To Tilt a Scale

Disclaimer: All characters and concepts in this story, in all parts One through Forty-Two, belong to Lisa Jane Smith and her publishers. They are used for non-profit entertainment and are her creation. Barred from this statement are the following characters: Martin O'Bach, Shale Eyre, Ravenal Fullin, Cristona Patterson, Reese, Lara-Elena, Lance, Cassi, Mitch, Griffin, Jesska, Scott, Peter O'Bach, Mathias O'Bach, Veronica, Mona Mastry, Robert Werking, Larabee Quest, and Violet Yarrow.

Spoilers: The Night World Series, probably all of them.

Rating: R Violence, implied torture, and language

Setting: Remember "Ashes and Embers," that little story where Ash's flight got cancelled and Mary-Lynette dumped him and he tried to take a diabetic girl to the hospital in the pouring rain and ended up crashing his car and admitting he was a vampire? This story begins right after it. Like, two days after, in March of 98, on the night of the spring equinox.

Thank you: Dessa and Chris for your constant feedback; Refuse, for your enthusiasm; Emily, Sophanika, and Sara, for being my darlings; Patrick for your chaste kisses, Tam for your less chaste ones; Fred for amusing me, and my dearest, most wonderful friend, September, for being incredible. You, dove, inspire me.

This story is dedicated to those muses who wake me up at night wanting to play pool.

The hospital room was dark except for two pink votives burning on the tray-table. A frail figure was folded between the stiff sheets of the bed, a home-sewn quilt tucked around him. Slumped beside the bed in a plastic chair, a second figure sat crying.

"Leave," Martin O'Bach said again.

Thea Harman wiped at her eyes and sniffed again. She looked pretty when she cried, Marty reflected, but then she almost always looked pretty. He was pleased that she would be the last person he ever spoke to.

"I won't leave you here to die alone," she said, continuing her battle with the tears. Chances were she would loose.

Just like Marty was loosing his battle. He'd been born with cystic fibrosis seventeen years earlier, and despite calling on every power he could think of, he hadn't found a magic strong enough to cure him. When the fever hit last Monday, he'd known right away that this was the last time he would get sick. His lungs were clogged with mucus and he could barely talk, and his fingers had swollen up like sausages. The fever made every pulse come in waves of heat, the room, his head, Thea's face. He glanced at the clock and wondered. He'd been sure he wouldn't live through the Spring Equinox, but here he was on the dark side of midnight. Surely there couldn't be much time left.

He patted Thea's hand, wincing at the weight of his limbs. When had his skin turned to lead?

"You know how there are some spells you have to cast alone?"

She nodded miserably. They'd only been friends for a year, but in that time had grown very close. She would be the one to hold vigil at his death bed, she would be the one to help the witches who were too sick to get out of bed celebrate the Spring Equinox. Of all the hundreds of warlock jokes he'd heard, not one of them had come from Thea's lips.

"I think this is one of those spells."

The tears were still coming. "I'm going to miss you."

"I'll miss you, too."

"Should I call your father?"

"No, no. I sent him home two days ago."

"How about Circle Chimera?"

"They're celebrating Ostara on Fleece Hill. Besides, I already told them."

Exasperated, she said, "Well, can I at least give them a final message or something?"

She wanted to help, needed to. Thea was that kind of girl. Marty let his eyes travel blankly over the ceiling and thought. Finally he said, "Tell them I've gone to have tea with Grandma."

At the mention of Grandmother Harman, Thea burst into tears all over again. "You're so poetic," she moaned, and her head dropped to the hospital bed again.

He patted her hand and continued staring at the ceiling. It was pulsating in slow waves of white plaster dappled with black spots. "It's okay," he told her, but it wasn't. Keeping his eyes open was getting harder and harder.

The girl knocked on the door to ICU 6. It was open a crack and dark inside, so she let herself in and crept to the side the bed. The old man laying there was practically hog-tied with tubes and wires, but no monitors. She had carefully checked his chart to make sure it included a "Do Not Resuscitate" order before coming in.

His face was covered in stubble and drool, and his eyes were open but lifeless. "Mr. Werking?" she whispered, reaching out to brush her fingertips over his arm.

His chin chattered up and down as he tried to speak. "Wwhoooo--ooo aaaaaa--arrrree..."

She rubbed his arm gently, feeling the dried and cracked skin ice cold. "I'm an angel," she told him, in the sweetest voice she could muster. "I've come to see if you're ready to be taken away."

His eyes flittered over her face, the white dress with its gauze arms and sprinkle of glitter. "Reeehehehe-eh-eh-dddddd," he croaked out.

The girl nodded and rubbed his arm again, then gently pulled out the IV needles in his hands. Holding them in her own, she sat on the edge of the bed and found his pulse. "Shh, relax now. This won't hurt a bit, and when you wake up you'll be in heaven."

Mr. Werking tried to nod and she ran her hand over his cheek soothingly. "Shh, shh." She bent to kiss his forehead and closed her eyelids. His pulse was slow; hers grew shallow to meet it and their hearts began beating at the same moment.

The girl let out a sudden moan as heat rippled through her body. Mr. Werking's chest jerked off the bed and he gasped. His mouth went slack and his watery eyes rolled back in his head. Abruptly, she flew backwards off the bed and tumbled onto the floor. Mr. Werking lit up like a newborn star, his body translucent and doused with silver light so intense she had to close her eyes against it. The floor shimmied back and forth as Mr. Werking floated into the air, then dropped three feet down and plunked into the mattress with a dull shud.

The girl opened here eyes and sat woozily up. It took her a few seconds to orient herself, and when she could finally stand again she stepped back to the bed, clutching the footboard for balance. Mr. Werking was motionless, his eyes totally white, his expression that of a man who has just seen God. She tucked his arms under the blankets, although they were already cold, and then closed his eyes.

"Thanks," she whispered, as she always did, and leaned down to kiss his bruised and veiny hand. "I promise your life won't go to waste."

"Thea, please." Marty was almost begging her now. It was closing in on one o'clock, and he didn't want to die with her sitting right there. He required three breaths now to get in the air of one, his heart was beating in his ears like a bomb ticking away the seconds of his life.

"I'm going, I'm going." She stood up and reached out to hug him. "Merry meet," she whispered. "Say hi to Gran for me."

"I will." As she walked to the door, still crying uncontrollably, he added, "Thea? Don't forget the part about meeting again, okay?"

She turned and gave him her most beautiful smile, and if he'd secretly harbored some fear that she was angry at him for dying like this it was burned away in that smile. She blew him a kiss, her smile broke down, and she huddled off into the hallway.

Marty finally was able to close his eyes. That hadn't been so bad, and now he had a little time to just lay and meditate before the end. Yes, this is how he wanted it. A quiet goodbye and then sleep.

The two candles continued to burn, and the light was soft and painless against his sensitive eyes. Circle Chimera, up on Fleece Hill, was burning another one in honor of him. Marty could feel the warmth of the flame if he concentrated very hard, could even hear Circle Chimera chanting in deep, male voices.

His father was there, Mathias O'Bach, and his uncle, Peter. Scott, who at only twelve years old was both passionate and idiotic, and Mitch, an old crone of a man, were standing with them. Scott's voice was loudest, Mitch's feeble and muddy, Mathias's filled with reverence. Marty caught a glance of Peter's face and knew he was watching the candle, waiting for it to go out at any second. Besides Thea, he was the only one who knew Marty was expecting to die at any time, and that Circle Chimera was about to loose one of its last members.

He had never understood the prejudice against male witches, why they were frowned upon by the Night World, including all too often the females. Long ago, Circle Chimera had been Circle Midday, and had been one of the founding members of the Night World. Time passed and Circle Midday grew smaller and smaller, until people began calling it Circle Waning as a joke. Soon it was not only shrinking but being ridiculed and excluded as well. "Men can't be witches," people were suddenly saying. "It's a woman's art."

Then came the fire that destroyed Circle Twilight's temple in the Isles, which Circle Midday was inexplicably blamed for, and the cry became, "Down with Circle Chimera."

Marty was almost Scott's age before he thought to wonder what Chimera meant, and he found it in the dictionary as, "an imaginary monster made up of incongruous parts; a frightful or foolish fantasy."

Somehow the cruel title became a badge of honor for most of its members, a constant reminder of the adversity they fought every day. Even within Circle Daybreak, Marty occasionally ran into someone who laughed out loud when they realized he was a witch. But through all the years of teasing and hiding and trying to discretely thank the Goddess during cafeteria lunches, he had never considered leaving Circle Chimera for more than a moment. There was an energy in it that sustained him for so long.

Grandmother Harman had said he had true faith.

"It's going to be good to see you again," he mumbled, the words nothing more than a gurgle of syllables.

Yet, at the same time, he was dreading seeing her again. Because that faith she was so proud of, he had lost.

Now, in these last moments before being swept into a lovely abyss Marty wasn't sure he believed in, he wondered what it had all meant, why he had been forced to live this. Sick and shunned, always at the edges of the crowd coughing. Had the magic ever helped him? Had he found a spell that could cure this?

His mother had died believing, in a ditch in rural Vermont. She had left her family, her friends, her beliefs, everything, behind to marry Mathias and give life to a weak and short-lived son. Was it worth it? Marty asked her silently. Did he mean that much to you? Or did magic just mean so little?

His heart hurt as it began to stop beating.

A hand touched his and he forced his eyes open again. He was expecting a nurse, or possibly Thea again, but to his surprise he found a girl about his age standing beside the bed. Her thick blond hair had been tied off her face with a large white ribbon, and she was dressed in a flowing white gown that sparkled in the candlelight. In the dimness she looked ethereal, but Marty got the feeling that if he saw her in full light the outfit would look like a tacky Halloween rental.

The hand covering his was warm and soft, and the fingers massaged his wrist as she spoke. He noticed over her shoulder that the door had been closed.

"Do you want to live?" she asked, her voice very low.

He blinked. "What?"

"Do you want to live?"

He tried to sit up and found that his scull was full of wet sand. "Who are you?"

She took his hand in hers. "I can make you live, if that's what you want."

"What? How?"

"Tell me that you want to live."

"Wait, what are you going to do?"

She shook her head. "Do you want to live or not, Martin?"

Confused, he tried to shrug and was barely able to move his shoulders. "Yes, but why?"

"Say it. Tell me you want to live."

"Alright," he agreed in exasperation. "I want to live."

She closed her eyes. "Good. Relax now, this won't hurt."

Her touch was doing something to him, sending sparks shooting through his numb fingers. All the drugs had made it hard to feel anything, but this sensation was sharp and vivid.

"What..." he asked again, but the rest of the question was lost in a swirl of dizziness.

Her breathy voice washed over him. "I'm giving you this life. His name is Robert."

He felt her hands close around his and shuddered. Her flesh was hot but he was hotter and there was a crackle in the air between them. He wondered if he was hallucinating, because he could actually see the air dancing with flame.

The girl seemed to pull away a little, then forced herself to step closer again. Marty was struck by the horrifying fear that she would leave at any moment and he would be plunged back into his hospital bed and the dark swirl of medications waiting there. As it was, he could still feel the pillow under his head and the weight of the blankets, but his mind was elsewhere. The girl was pulling him into a trace like the one he used when he cast spells, only this one was so strong it was palpable. Marty could feel strands of silver thread binding their hands together with the strongest magic in the universe.

"Your name..." he managed to get out, as moist heat flooded up his arms.

"Doesn't matter," she replied. "Relax and you'll be healed."

He realized that he was so deeply tranced he couldn't open his eyes. His mouth still worked, barely, and when he said, "No, tell me," he wasn't even sure the words were decipherable.

The cords grew tighter, cutting into his flesh--no, becoming his flesh. The girl groaned and tried to wiggle away, but she was as securely bound as Marty was. "Oh god," she whispered, and he understood just from her tone that something was wrong.

There was a rattling noise and the bed slid a few feet away from the wall. The girl teetered on the edge before Marty pulled her further on, and then the rattling grew louder. Something crashed, maybe the bedside lamp, and the window flew open with a gust of cool air.

Marty opened his eyes and found that hers were only inches away, the hardest slate gray he'd ever seen. The dresser drawers leapt onto the floor, where linoleum tiles were dancing, but Marty hardly saw them. Nor did he feel the icy rain that was suddenly pouring through the window and soaking them both. Bits of hail rolled down her round face with the angled cheekbones and luminous gray eyes.

"My name is Shale," she finally answered, and as soon as the words escaped her lips the room exploded with a light so intense it momentarily blinded Marty. A chunk of ice hit his jaw and his head snapped back as the girl went flying into the air. Both windows shattered, the bed collapsed, dropping the mattress onto the floor, and yet the two votive candles continued to burn. A vase of flowers burst and sweet-smelling water mixed with the frozen rain on the floor and there was a vibration that rang like a silent scream in the air.

The girl smashed into the wall, flying right through the plaster and creating a huge hole into the next room. A nurse tried to get in through the door and it slammed shut in her face. There was shouting in the hallway and somehow in all the rain and wetness the window curtains had caught fire. Marty stared at the blaze in awe for a moment before the light hanging above his bed was cut loose by the wind whipping through the room and landed on his head.

The three vampires locally known as the TAQ team--Tern Zizias, Ash Redfern, and John Quinn--stood outside the front door of Saint Brigid Hospital in dulled silence. It was raining, gently but with a bitter chill, but only Ash was wearing a jacket, and that was just for show.

He rubbed his head and let out a slow breath. They'd just come from the hospital room of Cristona Patterson, possessor of the Gift of Life, and seen her laying like a heap of pale cloth under the bed sheets. Even her lips were white and when Ash touched her hand, he could feel all the power of being a vampire sucked out of him. For one brief, horrifying moment, he knew what it was like to be human and fragile.

She was dying, and the doctors said there was nothing they could do. Something in her brain, breaking down.

She had not left an heir.

Her bodyguard's name was Reese, and it was obvious he was madly in love with her. Aside from keeping her safe, he was also the only one who could speak with her, since no one on the TAQ team knew sign language, and Cristona had been deaf from birth. She woke up briefly, just long enough to gesture hello, sigh, and swallow a couple of pills. She was a waif, a flower-child, with long, crinkly red hair streaming out behind her head and gigantic blue eyes. There was something both earthy and untouchable about her, and it made Ash nervous.

"Damn," Quinn said finally.

"What happens now?" Tern asked. "We've got one lead that isn't even a lead, and medical science can't do squat."

Ash ran a hand through his hair and leaned back against the hospital wall. It was times like these when he wished he hadn't given up smoking, when it would be good to have something trivial to concentrate on.

"The witches?" he suggested. He'd been out of town--having a hell of a screwed up weekend--and missed the discovery of Cristona's illness and her subsequent visit to the Harmans. Apparently she was doted on by Thierry, referred to as his "granddaughter," but her bodyguard had only announced that she was dying a few days before.

"They've done everything they can. They managed to break the fever she had, but the cancer is too far along."

"Damn," Quinn muttered again.

The drizzle continued, and in the distance, Ash could see the beginnings of dawn. If there was nothing they could do here, he'd like to get back to the compound and take a long nap. Maybe go hunting later, since he hadn't had a decent "meal" in a week. His apartment was empty and waiting for him, but he didn't really want to go back there because he'd fixed it up for Mary-Lynette, using colors and styles he knew she liked, and he didn't really need the break-up rubbed in his face just yet. At the compound it would be easier. He'd have work, he'd have people to talk to. He could manage if he kept his mind off it.

A blue car pulled up in the parking lot and Thea Harman jumped out. She was wearing sweat pants and an over-sized t-shirt, a very "I-jumped-out-of-bed-as-soon-as-I-heard" kind of outfit. There was a smile to light up the sky on her face, and she dashed up the steps--who built steps in front of a hospital, anyway?--as fast as she could.

Ash rocked off the wall and onto the balls of his feet. "Did you find something?" Quinn asked quickly.

She stared at them a moment and then her face fell. "Oh, you mean for Cristona. No, we're still looking. But Marty's going to be okay, did they tell you?"

"Who?" Ash asked.

"Marty. You know, Martin O'Bach." She glanced from one face to another and then added. "He's in Circle Chimera."

Disgust welled up in Ash's throat and he felt himself frown. Quinn snorted, but Tern was polite enough to give a delicate, "Oh."

Thea looked and them for another moment, her forehead wrinkling, and then said, "Never mind. I'll see you later."

The minute the door closed behind her, Quinn said, "Damn warlock boys. Should have traded him for the Gifter."

"The last thing we need is more Circle Chimera members," Ash added, and they stood silently in the rain a while longer.

It was the first time Quinn and Ash had ever admitted to agreeing on anything.

Shale Eyre yawned and opened her eyes. Is it Saturday, isn't it? she thought, examining the alarm clock. The knock on the door came again and she sat up slowly to avoid the inevitable pain. She'd gotten off lucky for a girl who flew twenty feet and through two layers of plasterboard. A stroke of weird luck had chosen for her to land on the vacant hospital bed in the next room over, and not on the concrete floor. Nothing broken, just massive bruises on her back and shoulders.

Another knock on the door. Where're Jesska and Cassi? she wondered, dragging herself into a standing position. Her two roommates lived with her in one of the pressed-wood cabins outside Canute where they could enjoy the illusion of autonomy but still be supervised.

She bungled into the kitchen/living/dining room and unlocked the front door. A guy was standing on the porch, dressed in black jeans and a leather jacket, but it took her a minute to recognize him.

"Griffin?" she asked slowly, and a delighted grin flashed on his face. "What are you doing here?"

As he pulled back the screen door and stepped inside, a laugh came rolling out of his chest. It was decidedly hysterical and she realized he was drunk.

"Hi, baby," he slurred, and managed to kiss half of her mouth and most of her cheek.

"Griffin, god." She slammed the door shut, praying no one had seen him come in. "What are you doing here?" she asked away. Her leisurely morning of laying in bed and listening to the radio had been totally forgotten, and she found herself wide awake.

"Are you sleeping you in your clothes?" Another delighted grin. "Me, too! See, we match!"

Shale quickly pulled the shade down over the window and rubbed her head. She ducked into the other two bedrooms and was relieved to find that Jesska was at work and Cassi was in the shower. Cassi wouldn't give a damn who she brought in here.

Griffin had collapsed on her bed, his eyes drooping shut. Shale had forgotten how attractive he was, with nicely but not overly muscled limbs and a sharply angled brow that almost hid his exceptionally deep set eyes. Come to think of it, she had never gotten a good enough look at those eyes to tell what color they were.

Griffin motioned to the white dress crumpled on the floor. It was stained with blood and torn in several places. "You go out killing last night?"

"It's not killing," she muttered, bunching the dress up and shoving it into a drawer.

"Right, my mistake. Were you out Harmonizing last night?"

She couldn't tell whether her was mocking her or just drunk and forgetful. He smelled of rum, which gave her a nostalgic pause, but she opened the window and tossed him a pack of Altoids. She'd worked too hard getting clean to go back now.

"Shale?"

"What?" She pulled the damp shirt over her head and reached for a clean one.

Griffin propped himself up on one elbow, suddenly interested.

"Damn, girl, what happened to your back?"

"Huh?" She glanced in the mirror and saw a huge gray and purple bruise covering her shoulder. No wonder it was so stiff.

"I flew through a wall," she told Griffin, pulling a cherry-colored V-neck on and wincing as it settled into place.

"So you were out doing your change-over thing? Who'd you do this time?"

She found a pair of loose tan slacks to step into and replied distantly, "An old guy with AIDS and a young guy with cystic fibrosis."

"Did it work?"

Shrugging, Shale ran a brush though her hair. "I guess. I'll check the paper and see if there's any mention of how I busted up the wall."

Griffin reached out and pulled her onto the bed, laying his head against her thigh. "Why were you flying through walls?"

She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and suppressed a shiver. "Something went wrong," she said. "I don't know what. I killed Mr. Werking just fine, but then I went into the guy's room and when I touched him there was this shock, like really bad static, but it didn't hurt like that. And once I knew he had the life, I couldn't pull away. There was just this power growing around us that exploded, and I was airborne."

Griffin didn't respond, and Shale continued watching her reflection. Definitely, something had gone wrong the night before. Only wrong wasn't the world she wanted. Whatever had been different, it had been decidedly right.

"Come out with me tonight," Griffin said through a haze of half consciousness.

"You know I can't."

"Sure you can." He picked up her hand and kissed the fingers.

"Grif, no. I haven't even seen you in four months."

"That's why we've got to go out. So we can catch up."

But she knew what would happen if they went out. They'd end up in some back alleyway with a couple of other werewolves chowing down on deer, and Shale would get so disgusted by the sight that she'd either have to barf her guts out or smoke something until nothing mattered anymore, and if history was any indicator, she would choose the later.

She tugged her arm away. "Things are different now. Come on, get out of here before you get me in trouble."

"I don't have anywhere to go."

"Why not?"

"My sister split for Tucson and Moenika says I can't come around any more."

"So you show up here?" Shale felt her cheeks flush with anger and she shoved him away. "I'm not a bloody motel, Griffin. I've got roommates, neither of whom I would imagine want a drunk, stoned werewolf staying with them. Just get out of here already."

She turned her back on him and went into the kitchen again to wash the dried plaster off her face. That was just like Griffin, always a rainy day friend. He probably expected her to sleep with him, too.

She shook her head and reached for the soap. Too bad for him; things had changed.

Marty felt like he had suddenly acquired four more lungs. "You're going to hyperventilate if you don't relax," Thea warned, smiling that beautiful smile so wide he thought for sure it must be hurting her mouth.

The hospital room seemed suddenly crowded. Marty and Thea were sitting on the bed, Uncle Peter was draped over the chair, and the three guys sent from Circle Daybreak were crammed into the remaining space.

They'd arrived an hour earlier, after somebody phoned to tell them there had been another healing. Vampires, all three, which made Marty wonder at his luck after all. He'd already heard the short one call him, "Warlock boy."

The short one, Quinn. Looked like some kind of viper as far as Marty could tell, and he had the aura of the creature from the Black Lagoon. Then there was Ash Redfern, whom Marty had met numerous times and considered completely incompetent for this kind of work, and finally Tern Zizias, who didn't say much and appeared hopelessly distracted. They made an interesting if concerning group, bickering and actually hissing at each other in the midst of trying to figure out what was going on.

"It was nice of you guys to come down so early," Marty said. "With the sun being out and all."

Thea elbowed him discreetly, and Quinn sent a cold glare hurtling in his direction. "Tell me exactly what happened again," Tern suggested.

Marty sighed and recounted the night's events yet again.

"What are you three doing here, anyway?" he asked when he was done. "I don't know how old you are, Quinn, but Ash and Tern are both younger than I am."

Quinn appeared pleased. "You're right about that."

"We're looking for healers," Tern said in a more serious voice. "We need to find out who healed you and how it was done. If it can be done again."

"All she told me was that her name is Shale."

"Last name or first?"

"First, I guess, but she didn't specify. Who is it you need her to heal?" He didn't add that his uncle was one of the most efficient healers in the area, since he doubted three vampires would take him very seriously.

"That's classified," Quinn snapped.

Marty glanced at Thea and she shrugged. Since when are things in Circle Daybreak classified? he wondered.

"We have a psychic who wants to see you," Tern added. "You should get dressed."

"Who is she?" Thea asked.

"Her name is Larabee Quest."

"I've never heard of her." Marty hadn't, either.

"She isn't real active with others, and she lives in Cross Bien."

"How did you meet her if she doesn't work with others?"

A communal pause. "It's a long story," Tern said, finally. "But she called half an hour ago and asked that you go to see her as soon as possible."

Marty groaned inwardly, but Peter gave him a quick nod. Do it, he seemed to say silently, and Marty got the weird vibe that this was vital. "All right," he agreed. "It'll only take a couple of hours, right?"

Ash laughed inexplicably. "Yeah, sure."

The first hour alone was taken up with clearing Marty out of the hospital. He sent Thea home, promising to give her a call later, and Peter helped him pack his stuff. Then there were the doctors to deal with. They'd been running tests since two in the morning and were still utterly mystified. Cystic fibrosis did not just vanish; there was no cure. Martin O'Bach was a modern miracle.

If this weren't for Circle Daybreak..., he thought, as he climbed into the snazzy car in the parking lot. Tern climbed in beside him, and after a short scuffle, Quinn got behind the wheel.

"It's my car," Ash complained as they pulled out. "I think I have a perfect right to drive it."

"Not when I'm in it."

"What, you think you can drive better than I can?" Even greatly annoyed, Ash looked laid back. Marty wondered if he wasn't on huge amounts of Riddilin or something.

"Look," Quinn snapped, "I took my driving test in a model-T. Don't you dare imply that I don't know what I'm doing."

"Would you two cut it out?" Tern asked mildly. "You're giving me a headache."

Marty was tempted to make another crack about sunlight but bit his tongue. He was happy enough to be alive that he didn't really need the extra pleasure of ridiculing vampires just then.

Astral Appraisal and Gifts was a rather pink little townhouse in downtown Cross Bien. Marty inhaled as he climbed out of the car and didn't stop inhaling until he burped. Then he stopped, blushing, but the smile couldn't be held in. He was breathing.

Larabee Quest was a character. She wore frighteningly mismatched clothes, an orange jumpsuit even Richard Simmons would have cringed at the sight of, and some kind of bonnet structure to hold her scraggly gray hair off her face. She seemed familiar with the vamps, inviting them in and calling them by name. "Juniper's coming down in just a minute," she promised, ushering Marty into a chair in front of the battered card table in the front room.

"That's alright," Tern said. "I'll go up."

"Don't forget we're working here," Quinn called, watching his back vanish behind a purple velvet curtain.

Larabee bustled around to the other side of the table and heaved herself into a chair made with reinforced steel. Marty had always found something comforting in fat people, like Uncle Peter. They were so huggable.

"Hello, hon," she said. "I'm Larabee, and I run this shop. Now, have you ever had a reading done before?"

Apparently she hadn't been filled in on his background. Marty went to speak and paused, glancing at Ash and Quinn. They were busy eye-bickering.

"Would you two mind waiting outside?" Larabee asked, following Marty's line of sight. "This will only take a minute."

Quinn rolled his eyes but started toward the door. Ash followed, trying to pick the keys back out of Quinn's pocket.

"Now, you were saying?" Larabee asked.

Marty kept his voice steady and his eyes locked with hers. "I'm part of Circle Chimera."

She stopped cold, her rubber mouth going flatline. "Oh," she managed finally. Marty sighed discreetly and wondered how long it would take her to get used to the idea.

"I didn't even know Circle Chimera still existed."

"It does."

"Where are you based?"

"The plains."

When the genders had split, the women formed their traditions and the men formed theirs. Most of Circle Chimera stayed in Nebraska, in a small town called Chameleon. It was a choice spot for the group because the two closest towns, Louisa and Saint Rarie, had supernatural ties of their own and weren't concerned with a bunch of naked guys lighting candles on the hillside and hugging trees. Marty had spent most of his summers there with his cousins, Adrian and Isobel, until Isobel turned twelve and was sent to Grandmother Harman to be, "finished properly." Marty and Adrian had joked about how nineteenth century the phrase was, but in truth it hurt them both.

Larabee sounded another, "Oh." She picked up her tarot deck and hesitated a moment before laying it down in front of him, as if worried that his testosterone would stain the cards or something. "I assume you know how to cut these."

Marty picked up the cards with his projecting hand and let a portion of energy flow through his arm into the stiff papers. For a second he sensed something, too bright and powerful to be seen clearly, and he cut and restacked the deck quickly. He should have anticipated that with his sudden health, his psychic abilities would also grow.

Larabee turned the cards, using a complicated layout she probably thought Marty didn't know instead of the standard Keltic spread. Not only were members of Circle Chimera shunned, they were also considered ill informed.

Marty glanced over the cards unobtrusively, trying to let Larabee think she was still in charge. It was best not to challenge other witches, particularly older female ones.

Then he saw the spread and he didn't care if he offended her or not.

"Isis in the sky," he gasped. "Think we got enough major arcana?"

Larabee had lay out three rows of five cards, and nine out of fifteen were major. Included in the minor were the five of all four suits, all in order in the second row. Marty had never seen a reading come out so precisely.

"We're talking about ten people," he said as his eyes reached over the spread. Despite Larabee's presence, he let himself ramble through the deciphering aloud as he always did when alone. "See the Lovers card at the start of the center row? Five groups of two. Five sets of lovers. The whole bottom row is men, and a wild bunch. The top row is kind of vague, but since we've specified the men, I'll assume these are their other halves." He didn't want to take any chances and announce a particular gender, especially since none of the top row cards were gender specific. Before going on, he gathered the cards into five columns of three.

"There's Death, right above the Lovers and the Page of Cups. That's an odd combination." He stopped, trying to figure out what it meant, and Larabee said, "I know them."

"Huh?"

She pointed toward the purple curtain. "My godbaby has the Gift of Death. You've heard of that?"

"Once or twice. And Tern Zizias is the Page of Cups?"

"That's him, alright. Definitely my Tern."

Marty nodded and went on to the next stack of three, then stopped again. The Emperor was at the bottom. "That's my card," he said.

"How do you mean?"

"That's the card the I was given as a representation at birth." Larabee looked confused. "Never mind, it's a Chimera ritual. Five of Cups and Temperance are above it. I think the Five refers to the total of five, since it's in the same row as the Lovers, but I'm not sure about Temperance..."

Larabee said nothing while he thought. She was probably too stunned that Marty actually knew his cards and how to read them.

Temperance depicted an angel standing on the bank of a river, pouring water from the moon into the sun. Creating a balance.

"The girl who healed me is Temperance."

"You know her?" Larabee asked.

"No, but she said her name was Shale. What is shale, exactly?"

"Some kind of rock, I reckon."

"Lamia?"

"It's possible."

He turned his face back to the cards. "If this is a time line, we're only at the second stop."

He considered the other cards carefully. Each was an enigmatic contradiction by itself, and even more so when approached as a whole. There was the life-giving Ace of Wands above the powerful King of Swords, Force facing the Magician, and Judgment pitted against the Devil. None of them made any sense, as far as Marty could see. Judgment and the Devil hardly went together, it being Satan's worst nightmare, and Force and the Magician were like superheros and extension cords; they had nothing to do with each other.

The front door opened. "Are you done yet?" Ash whined, sticking his head in.

"Come over here," Larabee said excitedly. "I think we're onto somethin' big. Fetch Tern and Juniper."

Juniper was dark-haired and faintly hostile, and she walked with a kind of trapped power that alarmed Marty. She was something Night World, but he couldn't pin point what.

"Is this in reference to the Gifts?" Quinn asked. "I thought there were only two of them."

Tern nodded. "There are. Life and Death. Juniper has one, but which bank is the other?"

Juniper pointed to the center triad. "That's her."

"Who?" Marty asked.

"She has the Gift of Life."

"But we know where she is. It can't be the girl who has been doing the healing."

"How can you tell who that card represents?" Quinn wanted to know.

"It's an ace," Marty agreed. "It's a birth card. And the Gift of Life wouldn't be represented by Force or Judgment. We should add a few cards," he told Larabee, "see what to do next."

She handed him the remaining deck. "You do it, you seem to have a hand with the cards."

Aware of what an incredible concession this was, Marty took the deck and shuffled it through several times, soaking the paper with his energy. Then he turned over three cards.

The remaining Ones looked back at him.

"What the hell does that mean?" Ash wanted to know.

Without waiting to doubt his instincts, Marty flipped the next four cards. Two of Cups, Two of Wands, Two of Swords, Two of Coins. He did it again. Three of Cups, Three of Wands, Three of Swords, Three of Coins.

Larabee said something, Quinn said something, Marty drowned them both out. He'd learned long ago that his first instinct was usually the right one, and just then all he could think was that this was the order the deck would have been in when Larabee first opened it. He needed to backtrack...

"What exactly are you looking for?" Marty asked. "If Juniper has the Gift of Death, although I could have sworn Anhinga of the dark side had it, and this other person has Life, then who showed up in my room last night and what does she matter? And how did the three of you get put in charge of this whole shenanigan?"

There were sun-glassed glances exchanged. "We got into this because of Juniper," Tern answered finally. "There was an attempt to abduct the Wild Powers and she helped stop it. She was given her Gift from Anhinga, and the rest is a long story. We need to find the girl who healed you because we need someone else healed."

"Who?" They were underestimating him again. This wasn't just some Daybreaker who was in trouble, because Marty was a Daybreaker and they sure as hell hadn't gone rushing around to save him. No, this had to be someone important. Someone vital.

Ash opened his mouth and Quinn shot him a stare so cold its aura was literally blue. "We need to find the girl," Tern said simply.

Marty sighed. He was about to open his mouth when a strange vibe struck him and he glanced up. The vampires didn't like him. They didn't like him and they didn't trust him.

"All I know is that her name is Shale, and she could possibly be lamia. She definitely possessed some kind of power, but I couldn't figure out exactly what it was."

"Big surprise," Quinn muttered.

Ash leaned against the wall. "That doesn't give us much to go on. Are you sure you can't remember anything else?"

He idly removed his wallet from his pants and removed a stick of gum that was purely for show. Puzzled, Marty said, "I'm not trying to stunt your investigation, Ash. I wouldn't mind finding her myself. But offering me money isn't going to increase my memory. I honestly didn't see anything else." He paused and Ash put his wallet away.

"Do you have pen and paper I could use?" he asked.

"Why?" Tern wanted to know.

"I need to copy this spread down for future reference."

They brought him a notebook of wide-ruled paper and a pen from which ink flowed easily. Tern copied down the tarot card spread and Marty took another sheet and closed his eyes, holding the Pilot Precise comfortably in his hand.

His pictured her face easily. It was a perfectly clear image, as if he were staring at a photograph of her. She had lovely liquid brown eyes, cool but reflective. Some oldness at the corners, and smile lines that made her beautiful. Marty had been around sick people far too long; he couldn't tell whether she was conventionally pretty or not, but he found her enthralling. The lips with their faint smiles, the thick blond hair piled up atop her head swam before him like the vision of an angel.

She put a clip in her hair and brushed a few stray strands off her face. Then her eyes focused on Marty and she froze up, hands reaching for the sink basin. "Shale," he began to say, before the image vanished.

He felt himself plunge several feet, although physically he had never moved. His eyes opened to Larabee's audaciously colored shop, to three vampires, a witch, and a Gift recipient peering closely at him.

On the page were written four lines.

The hair brush fell out of her hand and rattled as it hit the porcelain basin. Shale stared at the mirror but could see only herself, only her shoulders heaving up and down and her eyes wide.

"Shale, baby, open up," Griffin called, beating on the bathroom door. "You've been in there for two hours."

She'd been in there for two hours doing her chem homework and waiting for Griffin to take the hint that it was time to leave. Now she was glad he was too drunk to pick it up. She jerked the door open and collapsed into his arms, shaking uncontrollably.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

She wasn't crying, but there were dry sobs inside her chest that seemed to rack her whole body. Griffin picked her easily up off the ground with his unnatural strength and carried her onto her bed. She pressed her face against his shoulder and tried to understand.

"Something's wrong," she whispered as he set down next to her. "Something went wrong last night when I was Harmonizing, out of control. I was holding that guy's hand and I just lost my grip on reality. I felt like I was flying, like I'd lost my head or I was tripping or something."

Griffin smelled of a distillery in summer, although he had sobered up considerably during the last two hours. "How long since you've lit up?"

"Three hundred and seventeen days. Why?"

"Maybe it was just your subconscious telling you to get off this damn clean streak. Relax a little."

She wanted to hit him and tell him what a jerk he was, but she needed to be held at that moment. It didn't matter that he couldn't understand what had passed between her and the boy the night before, how her vision had swum and she'd melted against his mind like it was a hot tub she could sink into. She could forgive Griffin for not understanding how a few quiet moments touching Martin O'Bach's hand had given her a sense of being cherished the pipe just couldn't duplicate.

Another knock on the door. Shale glanced up, wondering if the cops had somehow tracked her down. "Are you gonna get that?" Cassi called from her bedroom.

"Yeah," Shale replied. "Great bloody Saturday this is turning out to be," she muttered as she climbed out of Griffin's lap and headed into the front room.

She opened the door and her knees abruptly gave way beneath her. There were four people on the porch, all male, all appearing to be about her age or a little older. One of them was Martin O'Bach.

He looked so much better than he had the night before. That wretched flush was gone from his cheeks and there was energy in his green eyes again.

"Shale Eyre?" asked one of the other two. He was short, compact, and he wore Calvin Klien sunglasses like some kind of post-modern ice sculpture, but she could tell he was dangerous. Small and dangerous, like a Swiss Army pocket knife.

"Yeah?" she responded without thinking.

"We need to speak with you concerning your whereabouts of last night."

Suddenly Griffin was helping her to her feet. "Are you with the police?" he asked, one hand ready to slam the door in their faces.

"No, but we'd appreciate your cooperation."

Shale met Martin O'Bach's eyes and the rest of the world faded a bit. He sent her a faint, lovely smile that spoke of reassurance and simplicity.

"We're going to need to see some kind of identification," Griffin was saying.

A voice suddenly sounded between her ears, soothing and warm. Marty, not Martin. Nobody ever calls me Martin.

"I already told you that we aren't with the police," the Swiss Army knife guy said.

Telepathy? she wondered. He nodded almost invisibly.

It's just something I can do. Good to see you again, he said.

"Look," Griffin snapped, "if you think I'm going to let three vampires in here to rough my girlfriend up, you're nuts."

Shale looked at him. It wasn't the mention of vampires that caught her attention so much as the fact that he'd actually referred to her as his "girlfriend." They hadn't dated in almost a year. Damn but he was possessive.

"That settles it," said the knife guy, and he gave Griffin a hard shove out of the way.

"Quinn," one of the others said in a chiding tone.

"Ever heard of diplomacy?" asked the third.

Shale was surprised to see that Griffin had flown all the way across the room and into the bathroom door. There was a crack in it she would have to explain to her supervisor.

The door was closed and locked. Marty stood by the refrigerator, apparently unsure of what to do, and the other three arranged themselves in front of the exit.

"Maybe I should take over here," said the third vampire. "I'm Tern Zizias, this is Ash Redfern," he gestured to the other vampire, a tall blond guy who was perpetually sunbathing whether indoors or out, "and this is Quinn."

Quinn. Swiss Army Knife Guy. It would do, Shale reflected.

"Are you Shale Eyre?" Tern asked again.

"Yes." She glanced at Griffin, who was dusting himself off. "How do you know they're vampires?"

"I can smell it."

Ash took it upon himself to stretch out on the couch, and Shale sank back on the picnic table where she and Jesska and Cassi ate dinner.

"Is everything okay?" Cassi called from her bedroom.

"Yeah," Shale managed. "Just some friends of Griffin's. I'll get them out of here in a minute."

"You better. I'm not getting in trouble for that dumb-ass alcolie."

"You aren't lamia," Marty said to Shale, startling her. His voice aloud sounded just as it had in her head, alarmingly clear.

"I'm not what?" she asked.

"A born vampire," Tern answered. "Shale is a lamia name."

"Oh." She ran a hand though her hair, which was still wet from her shower. "Do you guys want something? I mean, obviously you do, but what is it exactly?"

She sure hoped they weren't here looking for blood. There had to be a Red Cross somewhere in the area.

"Are you the one who healed Marty last night?" Tern asked.

Shit, they'd found her out. Shale gripped the bench she was sitting on and looked at Griffin. He shrugged, as if pointing out that he couldn't take them all on.

"Yes," she replied.

"And you're responsible for healing Amry Slets and Judith MacDover?"

"Yes."

"Where did you acquire this talent at healing?"

Marty added, almost hopefully, "Are you a witch?"

"No. I was born with the ability, I don't know where it came from." She paused. "My mother used a lot of drugs, some while she was pregnant. Maybe that has something to do with it."

From the couch, Ash said, "Do you know what Circle Daybreak is?"

"I've heard a little about it."

Griffin, being a werewolf, kept her updated on all the Night World news, but he wasn't interested in politics and didn't care which side won as long as he was alive afterward.

"How do you feel about them?"

Her brow wrinkled. If she gave the wrong answer here, they might conceivably eat her.

We're with Circle Daybreak, Marty mentioned silently.

Thanks, she thought, unsure he would pick up on it.

"Since I'm human," she said aloud, "I guess I better hope Circle Daybreak triumphs, right?"

Ash laughed. Actually, it was more of a long chuckle. "Guess so," he agreed.

"We need you to heal a member of Circle Daybreak," Tern said. "She's mortally ill."

"What's wrong with her?"

"She's dying."

"Yes, but of what?"

"Brain cancer."

Brain cancer? Shale thought. I didn't even know that was a real disease and not just something off Days of Our Lives.

Her first impulse was caution. "I can't just go in there and heal her. I'm not technically a healer because I can only transfer life energy from one person to another."

"You mean you need to kill someone?" Ash asked, surprised.

Shale nodded.

"There was a death on my floor last night," Marty said suddenly. "Mr. Werking, down the hall. Robert..."

He trailed off, looking to Shale, and she knew he understood.

"Mr. Werking was tired, he was ready to go. I talked to him first, told him I was an angel and we were going to heaven. He died peacefully, and it allowed you to live."

The startled look on his face hurt her. It hadn't been cold blooded murder; did he know that? She wouldn't have touched Robert if he hadn't been in so much pain, and so anxious to go on. Did Marty see that?

"So you play God," Ash mused.

"Look who's talking," Marty snapped venomously. He crossed the few feet between himself and the table and sat down across from her. "Ignore him."

Tern closed in as well. "So you would need a life to give her?"

"Yes, but it's not just the kind of thing you can go out and buy. I only take from people who are ready to die and willing to give their lives to me because they know I'll make good use of it. I believe Mr. Werking knew when he died that he was saving Marty."

Tern glanced at Quinn, who nodded. "That can be arranged."

"Can we hire you?" Tern asked.

Shale forced a laugh. "I barely know you. You just barged into my house and demanded I help you."

"Would you prefer to be starved until you agree?" Quinn questioned.

There was a frown on Marty's face; he didn't like these people.

"We'll pay you," Tern said.

Griffin, who had been quiet since he got hit, couldn't help asking, "How much?"

"Would a hundred grand cover it?"

A gust of wind nearly knocked Shale over. A hundred thousand dollars? She could go to college on that money, she could start a business, she could go to college and then start a business.

"Who is it you want her to heal?" Marty asked.

"Don't you know?" Griffin asked him.

"That's not important," Quinn told them sharply. "We just need to know if you'll do it or not."

Too fast, everything was going much too fast. "I need some time to think about this," Shale told them. "I don't even know who you are."

Quinn glanced at his watch. "You can have twenty minutes."

"Then what?"

"Then you can either agree to help us, or we can tie you up and kill your friend."

"Wait a second!" Marty was on his feet. "Aren't you taking this a little far?"

"Stay back, warlock boy."

Marty's eyes flashed at Ash and something silver darted through the air. The framed poster on the wall above the couch depicting a dozen men in fishnet stockings dropped off its hook and landed on him.

"Ow!"

The closet doors flew shut, and then there was silence. All three vampires were standing in frozen attack positions, ready to pounce on anything that threatened them.

Cassi ducked her head out. "Shale, get them under control or I'm calling Kim. I'm dead serious."

"They're going in just a second, Cas, I promise."

Shale, unsure of what exactly had just happened, got to her feet. "I'm going into my room to think for a couple of minutes, okay? Try not to tear the place apart."

She curled up on the bed and shut her eyes. Her life was back on the streets suddenly, everything happening so fast and laced with threats of blood and pain and huge quantities of cash. Her head hurt, her shoulder hurt, the bruises on her back hurt. And who was Marty? Obviously, he was some kind of psychic. He could read her mind, send her thoughts, and she was pretty sure he'd made the poster fly off the wall. But why had the power that surged into her when she gave him Robert's life become so amplified that it threw her through a wall and trashed the hospital room? He should have been far too sick and exhausted to cause that kind of stir.

Griffin was the only one she'd ever told about her Harmonizing, and that had been to keep him from killing her when she caught him changing back to his human form. They'd kept each others' secrets from then on.

Now Quinn and Tern and Ash had found her, and she knew they weren't going to take no for an answer. It was really a question of going willingly or in a sack, but she still had concerns. Where would they find someone who wanted to die? If she did Harmonize for them this time, would they demand that she do it again?

And there was always the thought of the money. Shale wasn't a greedy person, but she didn't intend to follow in her mother's footsteps and work at McDonald's for thirty years before slipping into a hopeless pit of drugs and booze, then spending the last years of her life as a prostitute on Hoe Street. That money could help her in a million ways.

There was a knock on the door, far too soft to be Griffin's. "Come in," she called, lifting her head off her knees.

Sure enough, it was Marty who slipped inside. He looked so different from the night before, no longer deathly flushed and covered in sweat. He was still too thin, his frame was visible to the point of being creepy, but his seafoam green eyes moved with a swiftness that spoke of mend.

"Do you mind me here?" he asked, his voice smooth and polite. She had been startled last night to hear the frog-like croak that issued from between his lips, and now she was startled to hear the musical intonation.

She shook her head, and Marty closed the door and leaned against it. They stared at each other for several long seconds, during which time the air filled with a mist of sweetness that drifted in pockets. Smelled like flowers, smelled like pot. Her head swam.

He didn't appear to expect anything of her, just leaned against the door and slowly examined the room. Shale had a habit of holding onto stuff, bits and scraps of pure junk. A cracked china lamp, a Turkish throw run, a mattress supposedly made from the feathers of a billion chickens. There was her mother's old wardrobe, chipped but still beautiful, a weird new-age metal writing desk that she'd found in an alley, and her low-to-the-ground single bed. It must have been intended for a child, it was so short and narrow that she and Griffin used to sleep together on the floor.

She remembered Marty and blushed. For some reason she didn't like thinking of times with Griffin when he was around.

"I haven't had the chance to thank you for what you did last night," Marty said. His words were sudden but they didn't really break the silence.

"Thank Mr. Werking. He really was ready, or I never would have touched him."

Marty smiled softly. "I know. We were kind of friends, me and Robert. I mean, as much as terminally ill patients can be. I feel...kind of honored that it was him."

Shale breathed a sigh of relief. That hadn't been repulsion on his face earlier, he was just startled. "I think he was happy to go."

Marty rocked off the door. "May I sit down?" he asked, and she nodded. He sat down on the edge of the bed, moving stiffly. He probably hadn't been out of bed in two weeks, Shale reflected.

"How may people have you helped like this?"

She tried to think back. "I've lost count. Maybe three or four hundred. I..."

She stopped and looked down.

"Shale?" Marty asked, and she forced herself to meet his eyes dead on.

"I used to work gang fights. I set up a network so that if there was going to be a fight, I'd know about it ahead of time and could harmonize among the dying and wounded."

She couldn't read his face, and it had little expression to read. His eyes still carried that soft look, like a freshly dried towel, but he seemed far away.

"You saw bad things there," he said simply, and she nodded. "Terrible things. They left scars."

Now his eyes had glazed over, and his hand moved mechanically to pick up her arm. Shale felt a surge of heat race through her and she closed her eyes. Marty's fingertips traced a scar that ran from her wrist to her elbow.

"Why?" he asked, drawing her arm closer.

Tears slipped out from under her eyes and she shook her head. "I didn't know what else to do."

He was angry, she felt it, and it hurt her. "No," he said as she began to pull away. "It's them I'm angry at. The dealers and the gang leaders and your mother. They're the ones who did this."

Oh God, she thought, and started crying. He had just walked in and torn open her heart, as simply as if she were a pan of pears. Peeled the lid off her pain, poured it in a bowl and eaten it.

"Come here," he whispered. His arm went around her shoulders and she buried her face in his neck. "This isn't as strange as it seems," he went on. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Please stop," she begged. "Please don't look at this."

"Marty, stop, please."

"Stop it, stop it!"

Shale jerked herself away before Marty had time to stop her and threw her body against the opposite wall so hard her head snapped back and she lost all sense of body for a second. She didn't open her eyes, couldn't have opened them if she tried. The memories came back with such fresh clarity that they seemed almost to be happening over again. There was a dampness soaking into her shirt and she smelled the sickening, iron scent of blood.

"Shh, it's over."

He curled his body around hers in the corner, drew her into his arms like a child. "The police came, Griffin found you. They took you out of there."

But not in time, she thought miserably.

"You lived. After everything they did, you still made it."

She felt him kiss the tears off her face and realized her muscles had stopped clenching. She was surrounded by that foggy warmth again.

"They called you a warlock," she managed to say.

He stiffened, just as he had earlier.

"Marty?"

His mind exploded in front of her, and the images were as powerful as those of her own memories.

"What the hell?" somebody outside asked. Strong hands pulled her away before she had time to glimpse anything else, and she opened her eyes, blinking against the bright light.

"Griffin?" she asked weakly. Marty was sitting in the corner of her room, looking dazed. Griffin was holding her up, and glaring.

"Let go," she said, and shook him off when he didn't move.

Marty climbed unsteadily to his feet as Shale collapsed onto the bed. Her heart, her stomach, something felt sick.

"What's going on here?" Griffin demanded.

"Nothing, go away."

"Shale?"

"Nothing!" She lay down slowly, aching again. She needed some aspirin, she needed some percodan, she needed some heroin. "Just leave, both of you."

"Well, I'd like to," Griffin said, snappish and annoyed, "but the vamps are getting restless, and Quinn's talking about having snack time before they leave."

"Oh."

She rubbed her face and sat up. What a crappy weekend, what a crappy twenty minutes. But at least now she knew what she wanted to do.

She wasn't going back to the ghetto.

"Tell them I'll do it."

Marty understood it perfectly. She was his soulmate, it was that simple. She was everything required to complete him, strength, worldliness, health. He could give her a home, trust, acceptance. He didn't care that she'd grown up in a sewer, sleeping in an apartment full of rats and rotten garbage, waking up every night to the sound of her mother's customers panting and yelling. Life hadn't been kind or easy or fun, only unjust. She had tried to help the victims of a gang war and ended up being terrorized, kidnapped, and raped. She'd suffered addictions and withdrawals and loneliness, which was maybe the worst of all. Marty had spent a hundred nights laying alone in a hospital bed feeling bitterly lonely. And on top of it, she had to deal with a power beyond anything else she knew.

The car jostled along the road at a steady clip. The sun had just set but Marty could make out her profile against the window. She hadn't spoken to him since they left her house, and yet demanded that he come along. He understood. It was sometimes hard to face people after you'd shown them everything, even when you knew they would love you without question.

Shale was not accustomed to being loved.

Ash giggled. He'd been giggling a lot during the last half hour, ever since he brought out a thermos full of blood spiked with bourbon. Quinn was driving, looking annoyed, although Marty got the feeling he looked annoyed ninety percent of the time. Tern sat on the center bench with Shale, very quiet and distant. Of all of them, Tern was the only one Marty would trust to clip his finger nails, and that was as far as the trust went. Even worse was Griffin, who sat between them like a stone wall. He'd insisted he be allowed to come along, even after Shale told him blatantly that she didn't need him.

"You think you can show up on my door step after four months without a word, drunk off your ass, and demand a place in the situation?" she'd finally hollered. "The only reason you want to come along is that you don't have a place to sleep tonight!"

"Take it easy," Marty whispered to her under his breath, knowing she couldn't hear. He wanted to take her hand, touch her shoulder, something to show his support, but her entire body was radiating the kind of energy that could knock things over.

At that moment everyone had noticed a car driving toward the house, and suddenly Shale changed her mind. "Crap, that's Jesska. She can't see you here or they'll kick me out." She grabbed Griffin and shoved him into the back seat of Quinn's car. Everyone else followed suit and they peeled out of the Canute Home before Jesska could see them.

For a brief moment, crammed into the back seat so tightly Shale had to sit on Griffin's lap, their eyes had met. Ash and Tern were arguing over the possibility of rolling blood-plasma cigarettes, Griffin was telling Quinn that they needed a bigger car, and somewhere in the hub-bub, Marty and Shale had found a little pocket of private peace. He stared into her huge brown eyes and saw her gaze stray to the small bone he wore on a chord around his neck.

Your mother? she thought, seeming to know he would pick it up.

She shrugged, and a ghostly smile touched her lips. Marty felt warm and cold in the same moment as he realized she may have glimpsed as much of his mind as he had hers.

Not that his life had been so horrible. Yes, the disease had been bad. Getting hung upside down by the ankles twice a day so that his uncle could pound on his back until he coughed up everything crowding his lungs wasn't a lot of fun. Endless hours in bed, gasping for air, weren't fun. The constant thought that this thing was going to kill him hung like a dark cloud that didn't allow a lot of light to shine through.

But none of it had the intense, fiery pain of her life. He didn't really know which was worse, and in the split second he spent trying to understand, she saw the alarm on his face and blushed. She turned away and Marty didn't know what to tell her.

They stopped at the Circle Daybreak compound and made their way slowly to the inner corridor. "I need to make a couple of calls," Quinn said, "we'll leave in a half hour. Tern, you better go hunt something, you have that blank look again. Ash, do something with yourself that doesn't involve me. Griffin, go with Tern." He turned away and then stopped, "Oh, and Shale, go talk to the guard on duty and have them ID you so you can get registered."

Shale nodded, but Marty got the feeling she had no idea what that meant and just wanted Quinn to leave her be.

"What's up with him?" Ash muttered, watching Quinn walk away.

"He's scared," Tern replied simply. "We screw this up, and it's the end of the line for him. Leave him along, he's nervous."

"Fine, whatever. Look, I've got to talk to you about this weekend..." Ash pulled Tern toward a corner of the room and left Shale and Marty standing without purpose.

"Well," Marty said, "I can show you where the security desk is, if you want?"

She nodded.

It took ten minutes just to find out where she was staying, and by the time Quinn got the number his hands were shaking. Stop that! he thought harshly, and they stopped. He managed to dial the number before they started up again.

"Red Roof Inn of Chairsburg, this is Molly speaking. Can I help you?"

"I need to speak with a guest, her name is Kim Boduicuk."

"One moment while I connect your call."

He waited tensely, one hand knotting itself in the phone cord. He was in Delos's room, a long, low place with wildly ornate furniture. Somehow the phone seemed out of place, but Quinn was grateful for the privacy. Delos seemed to understand these things better than the others.

The phone started ringing, and a moment later a groggy female voice answered. "Hello?"

"Rashel?"

She yawned. "Quinn? Hi, I just had this dream about you. It was weird, we were at Target and you wanted to buy some orange juice, but I kept saying we had to get it checked for rabies first." Another yawn. "Am I babbling? Sorry. What's happening?"

"There's something...."

He could hear her sitting up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and suddenly he couldn't talk. His throat closed off as though he'd tried to swallow dead blood. His hands started shaking again, and he let out a ragged breath.

Rashel was suddenly awake. "Quinn?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

I'm going to die, he thought. After all this time, I'm going to die on you.

"Have you heard of the Gift of Life?"

"No. What is it?"

"It's a girl. The Gift is passed from one girl to another, by means of a secret ritual. By living, the possessor allows all unnaturally old creatures to continue living. All made vampires, all lamia and 'shifters older than eighty or so."

"What's wrong with her?"

He took another deep breath. "She has brain cancer, and it looks like she's going to die."

"And you...?"

"I'm too old."

Silence. Quinn sank into a desk chair padded with leather and waited.

"Why can't she pass the Gift on before that happens?" Rashel asked.

"She hasn't found the right girl. I don't understand it, but she can only pass the Gift to particular people. I wouldn't even know where to begin looking."

Another silence. Finally she said, "I can be there in three hours, maybe four."

"Rae, there's no point. I have someone who might be able to heal her, but if not, there's nothing we can do. The chances, well, they aren't in my favor."

"Then you called to say goodbye."

"I called....because I...."

There was a click in his ear and he jumped. "Rashel?" he said. "Rashel, are you there?"

Suddenly, another click, and she was back on the line as if she'd tried to hang up on him and found herself unable to do it. He could hear her crying with her hand over the phone.

"Rae, don't," he begged.

"I love you," she said. "I'll wait for your call."

A final click.

Quinn closed his eyes and carefully lay the phone back in its cradle. He wanted out of all of it, out of the Night World, out of Circle Daybreak, away from Ash and everyone else. He wanted to go north with Rashel and find a place in the woods where they could be quiet and forgotten.

But it wasn't going to happen. He had work to do. And Rashel was waiting to hear from him.

Marty looked over Shale's shoulder as she filled out the form. They were sitting in an alcove of the conference room, at a metal picnic table like the kinds found in school cafeterias. "Shale Tatiana Eyre," she wrote, careful to keep each letter within the box.

"Where did you mother come up with that name?" Marty asked.

"Beats me. My brother's name is Merlin Baclava."

Her brother. Marty reached back into the swirl of memories he'd managed to clamp onto during those brief moments in her head and could find no brother. "Where is he?"

"Social Services took him away when he was a year old. I haven't seen him since."

"When was that?"

"I was seven."

She hadn't seen him in eleven years, Marty calculated, and his heart gave a funny thump. "We could find him, maybe. Circle Daybreak's pretty good at that stuff."

Shale glanced at him, unreadable, and then said, "This form wants to know who first contacted me on behalf of Circle Daybreak. Who should I put down?"

She didn't want to talk about it. Okay. "The TAQ team. 'Tack' is spelled t-a-q, all caps."

"For what purpose was I recruited? Can I put down here that they threatened me?"

"If you want to."

She placed her pen on the coffee table and looked at him. "What happened earlier? Are you psychic, or was it because I healed you, or..."

Marty chewed on the inside of his cheek as he thought. The word "soulmates" tended to frighten people off, to make them think of bad sitcoms where tv teen-agers whined to their parents that they just had to go to the dance because the "he's not very good for you" guy was her soulmate. He didn't use the word lightly, and he didn't want Shale to think of that, to trivialize this whole thing.

"Sometimes," he said slowly, "these things happen. There are people who can connect with each other the way we did earlier. There isn't a whole lot of reason behind it, it just is."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"It makes perfect sense." He didn't want to contradict her, but it made perfect sense to him. "People...." He stopped and laughed. "People need people, as they say. I don't know, sometimes these things happen to throw us off track or bring us back on or just change everything. I don't know what the Devine's will is."

Her brown eyes were so easy to get lost in; he barely heard her say, "You believe in Divine will?" but when the words registered, they quickly brought him back to himself.

"That's....not something we want to get into right now," he said. "It's pretty complicated."

"Quinn called you a warlock."

Marty gritted his teeth. "Quinn's a jerk sometimes."

Shale leaned to the side, straddling the bench so that she could lean against the side of the table. "What do you like to be called?"

"Most of my friends just called me Marty."

She smiled. "Seriously. I'm confused here. I saw something earlier, back at my house, but I don't understand it. There are all these words floating around in my head. Some with pictures. I know about the Night World, and Griffin and werewolves and vampires, but what are you? I heard the word witch."

Marty couldn't think of anything to say, so he just nodded.

"I thought they were just stupid characters on TGIF shows," she said.

"Yeah, well, I'm not far from it." He sighed and stared at his fingernails, at how pink they were. Yesterday they'd been blue from lack of oxygen.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Shale's hand touched his cheek. He looked up, found her eyes, blinked slowly and let the weight of his head rest in her palm. "Why are you so ashamed?" she asked gently. "So you're a witch, so what? It isn't like in the movies or on tv. What I saw today, what I saw inside your head....it's beautiful, Marty. It's powerful and real and spiritual. It gives you a kind of inner strength I've been looking for all my life....it's nothing to be ashamed of."

Her thumb traced his lips as he spoke a few bitter lines. "Go up to anyone in the Night World and ask them what they think about Circle Chimera. You'll be lucky if they just laugh and don't spit on you."

"You care that much what they think?" Shale asked, appearing genuinely surprised. She ran delicate fingers over his cheek as she brought her hand away and returned it to her lap.

"Their disgust touches every part of my life." Marty tried to stop himself from hissing. "My mother was ex-communicated from Circle Midnight when she married my father. She died a year later, without her family, without her gods, without the ceremonies she'd grown up with. She's the only woman buried on Chimera lands in six hundred years, and she's alone there in the ground."

He stopped speaking abruptly and put his head down. There was more that could be said, certainly, but he didn't want her to see this side of him.

He waited for a reaction and only found her arms sliding around him. Without thinking he drew her close across the bench and closed his eyes in her hair. He didn't have to say a thing.

"Wait a second," Tern broke in. "You're going to date this girl?"

"I don't know! That's why I'm telling you all this, so you can tell me what to do. You're the smart one, Tern, I'm just the good looking one."

Tern rolled his eyes. He and Ash were sitting in the kitchen drinking from a bag of blood while Ash talked about his weekend adventures. Griffin was slumped in a nearby chair, asleep.

"I thought you'd sworn never to date humans," Tern said,

"Yeah, but that was before Mary-Lynette. And this girl isn't ordinary, Tern, she's incredible."

"Her breasts are that big, huh?" Tern asked knowingly, and Ash was about to reply when the door opened and Mona walked in.

She was a short, red-haired vampire who looked about fifteen and was closer to one hundred. "Where's Quinn?" she asked, glancing around.

Ash shrugged. "Who cares? What's that?"

She handed the file he was pointing to to Tern. "This is everything we were able to dig up on Shale Eyre. Read it over and come with a plan, okay? This is the first Circle Daybreak/Night World joint effort, and Thierry's really riding my back not to blow it." She headed back toward the door. "I'll send Quinn in."

Tern opened the file and started digging through it. "Born addicted to crack, mother stole her medication. Kidnapped from the hospital when she was two days old, then returned a week later. The police thought her father took her and then changed his mind and brought her back. She dropped out of school after the tenth grade. Arrests for carrying a concealed weapon, drug use, shop lifting, petty theft, and assault. Spent two months in juvie. Mom was a hooker, father in jail, baby brother taken away by social services. Spent time in one, two, three, four, five different foster families. Oh, look, she was a gang member."

Ash frowned. "That girl did not look like a hardened criminal to me."

"Ah, I'm getting to that part. She was caught in the middle of a gang fight, got the shit beat out of her, and ended up in the hospital under police protection. One of the worst gang wars in this part of the country; apparently she was willing to testify. Some enemies broke into the hospital, shot up doctors, nurses, and patients before they found her." He swallowed, his voice falling slightly. "They took her to a warehouse and tied her up for a week and a half. She was re-addicted to heroin and raped repeatedly." He flipped the page stiffly. "Apparently Griffin helped the police find her, and she went back into the hospital. She testified and moved into the Canute Home for Lost Children and enrolled in school a year ago." He glanced over her medical report. "Had to have half her liver removed. Just about every STD in the book. HIV positive." His eyes closed for a moment and blood-sweetened air rushed out from between his lips. "What a bloody mess."

The story of Shale Eyre's miserable life had little or no effect on Quinn. Maybe he was just old and jaded, or maybe he didn't give a damn about vermin's life on the street, but he didn't say do anything until he read the police report on her kidnapping as a baby.

Then he stomped into the main room, jerked her to her feet, and ripped her shirt off.

"Ripped" was the right word; the seams split under the arms and ran down. Shale didn't make a sound, just tried to hit him as he slammed her face-down onto the table.

"Woah!" Mona hollered, running toward them. Tern and Ash were at her heels, and Marty was trying to find something to hit him with.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ash cried as Quinn pinned Shale's hands above her head against the table top.

"Look at this," he said, and tugged down the back of her sports bra.

"Look at what?" Mona asked. He pointed to a black mark on her shoulder bone, a series of black lines running almost parallel.

Tern leaned closer and saw that it was a tatoo in the shape of the letter V, delicate vines curling around the pen strokes. The form was stretched and spotty, as if it hadn't been touched up after her growth spurt. "So, she has a tatoo. So what?"

Quinn released Shale and she sank under the table, shaking uncontrollably. "Was that really necessary?" Mona snapped at Quinn. She called down the hall, "Jez, could you let me borrow a shirt over here?"

"Don't you see?" Quinn asked. "That V is Violet's mark."

"Violet who?" Mona replied. "Violet Yarrow?"

"Of course Violet Yarrow! How many other Violets are there in town who go around snatching babies from hospitals?"

Marty tuned out the arguing vampires, ect. above him and climbed under the table beside Shale. "Are you okay?" he asked, touching her arm. She shook her head and drew in a long, shuddering breath.

"Bad flashbacks," she managed to say, forcing a weak smile, and Jez shoved a bundle of cloth toward them under the table before joining the argument.

"Here." The shirt was flannel, with a line of buttons running down the front, and Marty coaxed Shale into it. "Better?"

She nodded and wiped her eyes. "I don't know if I have a right to be this upset or not. Maybe I'm over reacting."

"You aren't. That's how he treats humans." He pushed back the sleeves of Jez's shirt and examined the red spots on Shale's wrists that were rapidly darkening to bruises. "I told you he's a jerk."

Shale nodded and winced. "The deeper into this thing I get, the less I like it. At first I thought time was the enemy, but now I'm starting to think Quinn is just as bad."

Quinn jumped the guard before the door was fully open, wrapping a cold hand around his neck and slamming him into the wall. He kicked the door shut and glanced around at the opulently decorated front room, lavender marble floors and beautifully carved framing around the ceilings. Very much to Violet's tastes.

He stepped over the guard and walked with quick precision to the kitchen pantry. He hadn't been to Schule Sav Set in years, but little had changed besides the decor.

His hands wrapped around the angel statue on one of the highest shelves and rotated the wing ninety degrees to the left, then he pressed hard on its cherubic nose until the back wall of the pantry swung away to reveal a staircase of rotting stone. Water trickled along the slanted ceiling and the enclosed space stank of mildew. Quinn closed the door and reached for the light switch, only to find that hardly half the bulbs were working. Grim yellow light dripped from saucer-shaped shades that swung gently in the under-ground breeze as Quinn passed under them.

The laboratory hadn't been used in quite a while, from the look of things. A moth-eaten sheet, once white but now turned dingy, covered the metal examination table, which was rusting around the edges, and the various vials that lined the shelves had been placed there with apparently uninterested attention. The machines--those roving torture devices that had seemed such miracles when Quinn had first played with them sixty years ago--were shoved carelessly in one corner.

Along the wall nearest to the stairs were the files. Unlike everything else, these had been maintained, and were probably still used to monitor the students at the school upstairs. Quinn ran his hand over the metal wall and wondered what precisely he was looking for.

Try the girl first. He opened the drawer labeled "En-Fa," and looked up for Eyre. Nothing. He tried "Shale," "rock," and "baby," before he heard the door at the top of the stairs open.

"I'm disappointed in you, Quinn," a woman's voice called down, accompanied by the sharp click of her heels on the stone stairs. He turned and waited, one hand still resting against the files, while Violet made her way carefully into the lab.

She wasn't tall, she might even have been called short once or twice in her life, but her body seemed long. Long legs, long arms, long neck. Long curve of the spine. She wore jeans and a sweater, her light brown hair pulled back with a clip, and her feet were covered in tan loafers. Her appearance was casual but secretively enticing, and Quinn felt a sudden pang of nostalgia for the old days when they had romped together in this laboratory like drunk children, feasting on blood and violence.

"You didn't even say hello," Violet finished. Her chin was strong, but her eyes were delicate, and carefully trimmed bangs hid her high forehead.

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Violet sighed. "I hear you're with Daybreak now."

"I suppose that amuses you," Quinn said.

"No. The days when politics amuse me are long past." She bit her lip for a moment, and there was nothing hidden in the gesture, no attempt to manipulate Quinn's emotions. "It's true then?"

"It's true."

"Why?"

Ah, the baited question. Even Quinn didn't know the answer. Violet held his eyes for a long moment and then nodded and said, "What are you doing here?"

They had been friends once, the best of friends. And for so long. There had been years when Quinn couldn't even have imagined life without her, how he could get through the night without her voice in his ears. They'd hunted together, taught together, frolicked under the moonlight together.

And then she'd left him. For Maze. For her "soulmate."

He'd never been so angry.

And he'd done things which he could never take back.

"I need information on a girl with your mark on her shoulder."

Violet nodded. The disappointment didn't show on her face, but Quinn could feel it. She seemed older, as if she'd let the aging process begin again and some of her three hundred years were beginning to show. Maybe loosing a child could do that to you.

Violet stepped up beside him and said, "What's her name?"

"Shale Eyre. I already looked it up, she doesn't have a file."

"When was she born?"

"Late seventies."

"What's special about her? Anything?"

Quinn watched her face as she reached for a drawer and pulled it open, all business. She looked so sad to see him. "She apparently has the ability to transfer life power from one person to another."

Violet paused to think, then removed a file labeled, "Anhinga Carbons," and handed it to Quinn. "Take it and get out," she said quietly.

Quinn tucked the file under his arm and started walking back toward the stairs, but he couldn't help turn back. Violet was drifting around the lab, running her fingers over the sheeted examination table, humming a miserable tune. I don't want to end it like this, Quinn thought.

"Send Maze my regards," he said, and Violet looked up, her eyes darkening.

"You haven't heard."

He took a step back on the stairs. "Heard what?"

Violet glanced away. "Maze was killed three weeks ago, trying to capture a Wild Power."

"We need to get him off this," Tern said, his voice firm but low. It didn't have to be very loud for Mona to hear, even if she appeared to be distracted watching Shale and Marty. "He's loosing control at the drop of a hat."

"I can't take him off a case," Mona replied. "I don't have that kind of authority."

"You're in charge here!" Ash hissed.

"Of the compound, and of keeping the Wild Powers safe. But I can't go bossing around a vampire who's older than I am, stronger than I am, and has higher clearance than I do."

"Then call Thierry," Tern told her.

"And say what? That Quinn's in a bad mood? He's been in a bad mood since Yuletide."

"Say that he's acting irrationally and you think he'll jeopardize this whole thing. Thierry knows how important healing Cristona is, he'll understand."

"Irrational is one thing. Dangerous is another."

"You don't think attacking Shale and ripping her shirt off wasn't dangerous? I swear to the moon I saw that table go up on one leg, the warlock was pissed."

"So leave him behind."

"Shale won't go without him, and if Quinn keeps getting on his nerves....well, I'm not exactly a big believer in the power of Circle Chimera, but that kid's got something, that's for sure."

Mona drew her fangs up into her mouth so that she could grind her teeth without hurting them. "The Chimera has power, I'll give you that. But it isn't a big enough issue with Quinn to warrant calling Thierry."

"What about the fact that Quinn's just run off? I mean, where the hell is he?"

"He said he'd be back."

"When?" Tern sighed loudly. "Can't you send him on a vacation or something? Just put him on a plane to Boston and tell him to stay with Rashel until he's pulled himself together."

"I don't have that kind of authority. And besides, Rashel is doing an undercover in Chairsburg, and having Quinn around would screw the whole thing up. Especially given the way he's acting."

"But can't you-"

"Tern!" Her eyes flashed and he was suddenly aware of how much older Mona was than he. "Give it up," she whispered. "Just let it go."

He watched her walk away and leaned back against the wall. She was probably as upset as Quinn, knowing that the moment Cristona died she would turn into a mummy. But Tern had just as much to be worried about; he'd been changed from lamia into a made vampire a few months earlier. He might not mummify, but it wouldn't be pretty.

Mona sat behind her desk and allowed Jez to massage her shoulders. The girl had fingers of steel and a lot of energy to burn off; she was incredible.

"Don't sweat on it," Jez said as she worked. "I mean, if this whole set-up with the girl is so risky, she must have been put in danger lots of times and come out of it okay. This has been going on since when, Maya's time?"

"Only three thousand years."

"Okay, so figure if each girl lives only thirty years, that's still one hundred girls who had to pass of this Gift before they died. They've probably got those natural luckiness things instilled in them."

"Maybe."

Mona's throat was dry, and it occurred to her that she hadn't hunted in a couple of days. Too much going on, too much to think about.

There was a knock on the door. "Come in," Mona called wearily.

Quinn stepped quietly over the parameter and eyed Jez. "Could we have a moment along?" he asked, cold but composed.

Jez sighed and headed for the door, muttering as she went, "Don't I ever get to have any fun?"

Mona watched Quinn lock the door. "Sit down," she said. "What's that you have?"

He placed a manilla folder on her desk and sat stiffly in one of her leather armchairs. "I've spoken with Violet, and she gave me the pertinent information. Shale was a participant in one of Violet's experiments, this one an attempt to replicate Anhinga's Gift."

"She used her own daughter as a subject?"

"No, only a study. She wanted to re-create the Gift of Death in human babies. There were three in the original project. Two were returned to the hospital, Shale and another girl. There's no further record of the third after the experiment."

"None at all?"

"Nothing. The only follow-ups are on Shale and the other girl, a Russian named Irien Dukosvky. She never mentions Teasel Moser again." He leaned back a little in the chair but couldn't seem to get comfortable. "I ran the Russian's name through the computer. You remember Muler, Muler and Rivnova?"

Mona's brow wrinkled as she thought back. "Vaguely. They were those real young kids doing all the elaborate undercover work in Asia for a while, right? What's this got to do with it?"

"They've been tracking Irien Dukosvky for three years now. They call her 'Ghost.' Can't seem to get a lock on her. I don't think Violet's experiment worked the way she hoped it would, but we can assume it did something to these girls. Shale can transfer life energy and Irien's avoided detection from one of the top tracking teams in the world. Teasel has dropped out of sight completely."

He stopped abruptly, and Mona felt a small wave of tightly-coiled animosity roll out toward her. "What is it?" she demanded.

Quinn's eyes lifted. "Why didn't you tell me Maze had been killed?"

She waited for an answer to come to mind, but none did. Finally, she said, "Would it have mattered?"

"He was my friend."

"You hated him."

"He was still my friend. So was Violet, and I should have been there for her."

"Christ, Quinn." Mona stood up and reached for her water spritzer. Maybe if she fed her plants she could avoid saying anything she would regret.

"Was it because of Rashel?"

"No, I just didn't think you'd care."

"I don't believe you."

She looked over her shoulder at him. "Then don't believe me," she said simply. "But keep your damn personal life out of my compound."

They traded in Quinn's car for somebody's van, and then pulled out. Having been driving for three hours, Ash was getting restless.

"Hey," Ash said, knocking on Quinn's arm. "How many lawyers can a vampire suck dry in one night?"

Quinn didn't respond. "Come on," Ash prodded, shoving him. "How many?"

"I don't know."

"How many can you afford?"

Ash broke into hysterical laughter, rocking back and forth in his seat.

"Hey, here's another one. A vampire walks into a dentist's office and says, 'Dentist, my fangs keep getting duller and duller.' So the dentist takes a look and he says, 'You're grinding your teeth in your sleep, and your fangs are grinding up the roof of your mouth. That's what's dulling them. I'll just cement in this bite guard to keep you from grinding any more.' And the vampire asks, 'But doesn't a bite guard kind of defeat the purpose?' And the dentist says, 'Not as far as I'm concerned!'"

Tern coughed discreetly, but Ash didn't pick up on it. He continued.

"Okay, listen to this. A vampire and a human are playing tennis, and the human has stuck a piece of wood in the tennis ball so the vampire will be reluctant to hit it. That way, the human keeps winning. So finally, after liked twenty games that the human has won because he's cheating, the human says, 'Gosh, vampire, you suck!' And the vampire says, 'Well, I certainly hope so! These clothes are expensive!"

Marty felt a wave of coldness coming back from Quinn but saw Shale's reflection crack a smile. That one hadn't even made sense, not as far as he could see. It was humorous to him how careful Ash had been to specify that the human had won only out of cheating. He might be willing to share the planet with them, but he was a long way from excepting them as equals.

"I got this one from Jez. She is so funny, especially with a little booze in her-"

"Shut up," Quinn said, and not in his usual Can-it-Ash-you're-killing-me voice.

"No," Ash replied, "this one's the best."

"No, shut up!"

Quinn's eyes darted around and Tern leaned forward. "What's wrong?"

"We're being followed, by what looks like an armored van."

"That's not very funny," Ash told him, too drunk to be anything more than annoyed.

There was a flare of light in the window behind Marty, and he turned to look. Sure enough, a big black van was tailgating them.

"They're flashing their high beams," he called up to the front seat.

"I know," Quinn snapped.

"Vampires have excellent night vision," Ash explained conversationally, turning in his seat. "That's what allows us to hunt down the little bunnies, and the little foxies, and the little deeries, and-"

"Shut him up, Tern," Quinn called, "before I do it myself."

The van lurched forward suddenly, and Griffin, who wasn't wearing a seat belt, was thrown to the floor. "Damn," he muttered. "Give me a hand up, babe."

"Don't call me 'babe,'" Shale told him. "And you can get yourself up."

Marty repressed a smile.

Tern unbuckled Ash from the front seat and managed to coax him onto the back bench with Marty. He reeked of bourbon. "Like I was saying," he continued, "my night vision helps me get all the little raccoons, and the little otters, and the..."

Tern was up front now, and Marty closed his eyes. The van peeled forward again, and he didn't dare look. He didn't want to see how quickly the desert was zipping by.

Concentrate. His mind stretched, his hearing loosened and extended past Ash's crazy rambling. The black van wasn't more than twenty feet behind them, surely that was close enough for him to-

Marty put his hand over Ash's mouth and opened his eyes. "Quinn," he called up front. "They have guns, and they're about to open fire, but if we keep going they'll run out of gas."

"What hell are you talking about, warlock boy? Of course they'll run out of gas, but by that time they'll have run us off the road."

"No, you don't get it. They're seriously low on gas-Ow!" He jerked his finger out from between Ash's fangs.

"How do you know that?" Griffin asked.

"Because I can hear the driver's thoughts."

There was a horrifying crack as the second vehicle slammed into the first, and the breath was blown out of Marty's lungs as the seat belt grabbed his torso.

"Now is not a good time for your hocus-pocus bullshit!" Quinn yelled over his shoulder.

The back window shattered and somebody screamed. Marty couldn't tell who it was. "Get down!"

He shoved Ash down before grappling with his own seat belt, then slid to the floor. Peering under the middle bench, he could see Shale's face in a mixture of shadow and light. Her eyes were wide but not frightened, and she seemed to be taking in everything she saw.

She's been in this situation before, Marty thought, and then another bullet tore through the van.

"Just keep going!" he called again. "They really will run out soon, or at least have to slow down enough that we can loose them."

"I can't afford to take chances on you being right!"

Marty realized Ash was tapping his shoulder repeatedly. "What?" he asked, exasperated.

"One time I hunted a baby monkey," Ash said. He was completely undisturbed by the shots being fired at them. "I was at the zoo, and it was night, so I just let myself into its cage and grabbed it."

"That's great, that's lovely. Quinn!"

"What?"

There was a screeching pop and the van tilted to the right. Marty felt something fall out from under him.

"Don't stop!" he yelled again.

"They're blowing our tires," Griffin pointed out.

The speed had abruptly slowed, but Quinn started picking it up again as fast as he could.

"It's not good for your car to drive it on a flat tire," Ash told Marty.

Another shot, and the tilt evened out.

"We can't stop until they've run out of gas," Marty said again.

"Yeah, that's what you said twenty miles ago."

Twenty miles? How fast are we going? he wondered.

A shower of bullets hit the back of the van, and before he even knew what was happening, the back door had been unlatched and was floating open. "Move," he told Ash, and gave him a shove. They scrambled toward the front, and Ash crammed himself at Tern's feet. Griffin had moved himself between the back and Shale, and was messing with the bench seat.

"What are you doing?" Marty asked.

"Trying to use it as a shield. We need the other one, too."

They opened the bench flat, pulled it off its tracks, and then bent it around Shale's body. "I can help," she protested, but Quinn said no.

"If you die, then there'll have been no point in any of this."

Marty and Griffin inched back and released the other bench. As they were working another round of bullets were fired. Marty froze at the sound but Griffin didn't even pause, just kept loosening and unhooking.

With the second shield in place, they crouched between it and the front seat.

"Keep going, they can't have much more fuel," Marty said. He wasn't sure his words were audible over the fire-cracker snapping of guns being fired.

There was the piercing sound of metal tearing, and the back door flew off. Unfortunately, Quinn had just taken a sharp turn and the door slammed into the dirt instead of the other van's front windshield.

"Who is it?" Tern asked.

"How should I know? They're either trying to kill us to make us pull over."

"Don't stop," Marty said again.

A bullet soared past his head and hit Tern's arm. "Ah," he groaned, digging his fingers under the skin and pulling the bullet out. "Wooden tips. They know who we are."

Marty watched the wound slowly stop bleeding as the skin regenerated. Fascinating. This was turning out to be a very educational, if mind-blowing, day.

"I'm pulling over," er," Quinn said, and put his foot on the break.

"No, if we can just keep going a little longer-"

"Shut up, you little wanna-be witch."

Ash punched him in the stomach and Marty stopped talking. He flew backwards, slammed into the shield of seats, knocked them over, and found himself a perfect target.

But the bullets had stopped coming, now that Quinn was slowly down. "Are you okay?" Shale asked, leaning over him.

"Yeah, I just wasn't expecting that."

She helped him sit up as the vehicle came to a stop. "Exit and line up!" somebody yelled.

Marty winced as he climbed out, feeling the familiar sensation of suffocation. Ash would hit him in the lungs.

There were three people outside, another two standing beside the black van. "Cassi?" Shale asked suddenly, her jaw dropping.

A dark-haired girl with an aura like spit-fire turned and smiled. "Hey, roomie. Fancy meeting you here. Evening Quinn, Ash, Tern. How's it going?"

"You almost killed me," Ash told her, drunk and out of it.

"You almost outran us," the guy standing behind Cassi said. "Another two miles or so and we would have been out of gas."

Marty closed his eyes in exasperation, but not before he saw the vampires and werewolf turn to him in shocked surprise.

He could deal with prejudice against Circle Chimera most of the time. On the street, in supply shops, at Circle Daybreak meetings, at holiday gatherings, those he could do. But why could they never believe him when it truly counted? If Quinn could have driven another three minutes, they would have gotten off Scott-free.

Shale reached out and took his hand, and he glanced at her quickly. She flashed a tiny smile and turned back to Cassi.

"What are you doing here?"

Cassi shrugged. "These are my people."

"You're part of the Night World?"

The guy laughed and tossed his gun up in the air. "Let's get em' in to the van. We've got nice wood shackles for the vamps, and steel for everybody else."

As they were bustled off to the van, Marty caught Griffin's eye and shook his head. They didn't know about him. There was still a chance they could escape.

One of the newcomers pumped all the gas from Quinn's van to their own. Marty, Shale, and Griffin were cuffed with steel, Quinn, Ash, and Tern with solid oak wood. The van was empty behind the front seats, and they sat on the floor in a messy heap. A thick partition separated the front from the back.

"Rav," Quinn called. "This isn't how we agreed to do this."

Cassi's buddy ducked his head in the door. "He's busy, and besides, this is how we decided to do this."

"We had an agreement."

"And we're breaking it," the guy said with a chuckle. "This is our show now."

"What's happening?" Shale asked. Her face was drawn but she still hadn't lost her wits. Griffin, on the other hand, was letting his eyes dart around the cramped space like a trapped animal.

"Rav's decided to take over. We had an agreement with the Night World that Circle Daybreak would take care of this, but he doesn't trust me. And I don't trust him."

Marty's head swam. He thought he recognized Cassi, she looked dead-up like Lily Swanson. It was a long time since he'd seen Lily, but hadn't she had a daughter named Cassiope?

"Who's Rav?" he asked, twisting the cuffs to make sure they had locked fully. They had.

"His full name is Ravenal Fullin." Quinn cracked his knuckles. "He sides with whichever side offers him the most money. He's also completely insane."

"What is he?"

"Completely insane!" Ash hollered, pronouncing each word as if Marty were hard of hearing.

"I got that part. I meant, is he vampire, werewolf, 'shifter, what?"

"Can't you tell?" Tern asked, and from the cold note in his voice, Marty could tell he was pissed about this whole situation.

Marty couldn't tell. Ravenal's aura was a strange rainbow of jewel tones and spiraling wisps of gray smoke. If anything, he was leaning toward classifying Rav as witch, but of course he would have known. Circle Chimera was small and tight-knit.

"What about Cassi?" Shale asked.

"She's lamia," Griffin told her, and the van started rolling forward.

"Couldn't you have mentioned it earlier?"

He shrugged. "I didn't think it mattered. There are Night World people all over the place. I can't point them all out."

Shale licked her lips. "So Rav decided he didn't trust you guys, and he wants to take me to the dying girl himself?"

"That's the idea," Quinn told her boredly.

"How long will we be driving?"

"At least another hour."

Griffin moved his wrists quickly and the handcuffs snapped off. "Now what?" he asked, but he was looking at Marty, not Quinn.

"Now you get shot," Quinn told him, bitterly delighted.

"Don't move!" came a holler from up front. "There are three snipers pointed at you right now!"

Griffin's head snapped from side to side but he couldn't locate the danger. "The roof," Tern finally said. "There's a gunman on the roof, two more in the front seat."

There was a hissing sound and some thumps from above. Marty looked back at Quinn and tried to probe his mind. He managed to see that Quinn had a glimmer of an idea who might be used as the life donor before a knife forged from icy iron snapped through his trace thought.

"Don't," Quinn hissed. He was in a really bad mood, even for Quinn.

Marty found his eyes slipping closed. "Tired, warlock boy?" Ash asked. He was still mildly drunk; his words slurred together so that it sounded more like, "Turned, boydock oy?"

He didn't fight it. Shale's head came to rest on his shoulder and he felt a heavy warmth spreading through his body.

"Now's not the best time for a nap," Griffin said from far away.

"No shit," Ash mumbled.

Shale let out a little sigh and curled against him.

"Do you smell something?" Tern asked. "Oh, god, what are they pumping in here?"

Marty didn't care. The dirty van floor felt like a feather mattress, and the pot holes were Magic Fingers. Shale whispered something he couldn't catch, then chuckled. They sank deeper down.

From far in the distance came yelling, the reading of a poem about pain. Or maybe it was pain itself, singing. The blackness rose up and up, and he could sense good will and the beckoning of something strong. It was a magic that was calling him, from deep in space, and it was singing...

The warlock was still unconscious when they drove the van in Rav's hide out, where ever that was. The girl was woozy but open-eyed, her throat issuing little groans and curses.

Ash wasn't feeling all that great himself. He should have demanded the rest of the weekend off; he was too worn down from seeing Mary L, and that, as much as anything else, had pushed him to get drunk tonight. If he'd had any indication that this would be more than a routine healing, he would never have touched the stuff. Well, at least not as much of the stuff.

Quinn had put up a good fight as they climbed out of the van, taking out Cassi and Vern temporarily. Then Cassi's friend, whose name turned out to be Sven, grabbed a Louisville Slugger and whacked Quinn on the back of the head. Tern wasn't looking great, either, one of the wooden clamps was cutting into his arm.

The building was huge. Elevators led from one floor to another, hallways ended in ballrooms which led to whole other wings. By the time they reached their destination, even Sven looked tired and lost.

The doors opened, and they were ushered inside, Marty and Quinn unceremoniously dragged by the ankles, their shirts riding up. Ash forced his eyes opened wider and he stopped walking abruptly when he saw the room, the huge antechamber with the onyx and wood fixtures.

It was circular, maybe sixty feet in diameter, and at least three stories high. Near the ceiling, a window ran around the room, on observation deck in front of it. The walls, floor and ceiling were black marble with veins of silver and white, and stationed in a large circle, like Stonehenge, were nine white pillars with wooden shackles sunk deep into the marble.

Someone had made this room with vampires in mind. Wooden stakes lined the floor like a peg-board, oak and ash and maple. Ash felt sick just from the smell.

Each of them was bound to a pillar, the wooden shackles lined with silver in Griffin's case. Marty woke up suddenly when Sven slapped him, but Quinn remained unconscious, all his weight hanging on his arms. Finally Sven cracked the baseball bat into his stomach and he lurched awake.

That's gotta hurt, Ash thought, but he was more concerned with another problem: Where was Shale?

Shale coughed and felt the mist in her head beginning to clear away. Her throat hurt, but she was alive, and at the moment that seemed more than a small miracle. A soft pillow covered in silk lay beneath her body, which was still tired and worn from the previous twenty-four hours of adventure, but no longer aching with every move.

She opened her eyes and sat up. The room was long and circular, with a low ceiling where maroon and navy tiles had been glazed into geometric patters that seemed to swirl above her. There were no windows but a chandelier hung with prisms and thick, beeswax candles dripped onto the floor nearby. The bed was a low coffin made of white marble, the top folded back and the inside lined with thick cushions. A thin blanket stuffed with down had been kicked off; her skin was clammy.

"How are you feeling?" a voice, very gentle, very soothing, asked. Shale turned and saw a guy a few years older than Griffin standing beside a delicately carved secretary with bear-claw feet and a scroll top.

"Who are you?"

He stepped quickly to the side of the coffin and make a sweeping bow. "Ravenal Fullin, at your service."

"As I am at yours, I suppose," she muttered, allowing him to help her out of the coffin. His skin was warm and she fought the urge to let her hand rest against his until it had absorbed that heat. Black hair, black eyes, he was attractive in a knock-you-off-your-feet kind of way.

Ravenal was chuckling as he set her on her feet. "That's a nice sense of humor you have."

"Where are the others?"

She dusted her slacks, noticing what could be a spot of blood on one knee, and followed him as he motioned her to the wall. Pushing back a curtain, she looked down into a room the size of a gymnasium, and as dark as a black hole.

"Lights," Ravenal said, touching a button. Through the spotless glass window, Shale watched track lighting burst forth, illuminating a wide chamber made completely on onyx.

There were posts sunk deep in the floor. Marty was chained, wrists above his head, to one, Griffin to another. The vampires wore wooden collars and shackles, and they all blinked at the bright light. There was blood running down Marty's face and she was struck hard by the certainty that if she didn't get him out of there quickly, he would die. His body just wasn't strong enough yet to endure this kind of treatment.

"They're waiting for you," Ravenal said softly. His voice carried like a nursemaid's as she tucked the children into bed. "All you have to do is heal her and they can go home. Here, come."

She forced her eyes away from Marty and followed Ravenal. This time he led her to the other end of the room, to another coffin. Hunched beside it was the unconscious figure of a guy about Ravenal's age, his left temple turning dark green.

"This is her."

Shale crouched down and studied the girl in the marble casket. She was beautiful in a comforting way, in that long, crimpy-haired hippie way. Strawberry-blond, with a bone-pale complexion and the some child-like face. Her dress was simple, a blue shift and sweater, but it failed to hide a figure almost as frail as Marty's. Shale was sure that no matter what she did, this girl would not regain her strength.

"What's her name?"

Ravenal was crouched beside her, now he reached out to stroke the still cheek with infinite tenderness and affection. "Cristona."

"Who's that on the floor?"

"Her companion, Reese. Her family is gone, and she's deaf, so she needs someone to help her around when she decides to go out in public. Reese has been with her all the years I've known her."

Cristona opened her eyes, and they were cornflower blue. Gentle, pixie, like the rest of her. A tiny hand clenched, like a baby's fist wrapping around a strand of hair, but as soon as Ravenal's fingers left her cheek it relaxed.

"Can she see?"

"Not any more. I'm afraid the cancer is very advanced."

"And you want me to heal her."

Ravenal stood up. "I don't want you to," he said. "You will. I have a donor for you. Actually, I have five."

It took Shale a moment to realize what he meant. "You want me to use one of them?" she asked, gesturing to the window.

Rav nodded and lead her back to the cat walk. "You're choice, which one. I don't really care, so long as Cristona is healed."

Shale stared down at them, at Griffin, her oldest friend and lover, at Marty, the other half of her, and knew she couldn't touch either of them. The vampires were no better, even Quinn, who had treated her so badly today. She would never be able to forgive herself if she killed them.

"I don't think I can," she said.

"Oh? Why not?"

She turned to look at his incredible face and relaxed posture. He was casual, but not in a forced way. She got the feeling he really was comfortable with the situation, and that, more than any of his posing would have, disturbed her.

"I don't play God," she said.

"Of course you do. Sure, the people you take lives from might already be on the edge of death, but it's your decision who gets to cheat fate and live."

"There's nothing wrong with helping people live," she said coldly.

Ravenal smiled. "I certainly don't think so."

Her head was starting to hurt, and that feeling of desperation that had plagued her life for so many years had returned. She wanted out of this, and she wanted it now.

Cristona moaned and Ravenal went to her. Shale watched him touch a damp cloth to her forehead and then give her an injection. "Hush, sweets," he said. "Sleep a while."

Maybe he didn't realize she couldn't hear him.

Marty nudged Quinn's leg with his foot until the vampire opened his eyes. "Are you okay?" Marty asked, and Quinn stumbled around at the end of his shackles until he had his legs under him again. He made a soft growling sound.

"Where are we?"

"Inside. They've taken Shale somewhere, the rest of us are here."

Quinn shifted around, testing his handcuffs and the bolts that held them in the onyx pillar. "We're trapped," Ash said flatly.

"We'll find a way out," Tern told him. "We just need to keep our heads on and think of a plan."

Quinn let his head roll back and Marty saw with his second vision something hazy and burnt float out of him. Is he giving up? Marty wondered. There were definite feelings of despair coming from that link of the circle.

"There's Shale," Griffin said suddenly, gesturing up. "On the balcony."

She was standing on the other side of the window that braceleted the observation deck, and beside her was a blurry figure that Marty couldn't get a psychic lock on. He appeared normal enough, shaped of long lines and smooth curves, with a crop of dark hair just begging to be brushed, but his aura was strange. Colorless, clear, invisible. Their was nothing there.

"Is he a vampire?" Marty asked Tern, nodding his head toward Ravenal.

Tern glanced up and frowned. "I don't know. Quinn?"

Quinn didn't answer. He was sagging on his wrists, unconscious again.

"It's time for a game," Ravenal said later on. "Since you're having a hard time deciding, I thought I'd make it easier for you."

Shale didn't like the sound of that. She walked to the window and peered down at the chamber, where the posts had been arranged in a perfect circle. None of them looked well, Quinn especially.

"What game?"

"Process of elimination." Ravenal sat down on the window ledge and brushed the hair out of his face. "Who do we know for certain that you couldn't bare to sacrifice?"

Shale didn't answer, and he studied her for a moment. "Your eyes keep going back to the warlock, over and over." He reached for a microphone sticking out of the wall and turned it on. "Sven," he said, his voice echoing in the chamber. "Remove the warlock."

"Where are you taking him?" Shale asked quickly, as Sven stepped into the room with a baseball bat and a ring of keys.

"There are hundreds of rooms here, many bedrooms. He can stay in one of those until we're finished."

She met his eyes and saw no deception there. "I don't believe you," she said anyway.

Ravenal leaned forward and reached out to touch her hand. "You don't understand, do you? I'm not here because I like torturing people. I can't stand torture, and I'm not enjoying this in the least. But Cristona must be healed at all costs, and if that means playing a few games, so be it." He shrugged. "I don't care about the warlock, he's yours to take home once this is all finished. Now, who remaining do you least want to kill?"

What a way to put it, Shale thought miserably. "Griffin," she said. "The werewolf."

Ravenal reached for his microphone again and a moment later Griffin was gone. "Who next?"

"I don't know. These people are strangers."

"You were frowning at Quinn, why not use him?"

"I can't just go around picking like that."

The microphone clicked on again. "Sven, bring in the lions."

Shale's head snapped towards him. "What?"

"If process of elimination is hard for you, then we'll bring in some help."

She didn't really believe it until a door rose open and Sven pulled a line of carts into the room. Each was a wire mesh structure that barely contained the tawny beasts within, and their growling could be heard all the way through the window.

"Let's go out onto the observation deck," Ravenal suggested, but Shale couldn't move.

"All right," Sven was saying below. "I'll let you three loose, and then I'll let the cats loose, and the last one left alive is for Ravenal. Understood?"

"You can't do this," Shale said.

"You have a better idea?"

"No, but this is just sick."

"Make up your mind, or the cats will make it up for you."

Shale turned back to the window and found Quinn staring straight at her. She had expected to feel that horrible drill-glare he had given her earlier, but instead he just met her eyes. Then he tilted his head ever so slightly to the right, straightened it, and repeated the motion.

He's gesturing, Shale realized. He's gesturing to Ash....

He's telling me to use Ash.

Her skin went cold and she felt the distress ease off her face. How could he?

Sven released Tern from his shackles and the gangly vampire stumbled away from the cages. Shale didn't know how vampires would fare against lions, but it was three to seven, and she didn't like those odds.

"Have you made your choice?" Ravenal asked, touching her shoulder.

"I want an interview," she replied without hesitating. "With Quinn. I need to talk to him."

"You understand that planning to escape is pointless, and I will have to sit in on this interview?"

"That's fine." She turned from the view and met his eyes briefly before walking away.

Marty searched the room but could find no exit. No windows, and no door besides the one he had come through. The bedroom was spacious and plush, with a canopy bed decorated in jewel tones and a fireplace--woodless, of course--that ran on gas. Marty had never seen a gas fireplace before.

He sighed, finding no possible route of escape, and went into the bathroom. There were clean towels on the racks, one of which he filthied giving himself a quick and hardly thorough sponge bath. Afterward, he went back into the bedroom and poured a glass of orange juice from the food-laden cart beside the desk.

There was a scraping sound and he spun toward the fireplace, his eyes riveted as he watched one brick slowly wiggle out of its moorings until finally tumbling onto the floor. Marty jumped at the crack of brick against porcelain, spilling o.j. all over himself.

"Hello?" he heard, and took a hesitant step forward. "Is anybody there?"

Marty hunched by the spot where the brick had fallen from and peered into the hole it had felt. Cool air blew on his face. "Griffin?"

"Yeah, it's me. I think I'm in the room next door. It's some kind of bedroom."

"Same here. Can you get out?"

"No, can you?"

"Only one door, and it's locked."

"What do you think is going on?"

Marty sat down on the floor so that his ear could rest more comfortably against the hole. He got the feeling he was going to be spending a lot of time there. "I don't have any idea."

They had an interrogation room set up at Ravenal's orders. It was a small, cramped space with steel walls and one cracked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The desk and chairs were wooden, and the chair's arm rests had been modified into shackles.

Shale sat on the edge of the desk while Ravenal took a chair in the corner. As they waited for Quinn to arrive, she said, "How do you know Cristona?"

Ravenal expression was slightly pained. "She's my friend."

"Just a friend?"

He smiled now. "Cristona isn't allowed into romantic situations. Reese takes care of that."

"He won't let her date, but he doesn't mind if she hangs around with you?"

"It's a complicated situation, I can't really describe it properly, but...." He shifted and Shale got the feeling he rarely talked about Cristona. "I want you to understand what she means to me, how important it is that she lives. If she died, it would kill me. Quite literally, I think I would just roll over and die. I can't be without her."

Shale wiped her palms on her jeans, suddenly uncomfortable to be alone with this guy. "Have you talked to a psychiatrist about any of this?" she asked.

Ravenal only chuckled. "You think I'm a nut. Well, that's okay. If I met me here, doing what I'm doing now, I'd think I was crazy, too."

There was a knock on the door, and Sven came in with Quinn. Shale watched the vampire be locked into the interrogation chair, and then drew her knees up to her chest and swiveled on the table to face him.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

His face was faintly bruised, blood running out of his hair. One earlobe had been torn off, but it appeared to be growing back. "I'll heal," he said flatly.

Shale nodded. "Okay. No small talk. I have to make a decision here, and pretty quickly. Cristona is fading fast, she needs a donor. I'm guessing you've already figured all this out, and that's why you suggested that I use Ash."

"Yes."

"I want to know why."

"Why Ash?"

"Yes. He's your friend, why would you want him dead?"

"I don't want him dead, I just want to get us out of this situation. We have to give someone up, and Ash is a logical choice."

"How do you figure that?"

"He's young, he's the least strongest but healthy enough to heal Cristona easily, and he doesn't fill a necessary role in Circle Daybreak. I know it sounds cruel, but it's the truth."

Shale got off the table and started walking back and forth, her eyes trained on the steel floor. Ravenal sat, silent and non-intruding, in the corner. "I don't believe you," Shale said finally. "Not a single one of your reasons make sense. First, Marty is younger than Ash. Marty and Griffin are both weaker than he is. And I get the feeling that Circle Daybreak needs all the people they can get. No, you're definitely bullshitting me. You hate Marty, you hate that he's part of Circle Chimera. You've been treating him like crap all day. Everybody seems to look down on werewolves, why not Griffin? It's obvious you don't like him, either, and he isn't even part of Circle Daybreak. What about Tern-"

"I made Tern," Quinn cut in sharply. "It would hurt me to kill him."

"I'm not buying it. Marty or Griffin should be the one, that much is obvious. But you still want Ash. Why?"

When he didn't respond, she stopped pacing and leaned over the table toward him. "Why?"

Quinn's eyes refused to meet hers, but he said, "The reasons don't matter. Just know that he's your best choice."

Shale slapped him across the face, then took his cheek in her hand and turned him to look at her. "It's been a long, hard day for me, Quinn. I'm not in the mood to play games with you."

She turned her eyes deliberately toward a pile of thin wooden spikes Sven had left on the floor, each of which would make a brutal torture divide without being fatal.

Quinn looked at the pile and then sighed. "Hell," he muttered. "Fine, I'll tell you. I do want Ash dead, because he knows about things I've done that could ruin my life."

"What kinds of things?"

"Just things."

"Want to be shiskobob?"

He grimaced. "I was involved in the death of my soulmate's mother. She doesn't know, Ash does."

It took Shale a moment to absorb, to shake the chill out of her ears. "Is he blackmailing you?"

Quinn laughed bitterly. "Of course not. Ash isn't that smart."

"Then why are you worried?"

"But he's gone on a major morality spin lately, and I don't want to get caught up in it. If he tells Rashel...."

"She'll leave you," Shale finished. "You know, I might have more sympathy for you if you hadn't killed your girlfriend's mom."

"I didn't kill her," Quinn snapped. "Hunter killed her, I was just there. And watching."

"How long has Ash known?"

"Since mid-December."

"If he hasn't told yet, somehow I don't think he's going to."

"That's because he doesn't remember. I did the best I could to brainwash him, but it could ware off any time. It's hard for one vampire to manipulate the memories of another, and nothing is for sure."

"But you figure that if one of us has to die, it might as well be Ash so that your secret will be safe?"

"Well, I thought that before I had to tell you."

She nodded. She climbed back onto the table and folded her legs, finding it more comfortable to be sitting above him. "That's really disgusting, Quinn."

He glared at her, and she felt those vibes--those "vermin scum" vibes--coming flying toward her again.

Softening her voice, she went on, "He's your friend. You don't do that to your friends, no matter how afraid you are. It's not right, it's not Kosher, and it's definitely not cool with me. Which is unfortunate for you, because I'm the one who has to make the big decisions here..."

Suddenly understand flashed in Quinn's eyes and a look of absolute horror crossed his face.

"I'm sorry," Shale said, and she meant it. "Maybe it's not fair, I don't know. But I know that none of the others volunteered each other, and that's honorable."

"You can't," Quinn breathed as Shale climbed off the table. Ravenal reached for a microphone in the wall and called for Sven.

"I have to," Shale told him. "I'm sorry it turned out like this, I really am."

"You can't!" Quinn hollered, and then let out a scream so loud she felt her ear drums begin to tear and ran for the door. "NO!"

"Marty!" Griffin's voice came through the hole in the fireplace, and Marty dragged himself off the sofa where he'd been napping.

He knelt down by the missing brick. "Yeah?"

"I think I found something."

"What?"

"The carpet rolls back, it isn't stapled down or anything, and there's a trap door in the floor."

The fogginess cleared from Marty's head immediately and he felt the first hints of an adrenalin rush. "Can you open it?"

"No, there's a lock. But I might be able to pry the lock off. Give me a few minutes."

He sank down in the ashes. "Hurry."

Ravenal took her up to the roof when she began crying. "For some air," he said, and she sorely needed it. All she could think was, How could I? I killed him.

"You did the right thing," Ravenal said, obviously distressed by the tears. "Really, there was no other way." And then, "He was my first choice, too."

Shale glared at him and he shrugged. "Sorry," he muttered.

The roof was at least eight or nine stories high, the highest building in view. Below was the stretch of desert and mountains for miles and miles, and Shale felt almost as if she were standing in the sky, it caved so beautifully around the rooftop.

"You are doing the right thing," Ravenal told her again.

She shook her head. "He has to be willing. If he isn't, we'll both just die."

"How do you know?"

She leaned slightly toward the edge, feeling her stomach turn over. "How do you know that if you jump off this building you'll fall down?"

His eyes were pitch black, deep but not endless, as Shale had first thought. He looked at her and nodded slowly, saying, "I can arrange that."

"Oh god," Shale croaked, and the tears rushed back at her full force.

Ravenal got up and put his arms around her, and she felt the intense heat of his skin. He was so feverish. The scent of motor oil and plastics filled her nostrils as he gently rubbed her back.

"I'll take you to Martin's room," he offered. "You can stay there until Quinn is ready."

She could only nod.

"I can't take this," Ash told his best friend. His eyes were huge, and he couldn't stop staring at those damn lions. "I'm going to snap and start screaming."

"Please don't," Tern replied. He was sweating like a pig on a hot plate. "If you scream, they'll scream, and if they scream, I'm going to."

"I'm so glad I don't pee," Ash said. "You know what's going on? Ravenal's torturing them one by one to make Shale pick. First the warlock, that's why it only took a minute, 'cause he just died, and then the werewolf, and now Quinn. He's been gone an awfully long time."

"You aren't helping any."

"What kind of wood do you think they're using? Oh jesus, it's going to be ironic if they torture me with an ash stick. What the hell kind of warped name for a kid is that, anyway? I mean, human's don't name their kids Cyanide, or Machete. And you don't meet any werewolves named Silver, Fish don't name their kids Land-"

"Ash!" Tern snapped. "Knock it off. You're getting hysterical. Just keep your dead on--dammit, I mean your head on. Think of Mary-Lynette."

"Mary dumped me."

"Fine, then think of something else."

A silent moment passed. Then, in a weak, quivering voice, Ash began singing. "Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens..."

Tern closed his eyes and let his chin fall to his chest. He laughed silently until the tears were streaming down his cheeks. This was a horrible moment, the worst moment, but somehow it seemed fitting that he would spend it with Ash, and dying for Circle Daybreak.

"Brown paper packages, tied up with string. These are a few of my favorite thin-!"

One of the lions roared and Ash broke off mid-word with a squeak, then laughed at his own skitterishness. "Tern?" he said.

"Yeah?" Tern was still laughing miserably.

"I've known you forever, and you've always been good to me, even when I was an asshole for like the last seventeen years, and you never tried to tell me what to do, or make fun of me when I fell for Mary. And...well, you're my best friend, vamp, and....well, I love you." He quickly rushed on, "Not in the wrong way or anything, but-"

Tern cut him off gently. "I know, Ash. I love you, too."

Shale sat on the big, jewel-toned bed and cried. She tried to tell Marty why but her mouth wouldn't work, and after a few minutes he gave up and just put his arms around her. "Take a deep breath," he said. "There you go. Take a few more. You want some water? Come on, Shale, breath. I don't have a paper bag to put over your face."

Her skin smelled so sweet against him, and he kissed her forehead as they rocked. "Sing me a Wiccan song of Lady; and of Lord," he sang softly. "Of candles censer, water salt; Athame and of sword. For only in a Wiccan song can Gods be true adored."

Shale lifted her tear stained face and Marty felt himself blush. "Uncle Peter used to sing that to me when I was in the hospital."

"Sing the rest."

She lay her head against his shoulder without waiting for a reply and Marty hesitated a moment before beginning.

Shale felt his hands stroking her hair and wished nothing would ever change. That she could be harbored here for the rest of eternity with his arms around her and his hands in her hair and his hesitant voice in her ears. That the simple comfort here would last.

When he stopped, she reached out with her mind, let it walk across the ethereal bridge connecting them, and find the memories that went with this song. "What are you doing?" Marty asked, shifting ever so subtly away from her.

"I want to understand it," she told him. "You're so ashamed of yourself, I want to know why."

Her hand tightened around his shoulders and drew him gently back. Her mind started wandering through his, and she found the images she had so briefly glimpsed the day before.

"Stop," Marty whispered. "Please."

Shale regretfully eased out of his mind. "I don't understand," she said. "They mock you, but you're powerful. I don't understand how you can be ashamed of that-"

He shook his head and she broke off. "Think for a minute," he begged. "You're female. All your life you've been brought up to believe that you're just as good as a man, but you have to prove yourself because they won't believe that. It's how every man you've ever met has treated you. Then one day, you find out that you were wrong, and you aren't as good as a man. You do deserve to be treated worse. How would you feel?"

"It's hog wash," Shale said, "I wouldn't believe it."

He touched her cheek. "When you tell me not to be ashamed of Chimera, that's how I feel."

She tried to protest and came up with nothing. There were no arguments that could be wagered against simple feelings. "For what it's worth," she told him. "They're wrong."

"You believe that?"

"Completely. I've seen inside your memories, you have more power than any of the vampires. You've just always been told not to use it, that it wasn't there."

"Maybe," he admitted, and then heard, "Marty!" from the fireplace.

Shale's head snapped around. "What was that?"

"Griffin, in the room next door." Marty climbed off the bed and went to crouch beside the fireplace. "Did you get it?"

"Finally, yes. Goddamn thing was practically soddered on there. Anyway, the door is open, and there's a ladder leading down. I'm going to turn the shower on and lock the bathroom door, and then go down. I think I can crawl under the rug so that it will fall back over the door once I'm through. I don't know where it goes, but I'll find a way to get you out of there."

"Shale's with me."

"Is she okay?"

"She's upset, but I think she's fine."

"Thank the new moon. Okay, I'll see you. Wish me luck."

"Luck."

"No 'good?'"

"I'll consider it a blessing if the Goddess decides to make her presence know at all."

Reese couldn't find a way out, except to jump off the balcony into the huge chamber full of lions below. The room was solidly sealed from the outside and windowless.

Cristona was still sleeping, still breathing, still living. He counted that as a blessing, possibly the only in this place. He should never have trusted those Circle Daybreak people, had been a fool to believe they would help him and not try to take advantage of Cristona.

"I'm sorry I got you into this, sweets," he told her, crouching beside her bed. She couldn't hear him, of course, but since her eyes weren't open she wouldn't have seen him sign, either, so he didn't know what difference it made. The rise and fall of her chest slowed; he cursed himself that she would die here.

There was a grinding sound from the ceiling and suddenly a panel off wood swung downward. Reese jumped up and, as strange as if felt, slammed the lid down on Cristona's coffin. A ladder, tilted to function as a staircase, was lowered from the ceiling until it touched the floor, and by the time the muscular guy had finished climbing down, Reese had found a nice bronze statue to use as a weapon.

The guy looked surprised to see him, and was covered in soot. "Hey, I'm not here to hurt you."

"Who are you?" Reese demanded.

"My name's Griffin. Who are you?"

"Cristona's consort. What are you doing here?"

"I'm here with a friend who's going to heal Cristona. Could you put down the statue?"

Reese lowered it slowly. "Why are you crawling around in the ceiling?"

Griffin found the pitcher of water and poured some into the basin provided, where he began washing his hands and face. "Are you with Ravenal?"

"No, are you?"

"No. He's holding me and bunch of other people prisoner, and I managed to find a way into the crawl spaces. I'm trying to get everybody out of here."

Reese heard a faint thudding from inside the coffin immediately threw back the lid. Cristona sat up, gasping for air and frantic to get out. Reese lifted her into his arms, feeling how light she'd become over the last few months, and set her gently in a nearby chair. I couldn't breathe, she signed with trembling hands.

I know, Reese told her. I'm sorry, I was trying to protect you. How do you feel?

Her eyes were already drooping shut again. "She doesn't look too good," Griffin said. "We need to find Shale."

"Who?"

"My friend. She can heal, sort of." He gestured to Cristona. "Can she make it through the crawl spaces?"

"I doubt it."

Griffin walked to the long window and peered down. "Quinn's gone. Oh god, now we have to find him, too."

Reese soaked a washcloth in the cool water from the pitcher and touched Cristona's forehead. She was running a fever again, and he could see the pulse pounding in the hollow spaces around her eyes. "Hurry!" he snapped at Griffin.

"Okay, I've got it."

The werewolf--Reese thought he saw werewolf in the way Griffin moved--leaned into the coffin and pulled the small velvet mattress from its lining. After tearing one end open, he removed the stuffing and gestured to Cristona.

"We'll slid her into her, like a sleeping bag. Then I can use one of the curtain pull strings to tie to the end, and I'll drag her though the crawl space."

Reese didn't like it, but he couldn't come up with a better idea, and they had to get Cristona to this healer. "Fine," he said, and lifted his charge.

Tern had passed out at some point, and was drooling on himself. Most of the lions had given up salvitating over their meal and had curled up to nap as well. Ash leaned back against the onyx post and tried to keep on inhaling, to avoid giving up and dying by sheer will alone. There had been a religion for vampires long ago, which most lamia children learned about but never practiced. He tried to recall one of the prayers as he waited for anything to happen.

"Oh sacred blood moon, through you the hunt is divine and the blood is sweet. With your blessing I pierce the vein, I tear the flesh, I feed off the life of your creations. I ask your guidance as I enter into this night, that you might show me the path..." He couldn't remember any more of the words and felt a crushing wave a despair come over him.

"Just get us the fuck out of here, okay?"

Shale began to get a funny feeling. Everything around her seemed to be a 3-D movie, it was all bright and jumpy. She felt a little high, and deeply nervous.

"Something's going to happen," she said, sitting in a chair by the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest.

Marty was down by the fireplace, trying to crack the bricks with an iron poker. He paused to look at her and wipe the sweat off his forehead. "Yeah," he answered. "I think so, too."

"Good or bad?"

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and shrugged. "I can't tell. But it makes me uncomfortable."

"Yeah."

Shale stretched until she managed to nab a shawl off the back of a nearby couch. She spread it over her knees and watched Marty silently. She liked the way he worked, thinking carefully and then acting, then stopping to think again before he went on. Having him near left her with a safe feeling, a sense of netting beneath the tight wire.

"I'm glad I met you," she said suddenly, and he looked at her again.

"You make it sound so ominous."

She didn't reply, and he stood up. Taut energy filled the room between them as he closed walked to the chair. "Do you know something I don't?" he asked.

She lifted her face to his green eyes with their ribbons of celadon and speckles of crest. Too much kindness behind them, so much empathy she wasn't used to.

The feeling was stronger, but she didn't think she could tell him. She couldn't break his heart before she had to. Instead, she held out her arms and felt him sink into them.

"I love you," she said, face pressed against his neck.

"I love you, too."

Griffin found another ladder and opened it, only to land in a narrow, carpeted hallway. No one was visible in either direction, but there were doors all over the place, and an elevator in sight. "Hand her down," he called to Reese, and together they lowered Cristona out of the crawl space.

"I'll carry her," Reese said before Griffin could offer.

"All right. Which way?"

They walked for what seemed like miles, never turning off of the great long, curving hallway. The silence stretched all around, until Griffin finally started whistling just to relieve the tension.

"I think we're running in a big circle," he told Reese, once his watch confirmed that half an hour had passed. "Let's try the elevator and go down a couple floors. Theoretically the door to the big room should be there."

It was. They stepped off the elevator and were immediately confronted by Sven, who was wielding a large gun but no silver bullets. Griffin felt two shots pass through his chest, one in each lung, and saw Reese leap back into the elevator with the girl. He took another round in the gut as he reached out and grabbed Sven's throat. Two more bullets shattered his spine before he could snap the guard's neck.

Sven crumpled on the floor, and Griffin doubled over, gasping for air. He stumbled to the elevator and pushed the button, and the doors opened. Reese was still inside, alive and unhurt, with Cristona in his arms.

Griffin sat down hard on the carpeted floor and willed his body to heal. The pain was so bad it didn't even feel like pain any more, just some fiery demon snaking through his torso.

"Are you going to die?" Reese asked, and Griffin couldn't help smiling a tiny bit at how annoyed he sounded.

"I don't think so," he replied, as his lungs became whole again and he began breathing more evenly. "Come on," he said, climbing to his feet. "Sven was guarding something behind this door."

The black chamber was just as he had left it, aside from the removal of Quinn. He limped across the floor, Sven's ring of keys in his hand, and shook Ash until he woke.

"Oh, thank god," Ash moaned as Griffin released him. "Tern, wake up. We're getting out of here."

Tern seemed weaker but showed no visible injuries. "I think it's the girl," he said as they scampered out of the chamber. "I think I can feel that she's dying."

"Don't say that!" Reese snapped. "She isn't going to die! We're going to heal her."

Even Ash was too tired to disagree.

Cassi groaned and opened her eyes. What time is it? she wondered, pulling her feet of the desk and sitting up in her chair. The clock said she'd been asleep for almost three hours.

"Goddammit," she muttered, standing up and stretching. "If Rav gets a whiff of this..."

She was supposed to have checked on Sven and made sure everything was going all right more than two hours ago. Well, better late than never.

Perhaps not. She found Sven on the floor outside the antechamber door, head twisted all the way around and eyes open wide in a horrifying expression of shock.

She let out another string of curses and dashed into the antechamber, only to find all five posts empty. Jerking the emergency phone from her pocket, she dialed Ravenal's number frantically.

"Hello?" he asked.

"Rav, we've got an emergency. The prisoners are gone and Sven's dead."

"What about Cristona?"

"I haven't checked yet."

He thought a moment, and then said, "How many guards do we have?"

"Six, only the vamps we made last week."

"Send them all out. If Cristona and Shale are part of the party, specify that they are not to be injured."

"How big is this place?" Ash moaned. "We've been walking forever."

"Not forever," Tern told him. "Only forty-five minutes."

"We need a map," Reese said.

"They don't hand out maps in prisons," Griffin replied.

"The place looks more like a cheap hotel to me."

"Wait!" Ash stopped suddenly, spinning around. "Someone's coming."

"More than one," Tern added.

"We're only missing three people," Griffin told them.

"This is at least four. Let's run."

"That's insane," Reese snapped.

Tern ran down the hallway touching doorknobs until he found one that turned. "Come here," he hissed, and they all scampered forward.

The closet wasn't very big. Against Reese's protests, they shoved Cristona up on the hat shelf above and all crammed into the space below, crouching under the coat rack. "Nobody breathe," Tern said. "They might be Night People."

But it's almost impossible for two vampires, a werewolf, and a nervous bodyguard crammed together in a small closet to be silent.

The vampires were huge, that was the first thing Griffin noticed. Also, they were armed to the teeth with wooden knifes and swords. As he leapt out of the closet onto the closest one, he felt himself begin to change without warning, the fur blossoming on his back as his spine curved and his hips rotated unnervingly. His hands swelled like grapefruit and as he lunged forward, his jaw reached with him.

Vampires are generally hard to kill, but these were very new vampires, so quickly and cheaply made that Griffin almost thought of them as factory-line weapons, that they went down much more quickly than most. Still, it was six on three after Reese jumped back into the closet with Cristona.

Lacking hands to grip the wooden knives with, Griffin opted to try for beheading. He sank his thick teeth brutally into the vampire's neck, letting the blood squirt out in every direction, and tore through the flesh as quickly as he could. He worried the vampire back and forth a bit to help, and didn't stop even when the vampire dug his nails into Griffin's back.

His teeth hit bone, and he shifted until his canines could slide between vertebrae and touched the soft sinew of the spinal cord. The vampire let out a panicked scream and Griffin bit down as hard as he could, tensing every muscle in his body.

The vampire's head broke off.

A blade of pure, searing silver was plunged into Griffin's belly.

Mona closed her eyes but avoided falling into that deep well of vampiric sleep that could last for days and appeared without warning. She held carefully onto her consciousness and leaned back into the couch, letting the hot flush of blood in her belly soak up outward into every vein and artery...

In the distance, she heard the phone ring. Jez--Curse that girl for not keeping a lower profile, Mona thought--answered in a bright Euro-trash accent, "Hello, I am Latice, ze fasheeon kween. I vant to suck your tosies-" She paused. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said very stiffly. "Just a moment please."

The hold button was depressed; Mona was disturbed by the fact that she recognized the particular sound each button on the phone made. Jez's rich scent touched her nose, and light fingers brushed against her shoulder. "Mona," Jez hissed. "There's a phone call for you from Bridge Lodge."

It was done, then. Mona lifted her lids and climbed off the couch, feeling her muscles protest at the movement just when they were ready to give out with relief. She walked wearily to the front desk and picked up the receiver. "This is Mona Mastry, can I help you?"

"Miss Mastry, my name is Laurel Spot, we spoke before. We were expecting your team to arrive here about four hours ago, and wondered if perhaps there has been a change in schedule."

It took Mona, even with her vampire brain, a moment to process this. "Are you saying my team hasn't arrived?"

"Not your team or the young lady and her companion. I haven't heard from any of them. Is there a problem?"

"I'll call you back."

Mona hung up and went back to her couch. They'd never arrived at the Lodge, neither had Cristona and Reese. What did that mean? All six people, the TAQ team, Cristona, Reese, and the healer, were missing, which probably meant they were together.

The phone rang and she tuned it out. Tern would have called if there were a problem, she thought. He definitely would have called if he had changed his plans.

Of course, not if he was dead.

Jez was tapping her shoulder again. "Yeah?"

"Lord Thierry is on the phone, and I think I pissed him off."

Mona's green eyes snapped open. "What?"

"I was expecting it to be Ash-" Jez started to say, but Mona was already flying past her.

"Hello, this is Mona. Can I help you?"

"A little less formal, Mona. This isn't the Night World council." Thierry voice was deeply layered, aged like a fine wine, and it eased her to hear him speak. Things would be okay as long as Thierry was in charge.

"Sorry, what's up?"

"I just got a call from the Night World council, they want to know why the Gift hasn't been healed yet."

"I don't know where she is. The team has vanished, they never reached the Lodge."

"When was the last time you heard from them?"

"Almost six hours ago. They were heading off with the healer."

Thierry thought a moment. "If the Night World doesn't know what's going, and we don't know what's going on, there has to be a third party involved. Let me check around and get back to you."

"What should I do now?"

"Just hang on and let me know if you find anything out."

He hung up and Mona sank down into the desk chair.

Marty had just given up on busting enough bricks off the fireplace to crawl through into Griffin's room and gone to play cards with Shale at the table when the door flew open and Ravenal stormed in. His face was flushed and Shale could almost feel the heat radiating off him from twelve feet away, but when he saw them both he calmed abruptly.

"Oh good, you're still here."

He leaned against door jamb, out of breath and covered in sweat, and smiled at them.

Ash couldn't look at the carnage. He turned away and let himself slide into a ball on the floor, face in his bloody hands. He swore in his head and moaned out loud, and all he could hear was Reese's crying and Tern's quick breathing.

The carpet under his feet was growing wet with blood. "Okay," Tern said shakily. "We've got to keep moving." He touched Ash's shoulder reassuringly. "Come on."

"I can't," Ash told him.

"Yeah you can. Your leg's already healing."

Ash spun around to look at him, furious until he saw the repressed panic on Tern's face. He's keeping it together, Ash thought. He's holding onto his last shred of sanity.

"I need you now, man," Tern whispered despairingly.

Ash nodded slowly and climbed to his feet, using the wall as a support. His stomach turned at the sight of the hallway and the stink of blood that he usually found so stimulating was making him naushious. There were body parts all over the place, heaps of formless flesh piled deep on the floor. Blood spattered all the way to the ceiling. A length of intestine was wrapped around Tern's ankle.

Griffin had changed back into his human form, the way most injured 'shifters do. The gouge in his abdomen was large enough to toss a basketball through, and Ash was shocked to see him still breathing. "We've got to find a way to carry him," Tern said. "Can you take the girl?"

Not if Reese won't let go of her, Ash thought, glancing at the blubbering boy in the closet.

Tern picked up the mattress cover they had hauled Cristona through the crawlspaces with and Ash helped him ease Griffin into it. The werewolf growled deep in his throat but didn't open his eyes. Tern picked him up and gestured Ash to coax Cristona away from Reese.

When they were walking through the halls again, Ash felt the tears begin to sting his eyes. "Tern?" he said. "When this is all over, let's go work at McDonald's."

Tern nodded miserably.

The workshop was never silent. Hours, holidays, entertainment, these things meant nothing in the workshop. For three years, the long, low room had been filled with the continual clink of metal parts being fitted together, with the scent of chemicals being melted and mixed, with the sight of lone hands and legs bending and stretching.

Things were always nicer when Cristona was around, Lara-Elena mused as she worked. A certain domestic feeling filled the place, even when Cristona reached for the chalk board and spent hours drawing. Even when Reese told them all to stop playing and get back to work, Cristona's presence softened the blow.

Hush, Lara-Elena told herself. Mom's dead.

Or almost dead. She'd be dead soon enough that it didn't matter. She wondered if Ravenal would take over the workshop when she was gone; it was Cristona's last wish that the colony continue to grow.

She affixed the wires running from the tips of the fingers to the wrist-brain and melted the plastic tape securely in place. They didn't have a name yet, maybe Shelly? Or Ann. Cristona had always been fond of the name Ann.

There was a soft tapping behind and Lara-Elena turned around. Veronica bowed and Lara-Elena reached out to kiss her cheek. "Phone call," Veronica said simply. "I'll take over for you."

"Convenient," Lara-Elena complimented, and eased out of her gloves.

In one of the side rooms, a telephone rested out of its cradle. "Hello?" Lara-Elena asked. Cristona had taught her proper phone manners.

She spoke for several minutes before hanging up, only to feel Lance tap gently for her attention. He bowed, she kissed his cheek, and he said, "Something's wrong."

The sounds from the workshop had ceased, and Lara-Elena could sense her brothers and sisters moving slowly toward the door, waiting to see, waiting to hear what had happened to their mother. The electronic pulses her heart sent out let them know that her blood was racing and she was feeling a tinge of panic.

Lara-Elena stepped into the doorway and stared out at two dozen faces. "Mother is missing. The Night World and Circle Daybreak are both at a loss to say why or how. They suspect outside involvement."

The workshop had fallen utterly silent, and Lara-Elena's voice rang clearly out over the tables. "There is only one among us who would interfere and go against Mother's orders."

Shale watched them stumble into the bedroom before realizing Ravenal was inside, then saw their faces crumble into disbelief. And then she saw Griffin's head lolling out of a satin bag.

Ravenal adjusted the gun he was holding and motioned to place Griffin and Cristona on the bed. Then he closed the door and ushered them all to one side of the room, even Reese, who protested thoroughly.

"I'm done playing," he said simply. "This has gotten out of hand. Tern and Ash, step forward and lay face down on the floor."

Ash's eyes darted to his friend. "Why?"

"Just do it."

Shale gripped Marty's hand so tight she could feel his pulse beating below the skin. Ash and Tern got slowly to their knees and then lay down flat, and Ravenal reached for one of the long, wooden Oriental poles decorating the wall above the fireplace.

Shale jumped up. "Rav, don't."

He ignored her, placing the end of one pole on Tern's back.

"Jesus, Rav, stop!"

She rushed him without thought, felt her shoulder hit the side of a brick building. He didn't budge, merely pushed her away, but he wasn't expecting her to grab a fist full of his hair and jerk it out. A feral sound came from his throat and he reached for her. The gun fell out of his hand.

Shale saw Marty's eyes follow it as Ravenal whipped her around into a headlock. She felt a wave of desperate begging flow out of her, and from Marty came a rush of cool power. The gun slid along the floor to his feet. He slowly picked it up, carefully, respectfully, and pointed it at Shale and Ravenal.

"Get up, guys," he said, and Shale watched the vampires scramble to their feet.

"Let her go," he said to Ravenal.

"You won't shoot her. You love her."

Marty nodded. "The way you love that girl on the bed. Cristona's going to die if you don't let Shale go, and if you let me kill Shale, Cristona will die, and if Cristona will die, so will the vampires, and so will I. So we'll all be able to finish this off in the Land Over the Bridge."

He's nervous, Shale thought, that's why he's rambling like this. None the less, Ravenal carefully released her. "Quinn should be ready any time now," he said.

"What have you done to him?" Ash demanded, sidling up next to Marty.

Ravenal's dark eyes flickered as though a candle had been passed behind them. "Nothing Shale didn't ask me to do."

What's he talking about? Marty asked silently. Shale avoided his glance and didn't answer. Instead she stepped over to the bed and reached for Griffin.

"We were attacked," Tern told her. "By a bunch of vampires. Badly made, mass produced, but they got Griffin before we had time to stop all of them."

Shale touched his face and felt her hand come away sticky with blood. "Griffin? You okay?"

She realized then that the rag he was in was soaked with blood, that it was dripping down into the bed cover with shocking speed.

He rolled slightly and looked at her. His eyes, still so deep set and curtained by shadow, were a dark blue, Shale saw. A beautiful blue, like the sky just before dawn.

"I'm going to die," Griffin croaked. Blood frothed on his lips.

Shale smoothed the hair off his forehead. "No," she said, "we'll get you out of here."

"Baby, don't...."

The seizure started without warning, and Shale jumped back, unable to think anything except that she couldn't let him swallow his tongue, and she couldn't put her fingers in his mouth because he'd bite them off.

When he stopped thrashing, the bag had slipped down a little to reveal deep gashes in his shoulders, and the beginning of a crater in his stomach. "Griffin?" Shale whispered. His breathing was labored, too weak.

"Shale," he said very faintly.

"Yeah, I'm here." She leaned against the side of the bed again, reaching for his hands. "Just hold on a while longer."

"No....Baby, use me....for the girl....it's...the right...thing...."

He shuddered and Shale felt his consciousness slip away. "Oh no," she moaned, laying her head against the torn flesh of his shoulder. "Don't do this to me, Griff. You can't leave now." She cried, aware that the whole room was silent and watching her. The tears bathed his face and when she finally lifted her head again his cheeks and forehead were clean. The expression was the same he'd worn so often sleeping in her arms, faint contentment.

He wanted it, truly. She could feel it as she touched him, feel the last remnants of self sending forth his life energy, offering it up for another wounded soul to feed off of. The most beautiful act, Shale had once thought, and she thought so again now.

She didn't want him to die, but it was inevitable. He had been her friend, and she at least owed it to him to grant his dying wish.

"It wasn't supposed to be you," she whispered, over and over as she positioned herself on the bed between his limp form and that of Cristona's. "It wasn't supposed to be you."

Lara-Elena didn't know how to drive. Neither did Lance, but that didn't appear to stop him. He climbed comfortably in behind the wheel and motioned his siblings to follow him. "Lower your internal temperatures," Veronica suggested, as the three vans filled with quickly. "It will make the close quarters easier to bear."

Lara-Elena could feel the others, hear their hearts gently beating out, We're ready.

Lance nodded wordlessly and pressed on the gas pedal. "You have to move that stick," Lara-Elena remembered.

"To which position?" Lance asked.

"I don't remember."

He shifted it around, glanced at her, shrugged and smiled, and depressed the gas pedal again. The van shot through the garage door in a shower of wood and tinkling glass.

"Shale." Marty touched her shoulder as gently as he could, afraid to startle her, and the tingling ran up his fingers. "You okay?"

She opened her eyes and let Griffin's hand fall out of hers. "He's dead," she said, almost as if by explanation.

"I know."

Her eyes had turned slate gray, the same color they had been when she had healed Marty. He leaned closer and found the speckles of brown reinstating themselves at the edges of her irises, soaking and gnawing at the gray. Tears spilled out, hanging between her long lashes, and she put her arms miserably around Marty's shoulders.

"You did the right thing," he said gently, as she buried her face in his shoulder.

"Yeah. But it still sucks."

Marty was stunned to feel himself lifting her as if she weighed nothing. Two days ago he could barely hold a can of Coke above his head, but Shale fit with easy precision into the crook of his arms and seemed a mere extension of his own weight.

He carried her to the couch and sat down, knowing she would breathe easier when she wasn't sitting beside Griffin's corpse. Hang on a little longer, he thought to her. We're going to get out of here.

There was a flutter of movement from the other side of the room and Cristona sat up without warning. "Cris?" Reese asked, leaping to his side.

Ravenal sat up, held back from the bed by Tern's gun in his chest. "Mom?" he said.

Ash, who had been completely silent for the last half hour, lifted his head. "Mom?" he repeated.

Cristona was obviously confused. Her hands jumped and she spoke with Reese in a quick succession of motion. Marty reached for the happiness at seeing her alive that should have been there and couldn't find it. His eyes returned to Griffin's bloody form, and he kissed Shale's temple as much to reassure himself as her.

He was surprised to realize he could hear a female voice in his head that wasn't Shale's. It took him a moment to locate Cristona, to understand that she was Deaf and therefore almost naturally telepathic, that she was projecting her thoughts unconsciously. Most of the Deaf people he had come in contact with were the same, just a cultural hazard.

Why did you do this? she was demanding, looking at Ravenal with her huge and cloudless blue eyes. I told the whole colony not to interfere, that it was up to Fate. You promised-

Ravenal's own hands jumped into action. They would have backed out, the situation called for an extremity they weren't prepared for. I didn't want to go against your orders, but I had to save you and make sure they didn't hurt you.

Marty tuned them out as Shale lifted her face. He didn't have to say anything to let her know that he was there, and she didn't ask. "We have to get out of here," she said. "We have to go now."

"What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, maybe it's just me. I'm getting claustrophobic."

"We have to find Quinn first," Ash interjected. "Rav, where is he?"

Ravenal's eyes flickered to Shale's, but he then he looked away. "Just a few feet down the hall."

"We need handcuffs to hold him with," Tern said, pointing to Ravenal.

Shale climbed out of Marty's lap and stepped away, one hand still holding his. "Never mind. We can just lock him in here."

"Cristona wants him to come with us," Reese said.

Ash scowled. Marty noticed that he was covered in blood and fits of flesh. "Too bad for her."

"She's his mother. She won't leave without him."

"She's seventeen years old!" Ash snapped. "She's not his mother!"

"I'm not human," Ravenal told him.

"Neither am I!"

Cristona signed again. Will you submit to me?

Ravenal lowered his head and went down on one knee. Marty could barely see his hands, but the voice was clear. Of course.

Cristona walked like a new-born deer, trembling even as she hung onto Reese's arm. With long, carefully fingers, she pulled a bobby-pin from her hair and crammed it into Ravenal's ear.

His eyes exploded simultaneously and a flame leapt from his mouth, making every one jump away. Ash let out a little scream and threw himself onto the couch with Marty.

Ravenal wavered a moment before falling onto his side. His hands opened and closed spasmodically and then a gust of foul-smelling smoke erupted from between his lips.

"Isis shat," Ash whispered. "What did you do to him?"

Cristona's expression was pained but quiet. She touched Ravenal's cheek and then felt for a pulse as Reese explained. "Ravenal is her creation. She built him four years ago."

"Then he's a..." Tern prompted.

"An android. Cristona's child."

"But if he was an android," Ash said, "why did he care if she died?"

Reese looked at the fallen form with a mixture of jealousy and sadness. "Cristona's children have a full range of emotions. They feel just like people. She made them swear not to interfere if Fate wanted her to die, but I guess Rav went against her wishes."

He touched Cristona's arm and signed. We'll send someone later to bring him back to the colony.

"We have to find Quinn," Tern said. "He could be hurt."

Shale's hand tightened around Marty's.

Tern was about ready to give up. There was a reserve of energy inside him that had long ago dried up, and he was now running on the sheer animal instincts that crave survival. He and Ash opened the door with the sing on the front reading, "Lab 1" and he threw the gun out in front of himself, ready to shoot the first thing that moved.

The screaming reached him before he could register the sight. The walls must be sound proof, he thought. We couldn't hear it in the hall of god don't let that be Quinn of fuck what are they doing to him i have to get out of here-

Shale retreated back into the hall in one quick step. Cristona and Reese were waiting in the bedroom, Marty had followed Tern and Ash into the lab to get Quinn.

She had only caught a glimpse of the table. It had been so much more than enough. Blood pooled around the legs of the steel slab Quinn was stretched out on, pieces of skin that were masquerading as cloth had been laid out to dry over a wooden rack, and the one technician was clutching a wooden knife.

A shot was fired, then another. Someone threw up. Shale sank to her knees, back against the wall, and listened to Quinn's screams, which had long ago lost any semblance of coherency. Now he was just screaming.

My fault, Shale thought. It's my fault they did this to him. I'm the one who chose him. I deserve to die.

She lifted her head to stare at the ceiling. Oh God, let me die for what I've done to him.

The elevator door in the adjoining hallway separated just as a door blew open. Cassi, Shale's roommate and former friend, burst out of the elevator with a gun in her hand, leveled it, and fired.

From out of the stairwell came a red-haired girl who leapt onto Cassi's back and slammed her to the ground.

Shale didn't even have time to wonder before the bullet struck her. It pounded into the long, flat bone holding her rib cage together and cracked it in half, taking away Shale's breath in one fell swoop. Her physical dimensions shifted, she felt as thought she were becoming part of the wall.

In her mind, Marty screamed. She watched the red-haired girl crack Cassi's neck and tasted blood in her throat. She though she closed her eyes, but maybe not. Maybe someone closed them for her.

"Mona? We need help, please, it all went wrong, everybody's dead. Mona, are you there?"

"Ash, calm down. Where are you?"

"I don't know. Someplace in the desert. Can you send a car or an ambulance? Tell them we need Thea, that she has to get here as fast as she can-"

"Ash, you aren't breathing. Who's dead?"

"Oh god, everybody."

"What about Cristona?"

"She's alive. But Griffin's dead, and Shale and Cassi and Ravenal, jesus christ, they stuck a pin in Rav's brain like medieval times. I think Quinn's dead, Mona. He really looks dead but he's still moaning. They took his skin off, and all the vampires are dead and that werewolf. And Marty's having a heart attack...."

Thea climbed out of the car and closed the door behind herself, not bothering to lock it. There wasn't a whole lot of crime in rural Nebraska.

Tern climbed slowly out after her, wincing at the bright sun overhead. Thea watched his eyes travel over the long expanse of grass in front of them, grown thick and sweet by the careful hands of the Chimera witches.

"I've never been here before," he said softly, and zipped up his jacket.

Of course you haven't, Thea thought, but she didn't say it aloud. "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

They walked up the long gravel drive; Mathias O'Bach met them at the gave with a hug. "Hello, sweetheart," he said. "It's been a long time since I've seen you."

"How's Marty?"

Mathias glanced at the ground, then shook his head. "I don't know what to make of him. He's so..." He stopped and looked at Tern. "Who's this?" he asked with false cheer.

"Uncle Mat, this is Tern Zizias. Tern, Marty's father, Mathias O'Bach."

Tern shook Mathias's hand, saying nothing. It was guilt that had brought him here, Thea supposed, but guilt from what she wasn't sure.

They slipped through the lines of trees that were planted around the parameter of Tata Acasa, Father's Home, Circle Chimera's home. Thea had come here three summers ago, back when Grandma Harman began pushing without warning for the genders to join again. Blaise hadn't gotten along with any of the boys very well, but Thea was surprised to find that once she stopped looking down on them, she was invited into a rich and layered tradition of magic not so different from her own.

"We held the burial last night," Mathias said. "Marty thought she'd want it done the Chimera way, so that's how we did it. The priest wasn't so sure about coming up here, I guess he's heard stories, but I told him Shale was a Catholic and he said it would be all right. I hope it's all right that we didn't wait for you."

"Of course, I understand. This is Chimera business."

Mathias wiped the back of his hand across his brow. Even in this freezing weather, he was sweating. "The funeral is about to start, you know where the graveyard is. I'll be at the house if you want to come up afterward."

Thea nodded, knowing that he didn't mean to be rude. "This way," she said, touching Tern's arm.

"How many people live here?"

"There are less than four hundred Circle Chimera members living in the world. About eighty of them live here, forty here, and forty in Cerc Gri, a few miles from here. It's a tight community, everybody knows everybody."

"Looks like a Shaker village."

Thea glanced out over the wooden buildings with their perfect whitewashings and the horses grazing near a barn. In the valley between Father's Home and Circle Gray was a circle of stones, an ancient ceremonial place. Thea didn't know much about Chimera burial rituals, but she imagined that the goodbye had been said there before the body had been carried to the graveyard.

A Father Lucas presided over the funeral, but his words flew past Thea as she stood in a loose circle around the freshly turned earth. Jesska, Shale's other roommate, and Mrs. Jacobson, the house mother at the Canute Home for Lost Children, had both come, as well as Shale's aunt and uncle. Only six people, including Thea and Tern. Marty was nowhere to be seen.

The headstone was made of blue marble, and a beautiful pentagram of dull silver was embedded above the name. "Shale Tatiana Eyre, 1980-1998." Below was an epitaph that read, "For love comes fleeting on spirits' wings, and dries to dust like buds of spring."

Thea told Tern that she was going up to the house to see Marty, and she'd be back soon. He promised to wait with the car.

Marty was sitting on the front porch in a rickety old swing that creaked every time it rocked, but he wasn't rocking and there was silence all around. Thea hadn't seen him since the mayhem at the compound, and she'd been so busy trying to put Quinn back together that his stunned silence had hardly claimed a priority.

He glanced up as she mounted the stairs, nodded and patted the seat beside himself. It was almost hard to believe his life had fallen apart, he looked so much better than she had ever seen him before. The skin around his face had filled out, his lips were a warm red again. His green eyes were rich with color but so distant.

Thea sat down and sighed. "I'm sorry," she said.

"It wasn't your fault. I just...it took me by such surprise."

Thea thought of Eric, who was at home trying to understand why she wanted to spend an entire day in the air so that she could spend an hour in Nebraska. No, he didn't understand, but he had supported her. He'd even paid for the ticket.

"Death is always unexpected," she said.

"Not just her death. All of it, the whole thing. I met her less than twenty-four hours before she died. I feel like everything has changed, fallen away. She was here and it was stunning and then...."

"I know."

Marty let his head fall into his hands. "You have to go, you'll miss your plane."

"I could stay a few days."

"No, you have work to do. Will Quinn recover?"

"I think so. Rashel's at the compound, but he's barricaded the door and won't let anyone in. Thierry worked things out with the Night World Council. Cristona went home with Reese, and she took all her androids with her. She said she was going to send you Ravenal's body. She didn't, did she?"

Marty nodded slowly. "In pieces."

Despite all her sweet flower-child appearance, Cristona had a streak of morbidity in her. "What did you do with it?"

"I melted it down and cast it as a pentagram."

Thea paused. "You mean....that one on Shale's grave is..."

Marty nodded again. "I don't know, it just seemed right."

She lay her hand on his. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I don't know." He stood up, pulling away from her, and went to lean against the porch railing. The cutting Nebraska wind rippled through his hair. "When I thought I was going to die, I had to accept that the faith had been too hard to keep. But Shale believed. She looked at my memories and believed everything, and believed that I could change it all if I wanted to."

Thea straightened. "Are you saying you'll pick up where Grandma Harman left off?"

He shrugged. "Someday, maybe. Not now. But someday I probably will. It seems to have been what Shale wanted, what she died for." He met Thea's eyes and she was stunned by the depth of fire behind them. "She's the second woman to be buried in Chimera land in six hundred years. That must be an omen of something..."

He stopped speaking, and turned back to the landscape. His eyes drifted, and Thea saw his thoughts float off with the wind, into stories this land told only him. The light she'd always loved in him had gone out, replaced by a fire she didn't recognize. He had lost his life, only to be given a new one and robbed of the one thing that made it worth living.

Fate works without regard for our understanding, she thought as she studied him. He's an extraordinary person, but it will tear him apart by sending him on an extraordinary path. Even the strongest person will break eventually.

But maybe that was just part of Fate's plan for Marty.

She stood up. "Give me a call if you need anything," Thea told him. She wanted to hug him, but this air made him harder to approach.

Marty just nodded, his mind in the distance, in the past. "Have a safe trip home."

She went slowly down the steps. "You too, cousin," she whispered so that he couldn't hear her. "Where ever you're going."

The End

November 9, 1998

Jory San-Corinth