My thanks to the wonders of you who commented last time round :-) I'm working on getting this up (hopefully it'll be about two chapters a week from now.) Thanks to:
Meg: Short and sweet - thanks!
Kitty Blaek: Thanks :-) I have - and am - writing more!
Blaze Baelfire: ::beams:: Thanks for the review on Chimera too - I wrote this one before it, and Chiemra is all Blue's fault!
Comments would be muchly loved. I hope you enjoy!
Ki
Shimmer Part Eleven
Sonj Jameson walked downstairs and slammed the door viciously.
The other two looked up from where they were sat. It was the small hours of the morning and Jepar was upstairs, asleep after Cougar had knocked him out with the mental equivalent of a sledgehammer blow. As Cougar put it; "At least we didn't let him have any coffee."
Now Lisa grimaced. "That bad?"
"Fever's set in," Sonj said flatly. "I'm doing what I can - and at least she's not resisting the spells. Her brother keeps floating around offering advice - if he wasn't already dead, I'd throttle him." She sat down and heaved a sigh. "And we have school in...oh, five hours. We can't leave her!"
Lisa smiled ruefully. "I've thought of that. I rang the Elders and told them we got jumped by some Nightworld assassins." She gave them a tiny smile. "I told them they were after Iry."
Cougar and Sonj gave her incredulous looks. "He'll kill us!" Sonj protested.
Lisa smiled. "I figured I'd blame Cougar." The vampire gave her a darkly smouldering look. "But no school tomorrow. While we 'heal'."
Sonj nodded. "Works for me." She sighed. "Back to the grind. Lise, can you come and politely tell Josh to bug off? I don't want to lose my temper at him...he's kind of creepy."
The made vampire nodded, the beads in her hair clicking together. "Sure."
That night passed slowly. Achingly so.
* * * *
Her dreams were fragmented. Sometimes she could hear voices, some of them melodious and beautiful, others ugly, cracked terrors that drove her into flames and a world where ice had vanquished everything.
Sometimes she thought she woke. Always to find someone there, sitting quietly. She would try to talk to them, but the weakness would overcome her and she would be trapped, silent, unable to move. And oddly enough, everything felt distant. Her pain; her fear; her anger. All of them seemed harder to reach with time.
"...are you sure there's nothing else you can do?" The coffee-smooth tones of Lisa Ochai, whispery and concerned. "I don't like the look of this fever. It's like nothing I've ever seen before..."
"You think I'm not trying?" Strident voice, the sharp smell of eucalyptus and beneath that, the sweetness of roses. Sonj was trying to keep her voice down and failing miserably. "Gods, I wish I *could* help."
"She's been like this for a day now, despite spells which should cure a cancer patient, never mind this! How much blood did Cougar's wretched brother take?"
"Too much!" Sonj said despairingly. "I'll never know how she got away. It must have been some spell, I'll say that for her." Some spell, Chatoya thought. Oh yes, it was some spell all right.
A new voice, one that had a strangely ethereal quality to it. "She's always been good with magick."
Sonj's impatient tones; "Oh *look*, Ghost Boy's back. Rattle anyone's chains today?"
Josh? She thought. Josh? Is that you? Are you here? Was it just a mistake...have you come back? She struggled against the mists she felt close over her. Josh? Answer me, please!
"I think she's..." he began and as the darkness took her again, she heard his voice from a great distance, suffused with disappointment. "No. It must have been my imagination."
* * * *
Another day passed, a day of worrying, of hoping while Chatoya's fever raged high.
Jepar woke up and nearly hit Cougar across the room. "I don't like people messing with my head!" he was shouting when a shattered Sonj stumbled in, about to ask the pair of them to keep it down while she got what little sleep she could before she tried to heal Chatoya again.
"Oh, get *over* it!" Cougar shouted back. "Whatever your Freudian complex is, go and make peace with the universe and stop taking your problems out on me! I have had enough of being your goddamn punching bag whenever you need target practice."
"Guys?" Sonj's soft, fatigued voice stopped them both, gold and green eyes blazing like fireworks. She was clinging to the doorframe, looking very young with her sleepy eyes and sweet, almost angelic smile.
"Yeah?" they both said, instantly concerned. "You need anything?" Jepar added.
She nodded. "Shut the *hell* up and let me get some shuteye."
* * * *
That evening, Jepar and Lisa were sitting talking. Sonj was curled on a couch, napping, waiting for her magick to strengthen. The continual healing had put shadows under her eyes and strain in her hands. Cougar was watching over Chatoya - and, Lisa suspected, sulking because Jepar had managed to dislocate his shoulder in his anger, however profusely the shapeshifter had apologised.
"I have to ask, Jep," Lisa smiled over at him. Despite the fact she was several years older, she rarely thought of him as a kid. The Nightworld's children grew up fast. "Why Toya? I mean...I can't see her as your type."
"My type?" Jepar said, eyebrows raising. There was an edge in his voice when he spoke again. "What do you mean?"
Sonj raised her head and yawned. "She means that whether you know it or not, you're drop dead gorgeous, Jep, and you're the type who should be dating models and cheerleaders, not someone like Chatoya who isn't beautiful and doesn't have the dimensions to fit all the stunning clothes you see in the shops."
"I was aiming for something a little more subtle," Lisa muttered, "but yes, that's the gist of it."
She thought he might have been angry or offended on Chatoya's part. Instead, his mouth twitched as if he was trying not to laugh and he shook his head, hair burnished in the sunset light. "But she's beautiful to me," he said simply.
She had nothing to say to such a stark truth. Jepar was rarely as brutally honest as Cougar Redfern, but when he was, she had an insight of someone devastatingly uncomplicated, someone who didn't deserve to be hunted and caged, however substantial the width between the bars.
"While we're on this soul-searching," Sonj said groggily, her words slightly slurred. "You didn't have to hit Cougar. That was probably the first unselfish thing he did in his life, knocking you out like that, and you put his shoulder out?"
He winced. "Yeah. Maybe I did overreact...but maybe next time he's smoking, you shouldn't shoot him."
"Cougar *was* only trying to help," Lisa told him, brown eyes earnest. But she saw that odd wariness that came into his face whenever they talked about mental powers. "Hon, you want to explain why it gets you so riled?"
The emerald eyes darted, as if he was looking for an escape. Then his mouth tightened and she saw acquiescence. "When I was younger...something happened to someone I knew. She was destroyed by it. As if someone had reached inside her, taken whatever it was that made her...her, and ripped it into scraps."
"What happened to her?" Lisa asked gently. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
His eyes were distant, looking into memories of a time that she was glad she would never know. "She dreamed. That was all. She wanted something she could never have and she paid for it. She died eventually. There was nothing left in the end. She didn't even know who she was, only that someone had hurt her and she just kept living that hell over and over and over. And one day," he shrugged. "It ended for her."
"I'm sorry," she said. He shook his head mutely and leaned back. There was silence for a long time after.
* * * *
Chatoya woke up to a yellow glow that came from the lamp someone had left on beside the bed. There was someone sitting nearby, she realised, staring out the window with bladed eyes that gave off gold sparks and holding a cigarette that drifted grey smoke across the window. Outside, the night was endlessly clear, stars glittering like broken glass on indigo velvet.
"Cougar?" she said softly.
He choked on a lungful of smoke and then turned. "Oh, finally decided to wake up, have you?" he croaked, the sarcasm losing its effect. "Welcome back to the land of the living. Well...undead, anyway."
"How long have I been out?" she asked sleepily. Her throat was still sore and heavily bruised.
"Not long. Two days, I think."
"That's *not long*?" she sat up and hissed as muscles protested. She ached all over from the fight and felt somehow indescribably *tainted*. "And why on earth are you playing anxious bedsitter?"
Teeth gleamed, sharper than usual. "I just wanted to take advantage of you. You know what vampires are like. The black cloak's in the wash at the moment, but if you lean back your head a little and scream..."
"All right," she moaned. "I suppose I asked for that." He grinned unrepentantly. "Seriously, two days?"
"Well," he drawled, "that's what happens when you don't get much sleep, don't have any breakfast and then try to kill yourself running a marathon and fighting off the forces of evil, namely my brother. Not to mention him drinking half the blood in your body. What did you do, give him a straw and a coupon?"
The memory should have been horrible. Instead, it was merely...there. She explored every detail; the pain, the horror, the fear that seemed so stupid. Why was she afraid? So someone had sunk two lumps of calcium into her neck. If she died, she died. And pain? It was just...feeling. Just something that she had once had. And now she didn't understand at all why they had seemed so important.
"Well," Cougar said, leaning back with a lazy sigh. "I hope now you realise you are not omnipotent."
"But I was so sure I could leap tall buildings in a single bound." So easy to spar. To pretend nothing was wrong; and Chatoya knew she had to pretend because otherwise...she would upset them. And she owed these strange people.
Teeth bared in a feral grin. "That's me you're thinking of. And I get the good looks too."
"Where's Jepar?" Something inside her flicked low, a dying flame. It was hard to see him as she had before, someone she had valued so highly. He was far away now. Another world; a warm world where it was easy to care.
"Downstairs. Relaxing. Poor guy was exhausted after he had to lug your carcass through the woods." The vampire stared at her and with a start, she realised he must have been hunting. His face had that fine air of life to it, every feature seeming sharpened. "Did you really spend all day running through the ghost roads?"
"Yes." Something he had said earlier caught her attention. "How did you know I didn't get much sleep?"
"Your twin told us," the lamia said causally, but his eyes watched her reaction with black humour.
"My twin...you know about him?"
"Yeah, he did this cute floating-from-the-shadows thing and then told us why my brother and his fang gang are after you. Did you know he tried to rob a dragon of his powers and keep them for himself?"
"*What?*" she shrieked and leapt out of bed. Sudden, terrifying emotion ripped through her head, unable to be controlled. For a second, she was teetering between void and flames of feelings and...
The world descended back into alarming darkness.
* * * *
Next time she woke, four anxious faces were looking down at her. A fifth floated above her, misty and almost transparent. Josh. It was darker outside than it had been before, the sky a deep unyielding black.
She remembered with a jolt and sat up, pushing tangles of sooty hair out of her eyes. "What were you saying about a *dragon*?" Relief in all their faces (bar Cougar's due to the cloud of smoke obscuring him.)
Sonj elbowed the other three out of the way, handing her a mug of golden liquid that smelled herbal and summery. "Later. Drink this," she ordered. "The rest of you, out...except Jepar because I don't want to get into a fight with him. And Redfern, you don't smoke round someone who's nearly been suffocated."
Behind the redhead, Jepar smiled brilliantly and winked at Chatoya. She winked back, remembering that dying, slow flame of emotion she had felt for him. Had it been love? She supposed not; that sentiment was often mistaken. But affection, certainly. Which was more than she could say for her soulmate.
The strange blue-haired boy, older than his years. Who killed and killed and had no compassion. She was beginning to understand why and found it harder to condemn him with each second away from the sixth sense of emotion. But she had to pretend. The truth...the truth would only hurt them. Somehow, it was important she didn't hurt them, because then she would be just like that boy, wouldn't she?
"What's in this?" Chatoya said, sipping the mug. "It smells gorgeous...but it tastes *awful*."
"Thanks." Sonj grinned, her silver eye glinting with mischief. "It's scented with roses, apples and a little ylang ylang. I'm not too good on hiding the flavour yet though."
"Sonj is obsessed with roses," Jepar said dryly, sitting on the other side of the bed. "Just look at her!"
The girl shrugged and sent waves rippling down her long red hair that she had held back with clips. He was right; her strapless top had a black rose printed on it, her necklace was a tiny silver rose in bloom, her ring, her bracelet, even the tattoo that twined around the top of her arm was interlinked roses.
"They're pretty," she declared. "They smell wonderful, I'm half-vampire, even if I'm not made, and-"
"And," Jepar cut in, "It's nothing at all to do with the fact that Rob Slivan gave you a rose for Valentine's last year, the remains of which is slowly decomposing in your room a year on...and that you are, in fact, a hopeless romantic under that hard-ass act."
Chatoya watched, distantly amused as the half-breed went scarlet and muttered something inaudible, playing with her hair. "I left some herbs in my room," she announced abruptly and left.
Jepar laughed. "She doesn't like anyone cracking the act," he told her merrily. "She thinks it'll make her vulnerable. And she's not sure she should like Rob because he's human...it's all very complicated."
"Sounds about right," she said. Humans. Playing with words and gestures for what? A breath of pleasure. She looked up at him to see him looking back steadily. She could see herself reflected in his eyes; a pale girl with large, moss green eyes that glowed serenely over a long nose and thin, curving mouth.
"How are you?" he asked. "Really."
"I'm..." She didn't even consider honesty. That was for people who valued it. "Shaken. And scared. I was lucky, that was all. And next time, I think they'll make sure the only luck I have is bad."
"There won't be a next time," Jepar said and something fierce shone in his face. "We won't let them. 'Sides, we've all got the next couple of days off until Lisa runs out of convincing excuses."
She looked at him, proud, passionate and more determined than she had seen him yet. "All of us?"
"Yeah." He raised an eyebrow. "You didn't think we were going to leave you here alone, did you? I know how you feel about being alone." His voice serious for once. And then he grinned wickedly. "I know a good cure for that too," he murmured and leaning forward, kissed her.
There might not have been sparks or a link into his mind, but she didn't need those things from the way he kissed her, passionate and yet curiously tender too, making her head spin with alarming ease as that quiet flame leapt again, and she thought: I feel for him still. I don't know if that will ever fade. Both jumped when they heard someone cough. The shapeshifter sighed regretfully and sat back, a faint smile on his face.
"If you're well enough to be giving Jepar a dental assessment, you're well enough to get up," Sonj said dryly. "Come downstairs, before I stuff Cougar's cigarettes in any orifice he happens to have open."
"He's smoking *again*?" Jepar said, wrinkling his nose. "He got through two packs yesterday."
"One and a half," Sonj corrected. Jepar looked interested and she explained, "I threw the rest on the fire. He only came to watch Chatoya so he could smoke and brood in private. Speaking of, Jepar, why don't you let Chatoya get dressed in peace? She doesn't need an audience, much though you'd like to be one."
She gave Chatoya a conspiratorial smile and both of them laughed as Jepar went slowly scarlet. And though Chatoya smiled, her head stayed as empty of emotions as ever, as though she stood inside an empty hall with only echoes bouncing around it.
* * * *
"Okay," Cougar Redfern said six hours later. "If I had three wishes, I'd wish for...friends who didn't try to kill me...a solar system to dominate...and more wishes."
There were groans. They were all sitting around the room, bright-eyed from dozens of cups of coffee with the TV on but muted. Chatoya laughed into Jepar's shoulder from where the two of them were collapsed on one of the sofas with his arm coiled round her waist, absently intertwining their fingers. Her head was tilted into the curve of his neck so she could feel his pulse beating, sense the life in him.
"You can't wish for more wishes!" a very vivacious Sonj protested. They had been talking since Chatoya had wandered down, the first time she had seen them together and relaxed since her arrival four days ago.
Over by the window, where he was chain-smoking furtively, Cougar shrugged. "Okay then...I wish for a different question."
"More coffee?" Lisa said, getting up with the mugs.
"Now *that* I can answer," he said, smiling. There was no malice to it and it transformed him, taking away the sullenness. "Sure, Lise. But are you certain it's legal to drink this much coffee before midday?"
The made vampire rolled her eyes and disappeared into the kitchen. Sonj glanced at Chatoya from where she was perched on the coffee table, trying to write up her latest herbal atrocity. "You okay now, Toya?"
"Fine," Chatoya said. All four of them had given her blood, and though she hadn't liked the idea much, she felt like she had had several nights of deep, dreamless sleep. "In fact...I haven't ever felt this good."
It had briefly allowed her to read their minds; she hadn't known that Sonj had been bullied when she was younger or that Cougar had six siblings, including a twin sister of his own who had taken after his younger brother. She hadn't known that Jepar loved to windsurf and that Lisa could speak eight languages.
She had to wonder what they had learned about her.
"Pity," Sonj said. "That means school tomorrow. And the clique."
"The clique?" Chatoya queried, puzzled. She lifted her head to see Jepar looked annoyed. "Not friends?"
"I've had friendlier viruses," Cougar put in. "Let's just say...they're popular, they have the combined IQ of yeast in winter and they're beginning to suspect about us. They don't know about the Nightworld...but they've seen enough trashy movies."
"And it's nothing to do with the fact you practically *told* them you were a vampire," Sonj said archly.
"The clique," Jepar said softly, "don't stop at your average petty pranks. A few too many of them like to hunt with rifles and sterling bullets. Not all of them are like that...Rob Slivan, Sharla Ferrars, Tamara Slone, some of the others don't join in. But there are enough of them to make life difficult. And they like to make *our* lives difficult." She knew why; they were different. People feared that; it was enough to make them hate. Fear and pettiness often walked hand in hand, especially where humans were concerned.
"Don't worry," Cougar said wickedly. "Compared to my brother, they're not even close to annoying."
"Or compared to Cougar," Sonj put in and sent a streak of silver fire flying at the packet of cigarettes on the windowsill. He swore as they disintegrated and glared angrily at the half-breed, who just shrugged.
The next day dawned clear and warm. The sun in the sky wasn't gold, but a shade of smouldering red that hung low in the sky, as if it had been filled with blood and heat. Something about it made Chatoya shiver, but for a second only before that smooth, glassy calm settled on her and she went down to a breakfast where Jepar and Cougar proved why they didn't cook very often after managing to burn toast, undercook bacon and explode several sausages.
She should have trusted her instincts.
* * * *
Thanks for reading! Comments would be loved, loved, loved!
Meg: Short and sweet - thanks!
Kitty Blaek: Thanks :-) I have - and am - writing more!
Blaze Baelfire: ::beams:: Thanks for the review on Chimera too - I wrote this one before it, and Chiemra is all Blue's fault!
Comments would be muchly loved. I hope you enjoy!
Ki
Shimmer Part Eleven
Sonj Jameson walked downstairs and slammed the door viciously.
The other two looked up from where they were sat. It was the small hours of the morning and Jepar was upstairs, asleep after Cougar had knocked him out with the mental equivalent of a sledgehammer blow. As Cougar put it; "At least we didn't let him have any coffee."
Now Lisa grimaced. "That bad?"
"Fever's set in," Sonj said flatly. "I'm doing what I can - and at least she's not resisting the spells. Her brother keeps floating around offering advice - if he wasn't already dead, I'd throttle him." She sat down and heaved a sigh. "And we have school in...oh, five hours. We can't leave her!"
Lisa smiled ruefully. "I've thought of that. I rang the Elders and told them we got jumped by some Nightworld assassins." She gave them a tiny smile. "I told them they were after Iry."
Cougar and Sonj gave her incredulous looks. "He'll kill us!" Sonj protested.
Lisa smiled. "I figured I'd blame Cougar." The vampire gave her a darkly smouldering look. "But no school tomorrow. While we 'heal'."
Sonj nodded. "Works for me." She sighed. "Back to the grind. Lise, can you come and politely tell Josh to bug off? I don't want to lose my temper at him...he's kind of creepy."
The made vampire nodded, the beads in her hair clicking together. "Sure."
That night passed slowly. Achingly so.
* * * *
Her dreams were fragmented. Sometimes she could hear voices, some of them melodious and beautiful, others ugly, cracked terrors that drove her into flames and a world where ice had vanquished everything.
Sometimes she thought she woke. Always to find someone there, sitting quietly. She would try to talk to them, but the weakness would overcome her and she would be trapped, silent, unable to move. And oddly enough, everything felt distant. Her pain; her fear; her anger. All of them seemed harder to reach with time.
"...are you sure there's nothing else you can do?" The coffee-smooth tones of Lisa Ochai, whispery and concerned. "I don't like the look of this fever. It's like nothing I've ever seen before..."
"You think I'm not trying?" Strident voice, the sharp smell of eucalyptus and beneath that, the sweetness of roses. Sonj was trying to keep her voice down and failing miserably. "Gods, I wish I *could* help."
"She's been like this for a day now, despite spells which should cure a cancer patient, never mind this! How much blood did Cougar's wretched brother take?"
"Too much!" Sonj said despairingly. "I'll never know how she got away. It must have been some spell, I'll say that for her." Some spell, Chatoya thought. Oh yes, it was some spell all right.
A new voice, one that had a strangely ethereal quality to it. "She's always been good with magick."
Sonj's impatient tones; "Oh *look*, Ghost Boy's back. Rattle anyone's chains today?"
Josh? She thought. Josh? Is that you? Are you here? Was it just a mistake...have you come back? She struggled against the mists she felt close over her. Josh? Answer me, please!
"I think she's..." he began and as the darkness took her again, she heard his voice from a great distance, suffused with disappointment. "No. It must have been my imagination."
* * * *
Another day passed, a day of worrying, of hoping while Chatoya's fever raged high.
Jepar woke up and nearly hit Cougar across the room. "I don't like people messing with my head!" he was shouting when a shattered Sonj stumbled in, about to ask the pair of them to keep it down while she got what little sleep she could before she tried to heal Chatoya again.
"Oh, get *over* it!" Cougar shouted back. "Whatever your Freudian complex is, go and make peace with the universe and stop taking your problems out on me! I have had enough of being your goddamn punching bag whenever you need target practice."
"Guys?" Sonj's soft, fatigued voice stopped them both, gold and green eyes blazing like fireworks. She was clinging to the doorframe, looking very young with her sleepy eyes and sweet, almost angelic smile.
"Yeah?" they both said, instantly concerned. "You need anything?" Jepar added.
She nodded. "Shut the *hell* up and let me get some shuteye."
* * * *
That evening, Jepar and Lisa were sitting talking. Sonj was curled on a couch, napping, waiting for her magick to strengthen. The continual healing had put shadows under her eyes and strain in her hands. Cougar was watching over Chatoya - and, Lisa suspected, sulking because Jepar had managed to dislocate his shoulder in his anger, however profusely the shapeshifter had apologised.
"I have to ask, Jep," Lisa smiled over at him. Despite the fact she was several years older, she rarely thought of him as a kid. The Nightworld's children grew up fast. "Why Toya? I mean...I can't see her as your type."
"My type?" Jepar said, eyebrows raising. There was an edge in his voice when he spoke again. "What do you mean?"
Sonj raised her head and yawned. "She means that whether you know it or not, you're drop dead gorgeous, Jep, and you're the type who should be dating models and cheerleaders, not someone like Chatoya who isn't beautiful and doesn't have the dimensions to fit all the stunning clothes you see in the shops."
"I was aiming for something a little more subtle," Lisa muttered, "but yes, that's the gist of it."
She thought he might have been angry or offended on Chatoya's part. Instead, his mouth twitched as if he was trying not to laugh and he shook his head, hair burnished in the sunset light. "But she's beautiful to me," he said simply.
She had nothing to say to such a stark truth. Jepar was rarely as brutally honest as Cougar Redfern, but when he was, she had an insight of someone devastatingly uncomplicated, someone who didn't deserve to be hunted and caged, however substantial the width between the bars.
"While we're on this soul-searching," Sonj said groggily, her words slightly slurred. "You didn't have to hit Cougar. That was probably the first unselfish thing he did in his life, knocking you out like that, and you put his shoulder out?"
He winced. "Yeah. Maybe I did overreact...but maybe next time he's smoking, you shouldn't shoot him."
"Cougar *was* only trying to help," Lisa told him, brown eyes earnest. But she saw that odd wariness that came into his face whenever they talked about mental powers. "Hon, you want to explain why it gets you so riled?"
The emerald eyes darted, as if he was looking for an escape. Then his mouth tightened and she saw acquiescence. "When I was younger...something happened to someone I knew. She was destroyed by it. As if someone had reached inside her, taken whatever it was that made her...her, and ripped it into scraps."
"What happened to her?" Lisa asked gently. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
His eyes were distant, looking into memories of a time that she was glad she would never know. "She dreamed. That was all. She wanted something she could never have and she paid for it. She died eventually. There was nothing left in the end. She didn't even know who she was, only that someone had hurt her and she just kept living that hell over and over and over. And one day," he shrugged. "It ended for her."
"I'm sorry," she said. He shook his head mutely and leaned back. There was silence for a long time after.
* * * *
Chatoya woke up to a yellow glow that came from the lamp someone had left on beside the bed. There was someone sitting nearby, she realised, staring out the window with bladed eyes that gave off gold sparks and holding a cigarette that drifted grey smoke across the window. Outside, the night was endlessly clear, stars glittering like broken glass on indigo velvet.
"Cougar?" she said softly.
He choked on a lungful of smoke and then turned. "Oh, finally decided to wake up, have you?" he croaked, the sarcasm losing its effect. "Welcome back to the land of the living. Well...undead, anyway."
"How long have I been out?" she asked sleepily. Her throat was still sore and heavily bruised.
"Not long. Two days, I think."
"That's *not long*?" she sat up and hissed as muscles protested. She ached all over from the fight and felt somehow indescribably *tainted*. "And why on earth are you playing anxious bedsitter?"
Teeth gleamed, sharper than usual. "I just wanted to take advantage of you. You know what vampires are like. The black cloak's in the wash at the moment, but if you lean back your head a little and scream..."
"All right," she moaned. "I suppose I asked for that." He grinned unrepentantly. "Seriously, two days?"
"Well," he drawled, "that's what happens when you don't get much sleep, don't have any breakfast and then try to kill yourself running a marathon and fighting off the forces of evil, namely my brother. Not to mention him drinking half the blood in your body. What did you do, give him a straw and a coupon?"
The memory should have been horrible. Instead, it was merely...there. She explored every detail; the pain, the horror, the fear that seemed so stupid. Why was she afraid? So someone had sunk two lumps of calcium into her neck. If she died, she died. And pain? It was just...feeling. Just something that she had once had. And now she didn't understand at all why they had seemed so important.
"Well," Cougar said, leaning back with a lazy sigh. "I hope now you realise you are not omnipotent."
"But I was so sure I could leap tall buildings in a single bound." So easy to spar. To pretend nothing was wrong; and Chatoya knew she had to pretend because otherwise...she would upset them. And she owed these strange people.
Teeth bared in a feral grin. "That's me you're thinking of. And I get the good looks too."
"Where's Jepar?" Something inside her flicked low, a dying flame. It was hard to see him as she had before, someone she had valued so highly. He was far away now. Another world; a warm world where it was easy to care.
"Downstairs. Relaxing. Poor guy was exhausted after he had to lug your carcass through the woods." The vampire stared at her and with a start, she realised he must have been hunting. His face had that fine air of life to it, every feature seeming sharpened. "Did you really spend all day running through the ghost roads?"
"Yes." Something he had said earlier caught her attention. "How did you know I didn't get much sleep?"
"Your twin told us," the lamia said causally, but his eyes watched her reaction with black humour.
"My twin...you know about him?"
"Yeah, he did this cute floating-from-the-shadows thing and then told us why my brother and his fang gang are after you. Did you know he tried to rob a dragon of his powers and keep them for himself?"
"*What?*" she shrieked and leapt out of bed. Sudden, terrifying emotion ripped through her head, unable to be controlled. For a second, she was teetering between void and flames of feelings and...
The world descended back into alarming darkness.
* * * *
Next time she woke, four anxious faces were looking down at her. A fifth floated above her, misty and almost transparent. Josh. It was darker outside than it had been before, the sky a deep unyielding black.
She remembered with a jolt and sat up, pushing tangles of sooty hair out of her eyes. "What were you saying about a *dragon*?" Relief in all their faces (bar Cougar's due to the cloud of smoke obscuring him.)
Sonj elbowed the other three out of the way, handing her a mug of golden liquid that smelled herbal and summery. "Later. Drink this," she ordered. "The rest of you, out...except Jepar because I don't want to get into a fight with him. And Redfern, you don't smoke round someone who's nearly been suffocated."
Behind the redhead, Jepar smiled brilliantly and winked at Chatoya. She winked back, remembering that dying, slow flame of emotion she had felt for him. Had it been love? She supposed not; that sentiment was often mistaken. But affection, certainly. Which was more than she could say for her soulmate.
The strange blue-haired boy, older than his years. Who killed and killed and had no compassion. She was beginning to understand why and found it harder to condemn him with each second away from the sixth sense of emotion. But she had to pretend. The truth...the truth would only hurt them. Somehow, it was important she didn't hurt them, because then she would be just like that boy, wouldn't she?
"What's in this?" Chatoya said, sipping the mug. "It smells gorgeous...but it tastes *awful*."
"Thanks." Sonj grinned, her silver eye glinting with mischief. "It's scented with roses, apples and a little ylang ylang. I'm not too good on hiding the flavour yet though."
"Sonj is obsessed with roses," Jepar said dryly, sitting on the other side of the bed. "Just look at her!"
The girl shrugged and sent waves rippling down her long red hair that she had held back with clips. He was right; her strapless top had a black rose printed on it, her necklace was a tiny silver rose in bloom, her ring, her bracelet, even the tattoo that twined around the top of her arm was interlinked roses.
"They're pretty," she declared. "They smell wonderful, I'm half-vampire, even if I'm not made, and-"
"And," Jepar cut in, "It's nothing at all to do with the fact that Rob Slivan gave you a rose for Valentine's last year, the remains of which is slowly decomposing in your room a year on...and that you are, in fact, a hopeless romantic under that hard-ass act."
Chatoya watched, distantly amused as the half-breed went scarlet and muttered something inaudible, playing with her hair. "I left some herbs in my room," she announced abruptly and left.
Jepar laughed. "She doesn't like anyone cracking the act," he told her merrily. "She thinks it'll make her vulnerable. And she's not sure she should like Rob because he's human...it's all very complicated."
"Sounds about right," she said. Humans. Playing with words and gestures for what? A breath of pleasure. She looked up at him to see him looking back steadily. She could see herself reflected in his eyes; a pale girl with large, moss green eyes that glowed serenely over a long nose and thin, curving mouth.
"How are you?" he asked. "Really."
"I'm..." She didn't even consider honesty. That was for people who valued it. "Shaken. And scared. I was lucky, that was all. And next time, I think they'll make sure the only luck I have is bad."
"There won't be a next time," Jepar said and something fierce shone in his face. "We won't let them. 'Sides, we've all got the next couple of days off until Lisa runs out of convincing excuses."
She looked at him, proud, passionate and more determined than she had seen him yet. "All of us?"
"Yeah." He raised an eyebrow. "You didn't think we were going to leave you here alone, did you? I know how you feel about being alone." His voice serious for once. And then he grinned wickedly. "I know a good cure for that too," he murmured and leaning forward, kissed her.
There might not have been sparks or a link into his mind, but she didn't need those things from the way he kissed her, passionate and yet curiously tender too, making her head spin with alarming ease as that quiet flame leapt again, and she thought: I feel for him still. I don't know if that will ever fade. Both jumped when they heard someone cough. The shapeshifter sighed regretfully and sat back, a faint smile on his face.
"If you're well enough to be giving Jepar a dental assessment, you're well enough to get up," Sonj said dryly. "Come downstairs, before I stuff Cougar's cigarettes in any orifice he happens to have open."
"He's smoking *again*?" Jepar said, wrinkling his nose. "He got through two packs yesterday."
"One and a half," Sonj corrected. Jepar looked interested and she explained, "I threw the rest on the fire. He only came to watch Chatoya so he could smoke and brood in private. Speaking of, Jepar, why don't you let Chatoya get dressed in peace? She doesn't need an audience, much though you'd like to be one."
She gave Chatoya a conspiratorial smile and both of them laughed as Jepar went slowly scarlet. And though Chatoya smiled, her head stayed as empty of emotions as ever, as though she stood inside an empty hall with only echoes bouncing around it.
* * * *
"Okay," Cougar Redfern said six hours later. "If I had three wishes, I'd wish for...friends who didn't try to kill me...a solar system to dominate...and more wishes."
There were groans. They were all sitting around the room, bright-eyed from dozens of cups of coffee with the TV on but muted. Chatoya laughed into Jepar's shoulder from where the two of them were collapsed on one of the sofas with his arm coiled round her waist, absently intertwining their fingers. Her head was tilted into the curve of his neck so she could feel his pulse beating, sense the life in him.
"You can't wish for more wishes!" a very vivacious Sonj protested. They had been talking since Chatoya had wandered down, the first time she had seen them together and relaxed since her arrival four days ago.
Over by the window, where he was chain-smoking furtively, Cougar shrugged. "Okay then...I wish for a different question."
"More coffee?" Lisa said, getting up with the mugs.
"Now *that* I can answer," he said, smiling. There was no malice to it and it transformed him, taking away the sullenness. "Sure, Lise. But are you certain it's legal to drink this much coffee before midday?"
The made vampire rolled her eyes and disappeared into the kitchen. Sonj glanced at Chatoya from where she was perched on the coffee table, trying to write up her latest herbal atrocity. "You okay now, Toya?"
"Fine," Chatoya said. All four of them had given her blood, and though she hadn't liked the idea much, she felt like she had had several nights of deep, dreamless sleep. "In fact...I haven't ever felt this good."
It had briefly allowed her to read their minds; she hadn't known that Sonj had been bullied when she was younger or that Cougar had six siblings, including a twin sister of his own who had taken after his younger brother. She hadn't known that Jepar loved to windsurf and that Lisa could speak eight languages.
She had to wonder what they had learned about her.
"Pity," Sonj said. "That means school tomorrow. And the clique."
"The clique?" Chatoya queried, puzzled. She lifted her head to see Jepar looked annoyed. "Not friends?"
"I've had friendlier viruses," Cougar put in. "Let's just say...they're popular, they have the combined IQ of yeast in winter and they're beginning to suspect about us. They don't know about the Nightworld...but they've seen enough trashy movies."
"And it's nothing to do with the fact you practically *told* them you were a vampire," Sonj said archly.
"The clique," Jepar said softly, "don't stop at your average petty pranks. A few too many of them like to hunt with rifles and sterling bullets. Not all of them are like that...Rob Slivan, Sharla Ferrars, Tamara Slone, some of the others don't join in. But there are enough of them to make life difficult. And they like to make *our* lives difficult." She knew why; they were different. People feared that; it was enough to make them hate. Fear and pettiness often walked hand in hand, especially where humans were concerned.
"Don't worry," Cougar said wickedly. "Compared to my brother, they're not even close to annoying."
"Or compared to Cougar," Sonj put in and sent a streak of silver fire flying at the packet of cigarettes on the windowsill. He swore as they disintegrated and glared angrily at the half-breed, who just shrugged.
The next day dawned clear and warm. The sun in the sky wasn't gold, but a shade of smouldering red that hung low in the sky, as if it had been filled with blood and heat. Something about it made Chatoya shiver, but for a second only before that smooth, glassy calm settled on her and she went down to a breakfast where Jepar and Cougar proved why they didn't cook very often after managing to burn toast, undercook bacon and explode several sausages.
She should have trusted her instincts.
* * * *
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