Apologies for the delay in posting. I have spent the last four weeks buried under large piles of schoolwear while children shrieked, vomited and hurled food all over the floor. Woe. But many thanks to the wonderful people who lifted my spirits - thanks to: The Cyan Knight, Shang Leopard, Mandy (I intend to delve more into the past now that the present is firmly established. Vaje is getting out on a field trip soon - you're right, it just isn't as much fun, and thanks for that feedback! :D), , goblinishelves, dunk the donut, Queen of Slayers, LifeSucksWithoutVamps, Khansa (I didn't intend this update to take so long, but real life, bah. Hades is a great myth - thank you Greek culture! - and I love playing with it and thinking how it fits in with the Nightworld. And Arthurian tales are some of my favourites, so lots to play with there. THanks - I'm glad you're enjoying it!), Clairavance, Shelli (Thank you! I'm really enjoying Alex. He is obsessive in a way that Blue just isn't, and he honestly thinks that the end result is worth...anything. Everything. Cougar - I think you'll enjoy Haloed :) As for Cern...he was unfortunate to have a soulmate that everyone unanimously wanted (rightly or wrongly) dead. I was in my 'curse these happy endings!' phase. I won't say what phase I'm in now. I make no promises. But I will try to make an interesting story ;) Thanks!), Hera Night, Yen (Thank you. I enjoyed getting into the past for the first time. I'm definitely going back there. Heh, I wonder if they'd have had pancakes then...no reason not, I suppose...) and last, but by no means least, the lovely and extremely-aptly-named-for-this-story Lethe (Ah! Dead On. That was a related spell, but not the same one as the guy really was a zombie (mindless) as opposed to Ryar, who is as she was. Blue might have used the first spell, but I think he would be very wary of the second. Unless he can use them, he likes dead people to stay dead. It's all about what he gains. As for Loholt :D Don't worry, I have that one covered. Thanks!)

As you can tell, I adore feedback. It makes my day! I welcome all comments and criticism, so fire away! Thank you to my awesome beta-reader, she of much fabulousness, MorbiDreamscape. Next part by October 16th, and then something seasonal for Halloween ;)

Hope you enjoy! It's a long one: apologies!

Long Lost Part Seven

Here is the root
Where I ply my boot
To kick you off the fence you are still sitting on
- The Time Has Come, Lily Fraser

There were no wolves following her through the woods. All the same, Lisa felt like Little Red Riding Hood picking her way through poison berries and shadows as dark as bloodstains upon the ground.

The silence spread out around her in a fine web and she knew just what grotesque thing she would find at its heart.

All the better to eat you with, my dear...

They had argued about who would approach Blue. She had won, or lost, depending on how you wanted to see it.

“I’m used to dealing with him,” Chatoya had said, and Cougar had only laughed, a dreadful bitter sound that lingered on the air.

“We all know what you’re used to, babe,” he’d said, and she’d gone as white as milk while the stillness in her eyes opened up like an abyss.

“Company,” she whispered, and that one word had the impact of a bullet.

A flash of intention in Cougar’s eyes, deadly – he meant to hurt, cruelty his first defence, but Chatoya was faster. Her hands twisted – such a small motion, such a normal one – and fire sputtered to life between them, black and rippling.

“Enough!” Lisa snapped, because she knew where this ended.

Before either of them could do anything more devastating, she insinuated herself between them, only to find herself back-to-back with Jepar.

I don’t know who’s scarier, the shapeshifter muttered. Beauty or the Beast.

Lisa saw no one she recognised in this strange, dark witch who played with fire as if she couldn’t feel its burn. Which one’s which?

She felt his nervousness, icy in the back of her head. Good point.

“Enough,” she said again, glad of Jepar’s solid presence at her back. “It’s a moot point. Neither of you are going to see Blue. It’s my problem, and it’s me he can bargain with.”

“He can hurt you,” Chatoya said, but her gaze went right past Lisa.

She inched into the witch’s line of sight, forcing her to pay attention. “Maybe. But I’ll make it difficult. And he’s got no leverage with me. He can’t seduce me...” She threw a glance over her shoulder at Cougar, tense and glaring. “...and he can’t blackmail me. My secret’s out now – what do I have to lose?”

“Everything,” Chatoya said, and it sounded like longing in her voice. “You don’t know him.”

“No,” Lisa said quietly, “But I don’t love him.”

The silence went from merely tense to excruciatingly uncomfortable. Jepar coughed, and said, “Um. I thought we weren’t going to talk about the love that really, really dare not speak its name, because that name is Blue Malefici and it’s icky.”

“It is not icky,” Chatoya said with tremendous dignity, if a certain lack of perception.

Before Cougar could air his opinion – again – on the subject, Lisa leapt in. “It’s...a little icky. But that’s not the point – he can’t manipulate me as easily. And I may not know him, but I know- I knew a man who did. I’m not going to let Blue manipulate me, but I need something from him. I just have to figure out what he wants from me.”

“The same thing he always wants,” Cougar said, and it wasn’t her he spoke to. “Whatever hurts the most.”

Maybe that was true. It didn’t matter: Blue Malefici was going to find her harder to hurt than he’d anticipated. He was an amateur compared to Alex. A nasty, ruthless amateur, but one who didn’t know half as much about her as he thought.

So she had won. The rest was just procrastination...

X - X - X - X - X

...Which brought her here: Lisa smiled as she stalked out of the trees and into the clearing, because Blue Malefici would want her afraid, and she refused to be.

No gingerbread house this, buried in the wood. She didn’t slow as she went past the battered car in the drive, purpose buzzing in her bones with electric intensity.

She rang the doorbell, and she listened until she heard the faint pad of his feet, and-

With an almighty kick, she sent his front door hurtling down the hallway. Unstoppable force met immovable object; wood shrieked and shattered, and Blue emerged like a demon from a cloud of dust and splinters.

There was murder in his eyes.

He hit her with such force it threw them both out into the clearing; gravel spewed across the air as they hit the ground and Lisa grabbed a handful of pebbles to fling in his face. He recoiled – she took the opportunity to put a foot right into his chest and heard his ribs break with a surge of primal joy. But as she scrambled to her feet, he was faster; his punch hit her like a hammer in the gut, and she doubled over in time to catch his knee in her face.

Part of her admired his sheer lack of chivalry. The other part, meanwhile, took the chance to collapse on the ground with an appropriately ladylike moan.

A knife scraped. She opened one eye and saw his foot in front of her, thought idiot, then grabbed his kneecap and twisted...

He went down, but even with a dislocated knee, found time to whip the knife at her eyes; she swayed back, and snatched at the blade. It sliced across her fingers, but she closed them into a fist, and aimed that at his face.

He caught it, and something swept by her vision like a silver ribbon. Suddenly she found herself frozen. His fingers were clamped like granite around her fist, and the knife rested at her throat.

It was scorn that curled in his smile. “Not good enough,” he said.

Her nose ached; he’d probably broken it, and cartilage shifted eerily as she healed. Her stomach was a sore ball, her back stinging from the impact with the gravel, every breath like inhaling nettles, but that was all that hurt, a few breaks of skin and bone to match the hairlines on her heart.

“For what?” she said.

His eyes narrowed. “To win.”

And she laughed in his face. She kept laughing even when the knife pricked her skin, because it felt good to see that flash of bemusement in his face. He only knew how to win; he didn’t understand that you could win a battle and still find your losses as innumerable and terrible as if you had lost.

And nor could he understand how one could offer up a small victory for the sake of a larger; how she could toss away those pieces of herself which she could afford to lose – her pride, her safety, her secrets. Blue Malefici knew nothing of loss or surrender except that they happened to other people.

“I think you’ve missed the point,” she said in as grave a tone as she could manage, still breathless.

The knife twisted a fraction. Blood oozed down her throat and pooled in the hollow at the base of it. “Then please, enlighten me.”

So arrogant. For all his confidence and his tricks and his weapons, she thought then how very young he was. He was face-to-face with her, nothing between them but a little flat piece of metal, and he thought that was enough.

Careful now, she drew up a picture of Chatoya in her mind and held it: Chatoya as she had been facing Alex that first time, determined and fierce and powerful.

She met his eyes as she said, “I came to deliver a message from Chatoya.”

His face was still as ice. The pressure at her neck didn’t alter, and she wondered if this would work, this wild gamble. She felt the brush of his power, questing and feather-light and settling on the image of Toya.

She whispered, “It’s over.”

His arm jolted – and she threw her power at his mind like a knife whipping through the air. His shields cracked and broke under the impact; his thoughts were laid bare to her, sharp gleaming things.

Alexandros... she snarled, and a great avalanche of information slewed over her as Blue’s unconscious thoughts answered dumbly in those precious seconds while his conscious mind was reeling. She grabbed it and leapt free as he recovered, mind snapping shut like the jaws of a shark.

The furious blast of power that he sent at her would have destroyed her utterly if she hadn’t flung up mental shields designed to withstand Alex, but she had no such defences against his fist. He hit her so hard that she flew into the side of his car and felt the bodywork buckle under her.

Lisa hit the ground stunned but alive. Slowly she staggered to her feet, leaning on the car. He was waiting, and power flickered about him like smoke, dark and curling and toxic.

She looked him in the face, and said in as deadpan a voice as she could manage, “Just kidding.”

She thought for a moment he’d annihilate her on the spot. But he only watched her, and she saw the anger slowly drain away until he was calm and still and cold once more.

“An interesting exercise,” he said finally. “But I’m fairly certain my little counterattack should have left you with about the same IQ as a turnip. And yet you’re standing there. Quipping. Not very turnip-like behaviour.”

He sounded somewhat rattled.

“Maybe you’re losing your touch,” Lisa suggested.

“Or maybe you’ve been to Hades,” he said.

Not as rattled as she had thought.

She watched him, this boy who probably loved her friend in some strange and awful way, this Fury, this monster, and she saw in him something she recognised, because she had seen it every day in the mirror. This was what she feared, and what she had feared ever since the day she found a shadowed path and followed it.

They weren’t so unalike, she and Blue.

“Yes,” she said, and gave up another piece of herself. What was one more? Nothing compared to what she had left to lose, nothing at all.

X - X - X - X - X

Out on the mountains, the air was clear and cold enough that it was like a razor in his throat. Alex hiked on through the worn paths, barely noticing the scenery or the winter scratching at his skin, his head full of Lisa.

She had been afraid to touch him. That hurt. Even when she had been a slave bought at market (bought on the wings of prophecy, bought to break a heart), she hadn’t feared him. Disliked him. Loathed him, even. And perhaps she had feared the pain he might inflict on her, but never him; she’d never flinched back from him as if he were diseased.

Time had left her almost unmarked, and yet he saw differences. She was gentler, calmer, but her anger was deep and unforgiving. He had thought she might have softened over the years – that perhaps she might have realised why it had come to war. Why he had found her, all those years ago.

Over a thousand years, when he had gone to an oracle with his blood in a cup and his ambition bared in his smile.

X – X – X – X – X

Delphi was nearing its end then. It had prospered for years as the most important shrine in Greece; but Christianity had spread like a great web across the world by then, and the Emperor had forbidden it to practice. A hundred years had passed since that decree, yet the shrine existed still, hidden amidst the ruins of its former glory.

Mists hung upon the mountains as he climbed up to the shrine, the sun breaking through in thin golden spears. People parted to let him through, a stern soldier with battle-worn armour and the marks of high rank. If they wondered why such a man was on foot and alone, no one commented.

There were no other petitioners. In its heyday, he would have waited hours. Now it was merely minutes. A priestess scuttled out from one of the dilapidated buildings, eyes wide and fearful.

He inclined his head courteously, and said softly, “The Kindly Ones look kindly upon me,” and passed her a flat silver coin.

She paled at the phrase, but took him into a small, decrepit building. Under the crumbling eaves was a narrow passage that he followed down to a cramped room lit only by a pair of torches that coughed out gouts of black smoke. At its end was a long, dark wall that reflected the light in two faint gleams of orange.

The voice was everyone and no one; a crowd of people screamed in it, yet it was inhuman as the gods. “So someone still remembers me. So few come now, so very few. What would you have of me, questioner?”

He swept a bow to the wall. “I am Alexandros of Nightfire.”

“You came to me once before.”

“Yes,” he said. “You helped me then, for a fair price. I have risen high on the back of your advice.”

“It was not advice, merely a future of your choosing. Your memories were rich and sweet,” it said, and he thought he heard wistfulness in its voice. “They kept the emptiness from me for many days. I felt the sun, and knew life.”

Whatever the Oracle was, it had no life but what its petitioners could give it. It fed from memories, nourished by pieces of a life it could never have. Its only sunlight came in glimpses of future or past, its body no more than a phantom.

“I would offer you something better,” he said, and drew out his knife. “A libation.”

“Blood?” it said, and its voice was shrill and thrilled as a child’s.

“Mine,” Alex confirmed. “But I need something in exchange. I need to find my soulmate, whoever he or she may be. It is a matter of some importance.”

“Done, and done, a thousand times done,” whispered the oracle, and giggled. “Pay me my tribute, and I will scour every future until I find them for you.”

There was a small hole in the floor. He raised his hand over it, then quickly sliced his palm open. Gritting his teeth against the sting, he opened the wound again and again as it healed. As his blood dripped into the hole, he heard a sizzling sound – there had to be heated coals at its bottom – and the scent of meat rose into the air.

The oracle gasped and whined like a hungry dog. He didn’t know how long he squatted there, slicing at his hand to feed it, but finally it said in a voice thick with delirium, “I have had my fill of you, Alexandros of Nightfire. Now have you fill of the future...”

He gazed up at the wall. It shimmered like water, and then an image appeared in its midst: a girl, a young girl with the dark skin of Africa and ropes binding her arms. She was one in a line of people, but she didn’t hang her head – she trudged on with her jaw set and her eyes ahead, staring around her.

“Her?” Alex said, astounded, and aghast.

“She is your soulmate. Your future lies in her,” slurred the oracle.

“But she’s human,” he said flatly. “She’s a little human nothing. You must be mistaken.”

“I do not make mistakes,” the oracle said, and giggled again. It was unsettling hearing that odd amalgam of voices – man, woman, child – laughing in chorus. “That is the prerogative of you mortals.”

He stared at her, fascinated. She was tall and muscles gleamed on her arms, and he needed her. But…but how could he ever love her? She was human. She was a slave. She was breakable as pottery.

And his soulmate. He had no choice. This was the hand the Fates had dealt him; so be it.

“How can I meet her?” Alex said curtly.

“She will be sold at an auction in two months,” the oracle answered. “Pay well, and she is yours, though she will not love you for that.”

Alex grimaced. “I don’t need a human to love me,” he muttered.

“Are you sure?” the oracle said, and began to laugh, a rattling, half-mad sound.

"Positive," Alex muttered, and when it did not stop cackling away in that unnerving manner, he left. After all, what could it say to keep him there? What was one more word? Nothing compared to what he had to gain, nothing at all.

Or so he had thought. Now as he walked through the mountains and tried to forget how Lisa had recoiled from his hand, he wondered just what the oracle had seen, what it had known in those long ago days when he hadn't needed a human to love him.

X - X - X - X - X

When Vaje came out of the archives, the halls were almost empty. Only the night owls were left, peering at paper in the four a.m. fluorescence.

He knew everything about Alexandros that the archives could tell him, and it wasn’t enough. And he had uncovered a mystery with it, one contained on the sheets of paper in his hand.

Along the side of the halls were small wooden cabinets, not unlike confessionals except that these had a phone at their side and no hope of salvation in sight. He sank into one and dialled an international number.

It rang a few times, and then a familiar nasal voice said, “Hello?”

“Ross, it’s Vaje.”

There was a pause, then Ross said, “Chusson? Why are you calling? If there’s dragons or an apocalypse involved, I’m not interested. I’ve still got bruises from the last time you decided to go gung-ho.”

“So have I,” Vaje said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to disturb your cushy life in England. I’ve been doing some research and I’ve uncovered something unusual. I want your opinion.”

“England isn’t cushy. It’s wet and it’s crowded and it’s full of crazy people who keep telling me I’m pronouncing everything wrong. What do you want to know?”

Ross sounded more lucid than usual, if grumpy. Maybe he was managing to kick his various addictions. If not for the fact he was a meticulous historian and an even more meticulous killer, he’d have been culled long ago. Vaje personally thought he was a raging psychopath, but right about now, fighting fire with fire seemed like the only option.

“I’ve been researching Alexandros, and the Furies then. And I’ve found something...weird.”

There was interest in his voice. “Fire away.”

“I wanted to talk to someone who’d known him. So I went through the list of everyone who’d worked with him or given a testimony.”

“Go on.”

“They’re all dead. Murdered.”

“They are,” confirmed Ross, sounding more delighted than anyone ought at such clear evidence of mass murder. “Do you know what’s even more interesting? The Furies used to go to Hades then – all the way to the Lethe. There were a little over a hundred Furies at the time who’d gone further than the Styx and about fifty who’d gone all the way to the Lethe. The very end of the underworld.”

“Yes...” he said cautiously, not sure where this was going.

“And they all died too! Leaving Alexandros as the most powerful man in the Furies by a significant margin. Convenient, eh?”

“You think he did it?”

“Well,” Ross said happily, “that’s the Stygian Mystery! It seems like the obvious answer, doesn’t it?”

He looked down at the sheets in his hands. A long list of names, all crossed out, all with a date of death. It was daunting to think that Alexandros had gone through them just as methodically, that beneath each black line was an equal cut that welled with blood and not ink.

Except...

“There’s a name with a question mark.”

“Nimue Fairchild,” Ross said, drawing out the name with reverence. “She vanished, probably as soon as she saw what was happening.”

“Vanished...where?”

Ross chuckled. “Nowhere anyone sane would follow. She was a powerful magic user, you know, and all the stories have her as Merlin’s equal. Know why?”

“No.”

“It’s in her name, Chusson. Fairchild. Half-human, half-Fey. Morgan le Fay’s sister – the sane one of the family. She was born before the Fey seceded from this world and in the end, she followed them back into the twilight lands.”

“You’re sure?” Vaje said sharply.

“Certain,” Ross said. “I’d visit myself, but you know what the Fey are like about rules. I’m not very good at rules.”

That was something of an understatement. Ross’s approach to rule-breaking was much the same as that of a lemming to high, sheer cliffs. He just couldn’t stop himself.

“And she knew Alexandros?”

“Knew and hated.” A note of suspicion crept into his voice. “Look, Chusson, what’s this fascination with Alexandros?”

Vaje hung up. He sat in the cubicle for a long few minutes while the phone shrilled with Ross’s curiosity. The struck-out list was slack in his hands; and that one name with its question mark was more important than ever.

Nimue Fairchild. Alive, the last living person who had known Alexandros. The histories could tell him nothing else and certainly not what he needed to know. There was no one else who knew what might be found at the Lethe, no one else who could help.

So he would go to the Fey lands, strange and twilit and distant as the blind moon, and he would live by their rules or die by their will. He would leave the world he knew, and Lisa would just be an echo in the void between, a whisper of dust to dust, a fairy tale in a fairy world.

Perhaps.

X - X - X - X - X

While Lisa went to face Blue, the courier arrived with the files on Alex. Jepar had murmured something about research being soothing in the kind of tone people used with slavering Alsatians, and it seemed like he might be right. The only sound was the scrape of pages turning.

Then Cougar said into the busy silence, “This can’t be right.”

“What?” Chatoya said. The lamia was boggling at the piece of paper he held.

“This,” Cougar said, and started reading, sounding slightly stunned. “Alexandros was a personable creature, and a desirable one. Over one hundred and twenty men and women have testified to sexual encounters with him. How did he find the time? Between crazies, I haven’t even been able to get a damn date – her psycho ex managed to run one of the Furies and give Casanova a run for his money? What was his MO, death by extreme exhaustion?”

“Talk about getting a bang for your buck,” Jepar quipped cheerfully.

“First, ew,” Chatoya said, giving them both a sharp look. “Second, how is that helpful?”

Cougar managed to look martyred. “I thought we were looking for interesting facts.”

“Facts which will help Lisa,” she pointed out. “That won’t.”

“It might. If the Furies are as thorough as you think, there’s probably records of all those encounters. And I’ll bet Alex had some interesting pillow talk.”

She stared at him, eyes narrowed. “That might actually work.”

“Of course it’ll work, babe,” he said with assurance. His mouth curved, just a little smug. “Want to call your flunkies and get the sex files sent over? The truth is in there.”

“Very funny,” she said. “But this is serious. ”

Something glimmered in his eyes, behind the amusement, bitter and heated. “Having a Fury for your soulmate usually is. Good thing you realise it this time.”

She caught her breath, hurt - Jepar might not have been there: the room shrank down to the two of them and the cutting edge of those words. They had reached an uneasy truce on the subject of her and Blue, and the dark intricacies of their relationship which were as unfathomable to Chatoya as to everyone else, but moments like this reminded her that Cougar had not forgiven her.

She had chosen the wrong brother. And she chose again, every day, and nothing changed. Love still hurt, and the sun still rose, and his words were true.

Chatoya looked him in the eyes, and part of her understood the cruelty of what she did. There was something so terribly intimate about it, this unending and direct gaze, a closeness and a promise of closeness that would not be. “I’ve always known. I understand what loving someone like that means.”

There, the words were out and raw and suddenly terrible. She wanted to get up and leave, but she didn’t.

He did.

The hurried clatter of his steps, the slam of the door, the space so suddenly and conspicuously empty: that was the proof that she had won. It was a pyrrhic victory.

“You all right?” Jepar said gently.

She didn’t look at him; she turned her attention back to the papers. “Fine. Let’s get on with this.”

X - X - X - X - X

Blue looked at her with new interest; she had shifted to a new place in his hierarchy, and Lisa wasn’t sure she liked it at all. “How intriguing. So for all your protestations, you’re one of us.”

She didn’t want to be part of any ‘us’ that involved Blue Malefici. That was an ‘us’ of a particularly horrible sort: dangerous, callous, hideous.

“No. It isn’t only the Furies that go to Hades.”

He smiled, and his eyes glittered like frost. “Have you lied to yourself so long? We are the only ones who go to Hades and live. We walk its paths alone, and the beasts that chitter and shriek in the dark recoil from us, because we are more terrible and more hungry than they. We are horror in a place that reeks of it – we belong, and so we live, and drink down death, and when the sunlight touches us once more, it feels as warm as blood.”

She shuddered, and could not stop her memories – the shadows that moved so queerly, sinuous as snakes, the emptiness and the bleakness of those vast stone halls. The bones that huddled in corners, gnawed and abandoned. Desperation drove her there; desperation was what she cupped in her hands as she knelt before the Acheron, what she swallowed down with her pride.

“I am not like you,” she said.

“No?” He laughed, and it was a careless sound. “Did you tell yourself that when you slipped the poison into their drink? When you slid the blade between their ribs, when you felt their last breath on your skin, when it felt so good, did you tell yourself it was vengeance that warmed you?”

The words hurt her far more than his blows. But she stepped into them, fury driving her. “No. I told myself it was love. I told myself it was justice. I told myself it was for the best, and I was wrong. And one day, I grew up enough to see it. I was never a Fury. One of your thralls, maybe, a fool for love or Alex or those stupid dreams of destiny, but not a Fury. And if it was your heart under my knife, even knowing what I know about you, even knowing that you are a disgrace and an abomination, I would think twice. And I would mourn afterwards. Not for you, but for myself. And that is what makes me different. I know what I lost, and I miss it.”

His silence was thoughtful.

“I think I should kill you,” he said slowly. “It’s unfortunate I am bound not to. I need Alexandros, and he, after all, thinks he needs you. You could be dangerous, Lisanora.”

Blue said it with the exact same inflection as Alex used to, and her cheeks burned. She had ambushed his memories, and it seemed that he had repaid the favour.

“So could he,” she said. “But you know that already, don’t you? You’ve kept something of his. Blood. Saliva. Nails.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Nothing quite so revolting. Is that what you want? And what do I get?”

She stepped closer again. His power made her skin crawl, but she had seen Chatoya do the same. It was a small piece of power over him, nearness, because he had spent so long isolating himself. “Alex is more powerful than you.”

“For now,” he said idly, but she could tell that rankled him.

“If he wanted Nightfire back, he could take it. He could destroy you.”

He said nothing.

“I know Alex. And I can help you make him powerless. Give me this, and I’ll make sure he doesn’t interfere with you or the Furies.”

He tilted his head on one side, and his gaze swept her top to toe. “I begin to see where the legends came from,” he remarked dryly. “Love or lack of it, you are tenacious.”

“Well?” she demanded. “Do we have a deal?”

“Oh no.” There was a thread of ice in his voice. “You stole my memories. There should be reparation for that.”

Her heart sank. She had hoped it would be enough. “You-”

He overrode her, quite cool. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the term ‘blood-money’. Consider it literal. I will give you what I have of Alexandros. Make your protective spells. And then when he can no longer dazzle you, you will go and get me a replacement. In blood.”

She had no choice. That was obvious. She needed to protect her friends, and herself. And while she didn’t want to get any closer to Alex than she had to (something halfway between fear and desire shivered down her back), she had an excuse. Flick. And then it would be over. She could get rid of him once and for all.

“You’ll get your blood-money,” she said harshly.

His smile was bone-white against the leaden sky. “I always do.”

X - X - X - X - X

Shadow to shadow, she pursued her prey through the woods. It seemed to her that rustle of the leaves echoed her name, but she didn’t worry that the boy might hear. He was deaf to anything but his grief.

He stopped at last, and he fell to his knees with something like a moan. His back was a long slope, his head bowed in front of the scorched ground. She could see clearly where a fire had been; a blackened ring denoted its edge, and she could smell death in its ashes.

She let him mourn a little, tasting his emotion like a fine wine. When she was sated, when she judged the time was right, she stepped out beside him.

“Cern Akafren,” she said, the name strange on her lips.

He looked up; she felt the faint pressure of magic, half-threat and half-shield. His face was wary. “Who are you?”

“My name is Guinevere,” she said. “And I have risked everything to find you.”

“Have you?” he said curtly. The moonlight made a revenant of him, hollows and grime. “Why should I care?”

“I...I don’t expect you to,” she said, playing the victim; turning her head to bare the long vulnerable slant of her neck, hands wringing. “But I wanted you to know that you weren’t alone.”

“I hear that a lot. It’s crap, so thanks, but take the therapy session somewhere else.”

Time for the piece de resistance. She glanced at him, flash of eyes as soft as smoke, and said in a voice that trembled, “I miss her too.”

His eyes widened. But he was cautious still, for which she had to commend him. “Who?”

“Jal.” Psychotic bitch. She’d nearly killed Alex, and would have succeeded if not for Merlin and Nimue. “She was...a friend.”

“She never mentioned you.”

Guinevere looked away, her pose careful; the tears came on command now. She felt only calm purpose as she acted her part to perfection. He could see lies: all her words had to be crafted, skirting that thin line between honesty and fantasy. “No. She wouldn’t have remembered. I hoped she would – I was there when we put her into an enchanted sleep and I hoped she’d come to me when she woke, but...but...”

But the spell that Merlin had sunk her into just didn’t work that way. He’d thought he had a mind for revenge, but what he had was a dream of romance. There was no other reason he’d bespelled Jallakri ap Ganra to wake only when her soulmate crossed her burial place. As if love would fix it all. As if fate meant anything. Idiot.

“-she forgot it all. Nightfire. What they made her. And that meant she had to forget me too.”

She turned away, hands clasped to her face, shoulders shaking with feigned sobs.

“You know about Nightfire,” he said, and she heard the first hint of belief.

“Yes. I know what they made of her. They buried a monster in her and loosed her on the world. Some say she chose her fate. I say that she was a fool in love, and unlucky.”

Unlucky for everyone else. Nightfire was young in the days when it created such monsters in its name, young indeed to think it could scorn such a girl and expect no consequences. She knew the savagery of love, knew its teeth and claws; she wore her scars with pride, collected her wounds day by day in the surety that one day it would end.

“In that,” she added, “we were very alike. It was what drew us together. I knew her, and she knew me.”

“How did you meet her?” he said, voice a rasp.

She turned back to him, slowly, eyes brimful of tears. She was quite sure that she made a beautiful tableau, hair swept across one shoulder in waves, as fragile as porcelain. Alex would have appreciated the artistry.

“It was a long time ago. Over a thousand years. I was a girl in a strange land, following a man I loved more than all the world. She had escaped Nightfire and came to hide amidst the Saxons. The Morrigan, they called her, in their human words, and worshipped her as a goddess of slaughter. We met at a war council. The Saxons wanted to buy some peace, but they thought she might encourage more favourable terms.”

She called up the memory of Jallakri’s laughter, gentle, rather quiet, and she imitated it to perfection. She saw his answering start, and knew she was winning him.

“We met in a lull between talks. She didn’t know who I was, and I only knew her legend. We spoke about things – men. War. The weather and the harvest. And somewhere in the middle of it, we found a common purpose. We found one another.”

It was what Cern Akafren wanted to hear and so she fed it to him, piece by poisoned piece.

“When the Saxons were routed, I pleaded with the leader of the Britons not to kill her.”

Even then Guinevere had seen her use; had seen how she might turn Jallakri upon Lisanor. Events had conspired against her, but at the time it had been a clever plan.

“It was I who suggested we enchant her. I had hoped she would wake one day. I...I thought she might wake changed.”

And she had been right. Jallakri had acquired a conscience along with a soulmate. That the wretched woman had allowed herself to be killed – of all the utter foolishness, the waste of such power.

“I wish she was alive,” Guienvere said, delivering her line with Oscar-winning conviction.

His chest hitched, and his face was full of grimness as he judged her. She met his eyes, steadfast, knowing that he could see the truth of her words as clearly as if she were glass.

And then he said softly, “She could be.”

Guinevere gasped, and felt the burn of triumph in her heart. He was hers. It had begun. “How?”

X - X - X - X - X

The mirror was full-length and nailed onto the wall firmly. Vaje knew because he had checked it. Twice.

The Fey were creatures of illusion, living in the thin grey netherworld between what was and what might be. And as such, the pact they had signed with the Nightworld reflected that. All that was mystery and chicanery was theirs: mirrors and mists and theatres and shadow.

There were other ways into their world, but this was the quickest and the surest. It was also the most likely to kill him, but the other ways needed magic and he had none, nor anyone he trusted to come with him.

The pocketknife flicked open. He gashed his palms quickly and laid them on the mirror. Crimson smeared the surface, and the air stung his cuts as he leaned close and breathed onto the surface, which misted until his reflection was nothing but a formless shape.

He spoke quickly: it had to be complete before the vapour faded. “Through mirror, mist and blood, I call you from the twilight lands. I ask of you one boon and pass myself into your hands.”

The mirror shimmered; his blood faded into its surface and the mist spread, as if some great creature had breathed upon the glass. Faintly pink, it swirled in strange patterns that his eyes could not track.

And then it parted like curtains, and a figure appeared. Behind it was nothing but grey, featureless land and a indigo sky that was empty except for a crescent moon that seemed too large, too close.

“It has been a long time since anyone called us,” it remarked, and though it had human shape, there was nothing human in its waxy skin or its flat yellow eyes. “You are bold.”

“I’m desperate,” Vaje said bluntly.

The Fey seemed to like that; it smiled and revealed pointed, shark-like teeth. “There are rules, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Tell no lies. Cast no spells. Drink nothing. Eat nothing. When the bell tolls, do not dance unless you wish to stop only when your feet are flayed to the bone.” His guide licked its lips with a forked tongue. “It is a most amusing sight,” it added. “Those are our terms. Do you agree?”

“I agree.”

It gave a high-pitched giggle. “Most excellent, most merry! What is your pleasure, traveller?”

“I’m looking for Nimue Fairchild.”

Some of its amusement dimmed. “The changeling child. She lives amidst the thorns and the nettles. I will show you the path, but you must find your own way through.”

“Sounds fair,” Vaje agreed, thinking he would be glad to get rid of his guide.

It stepped back and he saw suddenly that bracelets of hair were looped about its wrists; bracelets with chunks of scalp still clinging to them. “Then enter the twilight lands, traveller, and pray you see the sun again.”

It was too late to turn back. Vaje stepped through.

There is no time left to reason
To tempt you, to beg you, to pull you,
To tease you, to please you
To talk you into or out of
The time has come

X - X - X - X - X

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