natural law. Who the hell knows what might happen?"

"I used it once before," Iliana told him. "I had to save a bunch of people. Nothing happened then."

"Once is pushing the limit. Twice is spitting in God's face."

"You want to bring God into it?" Nina demanded. "This isn't a religious decision, Steve, we're about to get killed."

"I won't let her do it." They had all stopped walking, and the color had drained from his face. "I'm telling you, it would be bad."

Nina's eyes flashed. "I'm fuzzy on the whole good, bad thing," she mocked, picking up on another old Ghostbusters line.

They stood in a rough triangle, Iliana looking back at the direction from which they had come. She had lost the feeling in her feet now, but the snow still burned her shins, and she stuck her hands in her armpits to try to keep the feeling in them.

Stephen-Kyle’s voice was a hiss. "Imagine twelve men without faces breaking into your house in the middle of the night and tying you up. They get you and your husband and your two small children, and the baby girl who's only three days old, and they take you all up to the attic. First they kill the baby, that's pretty quick since they use a mallet. But you and your husband, no, that takes a while. You were the ones who sinned, who knew Nature's rules and broken them. So the men cut your sin-kissing lips off, and then your sin-touching hands off, and then they move down and c-"

"Stop!" Iliana shouted, falling backward against the trunk of a tree. "Stop it."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Nina asked darkly.

Stephen-Kyle's expression was one of sickness. His eyes were half-closed, his mouth trembled, and even with the cold a drop of sweat rolled down his temple. "My parents," he whispered.

"Somebody killed your parents?" Nina asked.

Stop talking, Iliana thought desperately. Be quiet for a minute, I can't listen to this any longer.

"You fuck with nature," Stephen-Kyle said, "Nature fucks with you. Yeah, my parents broke rules. That's why they haven't been around for the last fourteen years." He glanced at Iliana. "I'm not going to watch you make the same mistake."

"You're going to die either way," Nina told him. She stared at him hard, her frustration at the situation turning to anger. Her lips were lightening to a funky amber. "Wouldn't you rather go down fighting?"

He shook his head. "I'd rather go down knowing I was a respectful gentleman while I was here."

"Iliana?"

Her stomach was revolting, and she wondered if she was going to get a reverse helping of Stephen-Kyle's terrific stir fry. "I told you," she whispered hoarsely, "I'm a coward. I couldn't fight even if I did try."

Nina turned away, silent. Stephen-Kyle stepped over the log to help steady Iliana, and she fought the urge to bury her face in his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said.

He gave her a forced smile. "Not your fault. Just a bad day. Like when the ninety-six spring line came out."

It was a joke, and even though it was sweet, Iliana couldn't find a laugh. She was realizing in a wave of perspective that she was going to die. These were those final moments people talked about, the ones meant for evaluation and forgiveness.

"I want to forgive myself for not being a warrior," she said, out loud.

Stephen-Kyle's ginger-brown eyes returned to her face, and the smile was smaller but more genuine now. "Done."

"And for not making it to the millennium."

"Done."

"And for failing the whole human race."

"Done."

Kind humor in his face. He was holding onto one of her hands and rubbing the warmth back into it.

"Anything you want to forgive yourself for?" she asked weakly.

"Well." He considered. "Probably just...this."

She wasn't as aware of the kiss as she was of her lips finally being warm. There wasn't a question of not pulling each other close, she didn't know if she wanted him or his warmth or both. Regardless, they spent a dozen heartbeats locked together, groping almost sexlessly.

Iliana pulled back. Her arms were still around his neck, the front of their bodies were still pressed tightly together. He was taller than she was, just enough that if she tilted her face back and he lowered his, their mouths would meet flushly.

"Done," she managed to say.

Stephen-Kyle laughed. "You're a goddess," he told her, and then threw himself to the ground, dragging her with him, as a gun shot rang out.

"Nobody move!" a man called out.

Iliana lifted her head and saw Nina a few feet away, leaning against a tree. Her eyes were wary, still not yet defeated.

It hadn't worked, she realized. He kissed me and now I'm even less ready to die. And I can't let Nina get killed, not with that baby, Ash's baby, right there in her stomach. How can I let that poor baby get killed?

"I need blood," she whispered.

Nina's eyes flashed toward her. "Hurry," she said under her breath.

"What?" Stephen-Kyle asked.

Above the ravine, faces peered down at them. Three men, all showing gray collars like the ones Iliana had seen during the attack.

"Do you have a pocket knife?" she hissed.

"No."

"Oh."

She pushed the dusting of snow off her face. Now was the time to be heroic, if she was going to do it.

She thrust her wrist in front of Stephen-Kyle's face. "Bite me," she ordered.

His eyes rounded. "What?"

"I need to be bleeding. Bite me."

"Do it," Nina told him. She was at least eight feet away, and didn’t have time to move closer.

A rope was being lowered over the edge of the ridge, and already the first pair of feet were coming down.

"Hurry," Iliana whispered. "Just bite me. Like I'm a piece of sausage."

"I don't eat sauage."

"Cavier. Lockes. Duck. Just break the skin."

"You do it."

"I can't."

She knew she would be lucky if she could let him cut her; marking herself was out of the question.

He took her forearm in both hands and contemplated it like a complicated algebra equation. "Breaded salmon," he muttered, and then bit down.

The heat of his mouth alone was enough to make Iliana cry out, and the sudden pain brought it to a shriek. She jerked her arm away just as a man in a gray robe hit the ground in front of her.

Her eyes snapped shut and she dug into the power inside her. It pooled in her stomach, ready and waiting, churning, building on itself. It was more than ready for battle, and she called it up into her arm-

Only to find that there was no portal for release.

"I couldn't do it," Stephen-Kyle was whispering frantically. "I'm sorry, I tried, I just couldn't bite all the way through."

And I thought I was the coward, she thought mournfully.

The man in the robe was holding a small hand gun on them. His face was soft, average, and he wore a hood to keep the snow off. "Don't move," he said calmly. "We have the ravine surrounded."

"We surrender," Nina told him. Her tone was laced with bitterness. "We don't have any weapons, I'm physically unfit to fight, and those two are both wimps. We're at your mercy."

The man glanced at her, then smiled. It was a friendly smile, soft like the rest of his face. Iliana guessed his age to be around thirty-eight. "Well, that was easy." Raising his voice and calling out of the ravine, "Come on down."

He smiled at Nina again. "I think we're off to an excellent start here." He took off his woolen gray robe, reveling thick hiking pants and a heavy parka underneath, and wrapped it carefully around her shoulders. Then he fell into a deep bow, every word and motion over-stylized. "Lady Millennium, I am honored and humbled to be in the presence of a Wild Power."

Stephen-Kyle and Iliana both gaped. While the man was getting down on one knee, Nina looked at them over his head and mouthed, "Play along."

In the time it took for four more robed guys to get climb into the ravine, Iliana figured out what had happened.

Last Christmas, Morgead had decided that a trip into the wilderness might help lift Jez's cabin-fever. Originally only he, Ash, Nina, Delos, and Jez were supposed to go, but Quinn caught them leaving, and Iliana snuck out after them. So they ended up in Wyndershine National Park all together, which was where they were attacked by werewolves and taken to the Prarrie Yard Dance School. While Iliana was being interrogated and smacked around, the others managed to bust out of their basement dungeon and launch a rescue attempt. It was partially successful--Nina, Quinn, and Iliana escaped, Morgead was knocked unconscious and left for dead, and Ash and Delos were captured. Scuttling down a dark hallway, Nina, Quinn, and Iliana ran into a pair of werewolves on patrol. Quinn grabbed Iliana and climbed underneath a table, and Nina, thinking quickly, convinced the werewolves that she was the real Wild Power and needed to be taken into custody immediately, giving Quinn and Iliana a chance to escape.

They'd all gotten out in one piece eventually--although it was a close call where Delos's foot was concerned–and the surviving werewolves had been left with the distinct impression that one of the Wild Powers was a Chinese-American girl.

"Who are you?" Nina asked.

"My name is Christopher Blaire, I'm the high priest of Circle Echidna."

"Co-high priest," said another of the men, pushing the hood off his robe. He was young, only a few years older than Iliana, with blond hair and a lanky body. Rather than the elaborate and melodramatic flourishes his co-high priest had performed, he lowered his head a moment in Nina's direction, the same way Iliana had seen lamia kids pay respect to their elders.

"I am Nicholas Early," he told Nina. "You're welcome to call me Nick."

"I'm Nina Rosette. You can call me Miss Rosette," she replied.

He smiled indulgently at her. "Thank you, Miss Rosette." Glancing at Iliana and Stephen-Kyle, he added, "Your friends are welcome to stand up, if they'd like. It's freezing out here."

They both stumbled up, their numb, beaten legs barely holding them. Nick glanced both of them over thoughtfully, and Christopher said with bright enthusiasm, "Let's tie them all up now."

"Calm down," Nick murmured.

"Don't forget who's in charge here," Chris said challengingly.

Nick's robe stirred around him, touched by a breeze no one else felt. "I haven't forgotten," he said in a low voice. "But Miss Rosette and her friends are all suffering from hypothermia, and I hardly think that having them bound and gagged will help any, besides which, they aren't putting up a struggle."

"It could be a trick," Chris pointed out.

"Not in this weather."

Chris frowned at being beaten and lifted one of Iliana's wrists. "I'm a doctor," he told her as he took her pulse. "They're in the first stage of freezing to death," he agreed. "We should get Lady Millenium into the van and shoot the other two. It will be quicker for them anyway."

Iliana's breath caught in her throat and she grabbed for Stephen-Kyle's hand.

"Shoot them?" asked one of the unnamed, robed men. "Since when do we shoot people?"

"We're talking about a Wild Power here," Chris told him. "Drastic times call for drastic measures."

Nick's voice was soft and dismissive. "We aren't going to shoot them," he said. "You're both free to go."

Iliana could hardly believe it. "We're free?"

"If you start walking now and don't stop, you'll probably make it back to the house before you collapse. There are several Circle Daybreak vans outside. Someone will be happy to help you." He pointed. "It's in that direction."

"Wait a minute!" Chris shouted. "You can't let them go!"

"Why not?"

"Because...because..." He was so angry he was sputtering, but it didn't appear that he had anything to say.

"They're innocent bystanders."

"They're witnesses! They'll tell Circle Daybreak who we are!"

Nick's face mocked horror. "Oh, was this supposed to be an undercover mission? Because if so, maybe we shouldn't have worn robes with the Circle Echidna logo stamped on the front." He shook his head, losing patience, and said, "Look, Chris, nobody here is going to shoot those two kids for no reason, so unless you want to do it yourself, you may as well help them out of the ravine already."

Chris gave in, and a moment later, a guy named Harry was boosting Iliana out of the ravine. Stephen-Kyle came up a moment after, his arms tugged by two of the four Circle Echidna members standing guard.

"If I were you," Chris called menacingly, "I'd start running the hell away."

Iliana looked at Stephen-Kyle. He looked at her. Neither one of them moved. "For crying out loud," Nina hollered up to them, "get a move on already!"

He grabbed Iliana's hand and started tugging her through the snow. Her legs were like Silly Putty baseball bats, they kept twisting and wouldn't hold her weight.

She blinked and swallowed, trying to move faster. "Can we slow down?"

"Can we leave at all? That's what I'm wondering."

She jerked his arm, stopping with one foot deep in a badger hole. "What?"

His cheeks were pink, freckled with red burn marks. "We've got to get Nina."

She wiped the snow out of her eyes. "We can't. There are at least nine of those guys over there, and they have guns. How are we supposed to get Nina away from them?"

"She's pregnant. I won't leave her."

He started to turn back and Iliana grabbed his shoulder. "We have a better chance of helping her if we go back to the house and call for Circle Daybreak."

"I'm going, with or without you."

"We don't even have coats!"

They glared at each other for several long seconds, and then Iliana's eyes focused on something over his shoulder. This wasn't the side of the ravine Grahme's house was on after all, somehow in the hole they'd gotten turned around and ended up in the opposite direction.

Even if she talked Stephen-Kyle out of going back, they wouldn't be able to cross the ravine by themselves, and she had no doubt that in the process of hunting for a make-shift bridge they would both freeze to death. If they walked blindly into the forest, like Hansel and Gretel, they had as good a chance of finding a good witch as they did an evil one.

"What?" he asked, turning to follow her line of sight. "What do you see?"

"Vans," she replied. "They brought two vans."

The vans were parked about a quarter of a mile away, and appeared to be deserted. They were painted olive green, detailed with gray pictures Iliana recognized from her attackers' robes.

"How many guys are there?" Stephen-Kyle asked distantly.

"Nine, I think."

He glanced at her. "That's an awful lot of empty seats."

"Awful lot of unused space," she agreed.

"You could probably fit a whole person under one of those benches, and nobody would notice."

At the same time, they said, "I'll go."

Oh, boy, she thought. "No, don't fight with me. I'll little and I'm going to die of cold faster than you. You've got a better chance of making it back to the house to call for help."

"I've also got a better chance to fighting off a bunch of guys."

"And a better chance to getting caught when you try to crunch up under the seat."

"Iliana, I can't let you go. You've got to realize that."

She couldn't help putting her hands on her hips. At least, she thought that's what she was doing; since she was too cold to feel either one...

"Why not?"

He looked at her as if startled. "You're the Wild Power," he said in a low voice, should any of the Echidna have had excellent hearing. "You can't be risked."

She didn't understand why, but his words hurt. She turned away, wrapping her arms around her stomach, and heard him sigh. "Maybe I'm tired of being the Wild Power," she said, surprised by her own words. "Maybe I'm tired of being treated like china."

Heavens, was that true? All her life she'd been beautiful and popular and liked, and it had never been enough. She'd wanted to be absolutely special, be prized and adored, coddled and revered. Being a Wild Power had given her that, and at first it had been a fairy tale. The clothes, the money, being treated with the utmost respect. Soon enough, even she was convinced that her life was vital, her soul all-important.

And then she'd spent a year and a half sitting in an underground bunker with nothing to do but catalogue-shop and dress manaquins.

"It's my turn to do something dangerous," she said decisively, turning back to Stephen-Kyle. "Fair is fair. This is a second time Nina has saved my bottom, I owe her."

Another staring match, and then he shrugged and broke into a smile. "I can't fight duty. Let's get a move on before we turn to ice."

As they started through the snow, she heard him repeat under his breath, "Saved my bottom."

Part Eight

Quinn pulled the van to a stop in front of a squat, run down house and turned the engine off. "This is it?" Tern asked.

"Not the kind of place I'd want to give up home for," Zion observed.

The front porch was covered in junk, mattresses and cardboard boxes and what looked like a broken, molding recliner. From out the front window poked an air-conditioner that had ripped mostly from its moorings and appeared ready to fall at any moment. The house itself was a double shot-gun with some sort of shed attached to the side, and the paint hadn't been touched up in at least a decade.

Marty said, "I should be the one to talk to him."

"You're not going in without back up," Quinn told him. "No arguments."

"This isn't right," Marty said, and then he was quiet for a long time. Ash watched Cafi blink as her soft human eyes adjusted from being closed for so long, watched her lean over and put her good hand atop Marty's.

"I smell something," Tern said. He cracked his door open enough for some air to slide in. "It's sweet."

"Probably hash," Ash told him. He could smell it, too, and it was giving him a funny sense of deja vu from his partying days. "Come on, Marty, I'll go in with you."

Marty's eyes were still distant, but he nodded. "Something's wrong here," he repeated, and then climbed out.

They were half-way up the walk when the auburn-haired girl in the sunglasses threw the front door open. She was shouting at the house's occupants in a rich European accent and trying to carrying one box outside while kicking another at her feet.

"Bjurn een hael!" she finished, before shifting the box in her arms to slam the door shut. A set of keys dropped out of her pocket and grumbling, she leaned down to pick them up.

Ash and Marty stopped at the steps leading to the porch, and the girl looked over at then, still leaning down. "Vwat?" she demanded. "Eh shepuse yu ar here to deel, iz thut eet? Vwel, furget yu."

Marty and Ash glanced at each other. The girl looked to be about eighteen, she wore jeans that were old but clean and a loose gray blouse that buttoned with fake pearls at the wrists.

Ash was still trying to figure out what she had said when Marty asked, "Is this where the Echidna are staying?"

She scoffed, but this time when she spoke, Ash found the words easier to understand. "Maybe two years ago," she said. "Not any more."

Watching her pick up her boxes, he said, "Is Nick still here?"

She gave them a funny look. "How much did he owe you?"

"Nothing, I'm a friend."

"Yeah, that's what they all say."

She shoved past them, and Ash shrugged. He could hear music playing inside knew there were people there. Sounded like they were having a party, and not being light-hearted about it, either.

"Wait," Marty said.

The girl glanced back at him but didn't stop.

"Are you Saina?"

Ash could see all the muscles in her back go hard even through the blouse. She turned slowly, beginning to smile as if she didn't want to but couldn't help it. "They call me Anna now." She paused, and took off her sunglasses to see him better. "No one's called me Saina in years. Who are you?"

He took a few steps in her direction. "Martin O'Bach."

"O'Bach," she repeated, shifting. "Allan is inside."

"My cousin. I thought you said the Echidna had left?"

"They moved out six months ago. What was left of them, anyway. I'm just picking up a few things."

Saina shifted again, and Ash picked up on her subtle hint that she might not mind his carrying the boxes for her. He picked them up; one was full of balls of yarn, and the other was full of chunks of glass. He wondered what the hell this girl was into.

"What was left of them?" Marty asked. "What happened?"

She smiled bitterly and shook her head, sizing him up with her eyes. "What do you want?"

"I think Nick might be in trouble," he said, after thinking a moment.

"He's been in trouble for a long time, why come now?"

"I just found out."

Saina considered again, then nodded toward the house. "Heroin happened."

That was the smell, Ash realized. There had been a time, of course, when he had been into the drug scene. Narcotics were pleasant enough if he could find a human to filter them through, and he'd always enjoyed a little junk where he could get it. He'd find a nice user at some party, a girl who'd been hooked for a while and could shoot heavy loads, and once the smack was firing around in her veins he'd just open them up and let his tongue burn off. Like liquid fire, all the way down, and he was usually lucky if he could get past the third swallow before he was blissing out on the floor. He had to be careful after that, because if he drank any more he usually got violent, and more than once he'd managed to do things he regretted in fits of temper.

It was different for him than it was for humans, naturally. His body could take three or four blood-diluted grams and not miss a beat while still enjoying the trip. There was always the mental addiction, but wasn't every lamia kid born with one? Wasn't it something he lived with, no different from his addiction to blood? No, for a long time he had taken his kicks when he found them, but he hadn't gone out in search of the drugs.

Marty muttered a soft word in Romanian that Ash supposed was a swear. "Where's Nick?"

"He moved out with some of the others."

"Can you tell me where to find him?"

Saina glanced between them. "He's clean now."

"I'm trying to help him, honestly. I'm not with the police or anything."

"I know. He used to talk about you, when I first met him."

Her guard had slipped a little. "When was that?" Marty asked.

"Three years ago. I was only fifteen. I'd just run away from home. We must have been nuts," she added, as if only in retrospect did she realize the truth of their situation. She laughed softly. "You're going to take him back to Nebraska?"

"If I can talk him into it."

She nodded. "That's good. He needs to be back with his family, his father." She seemed to come to a sudden decision. "I can show you where he's staying," she told them.

"Get in the car," Ash said.

"How nice of you to offer me a ride," she retorted, and turned toward the van.

Marty smiled faintly, and Ash sighed.

Saina, it turned out, had been with Nick almost since he left Tata Acasa. She had been hitch-hiking, and he'd picked her up off the side of the highway one night during the rain. Within a month, she was living with the Echidna, acting as a sort of group-mother, as well as Nick's girlfriend. It had been a confusing time for the group, since they had almost no money and a number of the members were still mostly untrained.

Saina had gotten a job coaching gymnastic to little kids, most of the others found themselves at minimum wage jobs thirty hours a week. Doctor Chris took up part-time at a clinic, and with the asset of living together, they made decent money.

"Enough to get cable," Saina said when Quinn asked exactly how much. "All four HBOs, and three Showtimes."

She did most of the house-keeping herself, from sewing curtains and robes to scrubbing floors. She'd also done a lot of the cooking and book-keeping. The one thing she wouldn't help with, she said, "was their filthy, disgusting man clothes. They would get all sweaty and dirty, and I said, I'm not going to wash these. You can wash your own bodily-fluid rags!"

So Nick had bought a washer/dryer, and everybody did their own laundry.

Apparently, it had also been Saina who introduced the group to its first taste of heroin, although she swore it was an accident. "I didn't know he was a dealer," she said, as the van wove through traffic on the interstate. "I didn't even know for sure that they had dealers in America. I'd only been here for six months."

"Where are you from?" Zion asked.

"Kyrgyzstan."

Ash wasn't even sure it was a word. But Zion said, "Ah, of course. I should have recognized the accent."

"You've heard of this place?" Ash asked.

"I was there last year. It's a little country in Europe, sort of below Russia but above China."

Saina nodded. "You know how different it is there, then. They say all sorts of things about America, nobody knows what is true and what's not. My sister told me that there were no cats in America, and then I get here, and look! Cats every where!"

Ash could see Quinn suppressing a smile in the rear-view mirror.

Saina went on to tell them how within a few months time, most of the group was addicted. "It was so frustrating, because they would say to me, 'I don't use, I chip,' and they were chipping two or three times a day, even worse than a lot of users."

Nick hung out at first, managing to be around it with being part of it, but Ash could see how it would have been hard not to cave. Vampires, he knew, always fed at the same time because none of them could resist once they saw some one else doing it.

Saina got pissed off and had them busted, but since they were all using fake names and IDs by then, no one underage was sent back to the Chimera. Instead, Doctor Chris ended up bailing them out. He alone had managed to stay away from smack entirely, and it was mostly because he had a huge ego and liked being able to rub their addictions in the faces of the other Echidna.

While Nick was in rehab, which Saina said he took absolutely seriously, Chris held the group together. His personal version of rehab consisted of chaining people to the walls in the basement of their new home, and forcing down a lot of soup. Forget methadone, he wouldn't even allow Advil, and withdrawl was hell for those he took under his wing.

Nick came back clean as a whistle, with Saina in tow, only to discover that Chris had announced himself High Priest of the group. That didn't fly; it had been his discovery and his group all along, and Chris could get bent and die if thought he was taking it over.

Saina said they had a terrible argument, especially once Nick found out what was going on in the basement. Chris insisted that he was better suited to lead because he was the only one strong enough to resist the allure of drugs, Nick said he was a dangerous psychopath who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near society.

Somehow, they ended up agreeing to co-Priest Circle Echidna.

"But Nick said no more bondage in the basement, so they lost a bunch of people to heroin again, and about six months ago, some of them finally moved out."

"How many?" Quinn asked.

Saina considered, touching her fingertips lightly. "Eleven."

"And everybody else stayed behind?"

She nodded. "But they might have found a few new recruits. Nick was always on the lookout for new members."

"Eleven, maybe more," Zion murmured. "What do you think, Marty? Can we take them?"

Interesting question coming from a cripple with no preternatural power whatsoever, Ash thought, but he didn't say it. He liked Zion.

"I have no idea," Marty answered honestly. "It's possible-"

"This is the exit," Saina called to Quinn.

"-that he's trained everyone to be as good as he is. I mean, the seven of us can't disarm eleven men who can shrink the polyester bands of our watches until our hands burst off. Cafi's wearing contacts that any decent Echidna could use to blind her, Zion's wheelchair could revolt...." He shrugged. "There's no telling here."

"Is it possible to talk him down?" Tern asked.

"I didn't realize he was doing something irrational," Marty replied, looking started. "He wants to be recognized as a Night World power, the same thing Circle Daybreak worked toward for years. Thierry himself said he'd take the fourth Wild Power by force if he had to, I don't see Nick doing any differently."

"That's an interesting point," Zion admitted. "A very interesting point."

Saina guided them through the streets of a small city called Arabesque, into the thicket of suburbia. Huge houses with tiny lawns rose up all around, polished cars sat in black-top drive-ways. Joggers lined the walks with their petite dogs, privately schooled children untucked their uniform shirts as they climbed off the bus, self-important house-wives rushed to tennis matches.

It wasn't the kind of place most cults sought out.

Quinn parked down the street. "Saina, go knock on the door and see if anyone's home."

She looked at him coolly. "I said I'd show you the house. I didn't say I'd do anything else."

"Two hundred."

"An hour. And I want it doubled if there's fighting."

"You're dreaming. One hundred an hour, five hundred extra if there's fighting."

She paused. "One hundred fifty an hour, five hundred extra if there's fighting, and you pay my medical bills if I get hurt."

Quinn's lip curled, and Ash knew he didn't want to give in just out of principal.

"And," Saina added, "I want a blow torch. A really good one, state of the art."

"What are you going to do with a blow torch?" Ash couldn't help asking.

She glared at him a moment. "I'm in technical school, I make stained glass windows and sculptures. I need a blow torch to melt the lead that holds the pieces of glass together." She tried to hide a smile. "Sometimes," she added under her breath.

"Fine, whatever," Quinn snapped, his patience lost. "Just go do it."

"If they're home?"

"Go inside and see how many there are and what state they're in. Then come back."

Ash watched through the window as Saina walked down the street. He'd never met anyone quite like her before, and certainly never met an immigrant with her confidence. He could see why Nick liked her.

Six months since she'd seen him last, hadn't she said? Almost that long since Ash had seen Nina, almost that long since she'd run off leaving only that crazy note behind.

Saina and Marty's descriptions of Nick were reassuring. He didn't sound like a psychopath who would blow away any bystanders on a whim, and he didn't sound like he was careless. Nina was probably fine, just being held as insurance or something.

Ash crouch-walked to the front of the van and tapped Quinn's shoulder. "Can you call and see if Mona's doing any better?"

Quinn's black eyes were expressionless. "Cybele said she only had a few hours."

"Can you call anyway?"

He had this idea that if Nick and his crew hadn't killed Mona, that might mean they hadn't killed Nina. Or at least that it was less likely. Or something.

Quinn used the car phone. He was only on a minute before he hung up. "She's alive. Most of her internal organs have started hemorrhaging."

Ash's internal organs felt like they might have started to do the same. "Oh," he muttered, and as he turned away, saw Saina knocking on the van window.

"Nobody's home," she informed them. "Let's storm the castle."

The house was as nice inside as it was outside, although curiously bare. Yard-sale furniture of the highest quality sporadically furnished the rooms, yielding a count of eleven people in residence. Two small televisions, five computers, and assorted exercise bikes filled the living room. In the garage was a small ice cream truck bearing the Circle Echidna insignia.

Everything had a feeling of transience. The beds, rather than being made up or even just crowded with sheets and quilts like Ash's was, were covered with sleeping bags. The two tables were made of plastic, and instead of dressers, clothes and belongings were set on plastic shelves. There was an almost complete lack of natural fiber, right down to the plastic utensils in the kitchen and the polyester towels in the bathroom.

Ash sniffed; the place lacked that earthy scent his childhood home had been permeated with. "How cozy," he said, meeting up with Quinn in the kitchen.

"Want to try the porridge?" he replied, and Ash glanced at him. He could deal with Quinn not being a monster any more, but the attempts at joking were just creepy.

"Scratch that," Quinn muttered. "There's no one here."

"They're probably all off attacking Iliana."

"Grahme's house is almost three hours from here."

Ash didn't see the point.

"We might have better luck trying to grab them on the road between here and there."

"You want to leave?"

"I'm considering it."

"What if we miss them? There's a lot of road, and we don't even know what route they'll take."

"We know where they'll enter the country; it's an unchecked service road. From there, it's a reasonably straight shot to Arabesque, and they've probably painted their car to match the ice cream truck. Not easily missed."

"It's still a long shot, and if we screw up, we're done."

Quinn thought. "I'll take Tern and go. You and the others stay here. If we miss them, you'll be waiting when they get home."

Ash let out a long breath. "You actually trust me enough to do that?"

In response, Quinn's lips curved delicately. "You are my second in command."

"I am?" Ash asked in surprise, and Quinn sighed and rolled his eyes.

Ash wondered how Quinn was able to make him feel stupid while complimenting him at the same time.

"Quinn?" Marty asked softly from the doorway.

"What is it?"

The Chimera lifted a book bound in gray leather. "Nick’s records, and his journal. Apparently the house is registered in someone else's name and there's no way to trace him here."

"Except through Saina," Tern put in, appearing in another doorway. Zion and Cafi were behind him.

"Lucky us," Quinn murmured. "All right, that supports my plan that we split up. Tern, you and I will take the van and try to cut them off on the expressway. Everyone else, stay here and wait for them to get home."

"Except for me," Zion put in, and they all looked at him. He shrugged and said without anger, "Let's face it, I'm not much good in a fight."

No one spoke. Ash wanted to contradict him, but he didn't know what he would say. Zion was wheelchair-bound and ill, and he would be more a liability than an asset during a fight. But asking him to leave, saying that he was no use to have around, bothered Ash. It made Zion sound like less of a person, not as good as the rest of them, when in fact he was fast becoming one of Ash's best friends.

"Really," Zion said. "All political correctness aside, I'm only going to get in the way. If there was a computer file to be decrypted, or a lie to be told, then I could help you out, but there's no reason for me to be here."

Even if he stayed out of the way, Ash thought, a flesh wound alone might kill him. Zion's body just didn't like to heal.

"That's big of you," Marty said, somehow making it a real compliment. "Why don't you take him to a hotel on your way out of town, Quinn? You can take Cafi, too."

"What?" Cafi's eyes were a soft blue, but they narrowed harshly just then. "I'm not leaving," she told him.

"If I can't talk Nick into a peaceful agreement, there's going to be a fight." Marty's voice was calm, but there was an edge to it that belayed fear. "You still can't use your right arm."

She glanced down at the arm strapped to her side with a complicated net of Velcro. "I've still got my left arm," she said.

Marty stepped forward until he was standing in front of her. Ash saw the sweet smile rising on his lips and felt an undeniable urge to look away. "Cafi," Marty said, "take my word on this one. You're smart and strong and I love you to death, but we're dealing with Night Worlders who killed three people this morning from outside the house. I'm not going to take any risks with you."

"Da. I'll see you at the hotel."

Cafi sighed again, and turned to Zion. "Guess it's just you and me on the side lines."

He smiled complacently and steered his wheelchair toward the front door. "Just out of curiosity," Ash heard him say as they went into the living room, "what happened to your arm?"

"Adventures in horseback riding. What happened to your legs?"

"Adventures in gene splicing."

Ash saw Marty smile. "Saina," he said, "are you staying?"

"I suppose," she replied unhappily. Apparently waiting to ambush an ex-boyfriend wasn't her idea of a fun Saturday.

Quinn and Tern vanished out the front door, and Ash heard the car start down the street. "Well," Saina said, "I might as well put on some coffee."

Ash leaned against the edge of the kitchen counter, trying to ward off the sleepiness that was now becoming uncomfortable, and noticed Marty watching him.

If he hadn't been so grumpy, he would have had the will power not to say, "What?"

Marty hesitated, his eyes flashing a moment to the journal in his hand. "I don't know if these means anything Ash, but apparently a werewolf told Nick that there were three found Wild Powers, a boy from the old kingdom, Jezebel Redfern, and a Japanese girl nobody knew the name of for certain."

It took a moment for the circuits in Ash's head to connect. "They think Nina is..."

"It's possible," Marty said.

Ash didn't want to think about what it might mean. He let his chin drop to his chest and rubbed the ends of his fingers against his throbbing temples. Saina touched his shoulder, startling him, and said firmly, "Anything's possible. Don't give up."

Given how grim the other views were, he decided to believe her.

Part Nine

Both vans were unlocked, but one had been mostly cleared out in the back and had only two fold-down benches attached to the walls. From the looks of the stretcher, Iliana suspected that they would knock Nina out to keep her from using the Blue Fire. She and Stephen-Kyle would have to try the other automobile, there was simply nowhere to hide in this one.

"We don’t have much time," Stephen-Kyle whispered, tugging her away from the van-turned-ambulance.

Her eyes continued to linger on a medical bag shoved next to the stretcher. "If they use a general anesthetic, will it kill the baby?"

He touched her arm, then tugged it lightly. "Her baby is half-vampire. It’ll be able to absorb whatever they give her."

The other van lacked renovations but provided an excellent place for Stephen-Kyle and Iliana to hide. Not only was there room under the bench farthest back, but the seat had been covered with duffel bags and suitcases, so there was no chance of anyone sitting above them. They had to move some stuff around to get in, but once she was laying under the seat, Iliana felt relatively confident that they wouldn’t be discovered.

For some reason, they had both felt the press of time getting here, and now they were, well...early.

There wasn’t a whole lot of space under the seat. In fact, there was no space to speak of. Laying next to each other in a dark cave made of plastic and fake velvet which was rapidly warming, Iliana became suddenly nervous.

Stephen-Kyle must have been feeling the same thing, because he said, "You know, if I’d realized we were going to live, I probably wouldn’t have just kissed you like that."

She was stunned to her hear voice come out almost sultry. "Really? Because I probably would have let you cop a feel if I’d known."

There was a moment of utter silence, and then he started laughing so hard Iliana couldn’t help putting a hand over his mouth. "Shut up," she hissed, grinning at the same time. "They could be here any second."

He quieted, and she scooted into a slightly more relaxed position. "Can I ask you something?" he asked. His voice was just above a whisper, but easy to hear in the close silence.

"Sure."

She was slightly disappointed when it wasn’t more personal. "What’s Ash like?"

Ash? He was about the last thing on Iliana’s mind just then. "Ash is a vampire," she said, uncertain how much he knew. "He comes from one of the biggest lamia families around. In fact, I think they’re the biggest. He was supposed to be the family heir, but one day his sisters ran away from home and while he was tracking them down he met his soulmate. You know about the soulmate principal, right?"

He nodded, knocking his head against the underbelly of the bench and wincing.

"Careful there. Anyway, I don’t know what happened between Ash and Mary-Lynnette, but she broke up with him like. Then he met Nina and they hit it off, and....something happened where some people came claiming to be Ash and Mary-Lynnette’s kids, but it turned out they weren’t, I don’t know all the details. Then Nina found out that she was pregnant, and she left town without even talking to Ash." She rolled her face to look at him. "What did she tell you?"

"Well," he said reflectively. "She doesn’t like to discuss Ash or what happened with him. I’ve always tried not to bring it up."

"You two seemed pretty close," she ventured, remembering how Nina had called him "Steve," earlier that day.

He glanced at her. "Yeah. But."

"But?"

"We both had our boundaries, things we didn’t want to talk about."

"Is that why she didn’t know how your parents were killed?"

She wanted to kick herself for blurting that out, but there wasn’t enough room. Now he was looking up at the bench again. "Yeah."

The silence grew uncomfortable again. "Would it be all right if I told you about it?" he asked.

She looked at him again. "Yeah, but you don’t have to."

"No, it’s important that I do. Because I know you’re going to have another chance to use the Blue Fire, and I want you to know why you can’t, how important it is.

"My parents were both members of a small religious sect called the Intgriest. It’s a type of Pagan religion, but very different from Wicca, or Night World witchcraft. It involves deities that are very old and more formed. They have personalities, things they like and things they don’t, and worshiping them is a bartering game. You perform the proper homage, they do things for you in return.

"There were a lot of rules. Things that can or cannot be eaten, days which have to be observed in a certain way. Religions like that change your whole life, but Intgriestism isn’t restrictive in the same way say...Southern Baptist Christianity is. It doesn’t say that things are bad, it says that some things must be given up as a token of honor. The members have a lot of freedom in most ways, and people rarely leave.

"My parents-" He stopped, wet his lips, and seemed to struggle with his words. "One of the abilities of Intgriests is control over procreation. A woman never gets pregnant unless she wants to. A man never impregnates her unless he tries. It’s a conscious ability, some part of the brain numbing any magic that might visit in the hopes of creating children. Physically, nothing changes, it’s all done with just a mental thought.

"Three hundred years ago, the Intgriest oracle, Riska, announced in conjuncture with the Intgriest equivalent of a high priest that in order to keep the group from losing focus, the number of children born would be limited. One boy and one girl to each family, and it was made very clear to everyone that if this rule was broken, the punishment would be severe. Because it wasn’t as though a third child would happen by accident, not when both people had to be consciously thinking about creating a child.

"I was three, and Lauren was almost six. Felicia was only a few days old. My parents had taken us away from the others, they had announced their with-drawl from the church. But they’d known what they were doing the night Felicia was conceived. They knowingly broke sacred laws.

"So men came with no faces. They killed Felicia with one strike from a silver mallet. They killed my parents very slowly. They were just, Felicia’s death must have been instantaneous, and Lauren and I weren’t harmed. After they tortured my mother and father to death, they let the two of us go. Felicia had to die to keep the population down, my parents died because they broke the rules.

"Lauren and I were both pretty hysterical. She dragged me away from the bodies and into the woods. The next day a woman farmer found us. She called the police, and they investigated my parents’ deaths. Meanwhile, the Intgriests came to take us in.

"That’s when Grahme arrived. He was a member of the Intgriests before he became a vampire, when he was released from all physical vows he had made. He had been a friend of my mother’s, and he had given her money when she said she wanted to leave. We went to live with him, and he took care of us. His soulmate was with him then, Casey, and even though their relationship was very on-again-off-again, he always put us first. That’s probably part of the reason she left him for eight years.

"Lauren turned out to be a language prodigy. I had a flair for fashion and interior decorating, but not much else. Who knows who Felicia might have been. Grahme and Casey are getting married next month, at Thierry’s place in the desert. He and I aren’t getting along too well about that, and Casey and I aren’t speaking. My parents are still dead."

His voice trailed off, and then he said, "What I’m trying to say, Iliana, is that there are laws where magic is concerned. Those weren’t people who came to kill my family, they were animals bent into human form–I can’t even describe what they were. But they weren’t human, and they weren’t sent by the Intgriests. The executioner was the gods they worshiped."

His hand closed around hers. "I don’t want to see that happen again. Especially not to you."

His fingers were warm. "Only to save my life," she promised him. "The powers that be will allow me to save my life-"

"No. Iliana, you aren’t listening to me. They gave you a gift, but it can only be used as they’ve chosen. If you go against that, you’re digging your own grave."

He sighed suddenly, as if exhausted. "Listen to me, I sound like one of those people saying that you absolutely have to have a carbon monoxide alarm in your house. The chances that your house is really going to fill up with carbon monoxide is pretty slim, just like the chance that if you use your Blue Fire, a creature without a face will come murder you. But I don’t know your gods, Iliana, and it’s better not to take chances. When I almost bit you earlier, it was out of pure weakness and fear. It won’t happen again. I won’t knowingly help you do that." Softening, he added, "And I can’t go through that again."

She let her head fall against his shoulder. She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut. "I’m sorry," was all she could say.

"So am I."

So that was how a six-hundred year old vampire had come to have two human children. If....

"Are you human?" she asked.

He didn’t reply.

"Are you still an Intgriest?" She pressed onto her side so that she could look him right in the face. He avoided her eyes.

"Please, tell me."

After playing hide-and-seek with his gaze, she rolled onto her back again. "I’m nobody," he whispered. "I’m a ghost. As far as the world is concerned, I don’t exist. The same with the gods."

"So you aren’t an Intgriest?"

"Not any more. But there are parts of that religion that will always follow me, things I can’t shake." He covered his eyes with one arm. "I can’t believe I’m telling you this."

"Telling me what?"

There was a long pause before he asked, "Have you found your soulmate?"

She blinked. "I don’t have one."

"How do you know?"

"There’s a prophesy about it. They just found it a month or so ago, along with the prophesy around Aradia’s soulmate. Why?"

"What....what exactly did it say? Exactly?"

She sighed. He obviously wasn’t going to give her any easy answers. "Born unbound, without a guide, another cord winds from outside."

When he didn’t say anything, she said, "Does that mean something to you?"

He laughed, but it sounded miserable. "Oh, goddess, I really shouldn’t have kissed you earlier."

"What are you talking about?"

"We are so screwed-"

"Stephen, what-"

"Don’t call me Stephen, please. I can’t stand it. If you’re going to shorten my name, just call me Kyle."

"Fine, Kyle, Stephen-Kyle, whatever the hell you want, what’s going on?"

He lifted his arm off his face and used the hand that wasn’t holding hers to touch her. Again, she was aware of how little physical contact she’d had the last few months, without her friends and family to hug her, or Alex to tug on her hair. His finger traced a thin, smooth line down the side of her face, drawing no pain even from the wind-burned cheek or the temple that was still swollen from being hit with the phone. Every motion was the embodiment of tenderness.

"I’d like to apologize for having fallen in love with you," he told her.

She was still staring at him mutely when the van door opened. Then she was frozen, they both were, as if they’d frozen to death in the snow and their bodies chucked underneath the luggage in the back of the van. One of his hands was still wrapped around hers, the other was now clasping the side of her face as if he thought it might jump us and expose them.

"What the hell is taking so long?" a male voice asked.

"Beats me. It’s goddamn freezing out here."

The second guy sounded younger, more rebellious.

"I’m gonna start the van," the first guy said. "Let’s turn on the heater."

"Good idea," said the second.

They fiddled with the radio, arguing over modern alternative or classic rock, and Iliana and Stephen-Kyle were able to relax. He started to take his hand off her cheek and she reached up to hold it there, surprising both of them. I’m sorry, she mouthed.

His forehead wrinkled. Why?

She shrugged. Was anything she was sorry for simple enough that she could apologize properly without speaking? Or even with words.... She was sorry that his parents had been killed, that he had been so traumatized at a young age, that there was a strange religious burden she didn’t understand the nature of which he was going to carry around for the rest of his life. She was sorry she thought his declaration of love was pure lunacy, that she knew better than to think this anything more than extreme attraction. She was sorry he’d had to see Mona die like that, and even worse, that she hadn’t done something more to help. She was sorry everyone was being put in so much danger just to save her ass.

I don’t know, she mouthed, blinking at tears.

He pressed a finger to her lips and then drew her close. She didn’t protest, even as she wondered if she was somehow leading him on. He was too warm and too steady to let go of.

The sliding side door opened and closed, sending a choppy wave of cold air into the back. "Hey," said a voice Iliana recognized as Nick’s.

"What are they doing, getting a DNA breakdown on her?" the second guy demanded.

"Get this," said a fourth guy, who must have climbed in with Nick. "She’s got a bun in the oven."

"What?" cried the first guy.

"Totally," said the fourth. "Somebody knocked up the Witch Child."

"Damn," said the second.

"I wonder who it was," the fourth said. "What if it was another Wild Power? They were keeping them all at that compound, right? What if two Wild Powers got it on and ended up with like a super-charged kid? That would be awesome." Guys one and two were laughing. "Back me up here, Nick."

Nick sounded vaguely amused. "I think it would be dangerous more than anything else. Besides, Miss Rosette says the baby’s father is a perfectly normal human boy. Apparently he was a janitor at the compound."

"That’s gross, man. A Wild Power and a janitor."

"What, you want to like petition Brad Pitt for the job?"

"No, I’m just saying she ought to be with a good old fashioned Echidna boy."

"Old fashioned?" Nick repeated. "We’ve been around for less than five years."

"Fine, then one of the very modern and cosmopolitan Echidna guys. I’m just saying she’s too good for a janitor."

Stephen-Kyle laughed silently. His mouth was very close to Iliana’s ear, close enough that he dared to whisper, "What do you think they’d make of Ash?"

She smiled. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder, his arm was wrapped around her waist, and she could feel his fingers walking the staircase of her spine.

They got moving a few minutes later, Nick in constant contact with Doctor Chris via hi-tech walkie-talkies. The report on Nina was that she had politely requested not to be put under, but that she offered to let Chris bundle her with pillows and bandages so there was no chance she would be able to make herself bleed. He had Novacained her mouth, trimmed her nails, and wrapped her hands in gauze.

Fran -the second guy - and Bill - the fourth guy - agreed on a Don McClaine album and Richie -the first guy - drove. Iliana’s initial fear that they would be immediately caught lessened as an hour passed. Now her concentration and supreme self-awareness was caused much more by Stephen-Kyle, whose nimble fingers had found a spot of tension in her lower back and were gently rubbing it loose.

Nobody had massaged her back in forever. Nobody ever held her, either. She was the Witch Child, glamorized and placed on a pedestal with a red velvet rope bracletting her to keep the crowds at bay. They didn’t know how the lack of contact let her skin grown hard. She was collecting dust, the light was beginning to hide from her eyes.

She put her hand on Stephen-Kyle’s head and let the strands slide between her fingers. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, and she didn’t understand why but he was hurting.

"So what happens next?" Fran asked. He was sitting on the bench behind the driver’s seat with Nick.

"We’ll see how it goes," Nick said. "It might be that she’s not even going to put up a fight."

Stephen-Kyle’s face was damp. Iliana wiped at the tears with her thumb, she didn’t know what she was doing anymore, if she wanted to comfort him because he was hurt or because it was him, because it was this stranger she’d only known for four hours who couldn’t possibly be her soulmate because she didn’t have one even though she would glad melt into his heart should the opportunity arise-

"She’s sensible," Nick said. "I wasn’t really expecting that."

-and obviously her touch meant something to him, because he was pulling her closer until his lips touched her forehead in some cousin of a kiss, hesitant but desperate at the same time.

"You like her," Fran said.

"Do you hate me?" Stephen-Kyle whispered, ever so softly.

Iliana found his mouth and kissed it, and at the slightest reassurance he was holding her with a passion she’d never found in clumsy high school embraces or her mother’s breathy, lip-stick trailing kisses.

"Don’t start with me," Nick said.

She was vaguely aware of the conversation going on above them, and how strange it was to be experiencing this intense flush of sensation all over her body while keeping one ear out for clues to their predicament’s solution.

"Why would I hate you?" she whispered.

His eyes were hazel and cinnamon. "You aren’t really feeling this," he told her.

"Have you called Saina lately?" Fran asked.

"She changed her name to Anna. And no, I haven’t called her."

"I’m not?" Iliana whispered defiantly, and with the boldness she had started to gain during the course of the day’s adventures, ran the tip of her tongue very delicately over the flesh of his lip. "Are you not really feeling that, too?" she asked when he inhaled so sharply it might have been audible to Fran and Nick.

"It would be okay if you had a thing with the Witch Child," Fran said after considering.

Stephen-Kyle shook his head, between a smile and a bitter tear, and kissed her again. Every touch was more heavenly than the last.

"Francis, take two steps back and sniff. Nothing’s going to happen. She’s only been ar-"

The walkie-talkie crackled to life, and Chris’s voice snapped at the air. "Nick, we’re being followed."

Stephen-Kyle and Iliana both pulled back and looked at each other with wide eyes.

"Are you sure?" Nick asked.

"I’m sure. It’s Quinn driving."

Iliana let her forehead rest against Stephen-Kyle. "Thank Demeter," she whispered.

"It’s who?"

"Quinn, Hunter’s adopted son."

"So the Night World knows we’re here."

"No, Circle Daybreak knows. Quinn switched sides."

Nick took a few deep breaths. "What do you think?"

"We can try to outrun them, but he’s in a minivan and we’re both in full sizes."

"How long has he been following us?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"So he’s probably already called for backup," Nick said to himself. He clicked on the walkie-talkie again. "Okay, Doc, here’s our advantage. They don’t know which van the Witch Child is in, so I’ll distract them and you make a dash for it. We’ll try to meet you at the Rubber Cupboard, but if we can’t get there...."

"I won’t do anything drastic," Chris said, but Iliana thought he was probably grinning.

"Don’t do anything you know I wouldn’t do is all," Nick told him. "Okay, we’re gonna slow down, you go ahead and pass us."

The next several minutes lasted forever. Iliana didn’t know the exact time that passed, but she was curled up in Stephen-Kyle’s arms underneath the back seat of a van being driven by kidnaping cult-members, so she doubted that an exact chronology really mattered.

He kept kissing her, distracting her with warm, unfocused kisses at the corners of her mouth, on her chin. Just when she started to tense up he’d find some new patch of face to dampen. She didn’t question it, she even rolled her head back so that his lips could trail down her throat. Both worlds were calling for her attention, the one here in this warm cave and the one above in the van. She knew she should be paying better attention to the conversation, knew that drifting in this haze was putting Nina in danger, but it was like sleep in it’s pull, like walking downhill just a little too quickly.

Her thoughts floated like afterimages of the sun in her mind. She saw his room at home, thought of his beautiful, untouchable sister who hadn’t really looked at him or spoken to him since the day she dragged him into the forest. She thoughts about his unquenchable good taste, in clothing, in home decorating, in wine, even. She thought about how his right arm hurt at night, while he was trying to fall asleep, a deep pain in the bone where one of the faceless men had nicked him. She thought about his scars and how he covered less often then he simply accessorized around them.

"You have to stop," Stephen-Kyle whispered, when she drew his face up to kiss it again.

Stop? There was no room to move here, she had no choice about touching him, letting her hands drift over him. "Why?" she asked.

His voice was serious. "Because I can’t."

She smiled. "Neither can I."

"No, Ian, really-"

Ian.

Her body felt as if it had turned to heavy bronze, and she could feel the rusted hinges as she pulled herself away from him. It happened too fast for him to hold on, she was kicking furiously and scrambling under the duffel bags. Abandoning any thought of secrecy, she kicked pillows into the air and dragged herself onto the patch of rough carpet between the second set of captain chairs.

"What the hell?!" Fran shouted.

He had called her Ian.

"Shit!" Richie cried, and the van flew to the left.

Nick was on the walkie-talkie. "Chris, come in, Chris. He’s moving on you." Then, "Richie, try to cut him off."

Stephen-Kyle had his satin hand on her ankle.

"Who are you?" Fran screamed, and then he leaned down and punched her in the jaw.

Iliana rolled away from him and smacked her temple against the metal supports holding his chair down. It was the same temple the phone had assaulted, and her vision began to blur.

"Chris, we have a stow-away. Get the hell out of-"

Richie hollered a string of curses and the van swerved again. Iliana was dimly aware of spinning, but she couldn’t tell if it was all in her head or not. Fran tried to punch her again and Nick reached out to stop him. Then there was a lift in the floor, like the moment an airplane takes off the ground, and metal began to scream intolerably.

This time she knew it wasn’t all in her head. She barely had time to hit the ceiling before the van was rolling back over and slamming her against the floor again. Her eyes were open, she saw the duffel bags and pillows and what might have been Stephen-Kyle’s right hand wisping through the air. The Echidna stayed put - they were all wearing seatbelts, apparently - and as the van started to roll over again, Nick grabbed her knee.

It didn’t matter that he was an enemy. Her hand found his arm and clenched, she pressed her forehead against his shin and just thought, Please, please let me live through this.

The van landed on it’s roof for the second him, and Iliana was torn loose from her moorings. This time she hit the apex of the sliding door and the ceiling, and the window shattered under her ankle. Gravity got a good grip on her as the van kept rolling, so quickly that she didn’t even have time to understand that she was falling out the window until the van was tilting past. A piece of twisted metal gouged her abdomen, she felt heat and her stomach muscles kept grabbing and grabbing to hold each other together.

The crash was distant. She was laying in water, sputtering, trying to keep from drowning, but not willing to open her eyes. There was both ice and fire in her gut, battling each other, stinging her with each breath she took. Soft, damp reeds rubbed her cheeks.

After the crash was a long silence. Iliana’s eyes opened on their own and she saw an overcast sky partially marred by long tree branches. The blue was easy on her eyes, so she kept looking. Her skin was cold, but gradually her sense of the water around her began to fade. A frog croaked.

Then there were voices from far to her left, the sound of metal protesting as it was moving, then a windy sound and curses. The swamp she was in began to grow dark. At first she thought it was dusk coming, that hours had passed, but then she realized her eyes were closing again, and the dimness was just her eyelashes.

She could see Alex again, for the last time. He had been watching television, but now he snatched the remote from the babysitter’s hand and turned it off. His body was tense, his feathery eyebrows drawn close together.

I love you, I love you, I "love you. That’s it, open your eyes."

Dammit, she thought with a strange measure of calmness and annoyance, I’m not dead yet.

"Not yet," Stephen-Kyle agreed.

"Can we move her?" Nick asked.

"I don’t know. Iliana, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?"

They were both leaning over her. "Alex," she said. All that came out was a little gurgle in her throat.

"We need to get her out of this water," Nick said. "She’s already going into shock."

"Can you move your fingers?" Stephen-Kyle asked.

"I’m going to get something stiff to carry her on," Nick said. As he sloshed away, drops of icy water splashed her face.

She coughed because it was becoming hard to breathe, but the movement set off all sorts of pain in her stomach.

"Don’t move," Stephen-Kyle warned. "Just, can you wiggle a finger?"

It was numb and stiff, but she managed to flick him off. "You cahh...cahh."

"Shh, it’s okay. Don’t talk. We’re going to get you out of here."

"Called," she went on.

"It can wait."

"You called me Ian," she managed, in one quick, hoarse gasp.

He was soaking wet, she realized for the first time, and it was raining. She couldn’t feel it because he was leaning over her, protecting her. His longish hair fell like a curtain around her face.

He didn’t reply, only went on smoothing the hair off her forehead.

"Only...Dad called me....Ian. How....How did you know?"

He started shaking his head. "Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk later, I can explain all of it. There’s time."

He didn’t understand. "I’m dying," she told him. "There’s...no time left."

"No, no." He kept shaking his head. "You aren’t dying. You’re not going to die."

But she could feel it inside, and the water that soaked his pants was stained pink. Had she lost that much blood already? Her pulse was pounding in her sinuses like a high fever.

"You won’t die," Stephen-Kyle said again.

She remembered those minutes in the van, before he’d called her by her father’s old nickname, and she remembered what she’d thought about him. He hadn’t told her about the scar on his arm, she hadn’t been able to see it in the dark. He hadn’t talked about his relationship with his sister, just the same as she hadn’t mentioned her father’s old endearment.

It began to make sense to her, as she lay dying in the swamp beside the highway.

"You shouldn’t have kissed me," she whispered.

"I know, Jesus, I know." He was holding one of her hands, trying to rub the warmth back into it. "I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do this to you."

"Do you really love me?"

"Yes, Lilith help me."

She closed her eyes and had trouble opening them again. "That’s good," she reflected, but the words were just a mumble.

The rain started to fall faster. It was a beautiful sound. Stephen-Kyle lay down in the water beside her, and with his warmth she began to feel some of the aches and pains in her body again. No final thoughts this time, nothing to be forgiven for. This time was for real, this time she was just going to listen to the rain and the beautiful music it made, and die right there in Mother Nature’s soup bowl.

"Ian," he whispered.

She made a soft sound in response.

"If you had a choice between dying and spending the rest of your life as my soulmate, would you want to die?"

She couldn’t help smiling. The rain was getting louder, and the question was moot, but it still touched the sadness she had been fighting off. "Never," she whispered. Hot tears rose up in her eyes at the thought of everything she was about to leave, and while she was wondering how her tear ducts were still working when the rest of her was so broken, she died.

Nick started to turn away from the van and stopped. There was a twinge of pain in his throat. "Fran," he said, to the young man who was turning a duffel bag into a stiff board, "don’t bother."

Fran looked up, the sparkle of dust that gathered around his hands vanishing.

"She’s dead," Nick told him.

He couldn’t quite believe this was happening, but it was a feeling he had experienced so many times in his life that he without thinking dismissed it to concentrate on the situation at hand. Bill’s nose was broken - smacked squarely by the air bag as it inflated - but other than they there were only bumps and bruises among the Echidna. They’d all been belted in, and Nick had simply used magic to keep the car from hurting him.

He glanced at the minivan Quinn had been driving. It was wedged between the guardrail on the highway and a stout tree. Richie had been trying to out-maneuver him when they lost control.

Shouldn’t have happened, of course. Nick could drive a car without his hands or his feet as long as he had a good view of the road. But they were barely holding things together as it was, since Saina had left and they’d moved out of the old crack house. Keeping Chris from going postal was enough job, Nick didn’t have time to chide Richie for slacking off in his practice.

"I’m gonna go see if they’re dead, okay?" Bill asked, stepping beside him.

"Good idea. But be careful, don’t let the car explode."

"Yeah, I know."

They could both sense that gasoline was trickling through the engine and might be sparked at any second. It was simply something they knew, the way Nick knew that the six inches of water he was standing in was freezing cold.

He wondered if the girl had bled to death or frozen. "God dammit," he whispered to himself, and turned away from the minivan.

His feet squished in their boots as he sloshed through the water. There was a sort of swamp beginning to grow here, a few lily pads were floating on the cache of rainwater.

The girl was almost thirty feet from where the van had finally stopped flipping. Blood had blossomed like oil on the surface of the water all around her, her silver-blond hair was stained with it.

"Who are you?" the boy laying in the water beside her asked.

Nick stopped a few feet away from them. "I told you earlier, my name is Nicholas Early. I figure you owe me one."

He lowered his head, his fingers touching the dead girl’s hand reverently. "My name is Stephen-Kyle Cambridge."

"And the girl?"

"Iliana Harman."

Nick paused, feeling the old senses he’d grown up using rise in his forehead. "She’s a witch?"

"She was, yes."

"I’m sorry. Your soulmate?"

Stephen-Kyle couldn’t seem to decide on an answer. "I don’t know. I only met her this afternoon."

"I see."

He ran a hand through his hair. Since when does Circle Echidna kill people? Fran had asked earlier, and what could he say now? Only during accidents? It shouldn’t have happened, he should have realized that she was in the van, that both of them were hiding under the supplies.

He knew that he had blocked his old powers in favor of the new ones, but he hadn’t expected that it would lead to this sort of disaster.

"What are you doing here?" he began to ask, and suddenly he felt flame. Not the heat of it on his skin, or the scent of it in his nostrils; he felt the way it tore the leaking trails of gasoline between lines of wire mesh.

"Bill!" he shouted. The water splashed around his ankles as he spun and dashed toward the highway.

The van was already blazing. In the corner of his eye he could see Fran rushing toward it, limping on his bruised ankle. A first gust of black smoke burped into the air, and there was an internal explosion in the van that sounded like thunder trapped in a glass jar.

Nick knew it was coming before it happened. "Get down!" he cried and threw himself between the reeds.

The sonic boom he expected never occurred, but angry tentacles of fire flared in the sky. He lifted his head and saw Fran rolling back down the ridge.

They couldn’t get closer to the van than fifteen feet, which was where Richie discovered the vampire dragging himself across the muddy earth.

"Oh, Jesus," Fran said. "What do we do?"

"Hold him," Nick told Richie. "I’m going to try to get Bill."

"Bill’s dead!" Fran shouted, quickly dissolving into hysteria.

"Just stay calm," Nick told him.

"He’s dead!"

He looked at the flaming car. He could feel the heat now, and smell the smoke, and he knew without his old senses that Bill was gone. He didn’t even know what rituals to perform; Circle Ecidna had never had a death before.

"Who are you?" he asked the vampire laying weakly on the ground. Richie was holding his arms behind his back, keeping him from removing the chunk of metal scrap that had entered his forehead, but he didn’t seem to be struggling.

"Quinn," the vampire said. His voice was harsh, and ash had been spread across one cheek.

"You work for Circle Daybreak?"

"Yes." The vampire glanced at the mini-van. "My...a colleague was in there."

Three dead. Nick’s chest clenched until he couldn’t breathe and he had to turn away.

"What should we do?" Richie asked.

Fran had collapsed on the ground, face buried in his knees.

"Leave the dead," Nick said softly. "Fix our van. Put Quinn and Stephen-Kyle in it. We’ll stick to the plan."

"Bill is dead!" Fran shouted again, and Nick couldn’t help but snap, "I fucking well know that, Francis, but what am I going to do? Tell me to stab myself with a hot poker and I’ll do it, but...."

He broke off, then found himself down on his knees, wrapping Fran in his arms. Fran’s hand clenched his shirt and his fingers tore into the fabric. "I’m sorry," Nick whispered, choking on tears. "It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I’m so fucking sorry."

He didn’t care then about the plan, or the Wild Power, or Circle Echidna, just the boy he’d grown up with, the tag-along he’d never had the heart to push away. Even when everything had gone to hell a year ago, Fran had never doubted his judgement, never questioned him. And here Nick had failed him.

He pulled away and wiped his eyes with the rain that was still falling on them. "Come on," he said.

Stephen-Kyle had carried Iliana’s body to Circle Echidna’s van and laid her out on the smoothest part of the crumpled hood. His eyes were glazed, not with Fran’s panic but a deeper error.

"You can put her in the back," Nick said without thinking, "after we’ve fixed the van."

Stephen-Kyle gathered her sliver hair loosely in one hand. "I can bring her back to life."

Nick looked at him sharply.

"I can," he said.

"You’re a heal-"

"I’m not a healer. But...I started something with her, a sort of spell. If I finish it, she’ll be alive again."

"Will she be...whole?"

Stephen-Kyle nodded slowly. "She’ll be herself."

"We have two more dead. One is from Circle Daybreak. Can you help them?"

"No. It had to be decided while she was alive. Only her."

The fragment of light Nick had so briefly held onto vanished. Some part of him was hurting so badly that he wanted to tear the girl out of Stephen-Kyle’s grasp and throw her body on the burning wreckage of the mini-van, make him feel the same agony Nick was feeling thing. But the rest of him knew that this was a chance at a small redemption.

"What do you need?"

"A room. A quiet room, and some time. A few candles. A ring made of silver."

Nick’s mind jumped. This was going to screw his whole plan, but he really didn’t care anymore. Let Chris deal with the Wild Power and Circle Daybreak. "We’ll have to go to a hotel; it’s another hour’s drive to our camp. How much time do we have?"

"We don’t need to go to a hotel. We can go to your camp."

"You’re sure? It doesn’t need to be done immediately?"

Stephen-Kyle’s face was still expressionless. "No. There’s plenty of time." He twisted her hair around the back of his hand in a gesture almost harsh. "There’s all the time in world."

Part Ten

"What?" Ash asked finally, lifted his face to look at Saina.

They were sitting in the Spartan living room as dusk approached. Ash was drinking coffee and Saina was drinking ginger ale. At a cubby-hole desk, Marty gazed at the papers held within and sipped at a mug of strawberry milk.

Saina shrugged.

"You’re staring," Ash told her.

She shrugged again. Marty glanced at them, then reached over to turn on a battered plastic halogen lamp. It gave the room a golden, dusty glow.

"What do you want from Nick?" she asked.

He honestly couldn’t decide whether he liked Saina or not. On one hand, he could see why Nick had been attracted to her, she was funny, and confident, and loyal. But on the other hand, she could be such a political bitch.

"He kidnaped my girlfriend," Ash said.

Marty had the sense not to glance up this time, but his fingers paused between pages.

"He killed my boss, he kidnaped my girlfriend and two other people. Two guards were killed, and two were injured. To answer your question, I want the past changed."

Saina’s face darkened, but she didn’t get angry. "I don’t think that’s how it happened," she said.

"How do you explain it then?" he asked, and he was sure getting angry.

"Because I know Nick. He’s not violent."

"He’s over-sensitive," Marty said, and Ash was relieved to see the Chimera sticking up for him. "And he’s volatile."

"He doesn’t kill people," Saina replied simply.

"Tell that to Mona," Ash muttered.

Silence filled the room for several minutes. Ash dug his fingers into the carpet until he could feel the waxy net holding the strands together. Then he worked his finger even further down, letting the rough-hewn thread scrape the flesh off his fingers until his nail touched the floorboard.

"You don’t look like a man worried about his girlfriend," Saina said.

"Saina-" Marty began, wise to warn her.

Ash cut him off. "Why don’t you shut the hell up?" he suggested to her.

"You look more like you feel guilty," she went on. "Like maybe you’re partially responsible."

"I don’t hang out with psychotics."

"And I don’t sleep with them."

"Why don’t we stop here," Marty suggested quietly. He had turned in his chair to look at them.

"Why don’t you stay out of it?" Ash said.

"We have plenty of problems as it is, we don’t need you-"

"We? We? Excuse me, I think you mean that you don’t need any more problems. You’re the one who had no problems to begin with, remember?"

Still, no anger. "This isn’t going to get us anywhere."

"And you always move toward progress. You’re the calm, logical thinker, the sensitive one. You’re the martyr, you’re the one who gets screwed over and doesn’t even complain. This," he looked to Saina while gesturing to Marty, "is a specimen of a perfect man. He spent years sick and didn’t resent it, his soulmate was murdered but he found a real sweet substitute, and even though he’s been engaged to a saint of similar caliber for months, he’s kept his hormones in check and not slept with her. So heaven forbid you and I get into a fight and taint the air around him, since you’re a runaway who had sex with a killer in exchange for food and housing, and I knocked my girlfriend up with a human-vampire mutant child. We’re the dirty ones here, so why don’t we just take this outside, and Marty can catch a shower while us fallen ones duke it out."

He was yelling when he finished. He was yelling and he was breathing hard and his throat was dry. He’d managed to crush splinters into his fingers underneath the carpet.

He could feel full dark falling outside, and with it a kind dread sank over his anger. His could lash out like that again if he wanted–it wasn’t going to change whatever happened that night.

Laced in the dread was a certainty that he had already lost something precious.

Saina stood up and simply walked out of the room. Ash heard her footsteps on the stairs, and a door slamming. He felt like a jack-ass.

"Listen," Marty said. His voice was flat, his expression impossible to read. "You and I are different. I accept that. But don’t assume you know me, because you don’t know anything about my life. Or Saina’s. Or Nick’s."

His stupid pride made him say, "Oh, and I’ve just got you so wrong, is that it?"

Marty blinked very slowly and flexed one hand. Not to make a fist, but because the lamp had started to flicker hysterically, as if the bulb might explode.

"I’m not going to justify my life to you," he said darkly. "I’m sorry if you and Nina had a falling out, and I’m sorry your child is danger. But that doesn’t give you the right to spew lies."

"I didn’t lie-"

"You know Saina loves Nick. It’s written all over her face."

Ash was completely disgusted with himself. Saina did love Nick, that much was obvious even to the unromantic, and he had bulldozed over her feelings. Anything to make it someone else’s fault, anything to knock the blame off his shoulders.

With less false anger he said, "You aren’t going to tell me how I lied about you, too?"

He wanted Marty to do it to him, do those same hurtful things, spit venom.

"You lied," Marty agreed, his voice still flat but beginning to soften. "You know that I’m just like any normal person, and sometimes I blamed everyone because I was sick. You know Cafi isn’t a replacement for Shale. Maybe you don’t know that we have been intimate and she’s simply a modest person who didn’t want to spoon in front of strangers, but you still shouldn’t have brought it up. I think you probably do feel guilty about Nina, and you’re under a lot of stress right now, and you decided to pick a fight. You should avoid doing it again."

Ash wondered if that was some sort of threat.

"It’s not," Marty told him. "Think of it as advice for rebalancing your life. And yeah, Ash, you need some good advice right now."

He leaned back against the wall. His fingers hurt from the wood splinters. His head hurt from the strain of the last five months.

"Do you know what happened?" he asked.

"Between you and Nina? No."

He didn’t know why he was saying this, except that maybe the truth was deep down, he respected Marty. Liked him. Admired his calm, reasonable approach to life.

"Do you think it’s all been so easy for me?" Marty asked, unabashedly reading is thoughts. "Maybe I don’t scream when I’m angry, or break things when I’m hurt. Or hang all over the girl I’m going to marry. It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped feeling."

Ash pulled his fingers up from under the rug and peered at them.

"Cafi and I have been through almost as much as you and Nina. Believe me. Maybe it’ll get easier soon. Maybe it won’t. All I know is I want to be with her even when it’s hard."

Ash looked up suddenly. "Is that the trick?" he asked, all awareness of his stinging fingers vanishing.

Marty’s brow burrowed. "I don’t think there is a trick. It’s not about deception. It’s just about doing what’s best."

"For all involved?"

Memories of Heather and Shae came rushing back. He and Mary-Lynnette would have done anything for them, would have held them close, would have sent them away. Would even have made some sort of peace with each other.

Marty was saying something, and he wasn’t listening. It had even been Heather who had hinted that Nina might be pregnant, she’d been dropping clues all along. When Mary-Lynnette had asked why she and Shae hadn’t chosen some other couple, she had said, "Because you need the practice."

Maybe not together. Maybe having nothing to do with each other. Maybe she had chosen Ash because she knew that if he hadn’t made the decision once before, to give parts of himself up, that he wouldn’t be able to do it again when an even more difficult situation came along.

Because he realized what it meant now: If Nina didn’t want him in her life, she had the right to keep him out. He’d promised her there was no way they could have children together, and she had trusted him. Then he’d dumped a heavy burden on her, and it wasn’t fair for him to take even more.

How strange, that in those frantic days before her departure, he had been more certain than ever that he loved her. It was the first time he had loved someone not out of family or kinship or Divine intervention, but simply because of them. At the time it had seemed so precious, much a miracle, but he didn’t know any more. Maybe he had fallen into a mental trap, maybe the truth was he was still rebounding from Mary-Lynnette, maybe he’d developed a conscience and was simply feeling guilty because what he really wanted to do was go back to being a rogue bachelor.

Too many maybes.

"I just need to talk to her," he said randomly, interrupting Marty. "I mean, if she doesn’t want me around, okay, but...we have to talk about it."

"That would probably be a good idea," Marty agreed. "Although right now, it might be more important that you go upstairs and apologize to Saina."

Ash made his way slowly up the steps, locating Saina with his ears before he found the bedroom. He knocked lightly.

"It’s open," she said.

He touched the cold knob and the door swung open. Saina was sitting on the floor next to a box full of photos. She glanced at him without expression.

"I came to apologize," he said. Jesus. He didn’t know if he was angry at himself for being such a shit, or angry that on top of it, he now had to humiliate himself.

Saina opened her mouth, considered him, and then said, "All right."

"You’re not going to make me grovel?" he asked, startled.

"No. I found pictures of the Echidna."

It took him a moment to realize that her finding pictures wasn’t an explanation for why she was forgiving him so easily. By then she was holding one out.

Ash took it. "What the hell is this?"

"Rubber Cupboard. Nick finally built it."

From the photograph, it appeared to be a huge rubber cube, like an eraser about twelve feet tall. There was a door cut in the front, with a rubber door and a rubber doorknob.

"It’s a big house made out of rubber?" he asked.

"Actually, just the outside is covered with rubber. Nick thought it would weather better than the plastic he wanted to build the foundation out of."

"What was the point?"

"Nick said it would be a base of operations." She handed him more photographs, which he looked through slowly. "He never had anywhere to build it before, where people wouldn’t see it. I guess after I left they found some land."

"What are all these computers for?"

"The Echidna are very good with computers. They think of them like kin. Plastic, rubber, computers, anything man-made is part of them. They claim creator’s rights."

Ash handed her back the pictures. The place looked like the inside of a Ford plant.

She was looking at him expectantly. "So what?" he asked.

"Isn’t it obvious? If he finally built Rubber Cupboard, why would be bring the Wild Power here and not there?"

He froze a split second before rushing down the stairs. "Marty!" he shouted. "Marty, they aren’t coming back here!"

He flew into the living room. "What?" Marty asked, getting up from his chair.

"They built a huge Tupperware house in the woods and they’re taking Nina and Iliana there. They aren’t coming back here."

Saina burst in behind them. "Well?" she said. "What do we do?"

"Maybe Quinn and Tern will catch them on the road."

"Maybe they won’t," Saina snapped.

"Wait, wait," Marty began, turning back to the desk with all the little cubbyholes and drawers.

"Maybe they will," Ash told Saina again.

"They’re in a car!" she cried.

"So?"

"So, duh, cars are man-made. They can just make Quinn’s tires melt in the middle of the road."

"Why didn’t you point that out when Quinn decided to go?"

"Because it’s possible that–I don’t know, maybe Quinn will sneak up on them and they won’t realize anything is going to happen until it’s already happened!"

"I’ve got it," Marty told them, turning around.

"Got what?" Ash shouted. "What the hell is going on here?"

"You’re freaking out," Saina told him.

"Be quiet," Marty instructed. "It’s a land deed for property an hour’s drive from here. Where else would they have built something?"

"Fine, let’s go," Ash said, already turning toward the door.

"We don’t have a car," Marty pointed out.

"The Echidna left one in a garage," Saina said. "We can take it."

She dug around in her pocket and Ash said, "You have keys?"

"Yeah, I sold Nick the car. That’s how we met."

Part Eleven

The heater was running inside the Rubber Cupboard when Nick opened the door. He could have heated the place with just his thoughts, but that would have required more energy than he wanted to expend. As things stood, he’d never been so happy to feel the warmth hit his face and the scent of polyester fill his nostrils.

"Nick," Max said, getting up from a nearby computer console. The front room was full of them, the floor was strewn with wires and duct-tape.

"Hi," Nick replied weakly.

"What the hell happened?" Max asked, as he reached out to hug his leader.

"There was an accident." Nick brushed a kiss over his lips and pulled away to hold the door open for Stephen-Kyle. In his arms, the dead girl’s body languished like a hooker at rest.

Fran had stopped crying. He’d been almost silent while Richie drove them the rest of the way, leaving it up to Nick to make sure the vampire didn’t try to attack.

"Where’s Chris?" Nick asked.

"Making dinner."

"Where’s Miss Rosette?"

Max hesitated. "She’s asleep."

"What’s wrong?"

"Nothing, she was just tired."

"No, Max, what did Chris do to her?"

Max squirmed. "He showed her some slides, did a couple of displays. Mostly he just talked."

Nick turned away, angry but too broken to let it over-take him. "Quinn," he said.

"Yes." The vampire had a soft voice, and cold eyes.

"Go sit on the couch." Nick gestured vaguely, but he could see Quinn’s surprised expression. "Max, let me know if he tries anything."

Fran handed him a small shopping bag - plastic, of course - and Nick led Stephen-Kyle down the hall. He could smell tomato sauce being spiced in the kitchen, and hear the voices of other Echidna in rooms around them. His bedroom was at the end of the hall, it was small but the only place he could think of where Stephen-Kyle could be alone with the body.

He wondered what the hell was going to happen after he left them there. He wondered if he’d ever be able to sleep in that bed again.

Stephen-Kyle lay the dead girl on the mattress and reached out for the bag of supplies. "We’ll have to be left alone," he said. "I need to lock the door."

"It doesn’t lock, and we could come in anyway."

"If I’m interrupted, she’s stay dead. We have to be alone."

He looked at the boy’s strangely lifeless face. "I’ll do what I can," he promised, and turned away.

He walked back down the hallway, keeping his eyes low from a sudden bout of inexplicable claustrophobia. He and Andy had designed this place from scratch, he knew where each door and window was. The Cupboard throbbed with man-made power. It swam through the air, through the walls like current, but he didn’t find it comforting.

He paused in the kitchen doorway for a moment and watched Chris cooking, then moved away before the older man could spot him. He didn’t want to fight now, he didn’t even want to discuss, and Chris became intolerable so quickly.

He found himself avoiding the living room and instead walking toward the corner bedroom they had prepared for the Wild Power. It was a larger room than most, and although it wasn’t aesthetically noticeable, Nick knew that the walls were almost three feet thick. He doubted they would hold Blue Fire, but he’d built them anyway.

Max had told him that she was asleep; for some reason he wasn’t surprised to see her dark brown eyes open. She was tied up elaborately, to the extent that most actresses playing her part might complain about their relative lack of screen-time in comparison with the bonds. Chris claimed to know every possible way a person could hurt themselves, and he’d gone about immobilizing Miss Rosette with the utmost skill and thought. Her toes and fingers had been piecemeally bound with white gauze, tight enough that she couldn’t move them, loose enough that the blood flow wasn’t cut off. Her body was tied to a bed which could rotate without releasing her to keep bedsores from forming. Her tongue and jaw had been injected with Novacain, and her teeth had been buffered with a industrial rubber mouth-guard. Chris swore that it was impossible for her to draw blood.

The lap top computer was resting on the swinging table over her legs. The screen saver was forming and unforming geometric designs in gaudy colors, but the room was otherwise dark.

Her eyes followed him as he sat down on the stool next to the bed. He couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound either insane or cliched or just stupid, so he just bit his lip.

He looked at her. She looked at him. There was really nothing else to look at.

"I fucked up today," he said without warning. "One of my friends died. And a girl, Iliana."

She closed her eyes briefly, pained.

"Nobody was supposed to die," he told her, trying to justify it. "There was a car accident and she was hiding in the back, and then Bill went to get that vampire out of his mini-van and the thing just exploded on him."

His head hurt, pain like flecks of paint scattered across his scull. "It’s just what happened," he said.

Her eyes moved from him to the computer and then back quickly. "You want to type?" he asked, and her head wiggled in the faintest of nods.

With care, he released the pinky finger of her left and chained her wrist to the laptop with a pair of handcuffs. A word processing program wavered onto the screen as soon as he unfolded the machine, but any past conversations had been erased.

She typed without punctuation or capitalization, concerned only with getting her message across. The slash was supposed to be a question mark, but with only one finger she couldn’t hold down the shift key.

what vamp/

"His name is Quinn. He’s okay, but....there was another vampire with him who blew up."

name/

"I didn’t ask."

boy with iliana/

"He’s fine. He...he thinks he can bring her back to life. He’s trying to now."

possible

"I don’t know."

He glanced at her. "How do you know?"

we friends

He nodded, although he didn’t understand. Stephen-Kyle wasn’t a witch, and he wasn’t a healer, and he wasn’t a vampire. How could he return life to a body that had been dead almost two hours?

"I don’t know," he said again. "I’d like to be, but it depends on how things go. Did Chris try to tell you about us?"

talked and talked told tons

"Did it make any sense?"

did. i join you

He started at her again. "What?" he asked. She tapped the screen with her finger. "Why?"

"But you have the blue fire."

emergencies only

"Really?"

millennium only goddess get pissed otherwise

He had been unaware of this limitation. "So from day to day, you’re just like any other human."

She hesitated, for nearly twice as long as she had before.

baby half vampire father gone i alone with it cant take good care or protect me or it

His eyes kept unfocusing on the words. "How is that possible?"

diabetic experimental meds accident

Her hand fell to the tabletop, as if she were tired out. Nick pressed his eyes against the palms of his hands, disbelieving. When he heard her begin typing again, he lifted is face.

i join you you teach me human magic neither one of us helpless

"I didn’t realize we had so much in common," he muttered darkly.

/

He’d started speaking before he even thought to sensor himself. "My girlfriend got pregnant last year. She’s human. She had an abortion."

she scared/

"I guess so. She said it was just because we were young and broke and I was in rehab for being a heroin junkie, but I think it was really that she was afraid. It’s one thing to love a monster, it’s another to birth one."

"No, we broke up about a month afterward. I guess it made me realize that she didn’t trust me."

i trust you to keep me alive

He wanted to tell her that her trust was misplaced, but he didn’t have the heart. She wasn’t Saina, but it situation felt so similar. He didn’t want it to end the way it had before.

watch

He didn’t know what he was watching for until words began appearing on the screen faster than he could read them.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the government for which it stands–Huh, I’ve forgotten the rest. Well, never mind, I just wanted to show you that I can do this. Either it’s really wildly easy or else I have an aptitude for it. I won’t consider the possibility that it was Chris’s instruction that allowed me to catch on so quickly, because he’s a lousy, pompous teacher, but I do think his enthusiasm is spreading.

"Stop," Nick said. "Please, stop a minute."

Her finger had never touched the keyboard. She hadn’t even moved.

Why? Talking to you this way is ten times faster than spelling it all out with my little finger.

The words came more quickly than any typist could have spelled them out. "Because I need to think."

I told you, Nick, I need a magic to learn. I need that defense. The Night World is no place for a pregnant human girl. And if you teach me, I’ll stay with you. Circle Daybreak will acknowledge you as a serious power. You can form an alliance, or make enemies with them, although I would prefer an alliance, seeing as how they are trying to save my species from extinction.

"Stop already," he said, and reached out with his mind. Abruptly, the lap top went dead, and his lines of power crossed with hers, blocking them. He was far more powerful than she, but it was easy once a person got started.

They scared at each other. Nina lifted her eyebrows.

She was making him an offer. Power for power, things they both needed. The fact that she didn’t appear particularly fond of Chris hadn’t slipped past him, either, and Isis knew, he needed allies just then.

He remembered Saina. Would she have been willing to keep the baby if she’d known she wouldn’t be powerless in her own defense?

He reached up and tucked a finger under the gauze covering Nina’s face. Her breath was damp against his skin as he tugged the bandages away. She strained to open her jaw reflexively, but made no move to bite her lips or cheeks. Nick dug the sticky wad of cotton balls out of her mouth and put them on the swing table.

She worked her tongue for a moment, then swallowed and looked at him. Her brown eyes were absolutely without humor.

"We’re in this together, then?" she asked.

Nick nodded. "Yes."

Part Twelve

He stared at the body on the bed and hunched over further, sliding his hands up so that they covered not only his neck but his ears. All around was silence he didn’t want to hear.

The room was so blatantly someone else’s, he didn’t know how he would be able to go through with it knowing that her body was laying on the enemy’s bed. That this first scared act between them would be performed in the home of a stranger.

The plastic bag was on the floor at his feet. Between the twisted handles he could see a corner of the ring box. Nick hadn’t skimped on the supplies, and the ring was as beautiful a piece of jewelry as Stephen-Kyle had ever hoped to find. It had been hand-engraved with a circle of tiny flowers on the brink of blossoming.

He turned his head enough that he could see her. Nick had wrapped her body in a blanket in the car, stained now with ghastly patches of her blood and the grainy ditch water. Her head was tilted back unnaturally; when he lifted her, it had become apparent that bones in her neck had been crushed.

He rose abruptly and walked to the end of the bed. Not wanting to touch her, he lifted back the blanket.

Her abdomen had been smashed several inches flatter. Her breasts had vanished. Sharp points lifted the sticky cloth from her skin.

Lauren had always told him that this day would come, and he’d always disagreed. "I’m not going to live my life according to their rules," he’d told her.

"And risk losing their gifts?" she’d replied.

He knew that Lauren herself would possibly never be put in this position, that she was wise where he was romantic. She wouldn’t have seen this girl standing in the foryer, looking like a distressed fairy in her blue silk and fake flowers, and wanted to hand her life over the way he had. She wouldn’t have acted rashly at the first sign of danger when she knew there was a high probability that she would survive. She never would have ended up in this room with this corpse to make love to.

I should clean her off, he thought. I can’t touch her like this.

There was a pair of scissors in the top drawer of the desk. He grimaced as he knelt on the edge of the bed and tried to find a dry place where he could touch the fabric. When it all proved to be soaked with grime, he simply used one blade of the scissors to lift the material and began cutting. The sweater was Lauren’s, high quality. It didn’t cut easily, and finally he resorted to holding one corner of the knitting up so that his cuts could find room.

When he had split the garment from waist to neck, he nudged the flap back like sides of a vest.

He covered his mouth, trying not to vomit.

Iliana’s rib cage had buckled. Slender lines of bone ending in dangerous shards had torn through the skin. He could see her heart underneath, or what he thought must be her heart. A piece of metal had been thrust into her stomach like a botched suicide.

The pants, he thought, you’ve got to cut her pants off.

There was no way. It was impossible. He couldn’t even look at her.

He went into the connecting bathroom and ran warm water over his wrists. He was cold and wet, and he thought he’d bruised a bone in his elbow then the van finally stopped moving. He knew there were two knots of his head that were rapidly swelling, and tomorrow his back would ache like hell-fire.

She doesn’t have a tomorrow. Do you love her or not, Kyle?

"How the hell should I know?" he demanded, looking up at the mirror as if the questions had come from someone other than himself. "I just met her six hours ago."

But the draw had been there. He didn’t know her, but there was a softness in her that he liked, a sweetness he had always associated with little dead Felicia.

Little dead Ian.

He washed his face in the warm water.

It wasn’t just the corpse, although he couldn’t bare to look at her like this. It was his own fear. His parents had loved each, that much he remembered, and it had gotten them both killed. If he had a chance now not to enter into that sort of situation, to avoid possibly making a horrific mistake...

Lauren would have walked away.

But Lauren had been so cold since the night their parents died.

He straightened and turned so that he could see Iliana through the bathroom door. She was sprawled just as he had left her, bloody, torn, broken. As if her insides were trying to bust out.

Think of her the way she was today, he told himself. Think of her in that blue silk thing stained with snow salt and all pale with worry. Think of her in the van, holding onto you and just letting you into her mind without any hesitation, without even wondering how it was you got there.

A tiny smile rose to his lips.

Now go clean her off.

He steeled himself and found a batch of clean towels. No dwadling this time, he kept his eyes on his hands and tamped down any thoughts of what had to happen next as he stripped off her pants, a pair of flowered cotton underwear, and a bra that was twisted among her ribs like the ribbons of a Maypole flapping in the wind.

He peeled the dirty, wet blanket off one side of the bed, then the sheets that had started to absorb highway sewage. Over the bare mattress he stretched two clean towels, and carefully rolled her onto her side while he gathered up the filthy linens and deposited them in a heap in the bathroom.

A washcloth soaked in warm water was in his right had as he sat down next to her. Naked, she looked more damaged but significantly less gory. With a gentle, hesitant touch, he touched the cloth to her twisted left shoulder and wiped the blood away. Her skin was slightly spongy, still soft. When he had crossed from one shoulder to another, the blood had diminished to a brown smear.

It took a long time. He found a bowl with a few popcorn kernels left in the bottom, cleaned it out, and used it to hold the water he needed. He washed her body in long strokes, wringing out the cloth every time it grew darkened. With both hands, he coaxed her chest back together, tilted her head more properly, set the broken bone her in leg as best he could. He wrung the blood out of her hair. He pried the piece of metal out of her stomach and put it in the trash can. He cleaned the wounds and dried her gently. Finally, he found a black down comforter under the bed and snuggled it underneath her so that she was nested.

He could see her now, see her fully, the way she was meant to be. In his mind’s eye, he saw her restored. He thought he would be able to do this.

But maybe not. Even after he had propped a chair under the bedroom doorknob and closed the bathroom door, he still felt too self-conscious to undress. "Talk about performance anxiety," he muttered darkly.

He wasted time, lighting the three candles and setting them on the dresser. The silver ring he placed very carefully between her breasts, adjusting it so that it wouldn’t roll on the slant of her crushed breastbone. Her eyes were closed, and he debated opening them. He wanted to feel like she was there, like he wasn’t alone in this stranger’s room doing something that should have been so intimately enacted between them.

There were no incantations to be spoken, no circles to be cast, no deities to be called. Nothing to do but turn out the lights and get undressed.

He closed his eyes, pulled his shirt harshly over his head, began sliding his pants over his hips and choked. Don’t stop now, he told himself, don’t you dare stop because if you do she’s just going to lay there and rot and the longer you put it off the worse it will be.

The comforter was soft against his naked skin, and with the candlelight falling over everything like a thin layer of butter-glaze, the situation was almost romantic. He lay on his side next to her and touched her stomach with trembling fingers. At any moment he expected her to protest, to open her eyes and squeal. The silence rang in his ears instead, and his palm brushed the ragged edges of the wound in her gut.

"I’m going to make you whole," he said to her.

No response. She didn’t even breathe.

He forced himself to roll on top of her. Jesus, her body was still warm, how was that possible? He felt their groins touch, tendrils of pubic hair catching and clinging. Her neck was broken but no longer visibly, he craned his head down and kissed it the way he had in the van, under the seat.

No stifled gasp this time. No arch of the back.

How could he do this when he was so far away from here? She was in the fucking Netherworld, he was in a borrowed room with a body she’d abandoned.

It took a long time to get hard. Intensely vivid fantasies drawn from every pornographic nugget he’d ever ingested would bring him only so far before the guilt at dreaming of sluts and dildos and blowjobs while resting his weight on this sweet girl’s corpse took over. Finally he steeled himself to the coarse, raw perversity of it, gave in to the obscenities is mind so kindly offered him.

He had to prop her legs up with pillows just to keep them out of the way. The moistness that allowed him partial entrance proved insubstantial quickly enough. Trying not to get distracted and loose the feeling, he slicked himself with the wash water and turned his mind away from the moral implications of it all once again.

Even with the water, nothing came easily. He didn’t know if her internal organs had been injured during the accident, or her inner corridors were just more complicated than he’d anticipated, but by the time he felt their hips finally lock together he had been driven almost to the brink by the constant stimulation of contact.

He made a mistake, opened his eyes.

She didn’t look back at him. She was dead. Plain and simple, the flesh that surrounded his, cradled him, crushed him in all the right places, was dead and falling apart.

For the first time, pure fury filled him. How dare she die like this, how dare the Intgriest gods do this to him, to her, to ransom her life in exchange for the freedom to love whom she chose. He wanted her alive and moving beneath him, her breasts rising up to meet his while they struggled for even breath together, her thighs drawn tight against his hips instead of flailing on the pillows. He wanted to hear her moaning and saying his name instead of this bitter silence.

And because of that, he would...

He pressed their chests flat together and felt the elegant silver ring bite into his skin. He thrust into her once before cradling her head with his arm, so that their cheeks were rubbing together and he could smell the remnants of her shampoo.

"You’re going to live," he told her, thrusting again, more roughly. Then again. The anger he felt drained from his chest to his groin and the determination that she would wake up again sent his body driving into hers.

"You’re going to live," he whispered, holding her as close as he could. The silver ring burned and stung over his heart.

"You’re going to live because I love you." He came in agony, clenching her broken body in is arms, shuddering helplessly. He could feel the semen being dredged from deep inside like black oil furiously pumped from a well, and he gave her the closest thing he had to a woman’s milk. It slid inside her like molten pearl, filled every nook and cranny, between the torn muscles and the cracked bones and the veins fallen flat like dead snakes, he sent himself into her.

When he was exhausted, wrung dry, twisted empty, he collapsed beside her. His heart was racing, there was a tendril of smoke coming from his chest. He reached up with one clammy hand and felt the burn, still tender, that tiny circle over his breastbone that wouldn’t go away as long as his body survived. When he found the courage to open his eyes and look, he saw the same mark on Iliana, and a living flush surrounded the wound.

He kissed her on the mouth, filled her chest with air tainted in his own lungs, and she breathed. Shallow at first, then a little stronger. He found himself crying while he watched the bones very slowly begin to reorganize themselves, the tendons mend, the skin reform like bread dough rerolled.

He drew the edges of the comforter over them both and kissed her again. He felt her lips hesitantly respond. "You’re going to live," he told her, and she did.

Part Thirteen

Iliana opened her eyes when she woke up. No, they were open before she woke up, they must have been because she had seen the bedroom around her. Only the angle had been all wrong, as if she were standing far away, a few feet off the floor.

She blinked. Her eyes must have been open; they were as moistureless as eggshell. Her body was full of wet sand, it sank heavily into the fluffy comforter. She cleared her throat and saw Stephen-Kyle sitting in a chair next to the bed. He looked up at the first sound she made.

Her first thought was that she didn’t like his clothes. They weren’t his, obviously, they didn’t fit, and the shirt failed to even hint at that perfect curve she knew he had running from shoulders to hip. The blue jeans were old, not in a deliberately washed and cut way, but a working-construction way.

She shifted her head so that she could see him better, frowning.

He was looking at her with a glimmer of wonder in his eyes. Affection. Adoration.

He noted the path of her gaze and said, "I know. They’re borrowed." Then he chuckled and put his head in his hands.

Iliana started to sit up and didn’t realize until the light blanket covering her slipped down that she wasn’t dressed. She stopped suddenly and adjusted the material. Her blood turned to ice water and her heart froze from the shock. Memory paralyzed her lungs.

"No, no," Stephen-Kyle began saying. She could see him in her peripheral vision as he sat down on the bed beside her, but she couldn’t move her eyes to look.

"No, Iliana, don’t panic. Shh, listen to me."

She was moaning unconsciously again. Stephen-Kyle ran a hand across her forehead, tucked the strands of hair behind one ear.

"You are alive. You are absolutely alive and you’re fine."

"I died," she said with words made of smoke. "I remember it. The van crashed and I was in the water. You said you loved me, and then...."

Now there weren’t any words, faint or not, and Stephen-Kyle was trying to fill in the cracks before she fell apart. "I asked you if you would rather die than be with me," he said. "Remember? I asked. You said you wanted to live."

The room blurred until she didn’t know what she was looking at, the floor, the ceiling, the palm of her hand.

"I died," she whispered. "In the water."

"In the ditch," he agreed. "But you said that...."

He was pouring water on her hair. It was no longer damp, but she could feel him pouring a glass of hot water over the back of her hair. She wondered if the bed wasn’t getting all wet.

"Please, Iliana, look at me. Oh, your heart is racing..."

She had died. She was absolutely certain of it. "Is this the after life?"

"No. You’re alive, truly."

But she had died. This isn’t possible, she thought. I’m not here, I can’t be. There’s just no way.

"Iliana, you need to breathe. Come on, don’t pass out. Stay with me here."

Here? There was no here. It was impossible. She started reaching for that place of nothing that drew her at unaccountable moments like these, when the universe stopped moving and she started living between moments.

Then he stuck her hand into a pan of warm water, and she couldn’t help looking down. There was no pan of water, just his fingers wrapped around hers. But it felt like water or silk or some kind of heat...

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Nothing, I’m sorry." He started to take his hand away and she felt herself reflexively tighten her grip.

"No, why is....why is it doing that?"

She met his eyes. What she had begun to realize while she lay dying in the beside the highway, came back. "The Intgriest choose their soulmates," she said. She was thinking out loud. "That’s why you weren’t supposed to kiss me, because it would connect us."

His breath had shortened. "It would have faded away after a few years, if it had just been that kiss," he explained. "But then, in the van, when we were..."

"You really couldn’t stop," she realized.

"No, I couldn’t. We just kept getting closer and closer."

"I could hear your thoughts."

"Yes, and I could hear yours. That’s how I knew that your father used to call you Ian. And that’s how I was able to bring you back."

She swallowed. "I was dead, and you brought me back."

"Yes."

"And you’re my soulmate now."

His voice was hesitant. "Yes," he said, and then rushed on, "I’m sorry, it’s not like you had a chance to really think the question over, but you were dead and we’d already started, and I thought that if there was a chance I could make it work-"

She put her hand over is mouth. His skin was warm, thick water, rippling faintly with electric current. He stopped speaking.

What could he have possibly said to explain it? She had every right to be angry with him; he had violated her spirit and her fate in a way no being should. But he also deserved her deepest gratitude; he had given huge parts of himself in order to bring her back. There was no reconciliation between two, it wasn’t possible, and this was one of those moments sentient being were unable to understand because there simply weren’t words.

So she kissed him.

And it didn’t feel like water any more, it felt like laughter made tangible. There was no time for hesitation and no need for shyness and no reason to be frightened that he was seeing so deeply inside her because he loved her and there was no doubt about that. All those times people had dismissed love at first sight were missed opportunities; he hadn’t even known he was falling in love and it happened while she stood in the entryway of his house. He would have loved her if he’d never seen her again, and maybe he wouldn’t have been conscious of it and maybe she would never have known, but some fragment of that emotion would have been let loose in the universe, like a flower petal on the wind.

She could already have listed the things about him that she loved, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Those things, his temperament, his attitude, his personality even, weren’t him, and that was the thing she loved, the core of him. The rest would come later, with fondness and respect and admiration and even dislike and annoyance, but for the few minutes they spent holding onto each other, the universe had stopped again for Iliana. And she didn’t mind.

When she came back to the ground, they were all tangled up in the blankets. Stephen-Kyle wasn’t even struggling against the mess, he was just looking and her and laughing and laughing like a little underwater brook.

"What?" she asked.

He shook his head, there were tears refracting the cinnamon in his eyes. "I didn’t expect you to take that so well."

She cupped his face in one hand. "What choice do I have?" she asked, and his expression abruptly sobered.

"I didn’t mean to make promises in your name. I didn’t mean to...do irrevocable things."

She nodded. "I know. I should be angry but I’m not. And I should be grateful....but I’m not even that, really."

When she couldn’t finish, he read her mind. "It’s just what happened."

"Yes."

They were both vaguely disturbed, but they lay on the bed clinging to each other just the same. There was no room for their doubts to go unvoiced, and no answers to give voice to.

It occurred to her that she had no idea what had happened after the wreck. "Where are we?" she asked. He sat up with her, and she noticed that the bed wasn’t really made, a comforter had just been spread over the bare mattress.

"We’re in Rubber Cupboard. It’s Circle Echidna’s hideout. Or their sanctuary. I haven’t figured out which just yet."

That got her attention. "We’re with Circle Echidna?"

He shrugged, standing up and taking a few restless steps across the room. "Once you crawled out from under the bench and the van flipped, it became pretty obvious that we were there. And I was so worried about keeping you from dying that I didn’t try to be secretive."

"So we’re prisoners?"

"I don’t know. Nick...has been very kind to us. This is his bedroom we’re in, and he promised me privacy."

Privacy, privacy. Iliana became aware again of her cloth-less state. She looked slowly at Stephen-Kyle. "Did we have sex?" she asked. Her voice came out tinny.

He looked at her, looked away, looked at the floor, looked anywhere but into her eyes. "Sort of," he conceded.

"While...I was dead?"

He winced and ran a hand through his hand. "Yeah, it was then," he said painfully. "It was the only way to bring you back."

She found herself staring at the outline of her legs beneath the sheet. He had....? While she was....?

"Did you use a condom?" she asked.

Their eyes met, finally, and his face was fully bewildered. "I didn’t even think of it," he said.

There was a knock on the door. "It’s Nick," a voice she remembered called. "I need to come in."

They looked at each other slowly. Iliana made sure she was decently covered and nodded. "Come in," Stephen-Kyle called.

Nick was as she remembered, his eyes intense but without cruelty. He assessed both of them briefly, then swallowed as if it were difficult. "It worked," he said.

Stephen-Kyle nodded. "It worked."

Nick closed the door and leaned against it. "I’m glad you were able to revive her," he said. "In the meantime, there’s something I need to make you aware of." He took a deep breath. "Miss Rosette has decided to join us."

Iliana jolted. "Join you?" she gasped.

"Yes. She wants to learn our magic. In return, she’ll give us her support."

She felt her fingers bunch in the sheets. "Is she all right?"

"She’s fine."

"Is the baby all right?"

"As far as I can tell, the baby is fine. There’s no reason to think otherwise; the van Miss Rosette was riding in arrived here without incident."

Nina was fine. The baby was fine. Iliana had died, but she was back. And she had a boyfriend. The only one they’d lost was Mona.

"Where does that put us?" Stephen-Kyle asked.

"I don’t know. Given the circumstances, I’ve tried to be as rational as possible-"

"No," he interrupted, "you’ve been more than rational. You’ve been very good to us. Thank you."

Nick nodded. "If you want to leave, you’re free to go. You can even tell Circle Daybreak who and where we are. But let them know that the Wild Power joined us by choice, and that we have the means to defend ourselves."

"Who’s side are you on?"

"Concerning the humans?" An odd smile came to Nick’s face. "We are very much pro-human. I used to be in love with one."

"So technically you’re on Circle Daybreak’s side," Iliana said hopefully.

"Circle Daybreak has refused to acknowledge our place as a significant power. We aren’t their allies because they don’t seem to be interested in us."

"You’re really going to let us walk out of here?" Stephen-Kyle asked.

"Actually, I thought I’d ask Max to drive you. It’s started snowing again."

They looked at each other. Iliana swallowed. "Can I talk to Nina?"

"When I last checked she was taking a shower, but I’ll send her in as soon as she’s dressed."

When he was gone, Stephen-Kyle sat down slowly on the edge of the bed.

"We can’t leave her here," Iliana said.

He lifted his eyes to hers. "You can’t stay."

"I’m not leaving Nina with these people."

"We have a chance to get you out of here, we can’t throw it away."

She was starting to get frustrated, and in trying to hide the tears, her voice sounded more and more angry. "So what, now I’m more important than she is?"

"With the exception of maybe ten people on this planet, yes. She’s not going to save the world, you are."

She wouldn’t look at him, even when he apologized a moment later. "You know I love Nina," he said. "She’s been my only friend for the past four months. But you still take first priority."

"I’m so goddamned sick of being a china doll," she whispered furiously, pressing her palms to her eyes.

He touched her shoulder and then her head shot up as the door opened. Nina came in slowly, only smiling faintly when Iliana and Stephen-Kyle both rushed to take her arms. Her hair was wet and she looked less than glamorous in her borrowed sweat pants and flannel shirt, but she appeared unharmed.

"Are you okay?"

"Em fin."

"What did they give you?"

Just Novocain, she said, so that she wouldn’t bite her tongue, but it was beginning to wear off. She insisted that she was fine even as they ushered her to the bed and Iliana wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

Nina’s brown eyes with their bleeding ink centers turned from one of them to the other, and then she smiled again. "Congratulations," she told Stephen-Kyle with careful pronunciation.

He kissed her forehead. "Thank you."

"You, too, Iliana. He’s a good guy, you got lucky."

She was alive, that was enough just then. "What about you?"

Nina shrugged. There were circles under her eyes that would take a month’s sleep to get rid of. "I’m going to stay here."

"Why? Don’t do it for me, please. You’re always saving me."

"You have a habit of needing saving."

It was meant fondly; Nina didn’t know how much it hurt Iliana to hear herself being referred to as the damsel in distress again.

Her expression must have showed her feelings, because Stephen-Kyle reached around Nina’s back to take her hand.

"I want to stay," Nina said. "This is a good place for me."

"A house full of horny twenty-something guys is not a good place for a pregnant woman," he told her flatly.

She just smiled vaguely. "I’ll be fine. I like Nick, and....I think he likes me. He’ll make sure nobody tries to mess with me. Besides, I’m the Wild Power. I’m off-limits, remember?"

"What about Ash?"

"I don’t want to see him. I don’t even want to think about him."

"You can come stay with me again. Thierry will continue to take care of you."

"I told you, I want to stay."

She sighed and sank down into the mattress. "I’m sick of hiding from Ash. I want to belong somewhere, with people. I want to learn magic and not feel defenseless anymore. And I want to get Iliana the hell out of here. So go. Please."

Iliana watched Stephen-Kyle kneel down before his friend and take her hands in his. "Nina," he said, "please, think a minute. You saw what these people did back at the house. Do you really want your baby to grow up around killers?"

She leaned forward and said in almost a whisper, "Steve, my baby’s father is a killer."

Part Fourteen

Ash stood next to the public phone in the lobby, watching through the glass doors to Not Without My Gun’s counter, where Marty was testing the weight of a small gun in his hand. Ash caught his eye and shook his head. "Bigger," he mouthed, and saw Marty’s lips speak the word "rifle" to the salesman.

"-might not be the best course of action," a high-pitched voice was saying in his left ear. He watched Saina pick up a nifty crossbow and prop it against her elbow. She looked like she’d used one before.

"Screw the best course of action," Ash said. "We’re going in, and we’re going in hard. You can either send back-up or not."

"I can assure you that if Mona were here-"

"Mona’s dead, Pandora, in case they forgot to tell you, which wouldn’t surprise me one red drop."

There was silence, and then, "Dead?"

"These people, the same ones who have Iliana and Grahme’s son and my girlfriend, fried her in an oven. Not that it was quick, last time I called the office the guy on duty told me she was still hanging on by a thread."

Marty nodded and handed the sales clerk a credit card. Not Without My Gun was one of largest suppliers of ammunition against the Night World, and even better, they didn’t have a waiting period to buy a gun. Or whatever it is Saina was tossing onto the counter. Looked like some kind of blowgun.

"We’re going after them," Ash told Pandora. "It’s final, so just tell them to send out a team or whatever. We could use the help."

"I’ll do whatever I can," Pandora said, her voice hushed.

He paused. "You were friends with Mona, right?"

"She changed me."

He closed his eyes. When was he going to grow out of being an insensitive, self-centered jerk?

"I’m sorry."

She sniffled. "That’s okay. Go buy some guns and blow those bastard Chimera to pieces. If Circle Daybreak won’t reimburse you for it, I will."

He smiled and didn’t even correct her assumption that the Chimera witches were the guilty party. "Okay. Bye."

He hung up and walked into the shop, where Marty was trying to explain that they didn’t need boxes of any sort, just the guns and ammo. He’d almost asked if Pandora had heard from Quinn and Tern, but it was obvious that she was out of the loop. He just had this bad feeling about it, that something wasn’t right. He couldn’t stop thinking about Tern and how they’d drifted apart over the course of the last year. It had started really when he met Mary-Lynnette, but the distance had grown further when Tern met Juniper and Ash took up with Nina. Not that Tern hadn’t been there for him, but it hadn’t been the same as when they were kids.

"Ready?" he asked. Saina had slid the blowgun contraption over her arm; up close it appeared to be a device for throwing stars, a stash of which she had in a bag at her hip.

"Ready," Marty agreed. He lowered his voice. "Are they sending back up?"

"I don’t know. I think so, but we’re going to get to the scene first."

Marty nodded, his face dark.

"What’s wrong?" Ash asked. He was anticipating another catastrophic revelation.

"Nothing," Marty said. "I was just thinking how glad I am that Cafi’s not here."

Ash turned away and headed for the car. If only he could be so lucky...

It was a terse drive. Marty had acquired, in addition to Saina’s big weird star-thrower, a rifle with a high-powered scope, two handguns capable of sending off forty-eight shots before reloading, three machetes, and one machine gun. The ammunition was rotating iron and oak, iron because it usually slowed witches down, oak because the Echidna couldn’t transform anything made of a natural substance. At least, Marty hoped they couldn’t.

He turned off the road when Saina told him to and after she flicked the dashboard light off, he heard her folding up the map. Marty was in the back, making weapons click and snap and bullets rattle.

"Straight for about ten miles," she said. "It’s the only structure, so you can’t miss it."

Ash’s palms were damp against the steering wheel. There was snow piled three and four feet deep on both sides of the road, and it was coming down again. "Is this a suicide mission?" he asked suddenly.

"I sure as hell hope not," Marty muttered.

"No, really, we’re going in there, armed to the fangs with a bunch of human weapons that probably won’t hurt them, when we know perfectly well what they can do to people. What are our chances?"

Saina said crisply, "I thought we weren’t going to go in shooting? What happened to that plan?"

"Ask Marty, he’s the one who bought all the guns."

Saina twisted her head around.

"Hey, I’m just being cautious," Marty told her.

"You’re being trigger happy and you know it," Ash said.

"I’m not going to start shooting unless they shoot at us first, okay? But you’re right that they’re dangerous. We’re protecting ourselves."

No, Ash thought, we’re martyring ourselves.

They parked when lights became visible through the trees. The snow was coming down in thick, heavy clumps, like lost bits of snow cones. Ash moved with absolute silence through the forest, no matter how dense. Marty’s footsteps could be heard, but they blended in with the natural sounds of the woods and weren’t noticeable. Any noise Saina made was obliterated by the swooshing of her machete as she hacked furiously at the vegetation.

"Would you keep it down?" Ash hissed.

"It hardly matters," Marty pointed out. "Once we ring the bell, they’ll know we’re here."

There was no logic behind Ash’s incredible desire to open fire on the big rubber box-house, arranged like blocks in perfect symmetry above a steep drive. "How delightfully cubist," Ash growled as they walked up the front steps. Both vans were in the driveway, and while one showed signs of having been beaten up, Quinn and Tern, along with the mini-van, were nowhere to be seen.

While they were having an argument over which one of them was going to go back into the woods to run for help if - in Ash’s mind, it was a decisive when - things got tricky, the door opened.

The guy who was standing inside was Ash’s age or a year younger. He was dressed casually in synthetic materials and was unarmed. His eyes widened when he saw them.

"Saina!" he cried. "Don’t shoot me!"

Ash kicked the door to keep the kid from closing it.

"It’s okay, Lev," Saina told him, but he was looking past her.

"Martin?"

"Leveret?"

Marty tucked the gun in the waistband at the back of his jeans as if he were putting away his wallet and without hesitation reached out to embrace Lev in the familiar Chimera greeting that Ash had always found a little too familiar. He knew these two had grown up together, but was it really necessary for Marty to kiss Lev on the mouth?

Saina apparently saw nothing unusual about it, but then she was holding out her arms to hug Lev as well. "Oh, I’ve missed you," Lev said. "Jim said you swung by the house today, but I thought he was hallucinating. Come on in, you’re getting covered in snow." He glanced uncertainly at Ash. "There’s really no need for all those weapons," he said. "Unless you’re planning on going hunting or something."

Ash made no reply and didn’t lower the machine gun he was pointing at the boy’s chest. "Take us to your leader," he snapped.

Lev almost broke into a smile, but Ash waved the gun at him and he jumped back. "Okay, calm down," he said, realizing that while Saina and Marty weren’t going to kill him, they had little sway over Ash’s actions.

"Nick," he called. "Um, there are some people here to see you. They have a number of weapons."

He continued to back up, but there wasn’t the sort of fear in his face that Ash had anticipated. He looked almost smug.

They were lead to a living room, occupied with bean bag chairs and an inflatable Darth Maul throne, where Marty was greeted by another old friend, Max.

"Nick is going to be so happy to see you," Max said, apparently unaware of the hostile situation.

"This is an invasion," Ash told him shortly, "not a family reunion."

Max glanced him over, and without warning the gun in Ash’s hands began to melt. He swore and dropped it. The string of bullets crossing his chest like crooked suspenders dripped down his shirt as molten lead. He could feel it burning his flesh.

"Max," said a voice from the hallway. The liquefying metal froze and hardened instantly, and Ash turned to see Nick standing behind them. No introductions were necessary, he knew it was Nick by the way the Echidna held himself so tensely despite the casual, lanky build fate had given him. His shadowed eyes and pale, chapped lips spoke of stress, but he was unexpectedly beautiful. His gaze drifted between eye lashes even lighter than his blond hair.

No one spoke. Ash watched him inspect them each, looking away only when he came to Saina. "What’s going on?" he asked finally.

Ash broke in before one of the Echidna could get started. "We’re with Circle Daybreak. We’re here for the Wild Power and the others."

Nick nodded and fell silent again. Ash noticed with an unsettled feeling that he could sense another vampire near by, something he hadn’t expected. Physically, he was more powerful than the Echidna, and it was an advantage he had hoped to keep.

"Hello, Saina," Nick said, breaking the strained quietness.

"Nick," she replied.

"Marty."

"Nick."

The round of recognition was almost comical, Ash thought, and it grew even more so when Nick said, "Marty, I can explain all of th-"

"No, Nicholas, don’t," Marty said, closing the space between them and holding out his arms. "Just come here."

Nick’s voice trembled. "Martin."

Ash watched them holding each other. Marty’s fingers brushed between the strands of over-grown hair hanging down Nick’s neck, and Nick cupped Marty’s face in both hands before laying another tender kiss on his mouth.

No wonder he sent Cafi to a hotel, Ash thought. Best friends, my ass.

He didn’t really believe there was anything other than brotherly going on between the two. The Chimera were a touchy bunch; that was one of the reasons Ash had never gotten along with them. But he was angry, and growing frustrated and anxious for a battle that refused to be fought.

Nick spoke softly to Max, and the younger man left the room. "We have to talk," he said to Marty, then fumbled for words. "I can’t believe you’re here." A laugh. "And with Saina."

She started to glare at him, then shrugged into a smile. "Don’t I get a kiss hello, too?"

This time Ash had to stifle the urge to say, "Come on, break it up." He had expected this encounter to be bloody, but not passionately emotional.

By the time Nick and Saina were finished enjoying bodily contact, Max had returned.

And he had Iliana in tow.

She was messy and damp and her clothes didn’t fit and she looked like the dirty twin of the girl Ash knew, but she was unharmed. And unshackled; she threw herself into Ash’s arms so fast he barely had time to lower the machete he’d pulled out when Max melted his gun.

"Oh, god," she cried, burying her face in his shoulder.

"You’re all free to go," Nick said. "Although...I wouldn’t mind if you stayed for coffee. It’s been a long time..."

Behind Max were Quinn and a guy Ash didn’t recognize but whose stance spoke of being a prisoner. "Stephen-Kyle?" he asked.

The boy nodded, he reached out to brush his fingers against Iliana’s shoulder blade and she let go of Ash to turn to him. "You’re both all right?" Marty asked.

Iliana nodded, her eyes welling with tears. "I’m sorry," she told them, "I just want to get the hell out of here."

Stephen-Kyle wrapped his arm around her shoulder and she collapsed against him.

"What about you?" Ash asked, seeing Quinn limp toward him.

"I’ll mend. We should leave immediately."

"Where’s Nina?"

He shook his head. "Forget about Nina, Ash."

Ash stared at him, forgetting entirely his surroundings. "She’s dead?" he whispered.

"She’s converted," Nick answered softly. "She’s decided to stay with us."

When had all this cotton gotten stuffed in his brain? he wondered. This was totally insane.

"You’re full of shit," he said.

"Ash," Quinn began.

"No," he snapped. "No bloody way Nina’s going to stay with you. I’m not going to believe it until-"

"Believe it."

Another arrival in the doorway. This one leaning against the plastic frame, wet air combed off her face, a ghost beyond her haunting ground.

"Hi, Marty," Nina said. "It’s nice to see you." She looked down at her feet.

The cotton had dripped down to fill Ash’s mouth; he couldn’t speak. Nina’s borrowed shirt almost covered the bulge at her waist but not quite, and there was a flush in her cheeks he’d never seen before. When people had talked about women glowing when they were pregnant, he’d always thought it was BS, and he thought so again as he gaped at Nina’s slouching shoulders. Gone was the invincible, defensive, smart-mouthed bitch he’d driven to the hospital in the middle of a rain storm.

Another thought hit him; he could feel the sting on his cheek.

Had he done this to her?

If they had never met, would she be attending Rachel University still, trying to prove her independence to the world, taking care not to appear weak even at her most vulnerable moments? Would she be better off if he hadn’t come along?

"I’m staying here," she said to the room at large, but in a voice that was small. "I’ve decided to stay and support Circle Echidna’s vie for a place in Circle Daybreak. That’s what you can tell Thierry when you see him."

"You can’t stay here," Ash said suddenly. "You’re coming home."

She looked pointedly at him. Their eyes met for the first time, and somewhere inside her he could feel the rage boiling. "I don’t have a home," she told him. "I don’t have anywhere to go, or anyone to run to."

"You know I’ll take care of you-"

"Know? How would I know that, Ash?"

Silence began to descend on the room, and then Nick said, "The situation, as it stands, is that Nina will be staying here. The others are free to go. I’m very happy to see Marty and Saina, but tonight might not be the best time for us to catch up, so why don’t you give me your phone number and I’ll give you a call."

Ash glared incredulously at everyone. "Are you joking?" he demanded, his voice echoing in the plastic room.

"Please," Stephen-Kyle said, speaking for the first time. "Nina wants to stay. And Nick is right, it’s been a long day, and we all need to get some rest before we start talking about this."

Marty and Saina were nodding. Ash just couldn’t believe the situation presented to him. They were all going to smile and say good night, and leave Nina here with that baby he hadn’t even allowed himself to think about in the hands of a cult which had killed three people already?

Or was if four? "Where’s Tern?" he asked loudly.

Quinn’s hand was on his arm. "Not now, Ash."

"No, where’s Tern? He left with you in the mini-van, and you’re here, but where’s he?"

Nick turned his back on the room, and Saina visibly restrained herself from touching him.

"The van blew up," Quinn said, quietly, simply. "Tern died."

Tern died.

Nina winced and lifted her hand to her eyes. Ash knew he was making her head hurt, projecting his thoughts all around like this, screaming them into the telepathic void. His head hurt, too.

"Tern died," he repeated.

"Yes."

Tern, his best friend for more than a decade, who had taught him how to feed off fish, and denied for years his rampant crush on Rowan, and known that Circle Daybreak was the right place to be long before Ash had begun considering it, was dead. He was dead.

"Ash," Quinn was saying, "come on. It’s time to leave."

He could hear Iliana crying, but his vision wouldn’t clear. The room looked like a smudged charcoal drawing. Then his eyes focused on Nick and a wave of pain so bitter and angry washed over him that he started shaking. His fangs unsheathed themselves and a growl build deep in his chest.

"You bastard," he hissed. "You stinking piece of shit. You idiot. You’ve killed four people, four good people, in the last two days, and you think I’m just going to walk out, leaving my girlfriend here? How fucking stupid are you?"

By that time, Quinn was pushing him physically toward the door, but an expression of confusion passed over Nick’s face and he said in a voice that stopped them all, "Wait."

It was just one word. A single word that Ash didn’t think had even come from inside Nick, but from a primary, primitive, destructive thing residing in the void of his subconscious. And Ash knew, when he heard that word, that he should never have gotten on Nick’s bad side.

The room had stopped, as though posing for a portrait. Saina and Nick were standing against the closet door. Nina had just taken a few steps away from the hall so that she was poised in the living room proper. Marty, Iliana, and Stephen-Kyle had almost made it to the door. Quinn was forcing Ash in the same direction. Lev was leaning on the card table, which held two computers, Max had his feet planted between the wires that ran from their portals through the wall.

"When did people die?" Nick asked. "Your friend was in a car accident, it exploded and one of my friends died, too. But when did these other people die?"

His question was direction to Ash; they were all surprised to hear Iliana answer.

"How can you not remember? There were the two guards in the living room you killed, and Mona." Her cornflower blue eyes had turned navy. "How can you forget when you made that oven grab Mona and burn her to death?"

Nick’s chest began to rise and fall quickly. He turned to Max and Lev. "What happened?" he demanded, to Ash’s amazement. "No one was supposed to die."

Lev shrugged. "I was with you."

Max swallowed but refused to answer.

"Chris!" Nick shouted. "Come here!"

"Wait a minute," Ash said. "Weren’t you there?"

"I was supposed to be, but just as we were walking toward the house, Lev...."

His face changed with understanding. "You faked it, didn’t you?" he spat. "You faked that asthma attack so that I would have to stay in the van. What did you do while I gone, Max? What the hell did you do?!"

A man around the age of forty, older in appearance at least than anyone else in the room by at least fifteen years, stopped in the doorway.

"Better let me handle this, Max," he said. His face and body were unremarkably ordinary, but his chest was puffed with attitude.

His strode between them until he was standing in the center of the room, and his expression was not one of guilt or defeat or even relief, but pride. He was proud of what had happened, Ash realized, and that, more than anything else, infuriated him.

Even with Chris trying to draw the room’s attention to himself, Ash felt eyes and saw Nina looking at him. For a moment, the situation’s tensions were forgotten. All he could think was that this was Nina Rosette, and he wanted to find a place where he could sit down and put his arms around her. Forgotten was the anger, guilt, and self-pity that had built up over the past four months. He didn’t care about the mistakes he had made, and the mistakes she had made, and the truly wicked games Fate had been playing with them since they met. Underneath all of that, there was something between them he wanted to hold onto.

"Nick," Chris said, and the spell was abruptly broken. Nina looked away hastily and brushed the tears from her eyes. Ash’s grip on his machete loosened. He felt weak and tired, but he reluctantly focused his attention on the man before him.

"When you started Circle Echidna," Chris told Nick, "you had a vision of something powerful and respected, and you worked for it. I’ve never seen someone so young work so hard. And you brought us all here and taught us, and you built this circle from the ground. You did well, Nick.

"But times change, and you haven’t. Circle Echidna is ready not just to whine for a place in the Night World, but to fight for it. While I’m grateful for where you’ve brought us, your time at the wheel is over."

Nick looked at him sullenly. "Do you honestly think that violence is going to get you where you want to go?"

Chris dodged the question easily. "I think Circle Echidna deserves a leader willing to make sacrifices."

Ash didn’t understand Nick’s sudden, bitter laughter, but it obviously startled everyone in the room as well. He stepped toward Chris without his usual taut self-awareness and said, "You’re such a fool. I never dreamed."

Chris wasn’t too pleased about that response. He folded his arms. "The others are with me. Even little Fran."

Nick shrugged. A kind of hysteria had come into his features. "You don’t get it, do you?" he asked, and then he laughed again. "Everybody who isn’t Echidna, get out. That includes you, Miss Rosette."

"No," Chris cried. "No one is leaving."

The front door slammed open so hard that the upper corner created an indention in the wall behind it and stuck there, holding it open. Everyone jumped, and Nick said again, "Get out."

"Nick," Saina started.

"No." He turned to see her. "Especially you. Go outside."

He didn’t wait to see Saina’s hurt features, and Ash wasn’t going to waste this chance. "Move," he said quickly, and, trusting Quinn to make sure Iliana got outside, he strode to the spot where Nina was standing.

She pulled her hands away when he reached for them, then pursed her lips and looked down. "Nina," he said, "come on. Let’s get out of here."

Finally she acquiesced with a grudging tilt of her head, but by the time they had turned toward the door, their path was blocked by Max and Lev, the latter appearing somewhat less certain about his place. Everyone else was already outside.

"No," Chris said again.

Nick’s apparent lack of concern was disconcerting. "Let them go," he said.

"The Wild Power stays. I don’t care about him."

With Iliana safely outside, Ash was free to say, "She’s not the Wild Power."

All eyes flashed to him, and he said, "Didn’t you realize we would have a decoy in place? Nina’s human. A smart," he stopped and looked at her, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. "Human," he finished. "But just a human."

Nick recovered from the shock first. "And now Echidna," he added. "Promise me something, Miss Rosette."

Her voice was tight. "Anything."

"If you live through tonight, you won’t use what we taught you here to ever do anything like Chris has, anything violent or cruel. You’re not as strong as we are, but with practice you could be. I don’t want to die knowing that I’ve unleashed another psychic Hilter on the world."

The words came easier this time. "Of course."

He nodded.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Chris demanded.

"It’s simple," Nick explained. "Why do we lord over plastic? Because we made it. It’s the truth on which Circle Echidna is founded. And guess who made Circle Echidna?"

There was a moment of horrified silence, and then the building exploded.

Part Fifteen

Iliana was debating whether or not she would be considered cowardly for fainting at this point when Rubber Cupboard’s existence came to an end. Then it didn’t matter, because she was being thrown to the ground, which was trembling beneath her, and instinctively fighting to stay awake just so that she could crawl away.

The five of them had just finished the descent down the very steep driveway and were thrown into the waist-deep snow lining either side of road. Iliana saw Saina wisely pitch her gun into the air and away from herself as she lost control. Her knee, which had been so sore a few hours ago, accepted the brunt of her weight without protest and she tumbled onto her stomach.

"Where are Ash and Nina?" Stephen-Kyle asked. It was an earthquake, Iliana realized, seeing how the road pavement had cracked.

"Inside," Marty called, having to shout over the sound of matter twisting.

In the days ahead, Iliana would learn the word "implode." It meant, "to burst or collapse inward," according to the dictionary, and this was apparently what Rubber Cupboard did just when the entire house and its contents were crushed into a thick, ball-like mass of plastic.

At which point the house exercised the exact opposite operation of imploding, exploding.

It’s precarious position at the top of the drive was lost. In fact, the entire driveway seemed to dissolve into a jumble of cracked plastic sheets, spiky beams and gushing rubber. It looked like a Sunday where the house was the ice cream and the concrete was the Oreo chunks sprinkled on top.

There were people inside the house screaming. Their terrified howls were interspersed with grinding made by the foundation being blended from a solid chunk to a fine sand.

"Move," Saina gasped. "Go, go, the house is coming down."

The house is already down, Iliana thought, but then she saw what Saina meant. The steep angle the house had been built on had been a strategic advantage, but now this warped rubber dollhouse was beginning to slide down to the road.

She grabbed Stephen-Kyle’s hand and they threw themselves forward into deeper snow. The five of them scrambled, perpendicular to the house’s path. Iliana ran smack into a tree branch in the dark that almost took her eye out, then rebounded and her nose bashed numbingly into the trunk. She could feel the warm blood streaming down her lips like water over Niagra Falls.

The house, ball, mass of plastic, whatever one could call it at that point, hit the flat of the road and came to a crash landing. The walls solidified and smashed. The computer monitors, with their vacuumed cores, imploded and exploded the same way the house had. Fires flamed and then burned out without fuel. Smog, patches of air so dense with grease and smoke they were palpable, burst between the trees.

Iliana collapsed on her back. Snow rose up around her like walls, pure and white, cool and calm. She wiped at the blood on her face, grimaced at her freezing hands, and then something dark went flying through the air and landed less than half a foot from her.

She screamed at the top of her lungs as the snow walls fell in around her. The snow got in her mouth, her eyes, the collar of her shirt. Black hands reached for her, a gasping was rough in her ears.

"Get off me!" she howled.

"It’s Nick!" Marty cried. "Isis shat! Iliana, don’t move."

She forced herself to be still, while something not of her making dripped down the side of her face. Shortly the weight was removed, and a hoarse, hacking chuckle began.

"I can’t believe I’m alive," Nick mumbled. He seemed to be highly amused.

"Neither can I," Saina told him, and Iliana slowly climbed onto her knees. She batted through the snow walls until she found the semblance of clearing a few feet away where Saina and Marty were laying Nick down.

"Kyle?" she called.

"Over here."

He was in the opposite direction, looking for her. His wrist was bent in a distinctly painful-looking manner.

"It’s okay," he said. "I mean, it’s broken, but I think nothing else is. God, is your nose okay?"

She nodded. The blood flow was already starting to slow. His wrist needed to be immobilized, she thought, and packed in ice if possible. The latter would be no problem, given all the snow, but for the life of her, she couldn’t get the shirt she had borrowed to tear.

Stephen-Kyle touched her arm. "Don’t worry about it," he said, and proceeded to lop some snow onto her face. It stung, and made her more aware than ever of her sinuses throbbing, but she kept it on.

"Is Nick okay?" he called.

"We need the van," Marty said. "He’s...."

"Barely breathing," Nick supplied, and resumed his grainy chuckling.

"This isn’t the time for joking," Saina told him.

"I know. I have-" he paused, struggling for breath. "-terrible timing."

"How are you and Iliana?" Marty called, and she reached out to knock away the snow between them.

"Broken wrist, broken nose, otherwise I think we’re fine. How are you guys?"

"It’s not broken," Iliana told him, horrified by the thought.

"I think I’m unharmed," Marty said. "Saina’s dislocated her knee, so I’ll go for the van. Try to...hold tight."

Iliana and Stephen-Kyle crawled to take Marty’s place next to Nick. His body was flat on its back, but his head had been scraped as if during a botched scalping. Saina’s hair was the only thing blocking blood from running right into his eyes.

"You showed up just in time," Nick said.

"To do what?" Saina asked.

"I don’t know. Gave me just enough time to tell you that I love you, and I’m sorry. Just enough time. Isn’t it weird?"

Iliana could see Saina fighting tears. "It’s weird," she agreed.

"Isn’t it strange?" Nick’s voice was starting to get slurred. "How we all feel a little bit weird sometimes?"

Saina couldn’t help laughing, and she leaned down to kiss him. "You’re going to be fine, Nick."

He made an incoherent, groggy sound and closed his eyes.

"Wait a minute," Iliana said suddenly. Her voice was nasal with all the snow packed against her face. "Where’s Quinn?"

They all paused. Nick laughed miserably and started coughing.

"Shit," Saina hissed. "Quinn! Quinn, can you hear me?!"

"I’m okay," came a distant voice.

"I’ll find him," Iliana offered, getting to her knees. When Stephen-Kyle started to rise with her, she said, "No, stay here. Marty’s going to need help getting these two into the van. I can get Quinn."

His grasp lingered on her hand a moment. "Be careful, okay?"

She nodded. His touch was like warm water on her skin, and she knew she’d come back because all she wanted to do was let him make her entire sore body feel like that.

Quinn was a hundred feet away, limping painfully on a horrifically bent leg away from them. "We’re in the other direction," Iliana told him, as she tried to take some of his weight and turn him in the opposite direction.

"I know, but I think I saw some one land over here."

Iliana followed his line of sight. Just blackness and sparkling snow, shadows running between the two.

"I’ll go," she said. "You head back."

"No."

"Whoever it is is probably dead," she told him.

"You’re still the first priority. Go back to the others."

"Quinn," she said in exasperation, "both of your legs are broken. I can see the bones popping out."

She could. It was really gross.

"My nose is still bleeding, if anything goes wrong," she lowered her voice, just in case Stephen-Kyle might be able to hear her, "I’ll just use the blue fire."

She wasn’t sure if, should the situation arise, she would be able to bring herself to do it, but it comforted Quinn enough that he gave in and started back toward the others. Iliana thought that her chances of finding anyone were slim, and the chances that anyone she did find would be alive, but she kept going. The clump of snow fell off her face and she didn’t replace it. Her hands were numb beyond belief, and she could only be grateful that she was wearing shoes.

"Hello?" she called as she walked, pushing the snow away with high steps and her thighs. "Anybody out there? I’m here to help, I promise not to hurt you."

For a long time no one responded, and then, just as she was getting ready to turn around, she heard a stifled moan.

"Hello?"

No answer, and then a short burst of uncontrollable gasping to her left. Iliana turned and pushed through the snow until she found a place where the smooth crush had been broken.

At the bottom of a four-foot well of ice, Nina was curled in a puddle of blood.

Iliana fell down beside her, and Nina opened her eyes. Her breathing was shallow and shuddering. "Nothing’s broken," she whispered between blue lips. "Just go away."

"You’re freezing," Iliana told her, aware that walking here had actually warmed her up a little. "Come on, if you can walk, I can get you to the van."

"I can’t stand up."

"Why not?" There was blood in the snow, but no visible wounds, and if nothing was broken...

In response, Nina suddenly exhaled and curled up tighter. Her hands made fists in the cloth of her sweat pants.

"Nina?" Iliana cried, grabbing the older girl’s arm. Her skin was so cold it was rubbery.

Nina’s eyes remained pinched shut, her face contorted, for several seconds, then she fell back weakly, panting. "Just go," she whispered.

"I don’t understand."

"Just go, please, go now-"

Another fit seized her, and Iliana finally saw what should have been obvious. "You’re in labor."

Nina’s fingers clenched until she drew blood from her own palms. "Miscarriage," she whispered. "Too soon, I hit my stomach when I fell. I’m bleeding like crazy."

The blood was, Iliana realized, seeping out of the sweat pants. She looked at the stained snow, which appeared black in this light, and felt herself grow dizzy.

I don’t want to be here to watch Nina and her baby die, she thought. I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to be here, I don’t wan...

It was possible that she passed out, because she didn’t become aware of her surroundings again until Nina’s pain became intolerable and she cried out in agony. Then Iliana found herself moving without thinking, sliding the jacket Quinn had given her off so that she could wrap it around Nina and helping to prop her up against the base of a tree.

"Just let me die," Nina begged. "Please, just let me die already, okay?"

Her hands tore the bark off the lowest branches of the tree, drawing more blood from her fingers as another contraction began.

Iliana shook her head. Tears turned to ice as they ran down her cheeks.

"Don’t you see what’s going on here?" Nina was saying. "It can end right here. I’ll fall asleep, the baby will sleep, and it’ll all be over."

"Ash-"

"Ash won’t care! Ash can go back to Mary-Lynnette and they’ll have dozens of half-vamp kids and she won’t mind! She won’t-"

The contractions were almost constant now, and Iliana knew it was because this was no ordinary birth. No life was being gently forced into the world, it was being sacrificed by Nina’s body in an attempt to stay alive.

"I don’t want to do this," Nina was whispering. "I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and be here again."

"You’re going to be fine," Iliana told her. She adjusted Nina’s legs and found that the crotch of the sweat pants had split sometime during the fall. She carefully ripped the seam further and Nina shoved her away with surprising force.

"Let it die," she swore. Her eyes burned, molten silver and coal. "Let me die and all of it die with me."

Iliana tried to reach toward her again, but Nina’s right had swung up from the snow with a branch the thickness of her thumb in it, and there was an explosion of pain in her temple. She tumbled backwards, unable to see any of the stars except in batches of two and three. Her arms felt weak. She was going to pass out again, she knew it.

The confusion failed to dissipate with time, and even when she heard Nina crying continuously, she couldn’t find it in her to sit up. The darkness was so inviting, so much warmer than the world...

In the distance, Nina stopped sobbing.

Alex was beating on the mirror when she finally gave him her attention. He’d been crying, too; tear-stained squares of toilet paper littered the bathroom counter he was kneeling on.

She smiled at him, as a little of the fear left his expression. "It’s okay," Iliana told him. "I’m all right."

He shook his head, and he mouth worked but she couldn’t hear what he said. He kept pointing to something behind her.

"What?" she asked. "Nina?"

He nodded.

"Nina’s dead."

The image of his mouth saying, "No, no!" was distinct.

"She wants to be dead," Iliana tried.

Alex shook his head, then reached up with one fist and shattered the mirror.

Iliana opened her eyes, and the sky was clear. Snow had fallen almost half an inch thick on her face, but her line of sight was unhindered.

She could go back to sleep if she wanted. Stephen-Kyle would come looking for her soon enough, she probably wouldn’t freeze to death. Or else she could sit up and try to deal one more time with this awful snow-birth before her.

When are you going to stop being such a frightened little girl and do your duty? she wondered. When are you going to stop being a coward and let everyone else do the work? When are you going to replay Nina for all those times she’s saved you?

She sat up. Nausea filled her throat for a moment, but it passed and her eyes adjusted slowly to the image before her. Nina had fallen off the tree and saw laying in the snow on her back. Her body cavorted without her knowledge, and as Iliana knelt beside her, the writhing was coming to its pitch.

The final convolution was like the whole horrible night had been, intense and without end. Iliana put her modesty aside and reached between the torn folds of the sweat pants until blood and slick fluid gushed over her hands, and her fingers found the shape of a scull being delivered into it.

She didn’t pull; she had a horrible vision of the baby’s head popping right off. A second afterward Nina’s body throbbed again and her right hand grappled to find purchase on the slender shoulders.

A moment later she had no choice but to lift the baby up and away, or else expose its tender flesh to the bite of the snow. She cradled it against her chest and tried to wrap the folds of her shirt around it, hindered slightly by the binding tether of the umbilical chord.

The baby was no larger than a month-old kitten. It’s eyes were closed, the flesh was warm, but motionless.

Iliana held it out in front of her, trembling all over, and almost dropped it when she realized that it was dead. Only the uncontrollable clenching of her hands kept it in her grasp.

She had delivered a dead child into the world. She was covered in the birth gore, and only this tiny corpse had come out of it. Her friend had suffered for nothing.

Unexpectedly, she heard a soft whisper. "Clear the airways."

"What?" Her eyes darted to the slumped form on the ground.

Nina blinked slowly, her consciousness reluctant. "Put your finger in its mouth and clear its throat."

Of course. Not all babies are born breathing, Iliana recalled, as she gently wiggled one finger into the stillborn’s mouth and poked at an indention that she supposed marked its throat.

Nothing happened. Nina had closed her eyes again.

Iliana lifted the baby, put her lips to its, and blew the tiniest puff of air she could manage. Her own breath was ragged, and her lips came away damp with blood. It covered the child’s body in uneven clumps, a smeared splatter pattern over the gray skin.

The chest had lifted, now it fell slowly. Iliana forced herself to blow another breath, then put two fingers against the baby’s chest and tapped. First barely pressing, then with more confidence, and blew another breath.

She could feel blood moving through the body, but only at her urging, and the lungs refused to inflate without her help. She didn’t know if she was helping or hurting.

"Nina," she begged, between breaths, "what should I do?"

Nina opened her eyes again. Wearily, she set herself up against the tree trunk and held out her arms.

Iliana hesitated. Nina could just break the baby’s neck if she wanted, just snap its fragile bones. But it was Nina’s child, and the fury that had possessed her before birth had melted away. Iliana held the baby out.

It rested peacefully in her two hands, and Nina studied it like an open prayer book. Iliana hovered close to them, close enough that she could see Nina’s tears drip off her cheeks and onto the alien, blue body.

"I’m sorry," Nina whispered once. She bent her head and lay a kiss on her baby’s forehead.

Iliana couldn’t help but start crying passionately then. They were both crying, and Nina turned her head to lay it against Iliana’s shoulder. "Thank you for taking care of me," she said.

"Thank you for taking care of me."

They were still holding onto each other, cradling the baby between them as if to keep it warm, when Stephen-Kyle found his way through the snow drifts. "Gods," he gasped, when he saw them, and fell to his knees.

Iliana closed her eyes, happy to let him take over. She was so tired, and she needed the thread of comfort sitting and leaning on Nina provided.

"I have Marty’s pocket knife," he was saying. "Let me get the umbilical chord."

Nina reluctantly handed the corpse to him. Her hand moved to stroke Iliana’s hair and hold her close.

"You okay, Nina?"

She nodded mutely.

"What a miracle," he went on. "What a bloody amazing miracle."

It was then Iliana opened her eyes and realized that the baby was kicking.

"What are you going to name your daughter, Nina?" Stephen-Kyle asked, and this time when oblivion offered its hand, Iliana gladly accepted.

Part Sixteen

When Ash finally walked to the doorway of Nina’s hospital room, his legs had started to hurt. He’d been crouching on the floor of the handicapped stall in a men’s bathroom for the last two hours. Quinn had tried to talk to him and he’d pushed him away, even when he insisted that Ash needed to see a healer. He hadn’t needed Quinn to tell him that, the burnt skin that kept flaking off his chest made it obvious enough. He had been unconscious for at least an hour before he woke to find himself buried under two tons of collapsed plastic housing, and it had been another three hours before a Circle Daybreak member heard the smothered rendition of "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall," and pulled him out.

Another hour found him feeding off an airline attendant while he waited to board a plane that would take him to Fog Grey Hospital, a human-witch establishment that used both magic and science to treat its patients. Nina had been transferred there in critical condition.

She was in surgery when he arrived to find Quinn waiting for him in the lobby, both legs rubbery with healing. He had seen the blood on the ground, heard the word "miscarriage," used back at the site, he held up a hand when Quinn tried to talk to him. Then he’d gone to the bathroom where he could lean against the wall. The thoughts of Tern and his dead child wrapped his mind in barbed wire, threatening to tear it open, but the tears that had always come so hard were even harder now.

He got up after an hour and found an empty nurse’s station, where he helped himself to a long-distance call. Jade answered; Rowan and Maegan had gone out to dinner, and Kestrel was hitch-hiking with her shapeshifter boyfriend. Ash asked to have Rowan call him when she returned; he answered negatively when Jade asked if he wanted to talk to her about it. He’d long since stopped feeling guilty about picking favorites among his sisters; they’d long since stopped being offended by it.

Afterward, he went back to the bathroom and thought about calling Mary-Lynnette. He had memorized the phone number for her office when she had given it to him five months earlier. All he had to do was pick up a phone and dial, and her voice would be there...

But instead, he found himself standing into the doorway to Nina’s hospital room an hour after she had come out of recovery. A nurse took her temperature and her blood pressure, and he stopped her on her way out.

"How is she?"

The nurse had that witchy twinkle in her eyes. "She’s stable, but it’s still serious."

Nina was asleep under a sheet that did nothing to hide the metal contraption her hips were immobilized in. Crushed vertebrae had been the final diagnosis, from crash-landing against a tree trunk. The unexpected birth hadn’t helped keep things in line any, either.

She was in no danger of paralysis, but the injuries had the potential to become life threatening. When they pulled her out of the snow she had lost a lot of blood, was well on her way to freezing to death, and been in a severe state of shock. No one had expected her to survive the helicopter ride to Fog Grey.

Ash left the door open just a crack and stepped up to the edge of the bed. His hands wrapped around the cold metal rails. There were bruises covering one side of Nina’s face, sprinkled with spots of frostbite. She looked dead; her lips were colorless and the blood vessels in her eyelids were broken.

He sat down in the chair next to the bed. He knew the limitations of humans, he expected her to die any minute. He expected to lose her one final time.

Too many dead people in this bloody business of his, in this bloody existence. He simply didn’t know if he had the strength to try to work things out.

He reached for the phone sitting on the swing table beside the bed and cradled the receiver. His gaze still resting on Nina, he dialed.

It was on the second ring that she opened her eyes and looked at him. There was no surprise, no hazy confusion in them, only acceptance of what was. Resignation.

Third ring. He had no idea how, but she knew who he was calling. She was helpless to stop the tears from filling her eyes.

Fourth ring. "When am I going to stop being a replacement for her?" she asked in a whisper like the stab of a tiny knife.

Fifth ring, broken off in the middle. "Hello?"

Ash stared into Nina’s brown eyes as the voice rang in his ear.

"Hello?"

The pain there was so much brighter than his anger had ever been, and he knew that this mistake, this ill-conceived child of theirs, had brought her more pain that it had ever brought him. Any resentment he might have felt for her was swallowed in the ache to heal her.

"Who is this?"

He hung up and put the receiver back in its cradle. Nina closed her eyes, rolled her head slightly and then stopped abruptly. Her crying became difficult and labored.

Ash unlocked the bed rail and folded it down. He lay his face close to hers on the pillow and said softly, "I love you."

Her shoulders shook. Ash knew without asking that shocks of pain were being sent down her back. "That’s the only time you’ve ever said that," she told him. "More than a year, and it’s the only time."

He found her hand under the sheet and rubbed the stiff, cold fingers between his own. "I know. But it’s not the only time, just the first."

When it became obvious that her crying was exhausting her, he kissed her eyelids and hushed her. "I can’t do this anymore," she told him.

"Then don’t. Go to sleep, Nina, I’m right here beside you. Go to sleep and I’ll be here when you wake up. Nothing matters except that I love you. Nothing else matters."

She was too worn out to vent her swarming emotions. Ash pushed the hair off her forehead and held her hand until she fell asleep, then turned to see the nurse coming back to check her vitals again.

While she cleverly tucked the thermometer into Nina’s mouth without waking her, she whispered to Ash, "Have you seen her?"

He was annoyed by the question. After all, he was sitting right next to her, wasn’t he? "She woke up for a few minutes," he answered finally.

"No," the nurse chirped. "The baby."

Huh? What? Wait a fucking second...

Ash gaped at her. "They baby died," he said, when his mouth was capable of forming words again.

"What?" She lifted her eyebrows in horror. "When did that happen? Oh, I’m so sorry. She was doing so well when I went down to the nursery an hour ago."

Another moment of processing was required. "I thought it was a miscarriage," he said. "I thought the baby was born dead."

"You mean..." The nurse finally shook her head. "She was a stillbirth, but they got her heart going after she was born, and when I was in the nursery, she was doing just fine. Wasn’t even on the lung machine."

"The nursery in this hospital?" he asked.

"Right upstairs."

"And you’re sure it was Nina’s baby?"

"Little girl was the first thing she asked about when she came out of surgery."

Ash couldn’t catch his breath. Each heartbeat was a strain. "If she wakes up, tell her I’ll be right back," he said, and scrambled to the door.

He found Quinn in the nursery, an impossibly small baby cradled in his arms. Since it was the only child besides a set of werewolf twins covered in matted fur, he had to assume it was Nina’s.

His, too.

Quinn looked up when he came in, and gave an unexpected, sweet smile. "I was wondering when you’d finally figure it out," he said, rocking the bundle of blankets in his arms.

Ash approached hesitantly. "It is really Nina’s baby?" he asked.

Quinn adjusted the blankets so the baby’s face was visible. It was small and while as an egg shell, even the lips, but her head had a shock of black hair. She looked up at Ash with eyes he thought initially were blue, but seemed to change color in the light. "I tried to tell you earlier," Quinn said, "but you were so upset about Tern, I thought I should give you some time."

Ash nodded. He didn’t know what he felt, expect that he was still surprised to find Quinn holding a baby.

"I didn’t think you liked kids," he managed. He wondered if there was a chair around he could sit in.

"She reminds me of my sister," he said.

"I didn’t know you had a sister."

"I had five." A strange tenderness was in Quinn’s eyes. "But they’ve all been dead a long time."

Ash swallowed. "Hold out your arms," Quinn said.

He thought about running away, seriously considered it for a moment before Quinn settled the rediculously light bundle in his arms. "She’s small," he said, as Ash stared and stared. "But she’ll be all right."

There is no way this is my child, Ash thought. It’s just completely inconceivable...

Only she was looking at him with eyes that were too focused to be human, and too hungerless to be vampire, and he could see even in this miniature form that her mouth was formed the same as his.

"People are starting to say that mixed babies have the best of both worlds," Quinn went on. "Have you spoken to Nina?"

"Only for a second. She was....tired."

"Ash."

He looked up at Quinn’s face and saw his lip curl. "Don’t screw around with her, okay? You two have a daughter to take care of now."

Hearing it said aloud only made him more aware of what he already knew. "I won’t."

"Good." Quinn touched his shoulder briefly. "I’m going to go check on Nick."

"He’s alive?"

"In a coma, but he could come out. I’ll see you in a few hours."

Ash looked back at the baby. Her eyes had fallen shut, and her head was lolling to one side. "Oh, wait, Quinn?" he asked, just before his friend reached the nursery door.

"Yes?"

"Does she have a name?"

Quinn’s voice was laced with amusement. "Carabelissima Ashlyn Rosette. Congratulations, Ash."

With a doctor’s permission, Ash took the baby back downstairs and settled in the chair by Nina’s bed. "What will we call you?" he mused, watching them both sleep. "Carrie? Belle?"

Minutes passed, and his contentment faded as understanding formed. They were all three alive, but that didn’t mean all sins were forgotten, and it didn’t mean their future was assured. All it meant for certain was that he would have to work that much harder to hold onto those he loved.

He was there when Nina woke up, and when the baby woke up, and when they both fell asleep, and when they both woke up again.

Part Seventeen

Cafi was out the hotel room door and throwing her good arm around Marty before he even had time say hello. He lifted her up off the ground and kissed her hair, her shoulder, the brace still immobilizing her arm.

"It’s okay," he told her. "I’m here. We got back safely."

She pulled away to plant a kiss on his mouth, and shoved a stiff pile of rectangular pages into his hand.

"What is this?" he asked, setting her back on the ground.

"Plane tickets. Round trip to Las Vegas, redeemable on any flight leaving between yesterday and next Sunday."

He stared at the tickets with her name printed on them. Las Vegas.

Cafi wetted her lips, waiting for his response. "I thought, I don’t know, they’re refundable if you don’t want-"

"No," he interrupted. He looked up and smiled at her. "When does the next flight leave?"

She laughed nervously. "Hour and a half."

"Then I better call a cab."

Iliana watched the cremations on WICH, a very exclusive cable channel that broadcast nothing but Circle Daybreak news and monster movies. The ceremony was held at midnight in the desert, bodies piled between the logs no longer capable of hurting them, torchlight falling unnaturally on the faces of the mourners.

"For those of you just joining us," said the well-know Night World reporter Basilica Chloe, "we’re watching the cremation of Mona Mastry, Tern Zizias, Ray Epstein, Laurel Ridge, and Juniper Aralias. With the exception of Aralias, they were all killed at some point during this weekend’s attempt to kidnap a Wild Power."

Iliana had bothered Ash so much trying to find out what happened to Juniper, that Quinn finally took her aside and explained simply that approximately an hour after Tern’s car exploded, Juniper had removed the surge protector from a bathroom socket in the apartment they had shared, then climbed into the bath tub with a radio. She’d left a simple note: "My life is over, but it will begin again soon. Goodbye."

The note scared her. The simplicity of the whole thing, how Juniper hadn’t called for help, hadn’t chosen an uncertain method of suicide, hadn’t even waited for confirmation of what her heart told her, terrified her. Because there was a chance she would feel like that someday, and if some one as strong and Juniper wasn’t able to handle the loss, Iliana knew there was no way in hell she would.

Of course, their situations were different. The Intgriest believed in the healing power of sex, and apparently it believed right back. Iliana was living proof.

"We’ll only age when we’re dead from now on," Stephen-Kyle had told her the day before. "Then I’ll get ahold of your body, or you’ll get mine, and...well, you know. Then we come back to life."

She wasn’t sure she would have believed it if not for two things. First, the raised pattern of ringed flowers that was settled between her breasts like a scar. Second, the impossible bond she felt with someone she’d known only three days.

Yes, she already understood too well why Juniper had done what she had.

On the television, Ash stepped out of the circle of mourners to the pile of logs and used the sharp end of one to slice his palm open. Even though the news crew had been asked to stand a hundred yards away from the ceremony, the camera man was able to zoom in enough for Iliana to see the blood gushing over Ash’s fingers. No holds barred, the cut was deep.

Nina and the baby were no where to be seen. Iliana had spoken to her briefly on the phone the day before. "I know it isn’t a Night World custom," Nina had said, "but if there’s anything similar, I’d like you and Steve to be her godparents."

They had agreed, of course, and when Nina was strong enough, she and Carabel would fly to the new compound to celebrate a naming ceremony. Iliana had hopes that someone else would be coming with them.

"We’re watching Ash Redfern, Hunter Redfern’s grandson, bestow the parting gift. He and Tern Zizias had been friends since early childhood."

He lifted the piece of black silk covering Tern’s head and covered his friend’s face in his blood. Larabee Quest, a chubby, sobbing witch, came forward to lay a sprig of flowers on Juniper’s face.

"I’m not certain," Basilicia said, "but I think it’s safe to assume those are juniper flowers. I’m uncertain who...Goddess, is that Lord Thierry Descourdes?"

Iliana could tell that it was by the smooth stride and the way moonlight caught in his hair.

"I do believe that the Prime Minister of Circle Daybreak is here to bestow the parting gift for Mona Mastry. What an unexpected honor."

But it wasn’t unexpected, not to someone who had known Mona. Thierry had met her at a garden party, an orphan trying to earn food money by acting as a serving girl for the rich, and her manner had been so seeded with poetry and humor that he had asked one of his lieutenants to change her. She had changed during the hundred and twenty-three years of her life, but her unwavering responsibility and good nature hadn’t. Iliana knew she had remained one of Thierry’s favorites over the decades.

She hadn’t died until she was told that Iliana was safe. Then it had only taken moments.

Iliana lay down on the couch and muted the television. She didn’t want to hear Basilicia’s morbid curiosity any longer, she just wanted to pretend, if possible, that she was there, paying her respects to the deceased, holding her fiancé’s hand while she mourned.

It had been impossible for her to go. She hadn’t even fought after Ethan said no for the second time. He was new, now in charge of the Wild Powers and their safety. A new compound was being built, Iliana didn’t know if she should believe the rumors that it was underwater or not, but she knew that without Mona there, it wasn’t going to feel right.

The bodies were covered in wine. Thierry lifted a torch to them and the pyre exploded with fire. It was yellow as sunlight at the edges, at the flickering tips it was burning golden with a vampire’s ultimate destruction. But at the heart, at the core where the flames found the bodies and engulfed them, it was as pure a white as the moon.

Iliana closed her eyes. She could still see the pyre burning, and she knew it would go all night. Maybe even all of tomorrow and into the next night. However long it burned, the mourners would wait beside it, without feeding, without finding shelter from the sun. This was a vampire’s funeral.

She must have drifted into to sleep, because when Stephen-Kyle turned the television set off, she started awake. "It’s okay," he told her, holding a hand up.

She eased back against the couch and rubbed her eyes. "What time is it?"

"Almost four. Do you want a blanket?"

"No, I should probably just go to bed."

She stopped when she said that. He was still dressed, in the subtle outfit he’d chosen from his own wardrobe, and she knew that he hadn’t slept, either. It was because neither one of them knew what to do, what was appropriate now. They’d had sex, but she had been dead at the time. They were soulmates, but it was by default and lousy luck. She couldn’t decide if her nervousness was reasonable or not.

This was their first night alone together, they’d spent the last two either in the hospital or in the air. Even now, they weren’t really alone in this little bedroom suite with its legion of armed guards standing outside the door.

There was another bedroom out there. She could ask him to leave.

Thing was, she didn’t know how to ask him to stay.

"Yeah," he repeated, "you should probably go to bed."

There was a long moment of silence, and then she spoke impulsively, the same way she’d been doing since she met him, as if she was empowered.

"Want to come with me?"

He was staring at the floor, but she could see him smile.

"Okay," he said.

When they were curled up in her bed with the gauze canopy curtains pulled, she hesitantly found his arms and relaxed into them. He was wearing loose, cotton pants, she had on a nightgown that fell past her ankles, but somehow she didn’t feel any better.

"This is what it’s about, you know," he said.

She looked at him. The room was dim except for a nightlight marking the bathroom. His face was close.

"Being able to touch me when you want to," he went on, "asking to be held if you want to."

His lips grazed her mouth, but she felt herself tense up.

"Saying no," he whispered in the same tone, "if you don’t want to."

"No," she breathed, pulling away slightly and opening her eyes. "Not tonight."

"My already knowing before I started that you didn’t want to," he added, "and dressing appropriately."

She couldn’t help laughing. "You always dress appropriately."

"I try." He kissed her forehead. "There’s no reason to rush things. We’ve rushed enough. I can even find another place to sleep, if you want."

She wrapped her arm over his neck so that she could run her fingers through his hair. "No way you’re sleeping anywhere else."

It was his turn to laugh. "You’re a goddess, you know."

He had said that in the ravine, just after he kissed her. The memory made her sad. "No, I’m not."

"All those silly things you think about yourself, that you’re weak and pathetic and a burden, it’s all hoggish. You’re not a warrior, but you’re hardly a wimp."

The surprise must have shown on her face. "Do you really think that?"

"Yes."

"But how did you..."

"How did I know?"

She nodded. He smiled and lay his head on her shoulder. "That’s what it’s about, too."

The End

October 25, 1999

Jory San-Corinth