These stories just take root when I'm not looking…thanks for your encouragement! And for those who are still reading my other looooooong story, I'm still working on it! I just needed a short break from it. The muse is fickle and all that.

Still Waiting

BONG….BONG….BONG….

Bis hissed as I jerked awake, nearly startled out of my skin. I hissed, too, because Bis's little claws had just scored some nasty gouges in my shoulder as he, too, jolted awake.

The huge bell in the belfry was tolling midnight. It was the only hour I'd programmed it to ring, and when it did, it was loud enough to shake the floor. The rich, sonorous, multi-layered tones vibrated through me, and ominous words For Whom the Bell Tolls sprang unbidden to my mind.

I raced to the double doors and threw them open, to reveal…

…nobody.

For Whom the Bells Aren't Tolling, I amended in my head, bewildered.

This time my shaking was just my physiological reaction to my sudden arousal and adrenaline rush, I reassured myself. No wonder I'd fallen asleep, really – I hadn't slept properly since the accident. My eyes flashed up and down our sad little street, with the boarded-up grocery directly across from our church, two vacant lots on either side. Glass glittered under the single undamaged street light. Clouds chased each other urgently across the sky. The waning moon was out, intermittently, and the trees were rustling in the faint summery breeze that smelt of asphalt, garbage, rain, and change. My heart pounded, as all my senses came alive…for all the stillness of the night, I felt on the verge of something huge, profound.

The air fairly crackled with energy and promise. It was a perfect night for working my dark demon soul magic.

There was simply somebody missing. Emphasis on the "body."

Of all the possible scenarios, Ivy simply not showing up was one I'd never considered.

Bis and I gave each other another confused look. Then we both looked down. I groaned and used one of my hard-spun curses to stitch up the damage to skin and cloth alike. The last thing I needed when confronting my newly undead and thus totally unpredictable lover was fresh blood streaming down my shirt.

Assuming she… showed… up…?

I'd spent three days psyching myself up for my last and greatest battle. Hell, I'd spent the last nineteen freaking years preparing for this night, ever since I'd met my partner. No, I'd spent my entire damned life fighting the odds, from my improbable survival of the disease that wiped out more witches than mere humans ever could, to my years as a runner doing my best to wipe myself out with impossible situations and even more impossible last minute escapes. There was nothing – nothing! – that we couldn't survive.

So why hasn't Ivy shown up?

I glared at the empty street. "Damn it, Ivy! We had a plan. I'm the flaky one, remember?"

We did have a plan. We had about a dozen plans. We…just hadn't had time to research or implement most of them. The whole soul-sucking thing had been a bit of an improvisation, but neither of us had expected a stupid freak accident, what with all the other things that regularly cropped up trying to kill us. Elves on our doorstep? Plan. HAPA dropping in to take out my infamous demon ass again? Plan. Fundies, Weres, other Undead making power plays…? Plan, plan, plan, damnit!

An idiot college kid texting his girlfriend?

Damned human was lucky I hadn't welded that phone to his ass. I've never been closer to nuking someone in my life, and that included the time Nick tried to take Ivy hostage over a fucking book. But Nick hadn't been sobbing his sorry heart out afterward, begging forgiveness of anyone and everyone around him. Not that I'd ever have forgiven the rat, tears or not, but even in the midst of my grief, my heart had gone soft on the kid.

Some demon I'd turned out to be. Al would have given me such a scolding for not at least giving the kid a terrible temporary disease or something.

The common element of every plan was always for me to wait in the church. And Ivy would return to me. And we'd rejoin her body with her soul…however we'd managed to preserve it. I had some idea of how to do it, though it might end up involving demon magic (which Ivy still feared) or that peculiar vampire bond between undead and still-living (which still scared me witless). But Ivy had been crystal clear on one point: I was not to trust her undead shell, and I was not to listen to its wishes.

"I'll be dead," she said. "Heart dead, soul gone. I'll remember love, and hate, and fear. But they won't mean anything, not for long. Nothing will matter, nothing but the blood, and I'll do anything, say anything, be anything in order to feel alive again, even for a moment. But Rachel, you have to understand: it won't be me. I'll remember you. I'll remember loving you. But I won't know how to love you anymore. My mind will be dead- the creative spark, the essence, whatever part that can sustain and build on that love? It'll be gone. You can't trust me, and you can't let yourself be swayed by anything I say. Just do what you have to do."

Easy to agree to anything she wanted, lying beside her warm body, still wrapped in her arms and her love. How could she be anywhere close to her first death? We had all the time in the world, particularly now, when I could theoretically live forever. We could be forever.

Now she'd feel cold, her body maintained not by a beating heart, but by a magical virus that continually rebuilt her tissues. Now she'd be frozen in time, a woman in her early forties but still vital and beautiful. Yes, she'd aged, while I'd stayed young. It was always in my power to restore her youth, if she wished, but she'd declined. What did it matter to me what she looked like, anyway? She was my Ivy, and seeing the incredible woman she'd become, scars and all, had never failed to—

An engine revved in the distance. A motorcycle.

I gulped as my heart tried to bust past my esophagus. Surely not. Not after hers had been totaled…?

Oh, shit. I'm not ready for this!

What if she didn't want her soul back? Could I force her? Living Ivy had been absolutely clear. All or nothing. She wouldn't give herself the slightest chance that she'd become a monster, spreading Piscary's evil legacy. "After all, everything he did will probably make total sense at that point," she'd said, eyes hard. "I've trained myself for this, made it perfectly clear in my mind: if you can't save my soul, I'm going to walk into the sun, and you have to let me go."

I've done a lot of difficult things in my life – holding my father's hand as he died, letting Al go strike down Ku'Sox alone, talking Jenks back from suicide after his wife's death, then letting him go when it was finally his time. Losing Ivy three days ago had been worse than all of the above combined, and I hadn't technically lost her yet. Did I have the willpower to save her against her will?

Did I have the strength to let her go, if I couldn't save her?

"And if I won't do it..." I knew I didn't have the fortitude to force her to walk into the sun, and told her so before she could demand it. She conceded that point without a fight, because we were both crying at that point. "Rachel, you have to leave me. I'll destroy you. I saw how my mother destroyed my father, and she was the most loving woman I knew…before her first death. You have to promise me you won't let me hunt you, hurt you, devour you like all the other undead do to those they once loved. Promise me you'll leave. Otherwise…"

It won't come to that, I promised myself, as Bis fluttered his wings and resettled on my shoulder. I won't have to do it, because after every damned thing we've been through, it's fucking well not going to end like this! I believe in the eleven percent!

"Who's that?" Bis rumbled.

It wasn't Ivy who roared up the path, letting the tires skid right into the grass and make a mess of my petunias. The figure was smaller, shorter, though her long hair flared as she swung off the vehicle. I knew it couldn't be her, because she had only a shadow of Ivy's grace of movement. And she stalked, rather than glided, up the path, with a purposeful, angry tread.

I stayed in the doorway, suspecting that I knew this woman, and dreading the encounter. Holy ground wouldn't save me. This vamp was still living. And livid.

The young woman threw the helmet aside, sending it bouncing carelessly past the mailbox and into my rosebushes. In her late thirties now, she looked like an unfinished, unsharpened version of Ivy. For all her severe makeup, her emotions still broke her control and ran rampant over her soft features. Her mascara was running and she looked like she hadn't slept for three days, either. She didn't have Ivy's iron core. She hadn't had to develop one. Lucky her.

"Erika," I said. I was too surprised to formulate the different questions swimming around my head into coherent sentences.

"You," she said, her little canines poking out from under her lips. "What did you do to her, you… demon?"

I opened my mouth to reply, though I had no idea what I'd have said. My brain was too busy focusing on the gun she'd drawn out of her leather jacket and pointed at me with a shaking hand. Bis hissed again, spreading leathery stone wings and lashing his serpentine tail in a warning display.

He might have been a cat, for all the attention Erika paid him. "You did something to her! She trusted you, and you did this to her! How could you? She trusted you!"

"I didn't— damn it, Bis, don't!" Oh, hell. "Rhombus!"

In a slow-motion fiasco, I watched as Bis flew at her, intending to knock or grab the gun from her. I could tell from her face that the two shots she fired were unintentional. One chipped a bit of stone from Bis's shoulder, and the other rebounded with a ka-ping! off of my hastily erected circle.

"Dormi!" I commanded her, as I dropped the circle. The curse struck her, and Erika fell to the earth like her strings had been cut. Bis and I stared down at her in sad bewilderment, and my heart began to race with dread as the import of Erika's words sank in.

What had I done?

I had no idea.

"We'd better get her inside," I said. "Virem me concede," I added, letting my ley line fill my muscles with a temporary burst of energy. I scooped up the unconscious woman, hardly even noticing the additional layer of smut as it settled over my soul.

And Fortitudinem me concede, too, I added in my head, but there wasn't any demon curse out there to add to one's internal valor. My own courage would have to suffice.

I hadn't seen Erika for years- she'd moved to Paris to study design, and had stayed there as an intern for a large firm. The internship stretched out into a real apprenticeship, and by all accounts she was very happy. Her family feared she'd fallen under the influence of one of the undead who populated Europe, but there was little they could do, and Erika was an adult. At least she was out from under Cormel's thumb. Cormel was hitting his thirty-year trial later than usual—his position had granted him fame enough to provide him willing victims for years beyond the usual, but even those were drying up now as his darker side made itself known. I'd love to say that only the threat and promise of my intervention had kept Ivy safe from his machinations, but the truth was that Cormel was still hoping I'd be able to save him, too. Even though I'd explained that his own soul had gone kaput years ago; nothing I could do about it now.

Now Erika was passed out on my couch. Bis crawled over onto the opposite arm of the sofa, gazing down at her. He'd taken her gun and was using it as a chew toy, probably more to make a point than because it tasted good. Then again, he ate the darnedest things these days. "You all right?" I asked, trying to take a look at the damage.

Bis waved a wing at me dismissively. "Fine," he said around a mouthful of bullet, glancing at his shoulder. He was living stone and there had been no blood. It was just a chip, the stone beneath looking a little fresher and lighter than his weathered exterior. "It looks kinda cool, actually. The chicks on the Basilica will be impressed."

I snorted. "Dude, you live with a demon. Gargoyle chicks with any sense should be staying far away from you."

Bis flexed. He was nearing fifty now, hitting his prime and ready for a mate. "Are you kidding? You of all people know that chicks dig the bad boy!"

I had to shake my head…he did have a point, and even now, a hot leather-clad vamp on a bike could still make my pulse race for a moment. (Sure, I was happily monogamous, but that didn't mean I couldn't look.) "Sure…but then they settle down with the nice boy next door." I glanced down at Erika. "Or the nice girl, in my case."

Now it was Bis's turn to snort. "And she's still kidding herself after all these years," he told the ceiling philosophically. "Ivy's never been the nice, safe girl, and you know it." He snapped his wings shut, glaring down at Erika again. "Come on, you scaredy cat. Wake her up and find out what the hell's going on!"

My heart lurched again, because once again Bis had called it. I was terrified to wake Erika up and find out how my messing with nature had fucked things up, again. But he was right, I had to know. And then I'd fix it. "Excito," I commanded, feeling the sleep-curse unwind itself like a coil of rope falling away.

Erika bolted awake, cringing a little. Demon curses were like that – she was still feeling the adrenaline rush of nearly killing her sister's lover, and now she was wondering how the hell she'd gotten onto a couch with Bis and I staring down at her with concern. "Shit!"

Yeah, that about summed up the situation. "We're all right. Did you really come here to shoot me, Erika?" I wasn't a bit surprised when her face crumpled. She curled into a ball and sobbed, and I let her, even though the suspense was killing us both.

"No, no," she said. "I'm sorry…I was going to make you come with me. They said you wouldn't leave your church, so…your gargoyle, he just scared me, I'm sorry! Are you OK?"

"We're fine," I assured her, relieved rather than angry. Having Ivy's undead parents, not to mention Cormel and his entire camarilla, pissed at me was bad enough. But I'd always liked Erika, and it hurt to think that she'd have turned on me so completely as to try to murder me. "Erika, what's wrong with Ivy?"

To her credit, she didn't keep me in suspense any longer. "It's been three days, and she still hasn't woken from her coma!"

I tried not to let panic cloud my thinking. "But she's healed? She finished the transformation to undeadhood?"

"Yeah? I guess? She looks fine?" Erika was still crying. "But she won't wake up! Time's running out!"

"Does this ever happen to the undead?" I asked, knowing the answer but hoping Erika would contradict it.

"Yeah. If they aren't up after three days…they never awaken. If you don't fix what you did by sunrise—" She sucked in a breath as she realized she was still busy accusing the only one who might be able to help.

But I was wincing, because she was right. I had done something. I mean, it happened, occasionally. Sometimes the transformation was nearly instantaneous, as was the case with Kisten, and sometimes it took the entire three days. And sometimes a living vampire's death was too traumatic, or something just went weird, and the transformation didn't work despite the best efforts of the vamp virus. But I'd never heard of any undead surviving to rise after three days. And that Ivy was failing to rise now? No, it couldn't be coincidence. It had to be because of me. "Where is she?" I asked.

Erika blew out a relieved breath. "Cormel's place," she said softly.

I let the silence stretch before answering hopelessly, "Any chance of him bringing her here?"

My heart sank and bile rose in my throat as she dropped her eyes and shook her head. "And Cormel didn't think to send anyone to fetch me?" I asked, feeling the first spark of anger rising in me.

"They're on their way," she said. "They'll be here any minute." She lifted her tear-streaked face and fixed me with a pleading look. "You did…do something, right?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I did something."

Erika's face was eloquent with relief. "You can bring her back?"

I closed my eyes. Not only would I have to confront Ivy without the safety net of my holy ground at my back and a lifetime of memories for us to latch onto, I'd have to go right into the lair of the dragon himself. And yeah, being surrounded by vampires, living and undead, was not going to be conducive to my survival even if I did fend off undead Ivy and reintegrate her living soul with her undead body. The emotions that would be flowing around would act like lighter fluid on flames. Not to mention, what would they do to me if I failed?

No pressure, Rachel!

One thing I knew, though. I wasn't going to go at the point of a gun. I'd show up on my own terms. I rose to my feet, feeling the adrenaline and dread pulsing through me transform into that heady pre-run rush. I could do this. I would do this. I wasn't alone. I had Bis. I had Erika.

And Ivy was still with me.

Anyone got between me and the rest of her? Living or dead, I'd beat them to death with a chair leg.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to bring her back. But first…I'm going to bust her out of Cormel's place, because there's no fucking way I'm going to try delicate soul magic with a hoard of undead breathing down my neck." I grinned down at her, and she flinched at the glint in my eyes. "And you're going to help me do it."