Chapter Ten: The Twist

Andy stared at her hands, watching a tiny spark dance from fingertip to fingertip. This was her weakness. She could never sit still and just exist. She needed to be doing something, even if it was completely stupid. That made her a poor witch. It was why she hadn't been much help when Naomi had murdered her mother or when Mona had been stripped of her vision. Andy had trouble simply being a part of the fabric of life without wanting to concentrate on something else. However, that didn't mean she couldn't take a hint.

"Beth's a very lovely woman," Mona noted quietly. She'd been mostly silent during the cab ride back to their motel. Andy had been quick to phone a cab once the police interview had finished. Mick needed to go blood shopping and there wasn't anything else they were going to accomplish that night. Plus, Andy wanted to get the hell away from that vampire before she did something more stupid than usual.

"Yeah, she's nice," Andy agreed, staring out the window. A conversation was waiting here that she didn't want to have.

"While you and Mick were in the kitchen, I got a chance to talk with her. It's strange how you can tell just by being with someone how deeply in love they are." Andy winced slightly. "Even when that love is causing them pain, there's a certain glow to it."

"Well, it's painful when you crack open your ribs and expose your heart to someone else," she muttered, trying to maintain the tiny spark she'd been playing with. Of course, once she was distracted it blinked out of existence. Typical.

"Mick had a very similar feel about him," Mona pointed out, tilting her head towards her sister and listening intently to the uncomfortable slide of jeans against the cab seats.

"And people say you're blind." Andy knew laughing it off wasn't going to work but that didn't mean she couldn't try.

"Maybe you should lend them a hand." Mona bit her lip to hold back the grin when her sister's confused sputters reached her ears.

"W-what? No way. I'm not poking my head into some lover's quarrel."

"You already have," Mona said, tapping the side of her neck. "Thanks to that feeding there's some connection between the two of you. It's too late to back out now." Andy started to protest but her sister held up a hand to stop her. "Besides, the two of you need to learn the same lesson. Acceptance." The other witch fell silent. She hated it when Mona was right. While Andy had been an unruly kid, Mona had always had a calm, even temperament. She could look at a problem from all angles and pick the best way to go at it. It got annoying but the weird sisterly tolerance/love kept Andy from throttling her. Plus, now that she had the job of watching out for her sister instead of visa versa, Andy couldn't say she envied Mona the task. Responsibility was a heavy burden.

"What would I do, exactly? Lock them in a closet until they worked out their issues?" For some reason she wasn't thrilled by the idea of Mick and Beth alone in a closet. It made her skin itch.

"That's one way of going about it," Mona said, actually considering it for a few minutes. "However, talking to Mick about his vampire issues might be more helpful until he reaches the point where he could actually allow Beth into that part of his life." Andy stared at her with disbelief.

"How do you know all this stuff? It's been about a day since we've met these people." Mona smiled benignly.

"I have excellent ears." Andy rolled her eyes. As if that was the only way Mona gathered information.

The driver pulled up to their motel and casually told them the price. Andy struggled with the snap on her wallet then shelled out the requested amount. Thank the goddess their mission here was backed by old money from some of the better known witching families in the country or they would be broke. The sisters climbed out of the cab then made their way up the stairs to their home away from home. Not that they'd ever had one solid home before. Their mother had moved them around a lot. Since her job had been to find magic abusers and teach them the error of their ways, staying put didn't make sense.

Andy wasn't sure why she was thinking so much about her childhood. Mick had brought it up and now she kept mulling it over in her head. Her preoccupation kept her from noticing the open door, at least at first. Then she blinked, focusing in on it.

"Mona, stay here a minute," she told her sister, taking a few cautious steps forward.

"What is it?"

"Our door is wide open and it really shouldn't be." Andy peaked into their room. It looked like a bull on steroids had gone through the place. The bed had been flipped over and clothes littered the floor. Someone had been seriously ticked off.

"Is there anyone there?" her sister called out. Andy turned around to answer but it was just as well that she didn't get the chance. Her answer would have been wrong.

"Bitch!" A young man slammed into her body and pinned her to the ground. The pressure of his hands on her skin ground the bones together painfully hard. Andy kneed him in the stomach but the angle was wrong. He only winced then punched her. She tasted a warm, coppery substance and knew her lip had been split.

"Andy!" Mona shouted. She could see her blindly reaching out with one hand while the other clutched the doorframe. The guy couldn't have been more than seventeen but the hate in his eyes was much older when he turned to look at Mona. Andy used her gangly 5'11" body to flip him over while he was distracted and did a credible job of blackening his eye before a knife cut into her upper thigh. She shrieked, jerking away and taking the knife with her.

Unfortunately, the knife wasn't a knife at all. It was an athame. Witches used it for the same reason they used a wand, to direct energy. However it was always possible to charge magical tools with both good and negative energy. This one was heavy with negative energy. Black magic moved fast through her blood stream and Andy started to shake. Her skin felt cold, as if she'd just been put in a freezer. Her tattoo remained black and inactive, unable to protect her from something already in her body.

"Jesus, Patrick, did you have to wreck the place?" She tried to distinguish the words. Everything seemed so out of focus, tilted at strange angles. Another man stood in the doorway, surveying the damage. He was holding Mona's limp body over his shoulder. A stab of fear broke through the numbness for a minute and Andy lurched towards them, only to fall down again less than three seconds later. "Tough girl," he murmured thoughtfully.

"She punched me in the face," the boy who'd attacked her, Patrick, snapped at him. "And the two of them killed Adam. So what if I wanted to mess up their room? We should kill them both."

"Naomi wouldn't be happy with you," the older man pointed out. He took the boy by the shoulder and led him away. "Don't worry. They'll both suffer enough to satisfy even you."

Andy couldn't stop trembling. Her teeth were clacking together and it felt like frost was spreading along the surface of her body. She needed help. Even in a nearly paralyzed state she realized that. Slowly, she tried to unbend her fingers and pull out the athame. Andy's shaking worsened the damage to her leg but eventually the blade slid out then clattered to the ground.

Mick. She needed to call Mick. Mona had the cell phone. Andy whimpered quietly, curling into a tight fetal position. The cold reached deep into her body and even bone marrow felt like tiny ice crystals. There had to be a phone in the room somewhere. That wasn't the problem. The problem was that she couldn't make herself move. It seemed more and more likely that she was going to die of hypothermia even though it wasn't even below seventy degrees outside.

Andy closed her eyes and took control of her breathing. This was life or death. She needed to focus. Listening to the slow throb of her heart, she thought about blood. Her blood. Andy pictured crimson blood flowing through her veins, its pace slowing down as the cold took a firmer grip on her heart. Blood that she had given to Mick. Help. The word wasn't important, just the emotion behind it. The fear. Help.

After that, she wasn't really aware of anything except the cold. Nothing else seemed real. When someone shook her shoulder, called her name, Andy didn't respond. Not even when that someone called her Andromeda, which would usually send her into a rage. She couldn't work up enough energy to care.

Poison foul and blackest ice, find a new witch to entice.

Scalding water burned across Andy's skin and a nearly inhuman scream escaped her throat. Half frozen ad half scorched, she fought hard against the solid grip that held her beneath the spray of water.

"Dammit, Andy, hold still!"

Shift the pain from her to me, as I will so mote it be.

Andy drew the hot, steaming air in with a ragged gasp. The cold drained out of her and was replaced with the oppressive heat in a shower she didn't recognize. At least she recognized the man.

"Mick," she breathed. His grip on her loosened once he realized she wasn't fighting anymore. The two of them were soaked to the bone but that wasn't their biggest problem. "Mona. I heard her, she was in my head and I heard…" Shift the pain from her to me. "Naomi has her," Andy finally said, meeting his eyes. Guilt fed on her roiling stomach. Her sister was in trouble and she'd still gone out of her way to save Andy. Even when Andy couldn't manage to protect her.

"Slow down and tell me exactly what happened," Mick commanded. Since she was no longer trembling and her body temperature had gone back to normal, he turned off the shower. Andy looked like a strong gust of breeze was going to topple her so he helped her slowly out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her shoulders.

"The door was open so I told Mona to stay back while I checked it out. All our stuff was trashed," Andy began, going through the events slowly in her mind. "Then this kid knocks me down. We fight for a minute or so and then he stabs me with an athame." She winced, the stinging at her mouth finally attracting her attention. "Although, not before artfully splitting my lip."

"I noticed that," Mick said, glancing at the wound and choking back a comment about her mouth being an easy target. "What's an athame?"

"Ceremonial tool, sort of like a wand except it can be a hell of a lot more dangerous." Andy looked down at her thigh and moved the ripped denim away from the place she'd been hurt. It had stopped bleeding. Instead, the coloring there was black and a toxic shade of blue. Andy let out a tired sigh. It was going to heal badly. The black would probably never fade away, either. Where dark magic touches, signs of the damage remain. "We need to find my sister. They took her after I went down." She tried to move away from his arms and almost fell flat on her face. Mick caught her before she could add a broken nose to the list of injuries.

"You can't go anywhere right now. You're wet, you're hurt and you're obviously exhausted." She glared at him for stating the obvious. "Would Mona want you charging off in this condition?" Her glare weakened. He had a point. She wouldn't approve of it at all.

"You get one night off only," Andy snapped at him, trying to be as firm as possible while her hair was plastered to her face. "Tomorrow morning we start looking for her. Immediately." Mick bit back a sigh. If she was going to drag him out in daylight he was going to have to sleep tonight instead of looking into Mona's disappearance without Andy peeking over his shoulder.

"Agreed." Mick picked her up, rolling his eyes internally when she started in on a rant about how she was perfectly capable of walking down the stairs. He needed to get her dry clothes. Actually, he was in need of those himself. When he'd stepped into the shower, he hadn't really been thinking about clothing damage. He just needed to get her trembling to stop. He needed her eyes to open up, for her to speak to him.

Why had he needed her to start talking again?

Neither of them talked about how he had found her. Andy was slowly beginning to figure out that there was more to vampires than weird eyes and sharp fangs. She thought Mick was starting to realize that, too. Either way, they didn't talk much. She curled up on his couch and he took sanctuary in his freezer.

"Mona," Andy whispered softly once the entire apartment had gone silent. The only response came from Andy's memory. The two of you need to learn the same lesson. Acceptance. She snorted and buried her face in a cushion. As if she and Mick had anything in common.