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!
