Evening all...

This is a short four-part Nightworld story set in Britain. I had tremendous fun writing it - and I hope you enjoy reading it. Feedback is welcomed, be it good, bad, or ugly.

Disclaimer: All characters and/or clannames you recognise are the property of the wonderful LJS; all else was whipped up by me. I offer no guarantees as to the sanity of the characters, or indeed, myself. And as the Jackson Five taught us, all blame lies with the boogie. And me. But mostly the boogie.

Rating: 15-R

Spoilers: NW in general. Lyrics belong to Robbie Williams and come from 'The Road to Mandalay'.

Much love,
Ki

Strange Lullaby - Prologue

Look down the barrel of a gun and feel the moon replace the sun
Everything we've ever stolen has been lost, returned or broken,
No more dragons left to slay

We spend our lives listening to heartbeats.

Listening to the world beating, listening to the hearts of others in their voices, listening to the murmurs of our own heart. Waiting for the words to be spoken that will awaken us, waiting like a child for a long-forgotten song to be played again, the notes at first so alien and unfamiliar until our heart catches at what it thought it had lost and dances to the rhythms of its own sacred tune. Holding on for that moment when we can sing the music back to the sky.

Clutching onto all we hear, our heartbeat clinging in our every action.

Waiting until we hear some strange lullaby that is strange no more.

X - X - X - X - X

Clutching...

Clinging...

Her hands so tight around the knife, her skin so tight against her skull, white and red smashing and blurring into a soft hazy pink. Strained, smooth white of her knuckles and the flaring crimson ribbons of his blood. Panicked, opal gleam of her eyeballs, rushing red rivers of the tiny veins moving over it. Ice-pale skin of her cheeks, dewed with tears and sweat and all the fear made flesh oozing from her pores, against the rosebud flush of her lips that were parted, but letting escape no sound.

He let her tug and slice at him a little longer, let her think that she was winning, and then he flung her off like a biting rat, her body slewing over the floor and slamming into the wall of the room.

She lay there a while, shuddering like a frightened dormouse, soft and plump and with dazed eyes that shrank from his shadow, dim and swaying under the lone lightbulb that hung from a fraying wire.

"You should have let me have it," he chided gently.

No response, only the little tremors of her rounded body, the kind of girl Rubens might have liked to paint. Her dark hair was long, cut deliberately ragged in a self-inflicted attempt at fashion, and it feathered over the planes of her face like dozens of daggers.

Her breaths sawed at the pauses between his words, and then she raised her head to show him that really almost pretty face, spoilt by too much cheap make-up and the contortions of fear. "You can have it, whatever it is." Quick, darting words. "Just take it and get out. Take it! Just please - please, don't hurt me."

That expression so instantly recognisable; he could read faces like the words stamped on a page, and he'd read this one so often. It was almost awe, and almost scorn, but what it truly was was revulsion.

"Hurt you?" He arched an eyebrow, and dropped the knife to the floor. It clattered, spun in a half-circle like a grotesque game of spin and kiss. "You pulled a knife on me. You attacked me." He kicked it across the stone floor to her, not caring if she picked it up.

Defiance, flashing in two hot streaks over her cheeks. "You followed me! I don't stop to see what strangers want, I know what happens that way!"

"You have something of mine," he told her coolly and gestured, trying to stop his hand trembling. "That necklace."

"This? It's just some piece of crap I nicked."

His lungs crushed down tight, shrinking as hope blossomed for the first time in so many years. "Where from?" he demanded. "When?"

She eyed him and obviously decided to humour the madman. "Some house up on Marley's Parade. I don't know, we crashed a party, I got it from some chick's room." Her face said she wanted to ask more, like why he thought it was his -but maybe she had some small amount of sense.

"Give it to me," he said sharply. Marley's Parade. A place - a location. She could be here, in this very city, after he'd searched blindly thorugh so many. The necklace was hers, for sure, the very same he'd gifted her so long ago when he'd been only a man and not a monstrosity. He'd paid a witch to locate it, using his own ring made from the same piece of silver, and she'd sent him here.

He'd thought it would be just another in a long trail of dead ends. But maybe...

Just maybe.

Stupid girl, almost wrenching it off: what if she snapped the chain? She might have been disgusted if she wasn't still so scared; but fear would keep her docile. He needed her afraid, long enough for him to get far away, for a face like his was never forgotten. "Fine, have it."

Tingling as she threw it at his feet, making a hot wash of anger go through him. How dare she treat it so carelessly, so cavalierly...but he quashed it. This would not be like Bologne again, not this time. He would temper his rage, and she would live to squat another night in this squalid hole, if that was living.

He took a step forward, and scooped it from the floor, a little puddle of silver chain. "You should never have stolen it," he said harshly. "But maybe I should thank you for it."

She cowered back into the corner of the room, this place filled with her ghastly collection of possessions - the ragged sleeping bag, and scattered food wrappers, and a tatty fabric bag that might hold her clothes, and a few other results of her taking ways. He could feel only a terrible pity for her, pity for a girl who lived like this and would die like this too. Maybe die in a situation like this, faced with someone who had no mercy.

He'd learned mercy. Learned it in blood and fire and agony.

He was used to people staring at him - oh, how they always stared, though they tried so hard not to - but not like this. Not like he was become death, the reaper striding out over the earth. And then he realised what she thought 'thanking' meant; it was scored there in those big blue eyes, so childish.

"Please, no..." she croaked.

He lowered his eyelids, shielding the power of a luminous green gaze from her. The kind of green, he'd been told once upon a falling star, that emeralds might drown in. The kind of green - and he thought he felt the spider-light touch of fingernails sliding over his lips - that luck was made from.

But all his luck had been bad.

Until now.

And then he dug out his wallet, and flung all the bills in it on the floor. "I didn't mean to scare you," he said flatly. "And I wouldn't have hurt you if I hadn't had to."

Her face told him everything. Monsters could only lie, it said. What was destroyed could not be neither truth nor beauty. And yes, he was destroyed, long lost to all he had loved.

His fingers closed hard about the necklace.

But now...

X - X - X - X - X

Sally Lupin was the only person Marina had ever met who could look beautiful when she cried.

The tears slid over her skin like dewdrops, like pearls, like diamonds, spilling out of those unbelievable pale turquoise eyes, coloured so delicately they seemed to have been painted in watercolours, big eyes with a wicked little tilt to them that could appear seductive when Sally wanted.

Seductive, however, was the last thing on her best friend's mind as she hurled herself onto the sofa, beating the arm with her fists in a way that only Sally could pull off.

"Oh, Rina," she moaned, shifting her elbows onto the chair to cup that enviously lovely heart-shaped face. "Rina, what am I going to do without him? He was my everything, my moon-"

"What," Marina said, trying not to smile, "he was a lifeless lump of rock? Agreed, but-"

Sally shook out the glorious sheet of silvery hair that had made her so much money part-time modelling. Marina was used to the little bubble of envy that rose up in her stomach - it was part and parcel of being friends with Sally - but sometimes she wished she could look like that. Just a little. Even if it did get Sally into all these messes.

Maybe because it got her into all these messes.

"No," she bewailed, pushing herself off the sofa to spin around and around the room, clutching at her heart like it would fall out otherwise. "You don't understand, he was...wolf-hearted."

After growing up together, Marina was used to Sally's odd comparisons. It was always the moon, or hunting - she called life the Great Hunt - or wolves. In anyone else, it would have been odd. In the radiant bundle that was Sally, it was merely quirky. Guys thought it sweet, and besides, they didn't mind being compared to wolves, and her friends just rolled their eyes and listened patiently.

"He was a cute guy with a hot car and a big-" The boy who came in had dancing tawny eyes and he slung the tissues and galactic-sized bar of chocolate on the floor with abandon. "Wallet."

Sally eyed him suspiciously. Then she giggled. "All right, maybe it wasn't that serious..."

Kaffir Lybica, wearing a rip-off 'fcuk me' T-shirt and a pair of alarmingly flattering green khakis, raised an eyebrow. "How long were you two dating, my lovely?"

If Sally was a the sun at noon, shining and vital, Kav was a black hole, all cryptic comments and sly, wicked glances, inexorably pulling people to him.

Even if he was living in the juvenile delinquent centre, and things did tend to vanish when he was around, Marina couldn't help but like him. He was hopelessly unrepentant, and he never stole from people he liked, and he'd gotten into more than one fight on their behalf.

Sally sniffed, a final tear trailing over her face. "It felt like forever."

Kav shook his head, tousling dark hair further. "How long?"

The full lips tembled into a smile. "Two days," Sally admitted, and at Kav's exasperated look, began to laugh helplessly.

"How do you get yourself into these messes?" he sighed, and sat on the floor to break open the chocolate. "Rina doesn't."

She wishes she did though, Marina thought silently. What was it about her two friends that she didn't have? Sally was beautiful, but she wasn't perfect, and sometimes it seemed to Marina that it wasn't her looks which made her so appealing at all, not even the way she threw herself into life like a gambolling lamb, but something...other. As if she had a secret star planted in her heart that shone out to draw the world in.

Something Kav too had. Just from time to time, Marina thought she saw his eyes glowing simmering red. Only when he was angry, or hurt and it always faded if she turned to look directly at him, but still...

No, it was just wishful thinking. Just envy.

But she didn't want to be ordinary.

And as she sat there, unaware that she shared the room with a werewolf and a wildcat, Marina was unaware of just how extraordinary her life was about to become.

All because of a silver chain, and a forgotten promise.

Every mistake I've ever made has been rehashed and then replayed
As I got lost along the way.

X - X - X - X - X

Thank you for reading this. I'd adore hearing your thoughts.