My thanks to everyone who commented last time round - you are lovely, sparkly wondrousnesses (It's a word, it is!) Thank you to:
Danel, Meg, Dianna, DLJewel, Mandy, Eleyne, Crimson Tears, Sianna, Queen Kat, Rain,Midnight Haze, Baloo, Werepanther, Leopardess, Blaze Baelfire, Dark Princess, Katherine, and the divine Diomede.
Reviews are much loved, revered and adored - please tell me what you think, be it comment or criticism; both are welcome, and I am totally open to suggestions.
The lyrics come from Anna Nalicks Wreck of the Day (Album: Wreck of the Day).
Ki
Chimera Part Twenty
Driving away from the wreck of the day
And the light's always red in the rear-view
Desperately close to a coffin of hope
I'd cheat destiny just to be near you
Tamara Slone was nearly in tears by the time she was stumbling down the road, her eyes wide and blank and terrified, though not for herself. She couldn't feel him, she couldn't feel him and from the moment there had been that agonised, dying scream in her mind, only silence had taunted her.
She didn't know where Aspen was. Everywhere she had searched had been empty of him, and now she was trying home again in the faint hope that he might have run back there like the frightened, hunted creature he was inside.
Someone was outside the house!
Oh, please let it be him, this dark-haired guy examining the lock with careful concentration and-
It wasn't.
He had spun at her approach. A hard-faced, shabby boy looked her up and down with his hands jammed in his pockets as though he were appraising her at a cattle market. Romulus. The horrible one who had tried to grope her at a party and ended up walking strangely for a day or two after a well-aimed kick. The one Aspen said was a werewolf.
"No," she snarled, too worried to even be polite. "Not interested."
"Been looking for someone?" The insidious, oily tones of his voice threw gasoline on an already smouldering furnace. "You're so...flushed."
"Get out of my way," she said flatly, elbowing past him. Let Aspen be there, she'd never let him out of her sight again, never.
"You should be more polite to me," he remarked, and snickered. "Reckon you might need me."
She ducked inside, calling him through the soulmate link. Only the same woolly quiet that had filled her mind these past hours. Not at the Café. Not out with his friends at the half-pipe. Not by the lake. Next up would be Blue Malefici - and she shuddered at the thought of him. Maybe it was him - maybe he'd hurt Aspen because...god, who knew why Blue did anything?
"Only as an organ donor," she told him flatly, and slammed the door.
There was a crunch as it hit his foot, and he growled something happily incomprehensible. Then in a manner alarmingly reminiscent of the Shining, he thrust his face through the gap, and hissed, "Listen, don't shut the door, Donna'll kill me! I know where Martin is!"
There was a note of panic in his voice.
Tam flung open the door without any thought except simply, Aspen, and there was more snarling as it knocked him off his feet and onto the porch. "Where?" she demanded, dragging him up with a strength born of desperation. "Why didn't you say?"
His eyes were feral and rolling. "Come on. I'll drive you."
Romulus edged away from her warily, rubbing at his spine. Hurry up, Tam thought as she threw herself into the car and waited for what seemed like aeons for the engine to start. Hurryuphurryup!
"Is he okay?" she shot at him.
The wolf turned around in a sideroad, careful with the rusted and slightly battered Volvo. "He's alive, ain't he? Counts for okay with leeches."
She debated hitting him, but it would do no one any good. "Yes, but is he all right?"
Romulus shrugged, and started back up the street. "He was out for the count. Probably just playing it up, like all them vampires do."
Tam tapped the dashboard impatiently, ignoring his obvious prejudice. Let him be okay. "Can't you go faster? Christ, I thought psychotics like you were supposed to- you're not even doing the legal limit!"
Romulus' hands were white on the wheel. "I only just passed my test, I don't want a ticket-"
"I don't care about your damn tickets!" she screamed. "Go faster right now!"
"Look, I don't like going fast. It makes me nervous," he explained through gritted teeth, flinching as a car went past them. "Things like this are dangerous-"
Tam stared in a mixture of disbelief and horror then grabbed his forearm, ignoring his curse as the car jolted sideways. "If your foot is not flat to that floor in two seconds, there won't be enough left of you to take home in a doggie bag, no pun intended at all."
He took one look at her outraged, fanatical eyes, and her set mouth, and hit the gas pedal.
X - X - X - X - X
Iager was gone. Blue was gone. Chatoya didn't know where either of them were, and she didn't particularly care, unless it was at the bottom of the ocean, in which case she would crack open the champagne. And now she had another problem to deal with, a problem that slunk in looking extremely cagey, surreptitiously checking her for wounds before he sat down.
"Lisa and JJ have gone home." Cougar broke the silence. "And Thom took Kirsty...somewhere."
"Any chance at all that it's Borstal?" she enquired tersely.
"None." His breath hissed in and out in their silence. It's my blood giving you breath, she thought. Your heart beats to my music, and your body dances to the rhythm of my pulse. "Toya..."
She thrust back her hair, and scrubbed at the two dark marks. "How could you? Goddess, Cougar, you know how I feel about this!"
"Toya, you were gone! You were this awful colour, hardly breathing and I was so scared."
That shocked her. Cougar never admitted to fear. Scared was a child's word, and the eyes he lifted to her in near-veneration were foaming with fear; the eyes of that child who had worked and worked to try and help his brother, and who had shrugged away the bruise that must have left more mark than mere pain.
"Dear one," she said gently, and something move in his expression, brilliant, intense, "did you have to bite me? I can't stand it. It's...horrible. You're so much stronger, you and Blue and Jepar and Lisa and Tali - you're all so strong, and if you wanted, you could make me some kind of toy. I have to trust you not to do that and this - this is the start."
"I know I shouldn't have," he mumbled, misery unbridled in his voice and gestures. "But you don't understand, Toya. You've changed. Blue's changed you, and you don't even see it. You walk right into danger and you don't seem to care. If you mind me preying on you," and the sarcasm twisted in his voice like a towel being wrung dry, "then why the hell are you messing around with my little brother?"
"Is that what this is about?" It cut into her head like a hot knife cleaving butter, and she heard the new agitation in his voice when he said Blue's name. "Blue?"
"No!" Cougar snapped, getting up to pace the room with sharp and hungry steps. "Christ, Toya! It's about you getting mauled by wolves, and fainting all over the place, and running off without a word, and...and...other things."
"No, I don't think that's it," she said softly. "But I don't know what it is. And you won't say."
He stopped behind her, and she tilted back her head to see him lean along the back of the couch, directly above her. His voice was slow as agony, soft as a whisper. "Maybe I can't."
"I thought we were friends." Above her, his eyes seemed endlessly dark in his shadowed face. Had any king ever been more imperial, more lonely?
He breathed in, and his hands rested on her shoulders with a touch both light and yet with his words, heavier than all the weight of the earth's worries. "I thought differently."
"What is it you want from me?" she said, half-exasperated and half entranced.
He drew back, and the shade he had cast over her vanished with him. She twisted to follow him as he walked around, over to the front of the couch and then sat, with a deliberation that made her uneasy. Cougar was not a thing of consideration; he was unexpected as a static shock, explosive as a landmine and slave to his emotions.
"I didn't know myself for a long time," he said, his mouth taut and near grim. "And then I realised I'd been...stupid. I guess that's nothing different, but it was a new kind of stupid."
Silent, she waited, snagged by the curious, meditative quality of his voice.
"What do I want?" The dreamy, hazy light in his eyes cleared into gold; luminous as the sun itself, life-giving and blazing and drawing all to it with a force that was born of massive fire and swiftness.
That moment was back; that fluttering, striving tension like an osprey fighting the straps about its legs, fiercer and more dangerous than it had been before.
"What do I want...?" he mused again.
Her stomach flipped as the vampire leaned forwards, and scrutinised her with an concentration near disturbing in its intimacy, its knowledge. Something raw, rash in his stare.
At last she said uneasily, "What do you want?"
He cocked his head, and reached out to curl one hand around the back of her neck. The flush began, creeping out from her cheeks and up from her heart, the feeling that this was forbidden, and paradoxically strange yet familiar.
The contact drew them close, so close she was afraid to breathe in case something happened and that moment flew screaming, released. Gold filled her vision, sacrosanct and strong, and her breath was shackled in her throat, and prisoner to his answer.
"More," he said.
That moment soared free, the answer to a question she hadn't even known she was asking until now. Oh, Goddess. Oh.
"Cougar," she began, and stopped. His fingers on her neck were trembling, and she realised what it must have cost him to say that, and just how much it had cost not to. What a choice to have to make.
But her voice had exposed her thoughts, and she saw the hurt, hidden just as rapidly, pass through him.
"Don't tell me it won't work," he said quietly. His face was white, that tantalizing bone structure more pronounced. "Don't fling the clichés at me, Toya. I've thought, and I've thought, and I've tried not to, but I think I-"
She clapped a hand over his mouth. "Don't say that!"
His hand left her neck to wrap about her wrist. "What?" His voice was half-angry. "What? Don't say I love you?"
It stabbed her.
Not this. Please. Cougar had always been her snappy, angry friend, a charging crocodile that had switched itself into human form, and she had always felt safe with him. She could run to him with guy problems and tease him ruthlessly and enjoy his biting humour.
"But you don't," she told him softly, trying to tell herself this was not some surreal, peculiar dream; this was real, this was happening. "You've known me three years, Cougar, and you've never been like this before!"
"You believe in love at first sight," he threw at her, lines appearing at the corners of his eyes. "Why not ninety-first?"
Chatoya shook her head dazedly. "But Cougar...I don't feel that way about you. You're my friend."
"I wouldn't stop being your friend."
It hurt her to say this, and to know that she would cause him pain; but it would hurt her more to lie, and pretend to feel something that she didn't. "Cougar, I can't."
"Do you love someone else?" he asked, and didn't meet her eyes as though it pained him to ask.
"No!"
He looked at her, and swallowed. Oh, she thought, dear one, you always think you're so clever at hiding what you feel, but your eyes can't lie. I'm sorry I had to say that, and I'm sorry I have to do this...but whatever else you are to me, be it sunlight, or anger, or woodsmoke, you are not my universe.
"It has to be that way...?"
She patted his hand. "Yeah. It does. But thank you for telling me."
"Did I mess up?" he asked in a near-groan. "I shouldn't have said it, should I?"
"You should," she reassured. "At least I know why you've been so moody."
A flicker of a smile on his face, though it didn't glitter in his eyes. "Nah. I'm always moody. It's going to be hard. Knowing you know."
She chuckled. "Oh, come on, Cougar, you'll get over me! I'm not going to break anywhere near as many hearts as you!"
Those shrewd eyes narrowed and his smile had a little more confidence, though there was something sad in it too. "Oh...I don't know, Toya. Maybe you'd be surprised. And if you change your mind..."
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I know who to yell for."
"I hope you're not talking about Jepar," he said deadpan, and that was more her Cougar, if the melancholy curve of his lips was not.
"I think he's taken."
"No kleptomaniac worth their salt would steal him," the lamia quipped. She knew it helped him; it was easier, always so much easier to hide under words. To make people think it was all a big joke to you, that nothing mattered. She knew that it wasn't true, but she let it lie. If he could pretend not to feel, she could do him the courtesy of pretending it wasn't an act.
"Are we okay?" she prompted.
"Well, apart from having my heart ground into mincemeat..." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. It was such a childish gesture that Chatoya nearly forgave him the remark that smarted like a slap. "We will be. Just...don't flaunt any boyfriends round me, okay? I may not be able to restrain myself-oh, god, please tell me they didn't hear all of that."
It was then that she noticed the blond head peering halfway round the door, and no doubt behind him, Lisa was listening eagerly. "Come in," she bid them more bitterly than she intended. "Why not? Let's make this group therapy!"
Lisa sidled in, pasting an utterly blank look on her face. "Hear any of what?" she attempted guilelessly, coming to perch on the arm of the chair Chatoya was on.
Neither of them apologised; Lisa didn't hold grudges, and they both knew what they would say anyway, so neither needed to hear the words. Chatoya simply knew that the rift was healed, if not forgotten.
Jepar strolled in with his usual supple grace, balancing a tray of iced fruit juice drinks on one hand and a basket of tortilla chips in the other. "Well," he said philosophically, setting them down on the table and collapsing onto the floor with a grateful sigh, "if we're going to argue about eavesdropping, no point in doing it on an empty stomach."
Cougar gave him a distinctly unimpressed glare and slithered away from Chatoya to swipe a drink, though she had the feeling that perhaps that was just an excuse. "You could have had the decency not to listen."
"Didn't I say the same to you when Toya and I broke up?" Jepar inquired dryly. "And what was it you said...let me think...oh yes, you should know by now that I am utterly indecent on all occasions."
"I swear," Cougar said flatly, "one of these days, I am going to kill you."
Jepar grinned, and his eyes danced wickedly. "At least I'll get some peace." He put his hands up in mock-defence as the lamia started towards him. "No, all right! All doom, gloom and tombs from now on, I promise." Cougar contented himself with slumping lengthways onto the couch, leaving his feet close enough to Jepar's head to make the cheetah shuffle away a little.
"What's going on with you and Blue?" Lisa asked, leaning over to close her hands around a glass and nestle it to her, probably, Chatoya knew, so she wouldn't bite her nails. The vampire nudged her. "Are you...?"
"We make mad passionate love every night," she said gravely, and then gave Cougar a daggered stare as he half-sat up and opened his mouth to protest. "Come on, Cougar! Do you really think I would?"
"Well," Jepar murmured, "you know what they say about the Redferns. They put the fun in fungal infection." There was the thud of foot meeting neck. "Ouch! Can't you take a joke?"
Another kick indicated Cougar couldn't.
"Well, it's true," the shapeshifter muttered.
"Yeah? Well, do you know what they say about shapeshifters?" Cougar flung heatedly.
Jepar swivelled his head to keep an emerald eye on the outraged Redfern. "They put the best in bestiality?"
The vampire blinked, and whatever he had been about to shout was blocked by the unwilling smile that turned up his mouth. "All right," he conceded grudgingly. "Maybe the family does have a little bit of a reputation."
Lisa chuckled, and tapped her fingers on her glass idly. "From what I hear, hon, the Redfern reputation is not for little bits. And Toya still hasn't answered the question. "
Three pairs of expectant eyes turned her way, Cougar's a curiously intense colour, as though the sun's rays had been crushed into one tiny mass about to go supernova.
"Honestly," she assured them, "there's nothing going on. I'm not stupid. I remember what he is. I can deal with him."
"You know," Jepar said thoughtfully, laying his head on the back of the couch, "I think you can."
Cougar rumbled beneath his breath, but they all ignored it. Three years of living with a vampire who had queued up several times when hormones were being handed out had made them impervious to any of his surly comments, his vastly instructive body language, or his high voltage scowling.
"Do you realise," Lisa said wistfully, "it hasn't been just us in a long time?"
Cougar nodded. "Things were good then. Apart from you two," a sly glance from Jepar to Chatoya, "hanging all over each other. You were so the match made in heaven, and I swear, I was that close to getting a match made on earth and some gasoline and using a little creativity so I wouldn't have to watch you being cute." He put his head onto his arm, and drew his legs up a little. "I miss Sonj. She understood me."
"No, she hit you back," said Jepar and dodged another viper-swift kick. "Hey! I need my spine in one piece, thank you."
"I was aiming for your voicebox." Cougar informed him regally. "Okay, maybe we didn't always see eye to eye, and she did keep throwing away my cigarettes, chucking water in my face every morning and making me do housework, but she didn't want me to be perfect."
"Ah, back to the time-honoured soulmate problem," Jepar said dryly.
The lamia quirked an eyebrow, and trouble tolled like bells in his voice. "Oh, yeah, like you have problems."
"You ever seen Tali angry?" he argued, stretching out his legs until the joints crackled. "Do you have any idea what she can do?"
All three of them looked at his black eyes pointedly. But Chatoya was intrigued; she had thought all was sweet and sunny in Jepar's world, like he himself was. Although Tali was a little icy, and there was something too knowing about her that came from eight hundred years of life, she had thought the pair were perfect.
"Maybe you do," the shifter acknowledged. "I just wish she wasn't a dragon. Alisha was...human. And she didn't seem so distant. Now - I think she's afraid of making a mistake again."
"Have you tried telling her you won't throw yourself off a cliff this time round?" suggested Cougar innocently, and Chatoya tried not to wince because the words were alarmingly close to those she had flung at Tali just last night. She hadn't known she'd hit so close to her heart. Or known that her heart could be so easily wounded.
"I told her I wasn't all that fond of stilts, never mind cliffs." He spread his hands, looking near-helpless. "She hardly seems to have any emotions sometimes, and I need emotions."
"Funny," Cougar said glumly, "I don't, and my soulmate has them in abundance."
"It could be worse." Chatoya half-smiled, because it was smile or cry with Blue. "You could have my soulmate."
"Or none at all," reminded Lisa, crunching a chip down. "Look, let's just accept that none of us are capable of having a happy relationship, and move on to how much money we're going to make out of our divorces."
"Divorce?" Cougar demanded. "Honestly, woman, you think I'm going to marry?"
"Isn't this the 'let's make a pact' moment?" Jepar said cheerfully. "You know, if none of us are married by forty, we all marry each other?"
There was a thoughtful pause.
"Is that legal?" Chatoya said, grinning at her lanky friend. "I'm not really into polygamy."
"How about just bigamy then?" Cougar gave her what was probably meant to be a leer. "Or if you want, you can be a slave in my harem."
"Oooh, try and stop me," she teased, but caught his little jolt of pain and hastily changed the subject. "Well, at least we can all be emotional cripples together."
The shapeshifter raised his glass. "Here's to total failure, utter lack of control, and an empty, hellish future."
Four glasses clinked. "Our lives," Cougar drawled, sharing a miraculous, pure smile, and for a moment, they could have been back in that brief, peaceful summer three years ago.
X - X - X - X - X
Tam couldn't stop the little cry that left her lips as she saw Aspen curled on the ground. She pushed through the people standing over him.
God, she'd never seen him this way; swan-pale and shadowed, mud slathering one side of his face from where he must have been lying on the ground, smeared on his clothes. Her hand was not entirely steady, as she reached out and ran her fingers over one of the three white-blond streaks that shot through his hair-
His eyes opened.
They were wild and dark, and for a moment didn't know her. Images blasted her mind, terrible images that made her gorge rise, made her want to shut her eyes and shut out the world and shut out everything-
"You came," he whispered numbly, and he was shivering all over, hardly seeming to see anything but her. "You shouldn't be here. You don't want me."
"Of course I do," she said fiercely, and had to swallow hard as he sat up, and scrabbled back from her. His face was distraught, the face of that half-mad, half-shattered boy she had glimpsed only once before.
"No you don't." He shook his head violently, so violently she thought he might snap his spine and her hands twitched to touch him and comfort him. "You don't know how bad I am."
He believed it. That soft, broken tone told her he really believed it.
"You're not!" she said furiously, and held her hands out to him. "Aspen..."
He stared at her hands as if they were something strange and wonderful. "You don't want me," he repeated, but his gaze never left her hands. "You don't understand."
"Make me, then," she told him.
A whimper, spilling out of his mouth. It was a sound of pure terror, and he recoiled from her. "Don't say that!"
He wouldn't move, she could see that. And that meant she had to get up, slowly, feeling the eyes of the Pack on her and not caring a whit, and walk over to him, seeing him look up at her with something that sliced deeper and quicker than a knife; fear.
And then she knelt down, and watched the fear collapse into sheer fractured need, and hugged him, but he only shook in her arms, and lay his head on her shoulder. He was so cold, cold as if he'd been pushed down into icy waters, cold as death, and the only warmth about him was the tears sliding on her collarbone.
He came back, he said hollowly into her head. His voice was flat and dead and awful. Tam, Tam, my Tam, he came back. They killed him, she killed him, but what if he comes back again?
"He won't," she murmured, not understanding, only stroking his hair. She couldn't cry too, she couldn't, but she was, and surely she should be strong when he needed her, wasn't that how it should be?
But he will, he chattered, the thought flung at her like a volley of arrows, over and over. You don't know him, Tam, you don't know what he is and what he can do and what he will do...
"Come home," she pleaded to him. "Please, let's go home, and you know he won't find you there."
But what if he does? He'll hurt me, Tam, and he'll make me empty, and I don't want to be empty anymore. I wanted you, but he came back, and he's poisoned me, you shouldn't be near me-
He had been ripped in half easy as paper, and nothing she could say or do would erase his fear. She could only do what she thought best, and that would not be enough.
"Come home," she said again. If she was home, she could deal with this. Home was safe, home was sanctuary, home was sacred. Her mother would know what to do, she always knew. "Mom will look after you, she won't let anyone in."
Home... It was a brief harmony in that mess of discord. I don't have a home.
You have mine.
She pulled him to his feet, helped by a copper-haired girl who slid over to help, shocked at how ashen he was. His eyes were no longer wild, but worse; drained, and near blank. It was as if whatever there was in him had been bleeding away, and now there was a mere shell left.
Come with me, she told him silently. It will be all right.
But she didn't know how it could be.
And maybe I'm not up for being a victim of love
When all my resistance will never be distance enough
Driving away from the wreck of the day
And it's finally quiet in my head
Driving alone, finally on my way home to the comfort of my bed