Nightfire Part Eight

Well, my apologies - for this taking so long - and my ecstatic, over-the-moon, heel-kicking thanks to the lovely people who reviewed - thanks guys, you rock! Thanks to:

The delectable Dee: ::Ki blinks:: Hey, you review for every chapter, the *last* thing you see will be complaining. I adore reviews! Routine banter :-) Yeah, I guess it is! I don't know, conversations just seem to blossom when they're about. And well, that happens with my friends (who are a pretty weird bunch, bless 'em.) Zara is back only briefly at the mo, but she should be back later, though I can't say why... Thanks everso!

The definitive Dead Flower: Oh, I know how it is being sick - I hope you get better soon...no one should be ill at this time of year, so take some time off and relax :-) And apparently, the msell of chocoalte is supposed to boost your immune system. ::grins:: Yeah, Cern and Jal have something there ~ but hopefully I'll surprise you yet (if I don't, it's time to retire...no one should be forced to read garbled repitition...) Huge thanks!

The inspiring Ice Princess: Zara is back :-) Only briefly though (men!) Cougar needs to have sense shot into him, in my opinion :-) But that would be cruel... I like cliffhangers. They leave me a sense of well-being and something to write about! Hopefully you can read this story without having read the other ones (I don't think there's anything too huge I haven't explained...if there is, yell!) Merci beaucoup!

The wondrous Wind Dancer: Great name :-) Thanks! I've always had fun writing this series, I don't know - it's just addictive! Yeah, you see more of Blue and Toya (That boy is just a scene-stealer). It's not just a Jal/Cern story, don't worry :-) other people and their various problems creep in...like life really...anyways, I'll cease rambling and just say: thank you so much! I love reading what you have to say.

Anything you have to say would be adored, pored over and purely cherished.

Ki

Nightfire Part Eight

One touch had been enough.

One touch, and Cern Akafren knew his whole life would be changed. One touch, and he felt a sizzling connection leap between himself and this alien, timid girl who he barely knew.

It was as if he had been walking in a deep fierce storm, with the rain so thick and harsh that it stung his eyes and blurred the way ahead. And sometimes the storm would slacken and the air become lighter, and sometimes there would be hail to cut him to pieces and icy cold, but always the same tempest, obscuring all before him, hiding all behind him.

And now the storm had lifted, and though the rain still tumbled as brutally hard as ever, the clouds were gone and above him, the most amazing rainbow hung shimmering in the air. Something that wasn't really tangible, yet still existed.

~ Jal? ~ he said softly, hardly daring to breathe.

He was surprised to find he was scared. What did he know about soulmates? Nothing. He had thought he was supposed to feel an instant love, or affection, or anything but the empty panic that filled his heart. He didn't *know* Jal. Sometimes, he didn't even think he knew himself.

The thought of anyone seeing his soul, his every secret, was terrifying.

But he couldn't resist this unearthly pull that dragged him through a dark channel at furious speed, so he could see nothing but rushing blackness, and far away, a distant grey glow.

~ She is not here... ~

The voice was rich and throaty, and there was a promise in it. It filled the air around him like intoxicating wine.

~ She has been gone from here for a long time, ~ the voice said and laughed, desire slicing through it. ~ She left me alone long ago...I want you. Your life is sweet, little halfbreed. ~

~ Jal? ~ he said again, confused. The voice sounded like her...but it was so cold, so full of hungry craving.

~ Not here, halfbreed boy. ~ Another, softer laugh. ~ There is only me here in the darkness. *She* is in the light...but soon, I shall rise. I want to be back in the light, back in the night's fire. It has been so long since I have tasted life. ~

The grey glow was becoming brighter in his vision, turning into a bright blue light that burned his eyes so he had to look away. But like a fading refrain, he heard that succulent, strong voice.

~ The night fires will burn soon. And so will you... ~

The glow was searing through his eyelids now, the cold wind throwing him forward into the light, faster and faster—

The impact knocked him to his hands and knees.

~ Cern? ~ he heard a voice say. For a moment, he thought it was that other, luxurious one, but no, there was a subtle awe in it, and like a light flicked on, her thoughts flowing through his head, a mix of pastel colours.

~ Oh gods, ~ he said quietly. He was subsumed in her thoughts, in the delicate blue of her marvel and the flushing pale pink of her shyness. And it was incredible. ~ It's real. ~

~ We're meant to be like this, aren't we? ~ she whispered.

He opened his eyes and found himself within a temple, a place cast in shadows shot with stark moonlight. She was there, in front of him, kneeling in a shaft of light that picked out the glaring crimson streak in her spilling hair, staring at him with wide and shocked eyes.

He looked back, caught between fear and delight. ~ Yeah. ~

Delight, because this was what everyone dreamed of. Of finding the someone who would understand them perfectly, who you could look at and share more than a mere glance, to whom one word would say what a thousand songs could not.

Fear, because the person he showed to everyone else was not the truth. It was a selection of what he wanted to show, a fraction of his thoughts and feelings. He had secrets that were buried so deep they would never claw their way to the surface again. Qualms he would never mention. Thoughts he would never voice.

And he was so afraid that none of those would ever be his own to keep again.

~ I'm scared, ~ she confessed in a small voice, twisting her hands.

He looked at her solemnly. ~ So am I. ~

~ You? ~ Astonishment in the line of her mouth. ~ But...you aren't afraid of anything. ~

~ Sure I am. I have an entire ossuary in my closet. But...I still think I want to know, because if I don't, I'll always wonder. ~ He paused, wanting and not wanting to say it. ~ We're soulmates. ~

A deep hush as she seemed to search his eyes, her stare sweet and piercing. ~ But I don't love you, ~ she said in childlike bewilderment. ~ Cougar loves his soulmate. Ria loves him. ~

That made him grin. ~ Cougar and Ria have known each other for over a year. I guess you don't just fall in love. ~ The words felt awkward. It was such a powerful word, love, and it was so often misused. To be talking about love to this exotic girl felt odd. Almost embarrassing. ~ It takes time. And you have to want to... ~

~ And do you? ~ she said quickly then went scarlet. He could feel her mortification like warm water.

~ I...don't know. ~ He shrugged. ~ I'd...like to give it a try. ~ He was *never* shy, but somehow, Cern found he couldn't look her in the eye. ~ You just have to trust me. ~

~ I'm not sure either, ~ she said hesitantly. ~ But...but what can it hurt? Please... ~ She didn't say it, but he heard her unfinished plea. Please don't hurt me.

How could you think I would, he wanted to say, but didn't. No one could make that kind of promise.

~ Where is this? ~ he queried, looking around. It was clearly a temple of some sort, torches burning orange on the wall and casting shivery shadows onto the walls and floor. In the centre of the floor, a pool swayed and lapped gently.

Her terror blossomed like dozens of flowers, bursting into fiery life.

~ It's all I remember, ~ she said quietly, her voice trembling. ~ It's everything. ~

At the very edge of his hearing, like the background noise of the elements, he heard a faint whispering. Something flickered in his vision and he turned to look at it, heart pounding.

There were people, standing in the temple, faint gauzy figures. They were speaking in a throbbing ancient language he didn't know, but Jal did. He could feel the meaning of this strange ritual through the link.

And that was a ghost of Jal standing in front of what was unmistakably an altar. His stare swung back to her; she had covered her hands with her face and was muttering something faintly under her breath.

He reached out to her, not knowing what else he could do or say to make any of this better as the scene played out, the fragments of Jal's screams echoing through the air. But she flinched away, curling herself up into a tight little knot.

He saw how the man – her lover– betrayed her, how she ran and they hunted her and how finally, finally, she had no choice but to succumb to what they wanted.

The figures blinked out. And now he could hear the prayer she was muttering, over and over.

~ Take me from the darkness, ~ she was thinking, ~ Take me, wrap me up in you, give me your heat and your light. Don't let me go back there again. Please let it stop, please let it stop, please let it stop... ~

He was silent for a long time, feeling her shuddering anguish drifting in and out of his mind. She was as afraid as he was of this – her mind was an empty desert, stretching into nowhere. Only odd nightmares appeared to fill the horizon occasionally, strange stunted shapes.

~ I'm sorry, ~ he said finally. ~ I'm sorry for what they did. ~

She lifted her head, the moonlight cutting her face into shapes of white and black. ~ What do you have to be sorry about? ~ she said bleakly. ~ It wasn't you, it wasn't your fault. ~

She was hiding something. He felt it appear suddenly as she spoke, a dark clot floating over her thoughts.

~ Jal? ~ he murmured, reaching out to her again. And again, she flinched away, shaking her head. ~ Why don't you want me to see? ~

~ Nothing, ~ she gasped. ~ It's n-nothing. ~

~ It something, ~ he persisted gently. He reached out through the link, falling deeper into her mind. It was like sinking into quicksand and for a moment, she didn't resist then that strange darkness emerged again, and curious, he tried to see it—

~ Keep away! ~ she snarled, her face stricken. Panic thundered in her thoughts, a bruised purple. ~ I don't even know you! I don't want you in my head! ~

~ Well, you've got me in your soul, ~ Cern snapped back furiously. Couldn't she see he hadn't asked for this either? ~ The way I see it, there's two ways to deal with this. We can fight it, or we can go with it. ~

~ I don't want you to see! ~ she threw at him. The link was trying to pull them together. He caught a glimpse in his mind, a glimpse of a blade...a blade shaped like a dragon, a...a...blood-gift.

~ A blood-gift? ~ he thought, and didn't realise she had heard it.

Her face went waxy-white. ~ Get *out*! ~ she screamed. ~ Not your place! Get *away* from me! ~

Her rage erupted into his head like black floodwater, and the link was severed.

* * * *

Ruby Luthman was cold.

She was always cold. There was ice inside her that never melted and underneath was trapped her shrunken and drowned soul. She didn't understand it; times when she had been swathed in happiness, when sunlight followed her steps like a slave seemed to be only yesterday.

Then Cougar Redfern had taken away the sun and given her the chilly, distant beauty of the Nightworld.

She stared at the photo that sat on her mantelpiece. It was a boy, a boy caught off-guard with his head thrown back in pure laughter and joy, green eyes leaping even in the frozen stillness of the image. A shapeshifter, with tousled blond hair and tan skin, a creature of desertland and daylight.

She wanted him. Jepar Jubatus was the warmth in this coldness of hers.

And he had been taken from her. She couldn't stand that, no, she wouldn't bear it. He couldn't love anyone else – couldn't he see how she needed him so desperately it filled her every waking second? She wanted the sunlight that encircled him, to take it and make her own so she could be the carefree girl she once was.

"You're in pain."

She started at the voice and spun.

Bane Malefici was on her long couch, his feet on one armrest and his head on the other. She felt wracking fear at the sight of him that made her scream feverishly, "Leave me alone! Haven't you done enough?"

"You're always angry when you're afraid," he murmured thoughtfully. "You're terrified by me."

She threw the first thing that came to hand at him. A small cry escaped as she realised it was her photograph, her precious photograph. He caught it in one hand without even bothering to sit up.

"Temper, temper."

"Leave me alone!" she shouted, picking up a clock and throwing that at him too. It missed and hit the wall.

"Alone?" His voice softened, like a gauzy veil laid over diamond. "I don't think you really want to be alone, Ruby Luthman. I'm sure you've tired of it by now."

How could he see what no one else had? How could he know that she felt that she had become invisible, that however loudly she beat against the bars of this immortal prison of a body, no one saw or heard her?

She could break iron bars. She couldn't make friends.

"Believe it or not," he purred with ephemeral softness, "I'm here to help."

"Help? I remember the last time you *helped*."

She had been nearly changed, and so full of wonder at the world. And then Bane Malefici had come to her door and looked at her with cool, unfathomable eyes.

"Hello," he had said, his azure eyes old beyond his years, infinite and primal. "So you're the illegal vampire my brother's been making. Well, your ticket to immortality just got torn up, sweetheart."

She had tried to slam the door in his face and he had caught it, pushed it open so hard she was thrown off her feet and sauntered in.

"I've told my family *all* about you...they're perfectly prepared to kill you now." The boy had glanced about him. "Nice place. Unless you want it razed to the ground, I'd recommend you listen very closely."

She had looked at his cold, striking face and seen not one shred of compassion.

"Now," he had said, "What am I to do with you? I could kill you I suppose, but you're so full of potential."

She had quivered, under that bright pitiless smile. "Please..."

"I've heard a good many of those in my time, believe me," he said calmly. She hadn't realised the wordplay; it hadn't struck her until long after that Blue had a sense of humour, strange and glazed though it was. "How would you like to strike a deal with the devil?"

What choice had she had?

He gave her immortal life and she gave him her loyalty whenever he called upon it, before all others. Couagr Redfern had run away believing her dead, the Redferns had supposed Blue made her a ghoul and she, she had been forced to live a shadowed half-life in that guise, until she finally escaped.

And the devil had come to collect. Time had added only beauty and ice to his boundless eyes.

"W-what do you want?"

"I've come to collect on our little deal, but of course, you knew that." He shrugged. "I let you live for a reason and this is it. I want you to help me with something. And I'm prepared to offer you something else."

"Why?" she whispered, her crimson eyes soft and glimmering as a glass of wine turned in light.

"Z," he answered and laughed. "I can recite letters of the alphabet too. Why? To make sure you deliver, my dear. And what I'm prepared to offer you, well, I think it'll interest you."

He glanced at the photograph in his hand. "Jepar Jubatus," he said. "You want him, don't you. In fact...you crave him. But there's that matter of his soulmate. A dragon, isn't she? So you can't kill her."

"H-how do you kn-know all this?" she said, fascinated.

"I have this lump of tissue in my skull called a brain, and occasionally I put it use," he drawled. "What I'm offering you is Jepar Jubatus. I'm prepared to make you a hex that will draw him to you. He'll be yours, my dear, and all I want in return is one little thing..."

She stared at him, lips half-parted, her voice filled with wonder. She was suddenly radiant, summer bloomed in her face. "You can do that? But you don't have magick..."

He threw the frame in the air casually and stared at it, his eyes leaping with incandescent silver lights.

It exploded in a flare of black fire. Ruby screamed in anguish as a fine grey dust settled around the room.

"Wrong," he murmured. "I acquired dragon magick quite a while ago. It's been a most useful boon."

"My picture..." she moaned, on her knees, hands sifting through the dust.

"Why have an icon when you can have the real thing?" that soft, deadly voice hissed. She looked up to see his eyes, impossibly blue and strikingly chill, watching her idly. "What do you say, Ruby Luthman?"

She looked at him. Alluring, stunning as the first storm of winter, and filled with the same uncaring destruction. But holding out to her something so exceptional, so beautiful, she had to have it. She had to.

Her voice was a scant whisper. "Yes. Yes."

"Good." He stood up suddenly, fluid as a jungle beast cut in blue and white. "We go now. I'll enlighten you on the way..."

She didn't dare ask where they were going.

Because if she followed in his path, she was going into the night.

* * * *

A clatter made Jal blink, and she was back in the house, staring at the same face and feeling her mouth hanging open in sheer shock. The saltshaker had fallen onto the table and spilled onto the cloth.

She could see the waves crashing in his indigo eyes. And just looking at his astonished expression, she knew that the rhythm of their hearts beat as one. Breath for breath and pulse for pulse.

She was gasping hard, trying to wrap her mind around this thing, this reshaping of her very essence. She had felt him, part of her *soul*, part of her that felt as if he belonged, and yet she knew nothing about him.

But she had felt that memory rise, that other memory that she denied even herself. Because it was so terrible, so shameful...because it meant that it was all her fault. She couldn't let him see that.

"Oh, you are *kidding* me," a disgusted voice said. Jal could feel the panic rising in her, like stampeding horses that she could feel shaking the ground but not yet see. It shook her.

"Please pass the salt?" Cougar Redfern was saying, appalled. She concentrated hard and could see his dazzling face. "What kind of way is that to meet your fated other half?"

"A most savoury way, I'd say," put in Zara coyly.

"It'd certainly season your life," the lamia boy drawled, his sleepy gold eyes beginning to dance with wicked humour. "Hey Cern, does this mean you're going to be throwing her over your left shoulder..."

"Leave it, Cougar," Chatoya said gently. Her mossy eyes were fixed on Jal's white face, filled with compassion. Jal could barely hear her words for the deafening crash of her heartbeat "This isn't a laughing matter."

The black-haired boy looked from Jal to Cern, tapping a fork on the table impatiently. "They don't seem to be having much fun, do they?"

Jal could feel the stare of Zara's fiancé resting on her thoughtfully, that cool regard shaking her even more. It was something about his face, the half-formed recognition on it.

The panic routed Jal. She couldn't stay, couldn't sit and pretend it was all right, that she wasn't changed...

She had only ever had one escape for the events in her life that had threatened her safety.

She ran.

* * * *

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