She was here he knew it almost as much as he knew that he was still alive and breathing after more years than he cared to count. Lynx Redfern was in Ryars valley. He sighed, now she was probably going to come for him. Uncannily like his soulmate Bran FallenStar turned to his mirror and looked himself in the eye.
Eyes that were most often described as black looked back at him but in the depths there was green, like dark emeralds. His hair looked tousled probably from the fingers of the woman who still lay in his bed and it was in complete contrast to his eyes a very very pale silver blonde. He was built like a gymnast standing 6'2 inches tall and all lean muscle but he didn't see it, all he saw was the girl he had last known as Lynx Redfern, a fiery temper inside an icy self control, gold eyes flashing, red hair tumbling to her shoulders and scarred not only by the association with her grandfather but by the blade she carried by her side. He had tried to get her to put it aside and she had refused; then he had to attempt to kill her, he had never expected her to win past him and he had never expected her to damage her own reputation for infallibility by going to a Night lord for help; of course she hadn't. Now she was feared by most of the Night World, the highest paid assassin in Night World history and it was rumoured the most insane. He could only shoulder the responsibility, after all he had forged the blade.
He could remember it even now, in the fires of hell as the world burned surrounded by a convocation of dragons. A lone human. He had been promised riches beyond his wildest dreams to come here and forge one blade out of the finest crystal that could be found in this world and the next; and of course he would die if he refused. So he had stood at a forge that flickered with an eerie green flame and had plied tools made of dragon fire on a piece of obsidian half a meter in length and seven centimetres in diameter and had tooled it into a blade. The hilt he had worked in molten silver to a twisted shape that had no real character until seven pieces of onyx were fitted to it then it gained an nasty slightly evil aura of old pain. The piece of artwork suddenly acquired a deadly purpose especially as one of the dragons snatched it from his hands and murmured a twisted incantation over it and it smouldered with an unholy light. Then came the most horrible part of it all, the part that had haunted his nightmares for years a tiny young witch woman, she couldn't have been more than fifteen was dragged in and held by two of the bigger dragon males and the sword was plunged into her heart and proceeded to drink her blood.
It was only then that the first two draconian runes formed. The moment the sword was released it wavered for a moment and then disappeared. Like an idiot he had demanded to know what he had created that had to be cooled in innocent blood. Seven dragons had left at that point with some unspoken signal between them and the eighth had come to 'reward' him at that moment he almost welcomed the death he thought he was to receive. What he had been given was worse, immortality. Bran SunStar had been given a Dragons soul in payment for the evil he had wrought in the making of that blade; all of the power and none of the identification, no horns but he was cursed with the heaviness of his own conscience for nearly two hundred years. Then he had finally embraced the fact that there was nothing he could do about it and became Bran FallenStar.
He smirked at himself in the mirror. What he didn't mention was his own cowardice, he always knew where the accursed blade was and the evil deeds that followed it, sometimes to the best of men. He could have destroyed it at times and his own pride in its workmanship and his fear at what its destruction would do to him always stopped him. The worst time had been in England over a thousand years ago when the blade had first driven Uther Pendragon to murder and adultery against one of his most loyal vassals and later his son to suspect the same of one of his best friends and had pushed the country into a war of unequalled proportions; he had been there with the seeress Morgaine Lafee to bury the king on the isle of apples and to throw the sword out over the lake. But it was not enough, it had gone to Hunter Redfern and he had put it to good use.
Bran's next viewing of the blade had been seeing it put into use against four shifters in a dazzling display of swordwomanship, wielded by a young redhead with wild silver eyes that seemed to shift colour under his gaze. That had been his first sight of Lynx; the sword had worked a longer course, it had even been in the hands of one Adolph Hitler at one point a gift of appreciation. Hunter Redfern had plucked it out of the ruins of Berlin and had handed it to Lynx's predecessor, he had been quite capable of going without the blade for a mere five years.
It was his problem, he should have destroyed it years ago. Now what would have to be done would weigh on his soul for the rest of eternity. A stirring on the bed behind him brought his mind back to the present and he turned to the night dark shifter on the bed and felt no stirrings of the lust that had brought him to his first long term relationship in over a hundred years, in the morning she would have to go. He had to think, and think fast.
Eyes that were most often described as black looked back at him but in the depths there was green, like dark emeralds. His hair looked tousled probably from the fingers of the woman who still lay in his bed and it was in complete contrast to his eyes a very very pale silver blonde. He was built like a gymnast standing 6'2 inches tall and all lean muscle but he didn't see it, all he saw was the girl he had last known as Lynx Redfern, a fiery temper inside an icy self control, gold eyes flashing, red hair tumbling to her shoulders and scarred not only by the association with her grandfather but by the blade she carried by her side. He had tried to get her to put it aside and she had refused; then he had to attempt to kill her, he had never expected her to win past him and he had never expected her to damage her own reputation for infallibility by going to a Night lord for help; of course she hadn't. Now she was feared by most of the Night World, the highest paid assassin in Night World history and it was rumoured the most insane. He could only shoulder the responsibility, after all he had forged the blade.
He could remember it even now, in the fires of hell as the world burned surrounded by a convocation of dragons. A lone human. He had been promised riches beyond his wildest dreams to come here and forge one blade out of the finest crystal that could be found in this world and the next; and of course he would die if he refused. So he had stood at a forge that flickered with an eerie green flame and had plied tools made of dragon fire on a piece of obsidian half a meter in length and seven centimetres in diameter and had tooled it into a blade. The hilt he had worked in molten silver to a twisted shape that had no real character until seven pieces of onyx were fitted to it then it gained an nasty slightly evil aura of old pain. The piece of artwork suddenly acquired a deadly purpose especially as one of the dragons snatched it from his hands and murmured a twisted incantation over it and it smouldered with an unholy light. Then came the most horrible part of it all, the part that had haunted his nightmares for years a tiny young witch woman, she couldn't have been more than fifteen was dragged in and held by two of the bigger dragon males and the sword was plunged into her heart and proceeded to drink her blood.
It was only then that the first two draconian runes formed. The moment the sword was released it wavered for a moment and then disappeared. Like an idiot he had demanded to know what he had created that had to be cooled in innocent blood. Seven dragons had left at that point with some unspoken signal between them and the eighth had come to 'reward' him at that moment he almost welcomed the death he thought he was to receive. What he had been given was worse, immortality. Bran SunStar had been given a Dragons soul in payment for the evil he had wrought in the making of that blade; all of the power and none of the identification, no horns but he was cursed with the heaviness of his own conscience for nearly two hundred years. Then he had finally embraced the fact that there was nothing he could do about it and became Bran FallenStar.
He smirked at himself in the mirror. What he didn't mention was his own cowardice, he always knew where the accursed blade was and the evil deeds that followed it, sometimes to the best of men. He could have destroyed it at times and his own pride in its workmanship and his fear at what its destruction would do to him always stopped him. The worst time had been in England over a thousand years ago when the blade had first driven Uther Pendragon to murder and adultery against one of his most loyal vassals and later his son to suspect the same of one of his best friends and had pushed the country into a war of unequalled proportions; he had been there with the seeress Morgaine Lafee to bury the king on the isle of apples and to throw the sword out over the lake. But it was not enough, it had gone to Hunter Redfern and he had put it to good use.
Bran's next viewing of the blade had been seeing it put into use against four shifters in a dazzling display of swordwomanship, wielded by a young redhead with wild silver eyes that seemed to shift colour under his gaze. That had been his first sight of Lynx; the sword had worked a longer course, it had even been in the hands of one Adolph Hitler at one point a gift of appreciation. Hunter Redfern had plucked it out of the ruins of Berlin and had handed it to Lynx's predecessor, he had been quite capable of going without the blade for a mere five years.
It was his problem, he should have destroyed it years ago. Now what would have to be done would weigh on his soul for the rest of eternity. A stirring on the bed behind him brought his mind back to the present and he turned to the night dark shifter on the bed and felt no stirrings of the lust that had brought him to his first long term relationship in over a hundred years, in the morning she would have to go. He had to think, and think fast.