Apologies for the length of time it has taken to update; this chapter is a little longer to make up for it. My huge thanks to the purely brilliant and kind people who reviewed last time – thank you goblinishelves, Shelli (I think it will be Haloed. I have various scenes written, and it should be fun. Evil twisted fun, but fun all the same. I’m looking at the ‘action’ side of the story; it’s coming, believe me. Vaje got the love story originally – it’s hard for him to realise that other people don’t as he hasn’t really been burned by love. Cern. That…will be a long discussion. And yes, to bed! 3.30am is either very late or very early and either way, not a time for wakefulness. Thanks!), dunk the donut, Bec (It’s up on my writing LJ, but I’m revamping at the moment. As for Cern – I’d say unhinged is a pretty fair description. WoW – I’ve heard lots but never tried it. Paint me flattered! It warms my heart to think of little Bane slaughtering in the otherworld. I’m a Diablo II girl myself :D Thanks!), Queen of Slayers, Shang Leopard, Lethe (Vaje has already had a bad time at Jal’s hands – I can’t imagine he’d be overjoyed at a rematch organised by Cern. As for deals with Blue – it depends if he possesses all the facts… Which short story? A few of them have hints in them ;) I hold my hands up: I cocked up Nightfire. Of all my stories, that’s the one I’d rewrite almost completely, bar maybe two pages. Cern was not done right, and when I get round to it, I will do it again, and better. Thanks!), Clairavance, Hera Night, Dactyl, Anterrabae, bunnies ate my baby, Ciel (Interesting you should remark on the similarities with Zeke :) You’re quite close to the mark. Toya – well, this is very close to the end of Chimera, so early in her relationship with Blue. Things aren’t yet what they’ll become in some of the short stories. If you google Lisanor – scroll down to Arthurian Infopedia – Loholt. Thanks!), Rose Kitty, nefarious nature, and last but by no means least, the fabulous Khansa (Thank you! Arthurian legends are some of my favourites, and I intend to have a lot of fun with them in this story... I hope you enjoy the new chapter!)

Thank you to MorbiDreamscape, my fabulous beta-reader.

Thoughts, comments and criticisms are very much adored! It all helps me improve.

Hope you enjoy - Ki

Long Lost Part Six

Fear is the brightest of signs
The shape of the boundary you leave behind
So sing all your questions to sleep
The answers are out there in the drowning deep
- Vienna Teng, Harbor

They came to Britain on the back of a sea-storm that whipped the waves into a foaming fury and turned the sky to a great, churning swirl of grey and black. Nothing lit the cold, bleak night but forks of lightning, illuminating the grim faces of the people pressed to the rails of the boat. It pitched and rocked on the water, climbing each towering wave as if it were a mountain, then crashing down amidst gouts of spray.

Lisanor was already bruised and aching from being flung against the sides. Soaked head to foot in salt water, she shivered uncontrollably and cursed the Empire and her owner.

Around her, men shouted and scurried, pulling at ropes while the sail flapped loudly overhead.

She felt a slap on her arm and turned to see the man who called himself Galahad offering her a waterskin. He didn’t seem to feel the cold, even though he was just as sodden as she. His blond hair was cut short in a Centurion’s style, his hands callused and scarred from battle. There was nothing friendly in his eyes, nothing but disgust.

She shook her head. It wasn’t as if she needed any more water.

He turned away, but a figure appeared behind him; her owner, shaking his head. His hair clung to his face, his dark eyes unreadable. Alexandros, he’d named himself, but in the fourteen days he had owned her, she hadn’t grasped a word of his tongue beyond ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘good morning’. This was the first time she had seen him from more than a distance.

He mimed drinking. She shook her head again.

His look was exasperated. Galahad shouted something in a tone that sounded as unfriendly as his stare, irritated, contemptuous.

She didn’t say or do anything but stare back, careful not to meet his eyes. That might be construed as insolence, to be beaten out of her. Alexandros hadn’t done so yet, but she didn’t doubt he was waiting for an excuse. She had no intention of giving him one.

The ship lurched, and she staggered and fell.

She heard Galahad’s booming laughter as she landed inelegantly at her owner’s feet. Inches from his boots, she cursed silently. She hated this life, this night, this cold unforgiving sea and him.

Then she was being picked up; his voice was soft and gentle, murmuring things she supposed were meant to be comfort. His hands were steady, cocooned in leather gloves, and she found herself gazing at Alexandros, mere inches away.

She saw the shape of her name on his lips: Lisanora.

He looked right at her, eyes moving over her with a kind of fascination. She supposed she must seem as exotic as a tiger to him, and perhaps that novelty was why he had bought her. The bidding had gone on for some time, and from the rumble of sound when it had finished, she had sold for a good price.

She wanted to throw fistfuls of coin back in his face, to say that she was more than a thing to be bought and sold.

But she stayed silent, the scars of other slaves criss-crossing on her mind like a net.

He moved her hand to the rail, touch firm. And then, to her surprise, he swung off the thick cloak he wore and draped it over her.

From the astounded look on Galahad’s face, Alexandros wasn’t given to noble gestures.

She gazed at him, bemused. And he gave her a wry little smile, as if he wasn’t quite sure why he’d done it either.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it.

He seemed to understand. His smile faded; the intensity in his eyes grew until they were dark and deep as the nights in Numidia, full of heat and the call of wild things.

She found her breath caught in her throat; the space between them was too small, his cloak on her shoulders as heavy as his gaze.

Then icy spray dashed against her face, and she raised a hand to wipe it away, blinking.

When she looked again, she saw nothing but his back, soon obscured by bodies and water. Only the cloak, full of the heat that burned in his eyes, said that he had been close, that in this stranger she had glimpsed some echo of her home even as she moved ever further from it.

X – X – X – X – X

When the alarm went off, she was almost shocked to find herself in her bed. For a moment, she felt giddy and dream-drugged, as if the intervening years had not occurred at all, as if her heart still beat in human motion.

Lisa shook herself and scrambled out of bed. It was still dark outside, but she plodded downstairs to flick on the kettle, banging on Chatoya’s door on the way.

Ten minutes of comfortable routine found the pair of them in the living room, furnished with tea and toast, breakfast TV murmuring in the background.

“I’m getting his files couriered over to me,” Chatoya mumbled around a yawn. She was a picture of disarray in the morning – hair rumpled and loose, feet tucked under a cushion to fend off the cold. “I’ve asked Vaje to have a dig through the vaults too.”

The mention of his name stung almost as much as the fact Chatoya trusted him so. “But won’t we have all the files?”

“This is everything that can travel, and that’s been translated,” Chatoya informed her. “But some of the documents are old, and in other languages. I need Vaje for that.”

It struck her that even in her towelling robe, Chatoya was a Fury. Her tone was business-like, her face calm and blank as paper. This was the professional – the girl of strength and wit and steel who had somehow emerged with the boldness of a butterfly shedding its chrysalis.

Then the witch smiled, and it was her friend sat there once more. “But we will need the boys for this. Apparently they needed a van to bring everything.”

“That much?” she said, startled. “I had no idea he was that famous.”

“Not just him. You too.”

“Me?” she echoed. “I was just his slave. I mean, I turned out to be his soulmate, but that was coincidence.”

“You made history,” Chatoya said gently. “The Furies respect people who do that, even if they don’t like them much.”

It was something to remember, even if the rest of that mess was something to forget.

“The feeling’s mutual,” she muttered.

X – X – X – X – X

Heads turned as he walked in. Vaje still wasn’t used to that.

He was even less used to the curt nods he received, the quick drop of each glance that was as much respect as most would give. His rise in the Furies had come recently and meteorically. Jacquiline Trehet had been ousted by Chatoya, and he had replaced her. It was only luck, but the weight of their eyes said they thought it design.

The archives were always busy. Initiates were studying while their teachers composed lessons; the little academic clusters were in corners and close to the doors. Deeper in were the researchers and the curious, digging through the intricately catalogued system. Beyond the double doors were the contract halls, full of the dead and the soon-to-be dead. There would be a few people there, researching marks and methods.

At the end of the contract hall was a vast panelled wall. A door was hidden in it, accessible only to the chosen few. Beyond it lay the vaults, and the most private, precious knowledge of the Furies: the lives and deaths of their own members.

“Chusson.” Orelie Perette of Nightfire had a husky French accent and the kind of sweeping, sloe-black eyes that had made Anne Boleyn famous. “Back from the dead. I hear rumours you tangled with a dragon.”

He gave her nothing but a long look. “You hear right.”

Her eyes widened; she leaned in with pseudo-concern. “Is it true?” Her tone bordered on insolent. He felt weary – so the game had begun, the political dance, the tricks and traps. He had been raised up, and like anything set on high, he was just another target to them, if a dangerous one. “After all, you look very...undercooked.”

He met her proximity with his own: he stepped into her, deliberately aggressive. Then he took her hand, fighting the urge to just wrench it and let the sound of her bones break the silence. That would be simple, but not wise.

Instead he drew her hand to his side. She could feel the ridged scars through his clothes; he heard her soft intake of breath. Except for her fingers, testing the savagery of his wound, she was still.

When she stepped back, it was a retreat. She was shaken, belief wide in her eyes.

“Not at all undercooked, darlin’,” he said into the silence. “More well done.”

She stared at him – and then she ducked her head, the tiniest gesture of respect. But coming from a woman who had felled princes and unmade kingmakers, it was victory. “Well done indeed,” she said, too quiet for anyone else to hear. “You are what you always promised to be. Alea iacta est.”

“It’s no game, Orelie,” he said, part-warning, part-truth.

“I knew that the day I went to the Phlegethon, and burned,” she said quietly. “But Hades did not seem to mark you so deeply. What changed, Vaje?”

He touched her chin, making sure she had no idea how her words chafed.

“Me,” he whispered, and she flinched back.

She stood aside and let him pass. And the others, who had seen Nightfire’s black widow withdraw to her webs and her silence, took note. The nods were a little deeper, the eyes more firmly averted as he went through them all. Past the students and the teachers, through the contract hall to the aged door of the vaults.

Words had been carved in it: they were said to echo those some forsaken soul had etched into the entrance to Hades.

Facilis descensus Averno;
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis

Easy is the descent to the underworld
Night and day, the gates of Hades are open.

It was both joke and reminder: those who were kept in these dark vaults, pressed onto paper as stories or pictures, had made that lonely descent, had passed the first of the gates and breathed the very air of the underworld. He was among their number – and now he would go among them, and follow Alexandros beyond Hades because Lisa had asked him, and he could not refuse.

He spoke his keyword, and breathed on the lock gently. It swung open, and he entered the darkness.

Alea iacta est, Orelie had said, the die is cast.

She was more right than she knew. Vaje hardly understood why he was even here, helping such a futile endeavour, except that Lisa had asked, and he could not refuse.

Common sense said he should walk away. He was a Fury, and he knew better than to be caught up in the knots of relationships. To get involved in a relationship as thorny and visceral and violent as that of Lisanor and Alexandros...stupid. Hopeless.

But she had asked, and he could not refuse. He could not give himself any answer beyond that.

As he climbed down the stairs, the door swinging shut with a hollow boom, he did not explore that need any further. It was dangerous. She was dangerous. And as he made his way down the vaults which filled the ground like great, unconsecrated tombs, he knew only one truth.

They were right. The descent was easy.

X – X – X – X – X

It was late morning when the doorbell buzzed.

“Let’s hear it for the boys,” Lisa said cheerfully.

Chatoya glanced at the clock. “Before midday? There’s no chance Cougar’s awake yet. It must be the courier.”

She got up. Lisa heard the creak of the door as it opened, following by voices murmuring.

Then Chatoya called in a dreamy, chilling sing-song, “Lisa...it’s for you.”

Instinct told her who it had to be. She swallowed back her fear and picked up the baseball bat they kept for special occasions – and occasional murderers – before she went out to the hall.

Chatoya was stood at the door, her eyes vague. The scent of magic hung in the air – the sharp smell of ozone and herbs. She didn’t look hurt.

Much to her disappointment, Alex looked equally unharmed as he loitered on the threshold in the dregs of the snowfall, hands held up in a show of Artful Dodger innocence. “I wouldn’t recommend it,” he remarked. “I don’t react well to violence. As you should know.”

“What have you done to her?” she demanded.

“Nothing permanent. She was about to throw a very nasty hex my way. Funnily enough, I didn’t feel like spending the next fortnight croaking on a lily pad. I just...” He wiggled his fingers. “...made her forget.”

“Forget what?”

Chatoya turned to her, her expression somewhere between concern and bewilderment. “Lise...you do know you’re talking to thin air?”

“My existence,” Alex supplied lightly.

Disbelief seized her. “What?”

“There’s no one there,” Chatoya said in the sort of voice that people used to soothe lunatics. “It was probably just a kid cherry door-knocking.”

Alex let the witch finish, then said with great amusement, “I know. If I didn’t know what extraordinary power this little feat took, I’d be affronted that anyone could forget me so easily. Let’s face it, I really am a legend in my own lifetime.”

“Lisa...you look like you’re about to hit someone with that,” Chatoya said uneasily.

She realised her hands were clenched around the bat; with effort, she lowered it. “Sorry. I just thought it might be Alex.”

“I know he’s obsessive and creepy in the extreme,” Chatoya said wryly, “but surely he’s not stupid enough to show up on your doorstep. And I don’t think he’d ring the doorbell.”

“I’m not creepy!” Alex said with what sounded like genuine indignation. “And ringing the doorbell is common courtesy, something your trigger-happy friends seem to have no concept of.”

“Tell me the big bad assassin did not just call us trigger-happy,” said the cool and very menacing voice of Couagr Redfern. Snow crunched as he appeared over Alex’s shoulder with a suddenness that made Lisa glad, blocking out the sunlight. “Personally, I don’t believe in guns.”

“The NRA will be devastated,” Alex said with a roll of his eyes, and half-turned so the open door was at his back. “What do you believe in? Peace on earth and goodwill to all men?”

Cougar gave him a bright, unkind grin. “Peace in my bit of the earth. And my fist.”

“Oooh.” Alex yawned. “Very scary, cherie. Didn’t anyone tell you that fisticuffs are just so nineties? Although the first rule of Fight Club is that you don’t talk about it, so one can forgive you for such ignorance.”

Chatoya’s face was a picture of bewilderment. “Guys...what’s going on? Who are you talking to?”

All the amusement drained from Cougar; his eyes were gold and hard as coins. “Oh, you did not,” he breathed, gaze fixed on Alex. “If you’ve hurt her...”

“Cougar...” she said softly. It was pointless starting a fight he wouldn’t win.

“I think you’d better leave,” added a new voice. Jepar eased into her view, hands in his pockets, but his shoulders tense. “Lisa’s made it quite clear she doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

“Lisanor is not in possession of all the facts,” Alex said shortly. “And I don’t think I’m fool enough to leave you in possession of all your faculties.”

She felt something – a twist of power, forked and flickering like an adder’s tongue. It was barely perceptible, but she knew what he had done because Cougar and Jepar were suddenly emptied of all their hostility. Their eyes slid past Alex as if he were invisible.

“Sorry we’re late,” Jepar said brightly. “I had to surgically extract Cougar from his bed.”

“And then he had to surgically extract his head from my wall,” Cougar muttered. “JJ, we need to talk about the way you wake people up. It isn’t right.”

“But it is funny,” Jepar said cheerfully.

“What did he do?” Chatoya said.

Three of the strongest-willed people Lisa knew had turned into Stepford wives – admittedly with extra testosterone – before her eyes, and if she wasn’t stood there, she would never have believed it.

The vampire’s scowl deepened, oblivious to her or to Alex who watched them with a half-smile, admiring his handiwork. “Nothing I want to talk about.”

“I call it the Sleeping Beauty technique,” Jepar informed them with the air of a scholar announcing a new and exciting theory.

“I call it sexual harassment,” Cougar said sulkily. “No one wants to wake up to you whispering your fantasies in their ear.”

“I guessed that from the way you screamed.”

“Oh...” Chatoya said, and it was obvious she was fighting laughter. “That’s just cruel.”

Cougar shot her a sidelong glance. “Well, if you want to try it, babe...”

She laughed it off, but Lisa caught the sudden tension in the air. “I’ll leave it to the master. Now are you going to darken the doorstep all day, or do you want to come in and start outstaying your welcome?”

The boys brushed past her without so much as a glance, exchanging banter. And she was alone with Alex, nothing dividing them but air. It was not enough.

X – X – X – X – X

The silence in the vaults was absolute. In it, the mere fact of his breath seemed sacrilege. Vaje trod lightly through the lines of glass compartments, full of airtight boxes and carefully pressed pages. It was arranged chronologically, and the era he sought was somewhere in the middle.

At last he came to it. A metal plaque announced his destination: AD 50-600.

Below it was a smaller list of subtitles. He scanned down, and found what he needed.

The remnants of Empire. The Furies in the aftermath. Nightfire ascendant. Alexandros and Lisanor. The Saxon Age of Britain and the Werewolf Kings in Scotland.

It was still a shock to see her name there. Or rather, to see the name and have a face to match to it: a face so well-known to him that if he closed his eyes he saw her in myriad small details, like pieces of a jigsaw.

This was the puzzle of her: the angle of her glance just before she confounded him once again, the uninhibited sound of her laugh, the length of her legs stretched across a sofa, the sound of her humming while she cooked some culinary delight, and the sound of her curses as she failed to conquer her culinary nemesis: pancakes. Trivia, details, and he missed her.

And now another piece: her name on a plaque, testament to a past he had never guessed at.

He whispered his keyword once more and breathed on the lock; the glass door slid silently open. A timer beeped to warn him he had only a few seconds to enter, and he obeyed. Inside the compartment, like all others, was a wide desk with writing tools, paper, various dictionaries and paperweights.

The shelves were labelled as neatly as the compartments. He went to Nightfire ascendant and scanned the folders until he found those labelled Alexandros: Origins and History. A portrait tube lay across the top – curious, he popped it open and spread the canvas on the desk, leaving paperweights on the corners.

Vaje whistled softly.

It was no Genevieve, this rough charcoal drawing with only a few dabs of red to highlight it, but it had captured Alexandros at the height of his power. Look into those eyes and they were familiar: Malefici had that same cold, naked gleam of ambition.

The boyish smile was negated by the sword hanging loose at his side, smeared with red. He was easy in victory, wearing a Centurion’s uniform that was dented and worn; armour that had seen battle.

A signature was scratched across the corner. Dux bellorum. Vera, Roma.

Someone had attached a note. Alexandros after the battle that won him Nightfire. Believed to be around a hundred years old. Nothing is known of Vera, presumably the artist, though some sources believe her to be synonymous with Neve, a close friend of Alexandros. At this time, he had earned the accolade ‘leader of battles’. It remains a compliment among certain sections of the Furies and an insult in others.

Leader of battles.

That was what Alexandros became. But Vaje was here to find out how he became it.

He sat down at the desk and opened the first folder. Handwritten accounts greeted him in an array of ancient languages. But he knew what he was looking for; call it Hades or Pluto or simply hell, that was where every Fury was born.

In despair, in pain, in hate, in fear, in memory. Alexandros had drunk them all and lived. How much of Hades ran in his blood? What had he gained – and more importantly, what had he lost?

As he sat there in an underworld of glass and paper, Vaje could not help but fear that he knew the answer.

X – X – X – X – X

“How did you...?” Lisa said in a voice dry with fear. He had overwhelmed her friends without breaking a sweat, or that infernal smile.

“They forget so easily,” he said quietly. “Even you, Lisanor, even you can be erased. Only for a few minutes, of course, and when they remember, they’ll wonder why they saw me and did nothing. I imagine they’ll be quite angry – especially that vampire, now there’s a boy about to explode from sexual frustration – but they won’t be able to do a thing to stop me.”

She found her breath short in her throat, as if there was not enough air in the world. “Is that what the Lethe did to you?”

“Among other things.”

He had always been able to do it then. “Have you ever...have you ever made me forget?”

Alex looked at her; a long, slow glance full of what might have been sorrow in someone else. “Do you think we would have gone to war if I had?”

“Why didn’t you?”

He gave a shrug. “I couldn’t.”

Of course. “Fate’s a bitch, isn’t she?” she said with some nastiness. It helped to be angry. Fear retreated. Only heat and need remained, not so different from love in their ferocity.

“Oh yes,” he answered, and turned his face away. “Cruel as Hades himself.”

“What do you want?” she said.

“Your help.”

She gave a short laugh. “And you needed to...to drug my friends for that?”

“One of them tried to turn me into a frog. The other two just wanted to turn me into pate. It would have been messy. My solution was better. No harm done.”

The word hung in the air like a vulture.

Yet.

“What do you need my help for, then?” she said, careful to keep her grip on the baseball bat tight. She knew how he could move without warning; there was a predator under his skin, regardless of how well he fitted sheep’s clothing.

“A drawing,” he said. “For...someone who needs it.”

“Oh, you came into town to commission a picture from me? I don’t think so.”

“I came to town to find you,” he corrected. “This just...cropped up. It’s for someone you might know, actually. A wolf by the name of Felicity.”

She felt her blood freeze. Flick. If he knew Flick, that meant he’d been with the Pack, and he might know...

“I know her,” she said gruffly, covering her panic. “But she can ask me herself.”

“She can ask, but you’ll have a hard time drawing it. The subject’s dead, you see, and the only likeness she’ll be able to give you...well, it’s not pretty. Suicide. Summer. Three days before they found her. You get the picture. Can’t blame Flick for being haunted by it.”

He spread his hands, looking simple, innocent, angelic. The kind of angel who’d kiss you into a daze and then steal your purse. His voice was tantalizing.

“Whereas I...”

“You carry the dead,” she said flatly.

His face flickered, as if startled. “Yes.”

“Don’t you have enough of your own?”

“What’s one more?” he said as if it didn’t matter. She hated him for that, for his indifference, because he did not care. And she envied him.

“One too many, that’s what it is,” she snarled.

“Then do the drawing, and give her something better to remember.”

“Fine.” She’d thought she might like Flick, if Cern didn’t lie between them, disputed territory. It meant she would have a reason to visit the Pack. Maybe this time he’d listen. “Where’s my subject?”

He held out a hand. She recoiled.

“No.”

“Lisa...” he implored, her name a sigh.

She remembered how she’d hungered for his touch. She’d been an addict, a criminal, a host of unpleasant things just so he would never leave her. Those days weren’t so far behind – part of her wanted to tumble into him again, to live a life that was filled with nothing but him. She'd cared nothing for the wreckage they left in their wake as they tore through life like a hurricane. It had been good. Happy.

And lies.

“No. I know a trap when I see one.”

She was afraid he might just ignore her – the space between them was too small. She wanted to divide herself from him with miles, oceans, mountains. Close enough to touch was close enough to deceive.

But he stepped back, something much like disappointment in his eyes. “Think it over. Not everyone should have to carry their dead.”

“Like you, you mean?” she said shortly.

He turned away. “Like you,” he answered, and the old, familiar tenderness in his voice was sweet as a lullaby. “And Flick. Do the right thing, Lisanor. You were always better at that than me.”

Before she could answer, he was out of earshot. Against the great grey sky, he was nothing more than a curl of smoke, ever-smaller, ever-fading. It was a good act.

She watched him leave because she had to be sure he had gone. When he was not even a sliver of shadow on the horizon, she closed the door and let the baseball bat thud onto the ground. Even then, she did not feel safe.

X – X – X – X – X

In the grey day, she was bright and beautiful and forgotten.

It suited her to be all of those things. Each in its place, and in this place it suited her to be forgotten, for now. In Nightfire, she had been content to remain small and unimportant. There, such extravagances as beauty or grace mattered very little. They were tools like any other. In Hades, none of it mattered.

She had lived her life in the shadow of Alexandros. It had been an easy choice; in his shadow meant a breath away, in the heat of his skin, in the circle of his arms and the confidences of his heart.

Until Lisanor.

Such a legendary love, and she had helped to make it so. She had crafted the war into being, shaping it with rumour and misinformation and outright lies. She had played them like pawns, a queen ruling and warring, Britain her board and her endgame Alexandros himself.

It had not worked. But even the shadow of his shadow was better than nothing, until Lisanor was gone.

For years, she had sought Lisanor as assiduously as Alex. With that in mind, she did not abandon the Furies as wholly as he. She kept her contacts, her little birds trilling songs of death and desire. She cultivated patience. She cultivated her hatred with it.

And at last, word came.

The game had begun again. A queen in shadow, she made her move, the first rule of victory bold in her mind.

Know your enemy.

X – X – X – X – X

“So...” Jepar said glumly, “you’re telling me he didn’t even bother wiping the floor with us?”

“He skipped straight to brainwashing,” Lisa said, looking from one aghast face to another.

“I can even remember seeing him there,” groaned Cougar. “I walked right past him. That’s just embarrassing. There go my tough-guy credentials.”

“We can’t protect you,” Chatoya said, and that stark fact seemed to frighten the three of them more than anything else.

“Is there anything that can?” Jepar said with a touch of desperation. “I mean, he could walk in and kidnap Lisa right now, and we’d probably pack him sandwiches if he asked us to.”

“Maybe...” Chatoya was looking thoughtful. “I can’t stop him messing with our heads – we didn’t even notice anything, and I definitely had my mind shielded. But I could ward the house so he can’t come over the threshold. All our houses.”

“You can do that?” Lisa asked, feeling brighter. At least if Alex couldn’t get in, she had some kind of bargaining chip.

“I can do it. But I need some...bits.”

Lisa eyed her. “I get the feeling you don’t mean eye of newt and toe of frog.”

“Well…in a manner of speaking,” Chatoya said carefully. “I need something with Alex’s DNA. Toenails, or hair, or blood...”

“At risk of sounding stupid, before we send Lisa out to try and mutilate the guy who can control minds, and wants to keep her forever…don’t the Furies keep that kind of thing?” Cougar said, glancing at Chatoya.

“No. They-we,” she corrected herself, “don’t keep any relics of our members.”

Cougar frowned. “Why not?”

Chatoya said softly, “Think about what they could be used for.”

The silence was haunted. So were Cougar’s eyes: Lisa knew he was remembering, as they all were, the night when Ryar ap Sangager had been dragged back from death in the name of love. What might people do to the Furies in the name of darker gods?

“I’m going to go ahead and guess that’s one of those unwritten rules,” Cougar said in a voice that sounded strained.

“Yes.”

“So. We need someone who’ll break that rule. Let’s think about this. Alex used to run Nightfire, and has boundary issues. Who else do we know who runs Nightfire and has boundary issues?”

Chatoya’s eyes widened, soft and dark as ferns. “You think Blue...?”

“I think my brother is a manipulative shit who likes causing trouble,” Cougar said through gritted teeth. “Why do you think Alex showed up now? Blue wants something from him. We all know what Alex wants. He’ll have Alex’s DNA, because he likes back-up. And he’ll trade it to us. The question is, what for?”

He did not look at Chatoya, but his eyes were gold and distant as the setting sun.

“What could he want from us?” Jepar said, and Lisa kicked him on the ankle too late. He stared at her, then caught on; a flush crept up his face.

“That he doesn’t already have?” Cougar said bitterly. “I don’t know. But...but...”

He looked at her, and Lisa saw how terribly young he was. The curl of his mouth was vulnerable, his face pale but resolute. She loved him then, knowing he was steeling himself for battle of a subtler sort.

He said, “We’ll pay. It’s worth the price.”

She sent the thought to him on a rush of affection. So are you.

His smile was tired and sweet and real.

You've got a journey to make
There's your horizon to chase
So go far beyond where we stand...
No matter the distance, I'm holding your hand

X - X - X - X - X

Thanks for reading! Comments adored.
Ki