He felt her slip away, and felt anguish as a part of himself was cut away and taken with her, doomed to trail hopelessly ever

Nightfire Part Twenty One

Here we are again, Chatoya thought.

Sitting, waiting, flies stuck on a cobweb. Unsure if the spider was making its way towards them, unsure if the frail web would snap, unsure of anything.

"Should we go after him?" Jepar said uneasily. He was sitting on the floor, one hand flexing nervously. "I mean...it's Blue."

Chatoya looked at him. She didn't realise how haunted her eyes were, or she might not have met that direct emerald gaze and shown him her pain. "It's Blue...but he's doing the right thing."

"Take it from me," Cougar Redfern said wearily, "My little brother never does the right thing. He does the profitable thing."

"Rent boy, is he?" Ria's soft voice cut in, making Cougar grin, however briefly. She had obviously woken and been listening quietly, but now she stretched and moved over to where Cougar was, watching him warily to see his reaction.

She settled herself next to him, though not touching, and the pair stared at each other. Chatoya almost felt embarrassed to see the emotions playing across both their faces; one striking, one ordinary, both vulnerable.

Then Ria slid closer, and settled into Cougar's arms, her turquoise eyes beginning to glow with a growing wonder as he sighed contentedly and tilted his dark head against hers.

Her face was soft and flushed with sleep, as close to prettiness as it would ever get. But Cougar was looking at her like she was Aphrodite herself. She was smiling tremulously, the kind of happiness that was deep enough to draw tears. "What have I missed?"

"Me," Cougar said with astounding arrogance.

She elbowed him in the ribs. "Apart from you...why are you all looking so serious?"

"Jal's gone to Blue," Chatoya murmured, seeing the girl's face change with regret. Why did even the mention of Blue's name wither some of that fragile pleasure? "It turns out she created Nightfire...and in return, they made her a murderer, and it also turns out they're the only ones who can unmake her."

"Unmake her *how*?" Ria said. The narrow-eyed glare was a trait she had definitely picked up from Cougar. Her red-gold hair was stark against his dark shirt.

"In the best traditions of all old religions," Jepar answered. The purring voice held no traces of laughter, nothing but bleakness. "With death."

* * * *

It was a long time since Blue Malefici had entertained doubts.

But now, one seemed to have snuck into his head as quietly as that wretched soulmate of his, and had set up home and started buying furniture. Juts one little, niggling doubt.

He didn't have a clue if this would work.

Blue didn't have a lot of trust in his forefathers. For a start, they had made Jallakri what she was. Secondly, they had let her kill them. Now that was sheer carelessness.

The little fool followed Blue dumbly. He glanced back occasionally to check that she hadn't run off to do some of her own brand of highly inelegant murder, and always found her there, with her unnaturally long hair dragging on twigs and catching up leaves, with her eyes downcast. She was hurting, he saw that, pulling herself into strips for her actions, and he was glad of it.

After all, if your target was hurting themselves, they weren't likely to be hurting you too.

He dipped into her mind briefly, because there was something odd about the way she moved. Yes, she looked subdued, but there was a poise to her that hadn't been there in the unknowing creature he had talked to earlier. A certain glint to her pale eyes, the way her glance flicked to his throat for a split second.

~ Glowing that foul, tainted orange and her teeth itched to sink into his white flesh, to see if he bled as blue as his name, to— ~

He reached around and broke her arm with no effort. She screamed.

The pain jolted her out of that dark reverie.

"What did you do that for?" she gasped, clutching her arm. The fresh naivety back in her face, for a moment making her startlingly reminiscent of someone he had once known. Another fool, she had been, but he had stopped her deluding herself.

She had probably had a name. Something human. He didn't care.

He shrugged, not stopping to aid her. "I could waste my energy controlling you or let pain control you. That was easier."

"It was crueller," she whispered.

"Only from where you're standing."

Finally. He felt the aura of power around this place, power that came from long centuries of authority and bloodshed. The Pack clearing, ringed with wolves that lay watchful and wary. Ready for the sacrifice.

* * * *

Cern Akafren had never run so fast. His mind wouldn't still, screaming at him to hurry because he knew that if he lost her then there would be nothing left of him. So much of his spirit had become wrapped around her, she held safe his secrets and his dreams.

Even after everything, he still loved her.

He flung out his mind, powers he almost never used but right now, he would have killed for Jal. *Killed*.

Some part of him recognised how dangerous that was, but it was obliterated by his anguish. Nearby, but still too far away, in the Pack clearing. His legs felt heavy and filled with bars of steel-strong pain, but still he kept on because he couldn't stop now.

To stop was to lose everything.

* * * *

Jal saw her own death in these people. And she was afraid, so afraid, but the hunter was rising in her again. She wrenched her broken arm until a whimper escaped her, tears slipping out with it, and knew that she no longer had a choice.

She couldn't risk becoming that creature again. Not even for Cern. There was too much blood between them...Blue had been right. She didn't belong here. Maybe she never had.

Donna Ares stepped in front of them, her hands on her hips, and her tangled red hair brushing her wrists. There was an air of ceremony to her, her head held proudly up. "This is the land of the moon's children."

"I seek entrance," Blue Malefici said. The words sounded formal, odd in this place that reeked of metallic sharpness and something that the hunter's instincts whispered was blood, oh, that she wanted to lap at—

She gave her arm another twist. Better herself than Blue.

"Denied," Donna answered. "You have drawn Pack blood."

"I am here to make amends." Again the words had the sense of ritual. Neither was saying what they really felt or wanted. "I bring you a gift, a death to satisfy your Pack."

Donna turned her eyes on Jal, and the sheer hate in the cool fire of her emerald eyes made Jal move closer to Blue, before she reconsidered and moved away again. "It will do. Enter, and make tribute."

She stepped aside, and the wolves snarled softly, the sound rippling around the circle like a wave.

"Honour shall be satisfied," Blue said, a slight ring of mockery to his words. "And now that's done...have you done what I asked?"

"With more grace than you asked," one of the wolves said. It was an old one, grizzled and silver, one of the few wolves still in human form. "You took your time."

"You know mortals," Blue said, shrugging. "All sentiment."

"I was one once," the wolf said dangerously. "Which is more than can be said for you."

Jal felt a tingle along her back, like the flicker of a snake's tongue, and Blue slowly, oh so slowly, turned until the full force of his stare hit the older wolf. It froze, and tried to back into the Pack.

"I don't believe in denying my nature," Blue murmured. "Why is it so right for your Pack to kill vermin, yet wrong for me to kill vermin of a different kind?"

"You kill our people," the wolf snapped, fear and anger mixed together in the faded brown of its eyes.

Blue smiled, but there was no humour to it. None at all...only the cold embedded in him that seemed to stretch back into times before even Jal had been born. "A rat is a rat is a rat."

"You're nothing but a monster!"

He tilted his head to one side, looking almost innocent then. A pause, and the silence unwound like a falling spool of thread.

"Yes," he said.

Jal felt the power lash out from him like razor claws, hitting the wolf with an accuracy and swiftness that left her gasping. The wolf crumpled into a bloody bundle, but as Jal squinted at the body, she saw something was wrong.

"You've taken his heart," a furious Donna hissed. "I ain't having you defiling the bodies of my people."

The heart, she realised, was on the other thing in the clearing that struck her. She knew it, of course, she had seen them burning in the temple so often. A pyre. Fire purifies. Fire cleanses. Fire kills.

"For a start, it's 'am not'. Grammar is a always a welcome trait in a leader." The lamia boy moved forward, soundless and lithe. "Secondly...if you don't like it, please, try and stop me, wolfling." Donna didn't move. "All bark and no bite? Smart girl. Thirdly...this ritual requires sacrifice. He was becoming inconvenient. He is now convenient again."

"He was one of my Pack!" the girl said, but more quietly.

A light laugh. "Yes, but none of you helped him. Not one of you told him to stay silent. You could all see what was going to happen...and you let it. Who's the greater monster here?"

Silence. Somehow, he had won.

He turned to Jal, his eyes cool. A flare of black fire, and the heart appeared in his hands. She stared, horrified as he crushed it between his palms until they were solely scarlet.

As he reached for her, she flinched back. A hot searing pain in her spine, and he had forced her forwards with power, daubing the blood onto her forehead, her lips, her throat, her ears, her hands, finally onto her eyelids. The smell made her reel dizzily.

"On the pyre," he said calmly.

She hesitated, and his next words were for her only. "Can you smell the blood, Jallakri? Doesn't it bring your senses to life? Wouldn't you just *kill* for it...?"

With a cry, she realised he was right, so right. She almost flew over to the wood, scrambling onto the platform set in the centre, trembling unbearably, understanding that sharp smell was gasoline, sent to guide her back to the abyss. She would go back there, alone, forever.

But now...she would remember a boy with summer in his eyes.

Suddenly, she wasn't so afraid. This was how it had to be. It was how it had to be from that moment she made a wish to an indifferent goddess, from the moment she let her desire blind her to anyone else.

Blue was speaking words aloud, harsh syllables that made her head fall back, eyes half-closing as the hunter was dragged up to the surface, splitting apart from her and soon, she knew, soon the cleansing would come, and they would be not one, but two—

"Stop!" someone shouted, and that frantic voice pulled Jal from her trance and made her almost fall.

He was here.

* * * *

Oh gods, above and beyond, she was going to do it. She really was.

The thought almost wrenched his heart clean from his body. He made himself walk over to her, crouched in the midst of that pyre, with crimson slashes across her face and clothes, wild and feral and yet still his.

He couldn't let go of her. He knew that now.

"Jal..." His voice wouldn't work. It was choked, and he didn't know why, except that all his pain seemed to have lodged in his throat, and mere words would not release it. "Please...don't."

Her lips moving, saying words that rang harsh in his world of silent agony. "I have to."

"You don't," he said desperately. "You *don't*."

She stared at him, and he could see a fine quivering had taken over her body. Then she leapt off, inhumanly lissom, and pressed her bloody lips to his.

The link opened up with a ferocity he had never experienced, one that knocked them both to their knees. Of course, he thought dazedly, blood.

But then he *saw*. He felt the hunter, pushing at him, roaring across his body, making him into something he could not bear to be. He saw all the horror, he saw the tides of others' lives being drained into this creature...and however he screamed and shouted and begged, the truth would not go away.

He understood.

She let go, and drew back, on her knees in the dust. He could hardly see her now, breathing through the cloud of death that seemed to hang around them.

Her eyes were so different from when he had first seen them. No longer terrified and innocent, they were full of tearing guilt and age he could only see in the stars that spun above.

"Where will you go?" he whispered. Maybe she would be reborn. Maybe...

She understood what he meant.

"Don't search for me," she said, her voice heavy with sorrow. "You will never find me. Maybe somewhere...maybe somewhen, you'll see me, but I don't think so."

"That won't stop me looking," he said, unable to tell her just how much she meant, now that she would be gone. "I found you before. I'll find you again."

She shook her head slowly and as if to remind them both, that flaring red streak of hair fell into her eyes. "No. I don't think there's anything left for me except the fire and the void." She touched a hand to his face, hesitant and for the first time, was his Jal, sweet and unsure. "Don't be sad. This was how it was always going to be. I always wished for too much."

"What would you wish for now?"

"If I had that moment again?" She ducked her head for a second, then her face, so afraid and so loving it broke his heart, was tipped up to him again. "I don't know. If I hadn't...if I hadn't made that choice, I would never have known you. And I think...I think I need you. I think I always will. But I think that love can't balance what I did."

"You could try," he said softly, pushing back the silk of golden hair that fell into her eyes and shadowed them from the sunlight. Knowing even as he said it that it was hopeless.

"No." She was close again now, like she had been that first time when it had been the beginning of something Cern Akafren had known would change his life from mundane to something beyond his grasp. Every moment with her was like catching hold of the tail of a comet and flying through worlds that were so far away and yet burned so bright.

Knowing that someday, that glorious, heartrending flight would end. Knowing that she would burn herself out. But gods, oh gods, holding on so tight because one moment of her searing soul would block out that long, dark fall into the abyss.

"It would happen again," she said, her voice melancholy. "I would lose myself again and one day, you wouldn't be there to bring me back. If that happened...Jallakri would be dead. And then Nightfire would have won. Don't you see? I have no choice. I had one choice and maybe I made the wrong one. Or maybe it was the right choice and this is how it's supposed to be."

She was shaking now; both of them were. "It's supposed to hurt? It's supposed to feel like someone's tearing my heart out? I can't let go of you, Jal. Not anymore."

"That's how it's meant to be for me," she said gravely. "But not for you. If you look hard, Cern Akafren, if you look beyond your soul and beyond your pain, you'll see there's peace there for you. It's always been there. You just didn't see it."

"Jal..."

A shimmer of tears, but she held them back. "I shouldn't have waited this long. When I first guessed what was happening, I should have done that then. But please don't tell me you love me or I might be tempted to stay and that can't...it can't be. You understand, don't you?"

She turned and looked at the horizon then, her face clear and full of faith. And he realised that perhaps Jallakri ap Ganra would be hurt more by staying than by dying. In the East, the hot sun burned, staving off the nightfires.

"Goodbye," she said, turning back to him. For a moment, he felt the hunter in her surge, and was afraid again. She gasped, and swayed, her eyes turning deep garnet. Then it had passed, and only Jal remained.

"Will you wait for me?" The question escaped before he could stop it, and he couldn't meet her eyes.

He felt her stand. When had she become so old? There was a sudden softness in her voice. "I will do better than that."

He couldn't watch as she stepped onto the pyre. As Blue Malefici's voice began to recite the words, he kept his head lowered, not even starting when he felt someone touch him, their arms wrapping round him as if they could hold him on the earth. It was the Pack, creeping forward to cling to him and to try and give what comfort they could.

"What are you doing," he said numbly. It wasn't a question.

"We aren't here for her," a voice said. He knew Jal's head had fallen back, that the hunter was separating from her, that the two spirits were fighting to be free of the cage of flesh that shackled them.

"The wolf lives in you," another chimed in. He could no longer see or hear. He was lost to Jal, to everything she was.

"We are here for you," a third said, little more than a ghostly howl. Blue's voice cut out, and he felt his silhouette pass by, over to the pyre where Jal waited, trembling.

A soft hiss, then heat exploded onto his skin, searing away the tears.

He screamed.

He felt Jal burning, heard her screaming in his head as her voice split into two. Fires around him, sinking into a sunset, with those two voices twining around him. One dark and dreadful, howling its rage as it died.

And one laughing. Laughing to be free at last.

* * * *

This is the last part of the story, bar an epilogue :-) I'd love to know what you've thought of this, or of the story as a whole. Thanks for reading – sorry about the huge parts, and delays. You guys have a lot of patience, you're absolute angels – thanks!