Chapter 9 -Light

Will stared at the picture in his hand, the same he had been staring at for the past two weeks. How insane it was, that a single picture out of all the other evidence was enough to destroy a living image he had of the woman he looked up to the most. His mentor, his idol, an occasional hot dream subject…a woman who had saved him from a monster that murdered his mother…. supposedly.

He was in a den not like Magnus's office, with two worn leather chairs and books that smelled old. The light of the sun was blocked out by UV ray protected glass, designed to help the office owner's own little problem with the daytime. Free from pictures, free from mirrors, this was a woman who never looked back.

"Why look back at all Will? There's only the future left for us," Katerina called from the door of the office, two glasses of wine in hand. She sauntered with long legs and high heels, deep red hair reaching down to her elbows in elegant waves. When Will's Aunt Ada first introduced them, a week after he had arrived at Balefire, he felt as if in shock. Such a strikingly beautiful woman and smarter than he could ever imagine, he knew it was a lure from Ada to try and soothe his pain over the Sanctuary and to keep him there.

It worked.

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that unsolicited telepathy is quite rude, young lady?" Will asked, taking a glass of wine. Katerina smiled, dark blue eyes sparkling.

"You say that but don't attempt to hide what you're thinking now, now are you?" She threw back, unblushing at the mental image in Will's mind of, ahem, private things. Done with her. To her.

"You said to be completely comfortable in your office," Will reminded her, grinning. He put the picture in his hand onto the coffee table next to him and sighed. After all the things his Aunt had shown him, the eye opening he had…was he trading in one slaughter house full of liars for another?

"Can I ask you a question Katerina?"

"Yes."

"Henry…"

Katerina bowed her head. "Spinner, our tech, reports a refusal of progress. Of course he's working, but she's telling me that he's not working nearly as fast as he could. A snails pace. He still wants to speak to you as well."

Instantly, Will's stomache filled with rats. He knew exactly how Henry Foss would react to his defection without hearing the facts, hell, even hearing the facts. The HAP grew up in the Sanctuary; with a lost nearly lover buried there, a mother figure always to help him and the Big Guy as the father that no one had ever dreamed of. A home, an odd upbringing, but a home that had taken him away from the Moors of Scotland to be raised where he found his love of technology. A place where he could fit. Nothing Will told him would ever stick, even if he shows him the records and the evidence.

Nothing.

"I wish he could see what I've seen Kat. God, I wish he could see what I've learned of Magnus." He took a long gulp of wine. "I feel so alone in this."

Katerina stepped forward and put down her glass. She then pressed her hands against Will's chest and breathed into his ear, "Of course you're not alone. You have me."

He chuckled and brushed his hands up and down her silk blouse and onto a flat belly. The image of Abby brushed his mind for a moment before it was pushed down by something greater. Something grander. Something more immediate.