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Lyrics from Black-Eyed Boy by Texas (Album: White On Blonde). Next part by June 18th. I hope you enjoy!
Ki
Long Lost Part Two
You call me superstitious
Tie me up with your deceit
I could never be malicious
Though I seem so bittersweet
- Black Eyed Boy, Texas
The sky was clear and so bright she had to squint. Growing corn brushed her knees, itching. All around her, the fields stretched away in swathes of gold, broken by low stone walls that straggled across the hills. Far away, she could make out a cluster of buildings – low huts, a farmhouse, enough to tell her that Alex had never left Saxon Britain.
The last time she had dared to step into his mind, it had been an isolated British fortress, threaded by winter winds. The change startled her.
"You've redecorated," she said flatly. "Very nice. Now please, let me go."
"Somehow I get the impression you aren't pleased to see me." The soft, slurring Cajun accent was new. So was his attire, which wouldn't have looked out of place on the fashionable parts of MTV, but was enitrely incogruent against the wild landscape.
"Really? What made you think that? Was it the fact I was begging my friend to let me leave? Or was it the huge – and pay attention, this term is literal – fuck-off war that I started to get away from you?"
Alex glanced away, his nonchalance apparently dented. She wasn't fooled; he knew how to use vulnerability. Emotions were just sleight of hand to him. Distraction, misdirection, artifice. He was a magician of the highest order, the kind who didn't even need mirrors or smoke.
"That was a long time ago, Lisanor."
"Don't use that name. That was someone else."
"Really? She looked a lot like you." He slid off the wall in a smooth motion. "Lisa, then. That's the name you use now, isn't it?"
The implication burned. "I don't just use it. It's my name. It's who I am."
"And who is that?" he asked, strolling towards her as someone else might approach a frightened animal. Eyes lowered, almost meek, each movement slow and careful.
"Someone trying to be better than I was with you. Please, leave me alone, Alex."
"No."
The corn scratched her shins as she retreated, fists clenched at her sides. "I don't want you."
He lifted his eyes and the intensity there froze her - dark, heated, and so very knowing. "I don't believe you."
She could feel panic beginning to overtake her. All the years spent running had taught her control, but she knew just how powerful he was. If he wanted, he could pluck out her thoughts and examine them at his leisure. She was playing for time now, nothing else.
"I have another life," she said. "It doesn't involve you. It never will."
His laughter was soft, but there was a bitter edge to it that puzzled her. "While I have the same life, and it is empty without you."
"That was your choice."
"Yes," he acknowledged. "And I'm starting to think it was the wrong choice."
"It's too late for that," she said coldly.
Strange how she had thought the past was dead, gathering dust in the pages of journals and textbooks. And yet those old emotions – hurt, betrayal, fear – surfaced so easily that she trembled with them.
Green glimmered in his eyes, wolfish. "No. I don't believe that either. You promised me, Lisanor," he whispered, and here, the words rumbled like thunder. All around them, the landscape was shifting, bleeding into stormy skies and ruined ground. The corn shrank beneath her feet until she stood on stones and weeds. "A fair chance for your heart, a fair chance for you. Who did you break that promise for?"
She tried hard to keep her mind empty of those she loved. There were so many people he could hurt if he wanted.
Faces flashed before her in a dizzying parade – Cern and Vaje and Toya and Jepar and Cougar and Thom-
No, no, no...
His eyes were so cold. "I see," he said slowly, and his tone chilled her.
"Please, don't-"
Her pleas were cut off – back in the real world, she felt something tear his hands from her, and the link fractured like bone.
X - X - X - X - X
Disoriented, she opened her eyes onto Jepar, who was peering at her anxiously. The alcohol on his breath did more to restore her wits than the tentative way he was patting her face.
"Don't you dare go anywhere near her," she heard Cougar say, his voice glacial.
She nudged Jepar aside. Cougar and Alex faced each other across the snow, threat in every line of the vanpire's body. His eyes blazed gold, as inhuman as the fangs that he bared at her soulmate.
Alex was breathing hard, flexing his hands as if claws might sprout from them at any minute. A slow smile crept across his face, amused, a little contemptuous. "I really don't think you can stop me."
"Want to bet?" Cougar drawled.
She shivered as Alex let his power roll over the air – force that crackled like the air before a storm, heavy on her skin, more than a mere werewolf should possess. But then, it had been a long time since Alex had been just a werewolf.
"Yes," he said, and with that word, power thudded down on them like a giant's fist. She heard Jepar gasp as he thuddded onto the ground; Cougar was somehow upright, hunched against the sheer pressure bearing on him. "You aren't anywhere near enough, cher."
"But I am," a new voice said, and suddenly the weight was gone.
Lisa stared, awed, as Chatoya moved between them, treading delicately and lightly through the snow on her bare feet. Her long black hair sheeted around her like a cloak, magic billowing from her in dark curlicues.
Alex tilted his head to one side. "How intriguing. A witch with dragon powers. You must tell me how you stole that spell from the Furies."
"I didn't have to," Chatoya said coldly. "I run Pursang."
They all knew the truth, but hearing it said so matter-of-factly gave Lisa chills.
A low sound rolled over the air, and it was a moment before she realised it was Alex laughing. "Is that supposed to scare me?"
"Usually it does," Jepar muttered, sounding bemused.
"How far have you been, little girl?" he said scornfully, gaze raking up Chatoya's body in a way that Lisa recognised. He had looked at the Saxons the same way, as if he could hardly believe their impudence in invading his country. "How much of Hades have you seen?"
Beside them, she saw Cougar stiffen. His eyes were fixed on Chatoya with something close to desperation.
"Nothing yet," Chatoya answered.
Hades. It was Nightworld legend, but she had been born in the times when it wasn't legend, when the Furies had sent their initiates into the underworld to drink of the rivers there and learn the secret of death. She'd thought it had been forgotten. But Chatoya hadn't been at all surprised by the question.
Alex raised his eyebrows, ostensibly polite. "Nothing? I've felt the breath of Hades himself – I've walked into the heart of the underworld and lived to tell the tale, and you think you can frighten me because you stole power from a sleeping lizard?"
"I think if you dare come near Lisa again, I'll kick your ass straight back into the underworld and you can give Hades a personal account of just what you did wrong."
"Feisty," Alex remarked. "But why don't you go and look up Alexandros in your archives, cherie, and then if you still think you've got a hope in hell of harming me, you come and try your magic on me."
Chatoya's eyes widened.
"I thought so," Alex said lightly, and he turned his attention to her. Lisa gazed back, suddenly unsure how safe she was, even in the midst of all her friends. "I'll see you soon."
Feral green swamped his eyes, but something unmistakably human remained in them – a calculating intelligence overlaying the beast. He threw back his head and howled.
The sound vibrated like a war cry in the air, and as its echoes faded, he turned and walked away, feet kicking up the snow. To the casual onlooker, he might just have been a teenage boy slouching along the street. To her, still the man who'd let a country run with blood because he would not let her go.
X - X - X - X - X
The trees bent over the house like clenched fingers. It lay in a pool of shadow, broken only by thin shafts of grey light that seeped through the leaves. Snow littered the ground in small patches, and occasional flakes fluttered down from the canopy, but it was otherwise untouched by the winter.
Alex raised a hand to knock, forestalled as the door swung open.
The boy standing in the doorway was startling. His face was handsome, teetering on the edge of beauty, all sharp edges that were only balanced by a full mouth that curled with contempt. His hair was bright blue, and a match for his eyes, which regarded Alex with a detachment that suggested he was being valued, much as an item at auction.
Alex strongly resisted the urge to slap the little bastard, who had been useful so far, and put on his most irritating smile.
"Surprise."
Blue Malefici, the vampire who ran Nightfire, the oldest of the Furies, raised his eyebrows. "Not exactly. Everyone within a hundred miles probably felt that show of power. I thought you were famous for your subtlety."
"Among other things," Alex said with a little purr. He let his eyes rove over the vampire, a slow, thorough examination. Very good-looking, but so emotionally repressed that he had to pity anyone foolish enough to get involved with him.
He thought he detected a flash of annoyance in the boy's face. "Did you get what you wanted?"
"Not even close," he said with a lazy smile. Her rejection rankled, more than he had thought it would. "But this is only the start. Do you have the records I asked for?"
"Do you have the knowledge I asked for?" Blue countered.
Alex tapped his temple. "Of course."
It was, perhaps, not wise to tell Hades' secrets to this one. Five rivers laced the underworld. Once the Furies had gone to each to drink and learn, if they survived. Now most of them went only to the first, a handful to the second, and only three people out of all the Furies had sampled the third. Blue Malefici was one of them.
Alex stood so far above them in power that he would have seemed a god if he was foolish enough to reveal the full range of his abilities. He wasn't sure that giving Blue the same advantage was a wise idea.
But he needed the Furies to win Lisanor.
Nothing else mattered.
X - X - X - X - X
"Do you want to explain what the hell just happened?" Cougar demanded, his expression close to hostile.
She looked around at them all, the words stuck in her throat. Alisha had ushered them all inside, efficient, carefully not commenting on what had just happened. Jepar was huddled by the radiator. Cougar was rubbing at his neck and shoulders as if they ached, while Chatoya was busy drying her feet with a towel, grimacing. She might not have felt the cold while she was saturated with magic, but once it had vanished, she started hopping from foot to foot.
Lisa didn't know what to say. It was obvious that she had lied to them. They'd caught her trying to run away. They'd seen Alex, and they'd heard what he said.
"What is he?" Jepar asked. "That guy had more mojo than a voodoo convention."
"That..." Once she had started, it became easier. "That was Alex. My soulmate."
"See, this is the bit I'm confused about," Cougar said coldly. "The bit where you forget to mention that you have a soulmate and he's a maniac. Because it's not as if we're short on either round here. You'd think you might have found time to mention it between psychos."
She swallowed. His hostility made it easier. "I didn't want you to know."
"Why not?"
"Maybe because he used to run Nightfire," Chatoya suggested quietly. "I can understand why you'd be ashamed of that."
"That was part of it." She found herself staring at the floor, not wanting to meet their eyes. But she owed them the truth. They had put themselves on the line for her. "But not all of it. It was a long time ago. A very long time ago."
"So you're not thirty," Jepar said tentatively.
"No." She met his summer-green eyes, shorn of all humour. "I don't know exactly how old I am. But I was born around fifteen hundred years ago."
The silence was absolute. None of them even moved.
Then Cougar said, "Say that number again."
"I'm fifteen hundred years old, give or take," she said quietly. "I was born in Africa, but I don't know where. When I was young, the Romans conquered us, and I was taken into slavery. Alex was my owner. And then...one day I found out he was my soulmate."
"Whoa..." Jepar breathed.
Of them all, only Alisha didn't look shocked. There might even have been understanding in her cool blue eyes. After all, she had lived eight hundred years as an Old Soul, passing from life to life and death to death.
"He had me changed into a vampire," Lisa continued, trying hard to forget that night, her fear and the feel of her chest hitching as she tried to breathe only to find that the air was no longer there. "We travelled everywhere – the Roman Empire was trying to hold onto its colonies, and he was one of its governors. At last we were sent to Britain to try and stop the rebellion there. He didn't care – the Furies were bringing down the Empire. Everything he did was for show. There was...there was a woman. She told me about Alex – what he was. Things...things he had done. I left him."
Sad how so much could be distilled into brief words; her life reduced down to a few core, terrible truths.
"But he chased me. I went to his enemies and begged them for shelter." A disbelieving little laugh choked out of her. "And do you know, do you know what he did then?"
"Lise..." Chatoya said gently, reaching out. Her face was full of concern, horror in her eyes.
She had to get through this. "He raised an army to get me back. He was there for years and let the Saxons ravage the damn country, but he united fifteen warring tribes because he couldn't bear the fact I'd left him. We fought. And he won – the Saxons surrendered, but I left him all the same. And now – now he's a legend. They make these stupid films about him, they write about him as if he was some kind of hero, as if he did it to save someone. He didn't. He went to war because he was a jealous man, that was all."
"It wasn't your fault," objected Jepar.
"It was," she said tiredly. "I could have stopped it. I could have said yes, and gone back to him, and pretended for a while. But I didn't. I let men die. I saw them ripped to pieces and I still didn't stop it."
I didn't want to. I hated him. He lied to me, and I just wanted him to suffer – I wanted everyone to suffer because at least then I wouldn't be alone.
She couldn't bring herself to say those things to her friends. Nor could she tell them the whole truth – the poison, the massacres, the deeds that she had been complicit in.
"I ran from him for hundreds of years. I always knew he was following me, and sometimes he came so close, but he only caught me once." That time was blurred by fever and exhaustion. "He let me go. I still don't know why. But he made me promise that when he f-found me again, I'd give him a fair chance. And now he has. I don't know what to do."
"So you went for climbing down the drainpipe," Cougar said, some of the anger fading from him. The smile he offered her was grim, but filled her with relief nonetheless. "Not too smart, babe."
She scrubbed at her face. "I wasn't thinking straight."
"No wonder. You really started a war to get away from him?"
"I really did," she said glumly.
"Then that's a guy who really can't take 'no', 'hell no' or 'screaming Saxon army no' for an answer," the lamia declared. "I vote we skip the niceties and go straight for annihilating him with Toya's scary dragon powers."
"Seconded," Alisha said, raising a finger.
"I'm not sure that'll work," Chatoya muttered. "If he's been as far into Hades as he says...I don't even know what kind of powers that would give you."
"Then find someone who does," suggested Cougar shortly. "One of your merry lunatics will know."
"Actually..." The witch gave a little nod. "You're right. Vaje used to work on the archives."
"No." The word flew from her. "I don't want him to know."
Chatoya looked taken aback. "Why not?"
Because what else is in those archives? What do they know about me, about what I did? For love, I told myself, and it was all lies.
She searched for an excuse that might be acceptable, but nothing sprang to mind. There was no reason for Vaje not to know. After all, he was about the best protection she could get aside from Chatoya.
"Because I lied to him too," she said finally.
Jepar gave her a sweet grin. "I'm pretty sure he's crazy enough about you to get over it."
That startled her. She doubted Vaje was crazy about her; fond of her, attracted to her, a close friend, a lover – yes. But that was as far as it went. She didn't kid herself about that.
"I guess," she said finally.
"I have a question," Alisha said. "You said Alex was a legend. He's obviously not Alexander the Great-"
"Alexander the Great Pain in the Ass, maybe," Lisa muttered.
"-then who is he?"
She supposed there was no harm in them knowing. The truth of the whole affair was long obscured by romantic interpretations of the legend. "He didn't use that name in Britain. His formal name was Ambrosius Aurelianus in the Empire, but he was so fierce in battle that they called him 'the bear'. Artos."
"Still not ringing any bells," Cougar said helpfully.
"Better known as King Arthur."
Your black-eyed soul
You should know that there's nowhere else to go
My black eyed boy,
You will find your own space and time
X - X - X - X - X
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