Thank you so much to you angels who reviewed last time round – I loved
hearing what you thought! Thanks you to: Dead Flower (Flick is just a one time
character for this story, but she will appear in others), Me (I hear and humbly
obey!), Myst (I'm a cliffhanger addict. Sad but true. Okay, I'll take a look at
that chapter and see how I can revise it.) and Persephone (Thanks :-) That was
a pretty busy chapter! You'll see about Toya!)
I would love to hear what you
think – all your thoughts, criticisms, opinions would be welcomed with open
arms, heart and mind. Please tell me!
Hugs n' honey,
Ki
Nightfire Part Thirteen
Ria Lutinne slipped across the
careless roads of Ryars Valley. She walked a lot lately. She walked on the
roads and through the woods and around the bewitching blue-grey deep of the
lake. Often she thought how easy it would be to walk into those sweetly icy
deeps and wait for the water to take her.
Today, the ghost roads were
calling her.
They weren't even real roads,
just half-trodden ways of wolves, arrowing into the reckless wild. She loved
it, and she feared it. Loved it for its untameable splendour, feared it for the
dark secrets lying in the depths.
"These are dangerous parts," a
rough voice said mildly. "Ain't a good idea to be walkin' 'em, not with the
hunter's moon this near."
She turned, swift and startled
as a fawn, her tumble of golden-red hair swinging in her eyes. She pushed it
back, blinking. Oh. It was just Iry. Ria relaxed, feeling the fear ebb away
gently. "I don't mind."
The werewolf snorted. "Well, I
get the feelin' Redfern'll mind if I let ye go an' get ripped to pieces."
Ria shrugged. But his words
evoked a startlingly vivid memory...standing in the first frosts of last
winter, with Cougar's arms around her, both of them just sitting and watching
while the Circle was in the middle of a furious snowfight. Lisa had just
tripped Jepar up and telekinetically dropped a small avalanche on him, and Cern
had been laughing breathlessly while Thom rugby-tackled a surprised Ruby...and
in the middle of it all, her dark soulmate, silent and smiling at her. With his
head against hers, and his eyes aglow and the softness of their breath
mingling.
For the first time then, Ria
had welcomed winter.
"It's not your business," she
said, in the hopeless heat of summer. Go away, leave me alone. Let me hurt in
peace...let me have that at least. "And he'd get over it."
Iry rolled his eyes. "Ya-huh.
You keep thinkin' that, darlin', an' maybe you'll believe it one day, probably
the day the devil rents out some skis and offers to host the Winter Olympics."
"Did I ask for your advice?" It
should have come out harsh. But she sounded merely fragile, merely fading. How
did I lose him? she thought, her turquoise eyes wistful. I am dying like the
flowers, and soon there will be nothing of me but withered scraps.
"No. You never ask, you an'
them friends of yours who all think you're so smart." He kept pace with her
easily, that long rangy body seeming so natural against the ruthless wild. He
lifted his head, and sniffed the air, his lips briefly skinning back as if to
taste it. "Trouble's comin'."
"Let it." Ria moved deeper into
the shadows, feel the graze of nettles on her palm and not minding the pain.
"It always gets you sooner or later."
"Not like this." Something in
his voice stopped her. Iry Lupine had the face of a thirty-year old, rugged and
fierce, and he was notoriously tetchy and unpredictable. But never serious. Yet
those eyes with their flecks of grey like hurled ash stared at her solemnly. "I
felt it before. An' it's here again, only stronger."
"What?" she said, intrigued
despite herself.
His next question was sharp and unexpected. "What do you know about the
hunter's moon?"
"It's...the first moon after
harvest," Ria replied, startled. What kind of a question was that? Though he
had mentioned it earlier... "Apart from that, not much."
The werewolf looked disgusted,
sitting himself down on a sturdy tree root. "An' you a witch. Shame on you." He
looked up, to where the sun just crept through the thick lattice of trees. Ria
waited patiently. "Hunter's moon is special for wolves an' vampires. Strong. It
amplifies our powers...telepathy goes further. Talked to a wolf down under last
year. Magic works better under it too. They say it's when all the dragons turn
in their sleep an' give us a little taste of their power."
"And that's going to bring
trouble?" she asked, unable to keep the bemusement from her voice. It didn't
sound like much...but still, something deep inside her stirred and whispered
like dry leaves rustling.
He bared his teeth, briefly a
beast and not a man. "Not alone. But there's other things. Used to be something
sleepin' under this valley, some creature. Felt it in my dreams sometimes. Now,
happens you might remember that there was a big disturbance 'while back, when
your Tali fought another dragon."
She nodded. The battle had been
silent in this world, phenomenal through her psychic senses, and she possessed
only a little. She could feel the unease gathering in her stomach. Please...let
it be nothing.
"All that power...it had to go
somewhere, or kill both them dragons. An' it woke somethin' else." He saw the
query half-framed on her lips and shook his head decisively. "I don't know
what. But that's not all. There's some boy strollin' around. Blue-haired."
Blue. Yes. Jal had mentioned
him, and Ria had the vague feeling Cougar loathed him...but he had never shown
her why. No, she reflected sadly, he guarded his secrets carefully. "I know
him."
"He's got power, that one," Iry
said grimly. "An' he's rotten somehow. Blackhearted to the core. An' the worst
thing is, I don't even think he's crazy. Seemed sane enough last time he came
here. Sane as you or I, an' smarter than us put together...not to mention minus
a conscience an' a soul. Don't seem to care much. An'...you really ain't goin'
to like this."
He had been here before? Maybe
that had something to do with why Cougar hated him so... "What?"
"I smelled blood on the air.
Not just any blood either. It's that witch friend of yours, Chatoya." Ria felt
her breath catch. Toya had never been anything but kindness to her, who on
earth would hurt her? "Lot of blood too. 'S why I caught you up, figured you
could help better than me, bein' witchblooded an' all."
"Where?" she said tersely, her
own pain banished. How horribly ironic, that only when others were hurt did she
become whole again for a while. "Why didn't you say sooner?"
"Told you now, didn't I?" he
demanded brusquely, and she realised it probably just hadn't occurred to him.
The wild wolves didn't think much like people; their heads were filled with
wolf-thoughts of hunting and stalking through their beautiful land, of their
family and their children and their instincts, not with common sense. "Follow
me."
She ran after him, through the
ghost roads, praying there would be no more spirits to add to their number.
* * * *
Chatoya Irkil had a strange
dream.
There were voices in it,
disjointed floating voices that pierced the veil of darkness around her and
dragged her up towards waking, up through starry drifts that spun serenely,
away from the sweet peace circling her.
"...aren't you following
Jallakri? Are all my employees doomed to be braindead, in a very literal
sense?"
The darkness in that voice
struck a chord in her. She knew it. It sent a feeling through her sluggish, drained
body like a bee walking over her palm. Fear, awe, anticipation. Did you send me
here? she thought dumbly.
"She fell into the Pack's
snare," a desperate voice said. Chatoya didn't know it. It might have been Ria,
with all the fright in it, but the accent was wrong. "They're the local
wolves...they don't like trespassers."
"I take it they don't forgive
their trespassers, then," the silky, night-filled voice said and then sighed.
"Puns just go straight over your oversized head, don't they? So...the wolves
have her. Hmmm...they're rather likely to kill her. Ms Ares especially...I need
to find a good vantage point."
There was a choked gasp. Chatoya thought she might have felt disgust,
but she felt simply devoid. As if this was what she would have expected all
along. "You want to *watch*?"
"Do I need to explain myself to
*you*?" A faint note of menace slunk and twined around each word, but somehow,
Chatoya knew why he wanted to see. To make sure Cern's soulmate was dead. Are
you insane? Chatoya thought. Ruby, can't you see what you're getting yourself
into?
"No. I'm sorry." Distant
sounds, like footsteps.
"No you're not," the drawling
voice said. "You're afraid. But let's not get caught up in minor details."
The sounds were becoming slowly
clearer. Yes, Chatoya thought, she needed to know what was going on...Cern's
soulmate? In the Pack-snare? And Ruby in league with Blue? Surely this wasn't
reality...but if it was... She tried to force herself into reality, that place
she that seemed to far away.
"What do I do?" Ruby pleaded.
"I didn't mean to mess up..." Her voice oddly thin and forlorn. "Please..."
"I can hear your thoughts, you
know," Blue remarked casually. Chatoya felt the final haze recede and knew that
she lay dying. Dying. How odd. She was dying, and the strangest thing was, it
didn't even matter. Not compared to this. "I don't need you any longer, Ms
Luthman. Jallakri ap Ganra has just made my work much easier."
A little gasp from Ruby, like a
dying man's last breath.
"You want your reward, of
course," the boy mused slowly. Chatoya lay in darkness, unable even to open her
eyes, and felt the cunning radiating from him like light. Somehow, she
understood, in this half-living state, she could see things she wouldn't
normally. Blue's voice was softly disdainful as the raven's laugh. "Jepar
Jubatus...gods only know why, though they do say those whom the gods wish to
destroy, they first make mad. In which case, your end may be singularly nasty.
Catch."
A thud. "What is it? It looks like..."
Doubt, but more terror. "A ring."
"Bravo. Tap it three times, say
the name of the one you want, and they'll be yours." Such boredom in his voice,
but Chatoya, knew that he was very interested to see what the consequences
would be. Because for him, it would be...entertaining. Love. Desire. What were
they but ways to manipulate people?
"I think I'll forgo the 'be
careful what you wish for speech' and skip straight to 'you have only one
wish'. I can however, assure you that your prince will not turn into a frog." A
low, amused laugh. "Do have fun."
"That's it?" Disbelief...and a
kind of sceptical joy. It's a charm, Chatoya decided. For...making someone fall
in love with you, or at least, think they are. But who? Who would Ruby wan—oh
no. She wouldn't be so stupid. Surely she wouldn't. She...would. Goddess, I've
seen how much she wants Jepar. She'd run to the ends of the earth...she'd sell
her soul...she'd watch someone else's soulmate *die*. "I can go?"
"Yes." ~ For now, ~ Chatoya
heard him say in a soft mental whisper.
~ Run! ~ she screamed silently
at Ruby. ~ Throw away whatever he's given you, it's tainted, it's corrupted,
it's *filthy*, can't you *see* that? ~ But Ruby was moving away with light,
joyful steps.
Then something happened that
shocked her.
~ Are you all right there,
Chatoya Irkil? ~ That sinful voice curled around her. ~ You're amazingly
stubborn...and so quiet there, I almost didn't notice you. Go on...warn her.
She won't hear you. She only hears what she wants to. ~
~ Why? ~ she flung at him. ~
Why are you giving her what she wants? ~
~ You know, ~ he murmured. She
blinked, and she was seeing the world through his eyes. Staring at her own
body, hidden in foliage, laying where she had fallen, black hair tangled, blood
dark around her. Ruby wouldn't have noticed...but Blue had.
Yes. She knew. He liked to
play.
~ You know rather too much now,
~ he said mildly. ~ The problem is...I still can't kill you. If you die, I lose
my extremely tenuous link to all those handy dragon powers. It's your
witchpowers that keep them in me, you know. Haven't you wondered why you've
never been quite so powerful as before? Not to mention it might well kill me as
well. ~
Control, she had assumed. That
was why she had never been able to cast spells quite so easily as before. She
wouldn't let herself unleash her powers. But...he was telling the truth.
~ So what do I do with you? ~
He was stalking round in a slow circle. She saw through his eyes, heard through
his ears. ~ Your friends are coming to help you. And if they heal you...well,
in true heroic style, you'll try to thwart my evil intents and so on and so
forth. But...you're quite helpless now, aren't you? ~
She didn't understand what she
meant until she felt his presence inside her mind, like a cool dark wind. For a
moment, a shocking moment, she felt everything he felt—
~ Ah. ~ He was...suddenly
enlightenment dawned. He wanted her witch powers. To lay a...sleeping spell.
And a forgetting spell...no, she wouldn't let him! Chatoya fought him, but it
was useless as trying to trap smoke.
But what if she played him at his own game?
Swift as lightning, she reached
deep into his mind, pushing past his thoughts, his knowledge heedlessly to the
dragonfire, dark and terrible. And before he was even aware, she put one simple
trigger in her mind, one trigger that would bring back everything. It was easy;
the trigger was important in his thoughts—
~ You little minx! ~ his
laughing mocking voice said, and power slammed her with a hammerstrike impact.
But as she was dragged into icy oblivion, but before her mind winked out into
nothingness, Chatoya thought silently, smugly...
When I see the hunter's moon, I
will remember.
* * * *
It was a snarling face above
her, a face with empty eyes and glistening teeth. Jal gasped and shrank back,
then cried out as pain lanced through her side. She looked down, and saw blood.
So much blood, glowing that deep living red...
She stared at it, felt herself
falling into the gleams on it, into the deep pulse and she was drowning in
rivers, in lakes, in oceans of other's lives, the only light the ethereal glow
of the hunter's moon above her...
Someone hit her.
Jal was thrown from the vision,
all her knowledge slipping away like slippery fish. What was it? she thought
desperately. I needed to know, it was *important* somehow...
She was thrown to the floor.
They had dragged her from the pit, with her side aching and bloody. Her chin
cracked on the ground, and there was dirt on her face and dank in her mouth.
"Trespasser!" snarled a high
voice. "You are not Pack!"
It was as if she could hear
Cougar Redfern in her head again, with his sardonic eyes glowing and the start
of that tilted, wicked smile, saying, well *duh*.
"Leave me alone," Jal said, trying
to get up. She almost screamed as a foot slammed down onto the small of her
back and she hit the ground helplessly. What would they do to her?
There were sounds all around,
nasty snuffling sounds. "You are on our land."
"I didn't mean to be," she
said, keeping her voice steady. They are the same as me, she thought
stubbornly. I don't have to be afraid. They're kin. Surely they won't hurt
me...and then she thought of the missing finger on her hand, and the icy-cold
stare of the wolf who had bitten her, and knew that she was nothing to them.
"We punish trespassers,"
another voice said, and growled. "You look tasty."
"Leave me alone!" Jal said, and
rolled sideways, out from the weight of whoever had a foot on her back. She
leapt to her feet before they could throw her down again. "It was an
*accident*."
Claws sliced through the air
and agony streaked across her face. She did scream then, but with anger, with
sheer fury that they *dared* to do this to her...she struck out blindly and
felt her fist connect.
"Bitch!" yelped a voice, and
she stood still long enough to see a circle of slinky, strong bodies ringing
her, to see glitteringly green eyes that leapt with unholy light and the
stretched, inhuman faces.
"Leave me alone," she said
firmly, though her heart trembled. "Or I'll hurt you."
"Like you could," someone
laughed. It was a boy, with a sullen mouth and a shaved head. She could see
shiny scars on his arms, running over tattoos. "We're gonna *gut* you, lone
wolf."
"I'm not alone!" she said
angrily. She had friends. She had something that was maybe more than
friendship, she was *no longer* alone. She would *never* be alone again. Never
falling into the abyss. "And if you don't let me go, you're going to regret
it."
A girl to his left laughed,
beginning to circle like all of them were. "Yeah? Think you can beat a whole
Pack?" Her hand, heavy with thick silver rings, stretched out and slowly
clenched. "We're going to crush you. You're on Pack land...and we rule here. No
one dares come here. Your friends don't want you – where are they now?"
"No one *wants* to come
here," Jal snapped, her anger slowly building. But what if...the girl was
right, and they didn't want her? "You're here because no one wants *you*
anywhere else."
The girl's metalled hand lashed
out to slap her—
Jal caught it and *threw* the
girl over her shoulder. She weighed nothing, *nothing* and it was so, so
easy...
But as the rest of the Pack attacked, she knew they had been right. No
one wanted her...
But if she hurt them, her pain
went away. It disappeared...and Jal got angry.
* * * *
When the three of them; Cern,
Cougar and Jepar, skidded into the Pack clearing with Donna Ares and the Pack
minion close on their heels, none of them were expecting the sight that met
their eyes.
Jal was causing chaos.
There was a half-healed wound
in her side, where she must have landed on one of the stakes the Pack planted
in their pit, and mud across her side from the dank earth inside, but her eyes
blazed with pure crystalline fury, and her hands and feet moved in golden blurs
as she viciously hit and kicked anything nearby.
"What idiot let her out?"
roared Donna, nipping past the trio of Circle Strange in wolf shape to throw
herself at Jal. Felicity followed, melting into a snarling wolf with a
copper-tinged coat.
Her mouth snarling, her eyes
wild, Jal turned to see the Pack leader streaking towards her...her pupils
dropped away like bottomless wells...Donna leapt.
Jal's foot moved up and lashed
into the wolf's head with blinding speed. Donna landed hard and shifted back,
blood trickling from her jaw.
Then Jal saw Felicity.
"You bit me!" she shouted
furiously, waving her hand with the finger missing. "You bit me, you mangy..."
Her language trailed off into words which could only have come from the mind of
Cougar Redfern.
"Would you mind not corrupting
my soulmate?" hissed Cern, wondering where the safest place to hide would be.
"I know she didn't learn that from *me*."
"Uh-oh..." Jepar muttered, his
emerald eyes fixed on the silver wolf facing Jal.
"Uh-oh? As in she has odd socks
on, or as in damn, that was the nuclear missile launcher?"
Jepar glanced at Cern. He could
read the look in the shapeshifter's eyes, the one that said is now *really* the
time for humour? "Uh-oh as in that wolf's going to poun—"
Felicity Serafine sprang.
Uh-oh.
Cern had the sense to hit the
floor as the wolf flew – *flew* – back over his head with a yowling shriek and,
unfortunately for her, hit Cougar Redfern.
Cougar was not known for his
love of wolves. He was not known for his understanding and compassion. He was
not known for liking being hit in the face by heavy objects moving at high
speed.
He was, however, known for
having a very short fuse.
Twenty very hectic seconds
later, Cern got up off the ground and looked at a faintly moaning Felicity. The
rest of the Pack was scattered around, most of them bruised from Jal's rage,
some of them nursing new wounds from Cougar's brief and projectile tantrum.
Throwing logs did tend to cause damage.
Jepar landed lightly, jumping
down from the tree he had been perching in. "Talk about seeing Redfern," he
drawled mildly.
Cern turned and looked at his
soulmate with new eyes. Suddenly, she didn't seem as sweet and shy as he had
thought. "Are you okay?"
He didn't know what he was
expecting her to say. With that fierce hunting light in her, with her golden
hair mussed around her face and her snarling mouth, he was expecting a joke, or
a wry comment, or a bright smile.
He wasn't expecting her to look at him with a fresh pain in her eyes,
as though something inside her had snapped suddenly. "I'm alone," she
whispered, her face pale with blood scarlet against her skin. Her legs seemed
to give suddenly and she fell hard. Cern had moved before he even knew,
kneeling down by her fallen form.
She looked up at him again, and he thought he had never seen anyone so
lost.
"I'm alone."
It was then that the scream
severed the air.
* * * *
Thoughts? Comments? Opinions? I'd
love to hear!
