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X A rock and a hard place – Part One

"Actually, Michal, I think we should go back to Stirling and check the Chapel Royal. Perhaps, now that the Cult has left, we might find some clues as to who's behind all that … Michal?" Jordan asked, his brows knitted in confusion, because his friend was staring wide-eyed and completely motionless over his head. "Michal?" he urged again. But instead of his friend, he heard someone else reply to him.

"Well, your friend, sir, obviously knows something which has escaped you until now. You've got company."

Jordan jumped up and turned round, drawing his wand in one fluid motion.

"Stop where you are, whoever you are!" he cried, brandishing his wand.

Behind him stood two figures, clad in black robes, their faces covered in silver masks. The bigger of the two lazily waved a hand at Jordan and replied, "Oh, don't you trouble yourself. There's no need to break a sweat over this. Just relax. You see, you don't have the slightest chance in any case."

Jordan bared his teeth in a contemptuous grin and shrugged. "That's what you think. Don't blame you for it. It's a free country. Well, anyway, while we happened to be socializing here, you might as well tell us what you want, and then we'll decide if you need to be arrested or not."

"Ah, well. Did you know they engaged comedians with the Aurors lately?" the smaller of the two put in, turning to her companion.

"Nope," they big man replied brusquely. Then he hissed in Jordan's direction, "You know, mister, this is no game. We're not in a playground. You see, some people–really powerful people–think you went too far with your nosing into other people's business, you little shit. You trod on too many toes. And they were not amused – trust me, not at all. Hence, it's time for you to withdraw … or to be withdrawn for good."

"You surely do not believe you can take on two trained Aurors, do you?" Jordan said levelly, shaking his head. "Can you believe such blatant stupidity, Michal?"

But there was no answer from his friend.

"Can you, Michal?" he asked again.

"Well, actually, Jordan, I don't think they are stupid, and I do believe they can take you on."

Jordan was quite certain he must have gotten wrong what Michal had just said. He surely had not said they could take him on, had he? He threw a quick, anxious glance over his shoulder, not daring to let the two strangers out of his sight for more than a tenth of a second. But what he had seen with this quick look made him very slowly turn round to his friend. Michal's wand pointed right at Jordan's chest.

"Well, doesn't seem to be your lucky day, does it?" Michal said softly.

Jordan had not even had enough time to think 'no' before the green jet of light thrust him into eternal darkness.

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Othello McDougal struggled with his wand, which somehow would not come clear from his robes. His hand was held down by something he could not quite make out. He tried again, but he found that he could hardly move at all: not run, not fling himself on the ground, nor do anything to protect himself from the unnamed terror that was hunting him it seemed for an eternity now. He moaned in helpless fear and desperation. The thing, whatever it was, drew relentlessly nearer and nearer, intent on killing him. It crashed through the dense brushwood, looming suddenly over him, dark and menacing, stinking of putrefying flesh. In a last unsuccessful attempt to hide, Othello pressed himself down to the ground, shaking with terror. "Please, oh please have mercy," he whimpered and tried to crawl away. "I think not," Othello heard it growl as it reached out to him, clamped an icy, clawed hand around his neck, and pressed down on his windpipe. With a gurgling sound and a rapidly beating heart, Othello McDougal emerged from a troubled sleep.

Oh, my, he thought, this will not do. There's entirely too much on my mind, lately. But I do need all the sleep I can get, or else I might make one mistake too many. Othello took a deep, shuddering breath. Moreover, in the present situation, this mistake might turn out to be fatal. No one knew who was going to be next…

With all the horrifying things going on in this country, it was no wonder the ancient and pitifully fragile ex-Auror could not sleep untroubled. People from all occupations and backgrounds disappeared with no apparent reason and mostly without a trace. Some turned up again, dead. Very dead. Some were horribly mutilated; others were simply dead – at least at a (very) superficial glance. Those turned out to be … sucked virtually empty, leaving only a flabby sack of skin filled with broken bones, but no organs and no blood. They had a look of absolute terror deeply etched into their features, eyes wide open, glazed over in death. Othello did not even want to imagine what horror they might have seen before their end. He took another deep breath. Why in Merlin's name had the Ministry come to him? Could they not have left him alone? What did they expect him to contribute? Wasn't it rather ridiculous to theorise about the doors of the Otherworld of having been opened again? Such a thing could not be true. It must not be true. Surely, there had to be a much more plausible explanation for the grisly incidents of the past months. However, he was the only still-living expert on the Dark Secrets. So. So, they had asked him to find out how to drive back the Others and how to close the doors again. Bah, as if they had been opened again in the first place!

"What utter nonsense!" Othello grumbled under his breath.

However, he had found out what had to be done in the unlikely case the theory turned out to be true. Just tonight, he had come across a fragment of a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old myth about Gorm the Great, and there the answer had lain hidden. He chuckled. Even the answer was crap. The weapon, or rather the talent, they needed could not be controlled – except by Gorm the Great perhaps, who was dead these two thousand and something years. Othello chuckled again. Caught between a rock and a hard place, it seemed. Anyway, this did not matter at all. Because the doors to the Otherworld had not been opened. And that was that. He reached out to his wife on the other side of their bed. In troubled times like these he could always find comfort in her presence. His hand touched cool linen. Her side of the bed was empty.

His bare feet made soft slapping sounds on the flagstones in the corridor that led to the kitchen. She had not been in the bathroom on the first floor. Therefore, Othello had gone down the wooden stairs to the ground floor. He did not bother to light a candle. It had been his home for over 80 years, had it not? He knew it like the palm of his hand. Perhaps Calla got up to get something to drink, he mused. Coldness crept up his bare, spindly legs, which stuck out pale and bent below the hem of his nightshirt. Calla would be angry with him for walking around in the middle of the night without the cardigan she had so lovingly folded over the back of the chair next to the bed. She always worried about his health since he had fallen ill with pneumonia caused by a walk in cold rain last autumn. He had not even thought about putting on his soft slippers, he realised. My, my, how she would fuss over him! He could already see her fetching woollen scarves and hot tea and all. The ancient wizard smiled to himself. His mirth evaporated seconds later when he noticed that there was no light coming from the narrow chink underneath the closed kitchen door. He hesitated and frowned. There was something wrong here. He strained to hear something, anything, but his hearing was no longer what it used to be. There might, just might be a soft dripping sound. He was not sure. But what could that be? Not that blasted tap again, surely? Suddenly he very much wished he had brought his wand with him.

The coldness in the corridor grew stronger. His ragged breathing turned ghostly visible as he crept, inch by inch, towards the closed door. There was definitely a dripping sound, slow, sluggish, like the dripping of molasses. Othello reached the door and hesitated, panting as if he had run uphill, fat beads of perspiration building on his forehead, the palms of his hands slippery with sweat despite the frosty air. He felt a nameless fear lurk behind the door. But there was no choice. He had to know where his wife was. She could be in dire need of his help who knew? Screwing up all his courage, Othello gingerly turned the doorknob with shaking hands and pushed the door slowly, ever so slowly open. Nothing happened. Nobody attacked him. The door opened gradually with that familiar protesting screech it had given off since nineteen forty-seven. He had meant to mend it, yes, he really had. But there had never seemed to be time enough to do it with all his work at the office and then, since his retirement, with his time-consuming private research into the Dark Secrets of the Otherworld. Twenty years ago, Calla had finally given up admonishing him about it. The door swung fully open. Nobody was inside. Only the moon filled the kitchen with its harsh, cold light. On the table stood an earthenware pitcher and a mug. So she went down to get something to drink, Othello thought fleetingly while he took in his surroundings. But where was she then? He could not see the floor because it was covered in a soft greyish mist that wafted in the draught from the cracks in the old wooden window frames. Everything in the room was coated over with frost. On the wall opposite the door there seemed to be a smear on the white-washed wall. Othello crossed the room to have a closer look.

You and you alone brought that on her! Just turn and – LOOK!

With a sob, he recoiled from the cruel words on the wall. Oh, no, no, no, please, no! Then he slowly turned around, feeling every minute of his one hundred and fifty-two years weighing on his heart, to look in horror at the bloody mess that was nailed head down to the wall next to the kitchen door, the bloody mess that had once been his wife. There were only shreds of skin left on her mangled, broken body. Her throat had been ripped out; blood dripped down, slow and sluggish in the freezing coldness of the room. The lobes of her lungs were spread out like the wings of a bird, a garish mockery of an angel, an angel of death. Othello sank down to his knobbly knees, hugging himself tightly and began slowly swaying his upper body back and forth in pure agony. Calla, Calla, oh my poor, poor Calla! Why, oh why? What have I done?

~*~

Othello rushed through the dense brushwood, his breath torn from his lips by the cold wind, his heart beating erratically in his heaving chest. Whatever hunted him drew relentlessly nearer. Down on his knees in the middle of the slaughterhouse that was once his kitchen, he had suddenly become aware of something, someone watching him. He had bolted through the back door in mortal fear. The door, caught in a sudden gust of icy wind, had shut behind him with a loud bang and he had done the only sensible thing: he kept on running. Without turning back once. He ran as fast as he could, which was not more than a painful, lurching hobble at best. Cold clawed with icy fingers at his back. But he struggled on. Crashing through the brushwood, he could feel their presence closing around him; shadows flitted right and left through the woods, only now and then visible; cruel voices jeered at him and whooped in the excitement of the hunt. Hard, bony fingers jabbed at him, strong hands shoved him around. He tripped over roots and outstretched legs, came up again and limped on, crumpled down again, came up again, trapped in an interminable, brutal, hopeless loop of agony until he could go on no more; until there was only the strength left to let him crawl in the dirt; crawl until he had to capitulate completely, sobbing with terror and fatigue, in the middle of a small moonlit clearing. They silently gathered around him then in a wide circle, black-clad, hooded figures, their hard, merciless silver masks gleaming in the moonlight. The old wizard rolled himself tightly into a ball, whimpering. Please, oh, please, let this be another bad dream, nothing but a dream, a dream …

Complete silence fell over the clearing when a tall man appeared from among the brushwood and cleared his way through the circle of figures; those nearest shuffled nervously out of his way as he strode towards Othello. Dark forms wreathed around him, clung to his shoulders like a robe, his face hidden in the shadows of a cowl. He stopped within a stride's length of the huddled form on the ground and slowly pulled back his cowl, revealing a narrow face and lank, sandy hair.

Staring up at the man's cold face, Othello whispered, "I-I know you. Y-You're the one from the Ministry. You're… M–" Othello paused and bit his lip. Admitting that he knew names might not be a very clever idea under these circumstances. "But why …?" He went on, his voice brittle with fatigue and fear.

"Well, actually I'm not the one you think you know." The dark man bared his teeth in a cruel grin. "As you will find out soon enough. As for the 'why' – you're no longer useful to me. Through your research I know now that nothing and no one can ever stop me. The one, what's his name–Gorm the Great, wasn't it, who probably could stop me, has been dead these past two thousand years–as you well know."

"But …" Othello's eyes grew wide. "It means you … you have opened the … no, this cannot be … you broke the First Law!"

"Well, what if I have? You know that all who use magic draw on the Otherworld – more or less. So this is just a matter of scale, nothing more."

"But we also know that no one was ever able to control the full force of it," whispered the old wizard.

The tall man lifted his eyebrows. "Well, my gifts are such that I am able to control and use them to better this world for all of us! I fill the void Voldemort left behind with his slaughter. I will redeem those who died in battle, call them back from the dead!"

"Nobody can do that … Who–Who are you?"

"I am the Chosen One!" The dark man spread out his arms and lifted his face towards the moon. "I am the son of the Great Mother; I am the bringer of life! You want to know? Then look!" His face and body worked, changed form, and revealed an even more familiar face and form to Othello.

"You!" Othello groaned. "Oh no, no … What have you done to yourself? What have you become? A shape-shifter, a stealer of faces, a murderer!"

"Oh, I wouldn't go so far as to call it murder. Tsk, tsk, tsk. What an ugly word." The green eyes in the now all too well known face gleamed with a red shimmer. "Necessary sacrifices' I would call it. And who cares about the means? Only results count," he went on coldly.

"What about me now?"

"Hm, let's see. You know now who I am. Highly unfortunate for you. So." He contemplated the cringing form of Othello with an unpleasant smile. "Consider yourself another necessary sacrifice. You serve the Cause."

"Please, oh please have mercy," Othello whimpered in a last desperate attempt to stay alive.

"I think not." He lazily pointed at Othello, uttering only one further word: "Feed."

The shadows that had clung to the dark man lunged with a piercing shriek at Othello as if released from a tightly drawn bowstring. The old man's body convulsed and writhed like a sack filled with fighting cats. The dark man watched with a blank expression on his young face until the shadows returned to him, leaving an empty shell that was once a living, breathing man, behind.

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A/N: I am sorry for the long delay in continuing this story. RL is limiting my free time a lot lately and will do so for the next couple of months. Another reason is that my beta, wonderful Celta Diabólica, can no longer beta for me. Therefore, I am forced to look for someone else to take over from her. Please be patient. The story will go on, eventually ;-)).

Thanks for reading and reviewing!