Nightfire Part Twnety

Nightfire Part Twenty

Cougar Redfern was just discussing strategy with the Pack when the urgent mental shout, amplified by the power of someone very ancient smashed into his head and nearly deafened him.

~ REDFERN! ~

~ Hell, Zara, ~ he snapped back, clutching at his pounding head. ~ I'm not deaf. ~

He felt the tiny vampire's agitation like it was his own. When had she gotten so powerful? The answer came almost at once.

~ But you are in a good deal of danger, ~ the calm voice of Darkstar cut in. Ah. That was where the power was coming from. Cougar had the feeling that guy was up near his little half-brother's league. ~ We've found out what Jallakri is. ~

~ An evil half-breed killing machine? ~ he offered silkily. ~ We know. ~

Silence. Then Zara said weakly, ~ oh no. ~ He could sense they were somewhere between Vegas and the valley, standing at a gas station with Zara pacing through the sandy dust. ~ You know how to stop her? ~

~ Yes, we're just letting her run loose because it's an interesting social experiment. ~

~ Sometimes, ~ Darkstar put in, a slight edge to his voice, ~ you sound exactly like your younger brother, who I've had the extreme displeasure of meeting. ~ Cougar could sense the power there, like an avalanche just waiting to roll. I hope this guy doesn't ever get mad at me, he thought.

~ How do you stop her? ~

~ There's a set of spells, ~ the older vampire informed him. ~ Nightfire knows them. The rest of us are clueless...but you want to stop Jallakri, find Nightfire. ~

Cougar gritted his teeth. No way. Over his dead body, and hopefully over Blue's first. ~ Thanks. ~

* * * *

Lisa couldn't answer. She didn't know how. All she knew was that she had just wrecked a perfectly good friendship. She just looked at her hands. This was why she had never said anything.

She felt tears spring to her eyes and blinked them back angrily. This was so stupid! She hadn't ever meant for him to know, because Lisa knew Cern well enough to know what he would say, how he would act. She had thought he'd laugh it off or be furious. But he was doing neither of those things.

"Hey..." His fingers tipped her face up, his touch gentle. She met his eyes reluctantly. "This is me, Lise. We've been friends a long time. I think I deserve an honest answer at least."

"But that's the point," she said wretchedly. "We're friends. That's not going to happen now."

He was searching her eyes, his olive skin pale underneath, and it felt like he was stripping her soul bare. "Gods...Lise...you really are in love with me, aren't you?"

Yes, she felt like screaming. Yes, yes, yes, and why is the world so unfair? But she jerked her head away, because it hurt to be this close and said miserably, "Yes."

His silky lips parted on a surprised breath. She couldn't look away, but it was breaking her in two to see the changes on his face. "How...how long?"

She shrugged. "Three years. Give or take." Give me peace, take my heart.

He shut his eyes, locking the violet depths away from her, and she already knew what he would say. "Lise...I can't deal with this. I don't know what to say or do, because it's not...that's not..."

She finished for him. "It's not how you feel." She smiled, even though the dull pain in her was beating away at her, killing her softly, because that was what he was expect. "I understand."

She could see pity in his eyes. That stung.

Pity, and perhaps a drop of regret. "If there wasn't Jal," he began and trailed off, shaking his head.

Well, we all need our own precious homicidal maniacs, she felt like saying, but didn't.

She had changed everything. And now this uncomfortable silence hung, like a shroud on the scarps of their friendship. She hated herself for it. She hated Jal, for existing.

"Look," she muttered, keeping her low voice strong, "it doesn't matter." Liar, liar. "You need to sleep."

"I need to find Jal," he said grimly, then bit his lip as he realised how tactless that was. Lisa struggled with the lump forming in her throat because damn him, she wouldn't cry over this. She should have learned to handle disappointment by now. When had she seen anything but it?

"You can't," she said gently. "You're healed, but you're still weak, hon. Look, even Toya and Jepar have the sense to sleep of the worst of the injuries."

"Sleep?" He sat up, and swung his feet off the bed to stand, and hissed in sheer rage as his legs gave under him and he collapsed. She could tell from his unfocused eyes and faint quivering that he was weaker than a newborn kitten. "I need your blood," he said desperately, imploring. "I have to find her..."

"You need to sleep," Lisa Ochai said. She wouldn't give way. However sweetly he looked at her, however it hurt. "Listen to me. Jal can take care of herself...whoever she is."

"No she can't," he insisted.

She reached out her mind, easy, so easy, and just as he had broken through her mental shields, punched through his and reached the part of his mind that was bleak and exhausted. In this state, he was closer to the shapeshifter side of him, the part that was simple animal reflex.

She could sense his emotions; betrayal, pain, the crimson instinct of the hunt, and even now, the knowledge he was hurt, the desire to curl up quietly and wait to live or die.

He yawned, then looked alarmed. "Don't do this," he said softly, but his mellow voice was already slurring with sleep, deepening. "Lise..."

She fixed him with a stare. "Could you help her now?" she demanded, angry with him for being so blind.

A silence, then finally he smiled ruefully, painfully. It was something he always did. When times got hard, he still smiled, because he had once told her, it was smile or cry. "No."

"Then sleep," she pressed, "sleep and heal."

"Hey Lise," he said sleepily. Then said something so softly even her fine-tuned hearing couldn't catch it. Through their mind-link, she could feel him struggling to form the words against the drowsy tide of fatigue.

"What?"

He repeated it, voice even quieter, sounding more like leaves rustling than a voice. Lisa leaned closer, until she was bare centimetres away. Again he said whatever it was. Lisa sighed. "I can't hear you," she said dryly, looking down at him. Cern's eyes were drowsy, but the starts of a weary grin tugged at his mouth.

"Just my luck, huh?" he said tiredly. "Lise..." She had the feeling he was going to ask her to stop this, to let him chase Jal when he couldn't even stand up.

He struggled up on his elbows and their lips met in a soft involuntary touch. It was enough to break the stream of mental power she was sending at him. Cern reached up and pulled her head down to his, kissing her thoroughly, all traces of drowsiness disappearing like a firestorm.

Lisa didn't resist. She couldn't have if she wanted to and gods, she certainly didn't want to. Not knowing she was with the one person who meant everything to her, who could make her heart sing like it was. The kiss lasted bare seconds, his mouth caressing hers with an odd tenderness, but it might have been eternity. When he took his mouth from hers, Lisa was startled, but his eyes, bare inches from hers were solemn.

"Sorry," he said and had to clear his throat. She didn't know what to say. Just couldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know what I was thinking." And she saw it in his expression. Regret. She knew who he was thinking of. A soulmate could never be replaced. "I shouldn't have..."

Lisa just smiled and shook her head. Blinking back tears that stung acidly, for though she couldn't hold back her inner tears, she made herself smile. Never let them see you're hurting. "When you wake up, you won't have," she answered.

"What?" But before he could say anything else, she reached out with her mind, to do what she had intended in the first place.

And carefully pushed away his memories into somewhere he couldn't get at them. He wouldn't remember any of this; just a meaningless conversation that Lisa put there.

But she would remember.

As his eyes fell shut, his face smoothed out into slumberous serenity, and Lisa was left alone. How it had always been.

I love you too much to hurt you like this, she thought, watching him. Jal's your destined. She's your One. Not me. Never me. One thoughtless moment...that was all it was.

That would have to be enough.

* * * *

Jal lost track of time in the horrible haze that followed. Sometimes it was dark, sometimes it was light, but all the time she ran uselessly through the maze of woodland and wild, wrestling with the wolf.

She was starving all the time, but she didn't dare to feed, in case the hunter rose up and swallowed her again. She could sense it all the time now, threatening to overwhelm her so, so easily. She couldn't go near other creatures...everywhere she looked, the orange taint swelled, and she would flee, fighting against the darkness trying to control her body, darkness wanting to rip and tear and purify.

Images of what she had done to her soulmate filled her, and eventually his face would change into one of thousands, screaming, begging, pleading.

All ultimately dying.

The hunter bayed for Cern's blood. She had left him alive. She not finished her task. Her purpose was to kill, not to wound or maim. The thought of blood left unspilled taunted her in wild dreams, made her wake screaming from the hard ground where she had curled up.

Her days were agony.

Her nights were other people's agony.

Every day, she was slipping away from herself, drawing closer to the abyss where she had lain sleeping so long. She knew now that for ten thousand years, the hunter had been awake. She knew she had come to Ryars Valley because Nightfire had been hunting her, fifty long years ago, and she had had to hide briefly, to keep them from destroying her.

But dragon power had corrupted the spell, and let Jal awake, pushing the hunter into the dark. Until the hunter's moon came.

It was too late now. She was becoming too weak to fight, and soon she would be gone again.

She knew the truth now. She couldn't fight it. She was a danger. A killer.

There was only one way to destroy the hunter.

Jal knew where she had to go.

* * * *

She found him easily, sitting relaxed and still on a fallen log where the woods met civilisation.

He was staring up at the sky, his face proud with the arch of his nose, made sharp with slanted cheekbones and fierce with those eyes that were impossibly blue, brighter than the summer sky above and icy with the cold of a thousand winters. His mouth was the only feature that softened his face, full and sensuous, but it was his eyes that caught the attention.

Blue Malefici. Descendant. Danger. Hope.

He couldn't possibly have heard her noiseless approach, but she jumped as he murmured, "Decided, have you?"

Jal swallowed. "Yes."

He looked at her, his face hard and yet so young. How could he know so much more than she ever would?

"And?"

Her throat had gone dry as a desert. "Please," she said. "Help me. Free me."

He nodded.

"But..." her desperate eyes met his, the soft crystal of them pleading. "One thing..."

He listened gravely, his face as unreadable, and she thought for one moment he would refuse, he would not aid her, and she added tremulously, "If you don't...I'll change my mind."

The withering stare he gave her silenced her.

"I think I can manage that," he remarked, and with that graceful prowling walk, was soon gone.

* * * *

"Oh...my neck is killing me," Jepar said with a moan. He blinked heavy eyes, sitting up from where he had simply collapsed on the floor. His tan was marred by mud, but he managed a cheerful smile.

Chatoya stretched, wincing as she felt the kinks in her own limbs from sleeping in a chair. She swung her black hair over her shoulders. "What time is it?"

"What day, actually," the darkly amused voice of Cougar said.

She blinked, looking round and found herself in Jepar's house. Ria was still asleep, curled childlike on the big couch, while Cougar was sitting, obviously watching over the three of them. Nearby, Lisa was watching them too, but there was something odd about her face. A slightly dazed, hurt look. But it was gone at once, as Lisa realised she was being watched, replaced with shutters.

"Well, what day is it?" she said grumpily, rubbing her neck. And sat bolt upright as the events of the hunter's moon came back to her. Oh god, she had stopped Blue...and Jal had...and Ruby was...

"You've been out for the count for three days," Cougar informed her. "And babe, even you don't need that much beauty sleep. Though I can't say the same for JJ."

Jepar rolled his eyes. "Thanks." He hesitated, but the shapeshifter didn't shy away from painful topics. "What's going on with Jal? And Cern?"

Cougar and Lisa exchanged meaningful looks. Then the gold-eyed vampire sighed. "We've been talking to the Pack," he said glumly. "They've been sweeping all over for Jal, or the purebloods, at least, and once or twice they caught a glimpse, but she ran before they could catch her." He let out his breath with a whoosh. "They don't think it's the hunter anymore. Donna says she managed to catch her mind for a second, and it was too scared to be that...creature. But she could sense it nearby. Waiting."

"Meaning what?"

The black-haired vampire grimaced. "Jal's got control of it now, but it's eating her alive from the inside out. It may be Jal now, but it won't be much longer...and then all hell's going to be let loose again."

"And Cern?"

"I'm here." She glanced round at the mellow voice. There was a ring of sadness to it.

Cern was in the doorway. Only a few marks left on him, scars on his arms and a finally fading bruise across his face. The mahogany hair was wavy, ruffled with prolonged sleep. "Woke up yesterday...after Lise knocked me out." He gave the made vampire a look, but she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the floor. Odd, Chatoya thought. "But I guess you were right."

Lisa shrugged.

"I'm going to find her now," he said. Hollows in his eyes, and pain in his voice.

"Don't be so bloody stupid," Jepar said flatly. "She'll tear you into pieces."

"What is it with us and soulmates?" put in Cougar gloomily. "Mine's afraid of me, yours killed you," he looked at Jepar and then the gold eyes moved to Cern. "And going on the evidence, I don't think we need to say much about yours. She said it all for us."

"In Braille, by the looks of things," Jepar said, tilting his head on one side. Cern scowled at them both.

"Very funny. I'm glad my shattered life makes you laugh," he snapped. That was when Chatoya realised just how bad it was; Cern Akafren was the most laid-back person she'd ever met, and he didn't snap.

"My brother's sense of humour was never exactly cultivated."

All of them stared as Blue Malefici strolled down the stairs and into the room. Another classy entrance, Chatoya thought coldly. Through the window no doubt. In true criminal style.

~ Through the skylight, actually, ~ Blue drawled. For a second his eyes pinned her and she saw the promise writ in them.

Looking away, Chatoya noticed everyone's posture change; Jepar reached for the nearest weapon, Lisa put down her book and shifted position so she could move if necessary. She could feel the tension in the room rocketing and knew someone was about to start a fight. Yet oddly, Cougar was staring at his brother as if he held the answer to this whole mess.

"Whereas you're the epitome of culture," she put in, feeling the dangerous suspense die a little as attention moved to her. "With all those refined massacres and all."

"Put your claws away," Blue advised. "And that goes for the rest of you too. I'm here to explain."

Lisa snorted, her voice harsh. "Is that the sound of Satan ice-skating?"

"I'm a hockey man, myself," Blue said coolly. "But yes."

"Go on then," Cern said flatly. Of all of them, he didn't have to fear Blue. After all, he'd never met him. "Explain why you're trying to kill *my* soulmate."

The lamia boy turned his endless stare on Cern, and Chatoya saw the witch boy drop his eyes. "She obviously hasn't told you the whole story."

We should start grilling new arrivals more thoroughly, Chatoya thought dazedly. There should be some sort of census. Tick here if you have any deep dark secrets. Please list all long-lost enemies you thought you had killed. If you have no soulmate, put a cross in the box, one will be along shortly.

"Jallakri," Blue said, settling himself on the bottom stairs, "created Nightfire."

"What?" a chorus of horrified voices said.

"The little fool didn't know it at the time, of course. Nightfire turned on her, and turned her into the creature she is today through a long process of spells. She served her purpose well, but times change. We no longer needed her...around fifty years ago, Nightfire tried to hunt her down. They failed, and she hid herself here, waiting to awaken."

"What went wrong?" Lisa said bluntly. They were all staring at Blue in fascinated horror.

"It wasn't the hunter that awoke. It was the girl Nightfire had locked under the spells. And unfortunately...the girl found her soulmate." He glanced at them. "Is it something in the water here? It seems to be contagious."

Stony silence was his answer. Of all of them, Chatoya could feel calm. She knew this. She watched Blue's face, and knew he wasn't telling the whole truth, or even half of it. He was telling them what they needed to know...needed to know to go along with whatever he wanted from them.

"For ten thousand years, that hunter slaughtered halfbreeds. Until she went to sleep, there were virtually none. Even Redferns were at risk. The hunter must be killed..."

"No!" Cern Akafren said fiercely, his purple eyes burning.

"And that brings me to the final part in this merry tale," Blue said coolly. "Jallakri found me this morning." His eyes were clear as he looked at them all. "She wants to say her goodbyes."

The words sunk in slowly.

Cern moved so fast Chatoya didn't even see him until she realised he was going to *hit* Blue, the bloody idiot, he was—

The power lashed out casually from Blue, and the witch boy was suddenly thrown back a step or two.

"You lying bastard," Cern shouted, raw pain in his voice. "She *wouldn't*, she wouldn't do that..."

From the corner of her eyes, Chatoya saw Lisa walk out.

Blue stood up slowly, in a movement that drew all eyes to him. Power hummed about him. "Wouldn't she? Did you think she could kill?"

Horror bursting in Cern's eyes as he realised the truth of that.

"If you want to say goodbye to her, you can find her on the plateau." Blue smiled that tiny, serpentine smile that turned the air to ice. "I'm sure you remember it...it was so nearly your grave. Believe what you want, but it doesn't alter the truth." He looked at Chatoya directly, and the uncurling dark in his face made her flinch. "I haven't forgotten my promise."

After he was gone, the atmosphere held the still silence of sheer shock. Blue always seemed to trail ruin in his wake, she thought. She felt so helpless...useless.

"Cern?" she asked, unsure what else she should say or do.

Her friend looked at her. This wasn't the boy she knew – his face had lost that odd naivety that had always been there, the sweetness. He had walked through over hot coals and been burned so terribly...she wasn't sure if he'd ever heal.

"I'll go," he said grimly. "But I won't say goodbye. I am not letting her die...there has to be another way."

And if there is, she wanted to ask, do you truly think Blue will let you find it?

But she could see the determination, the love in his face. He gave her a brief smile. "I'll find it," he said, and she realised Cern had to be reading her mind. He didn't often do that. "Jal's got me, whether she wants me or not."

What she wants? Did that matter anymore?

His eyes burned into her. "It matters."

* * * *

I would love to know what you think J