hank you to everyone who reviewed last time round :-) It was hugely appreciated!
Thanks: Cynical Leaf, Persephone, Myst, Starwisher, Night Goddess, Kitty Katt, Me, Dark Angel, Jen, and the wonderful Jezebel.
The lyrics come from Dido's 'Don't Slide'.
Hope y'enjoy!
Remember Part Seven
You brought this on yourself and it's high time you left it there.
He was bleeding. For a moment, Tam had a horrible recollection of that day when she had walked into Rob's house and found him covered in blood. She had never let on how absolutely terrified she had been; how her hands had shaken while she dialled an ambulance, and then his parents, and then went back up to press compresses onto his wrists, and to try to bring him round.
Then it was gone, and it was Aspen she was staring at.
"I should shoot you too," she heard Ellie say.
"Why don't you bugger off, you repulsive bitch," Tam snapped, losing all semblance of calm she had. "You just shot my soulmate!"
"She was talking to me, actually," Blue Malefici said from somewhere nearby. There was a curious flat sound, and a thud.
"What did you do?" Tam said absently.
"Cooked a light salmon soufflé. What do you think? I removed the problem." Blue's feet appeared in her view. Bare, and covered in green marks and mud. He looked, she thought, as though he should have been running through a jungle with the wind in his hair and the roots clutching uselessly at his feet. A thing of controlled power and poise, almost elemental.
It didn't make her hate him any less. She wanted to punch him right in that perfectly malicious smile.
"You let him get shot!" she said furiously. God, god, he wouldn't stop bleeding.
"I doubted if he'd really die for you," Blue explained as if it was perfectly justified. "Patently he would."
"No, really?" she hissed. Stop the bleeding...pressure, pressure. She looked at Blue. "Take that T-shirt off."
His eyes widened in mock astonishment. "I only strip to music."
"I need something to stop the bleeding. Take it off. Now."
"Why don't you take that dress off instead?" he said with sepulchral innocence. "You can't save him with first aid, my dear. However much the pair of you have been practising it lately."
"What am I supposed to do?" she shouted at him. "You could at least call an ambulance!"
"No chance." His voice had chilled like a dying star. "Anyway, there's a witch on her way."
She was caught off-guard. "What?"
Slow and patronizing tones, and the deliberate upwards curl of his mouth. "There is a witch on her way. I can say it in twelve other languages if it would make more sense."
Please, she begged Aspen, stay here. She could still feel his mind, that rapid, manic whirlpool, but it was shrinking in on itself, waning...
"Yes." He did something that surprised her then; knelt down, and put a hand over the wound. Tam caught her breath as what looked like black, oily fire covered his hand. "I can keep him alive until she gets here."
"Why would you help?" she asked him, so, so confused by this strange and cruel boy.
Blue glanced at her briefly. For a second, she saw something swirling in his eyes, something awful and monstrous which made the metallic taste of blood choke her suddenly-
Before Tam had even realised, she had screamed and covered her eyes. The dazzling, burning blue colour was burned into her mind like a sunspot.
"I'm just bursting with charitable instincts," he purred, and a savannah wind filled her nose. There was something unearthly about him that made Tam's flesh creep until she thought it would slough free from her bones. "Now...while we're here, tell me about these vampire hunters of yours."
"No." Whatever they did, none of them deserved to be given into Blue's hands.
"It wasn't a request."
"I don't care," said Tam flatly, memories flashing through her head. "I-"
His smile was sudden and daggered. "Maybe you should ask Aspen to teach you to shield your mind. That was most instructive."
Agape, she stared at his cold, pale face. Her own thoughts had betrayed her. "What...will you do?"
"Oh, now that would be telling," he whispered. His words were sharp as glints of light on frost. "But let's just say...people always underestimate how much damage you can do with a lighter and some wire."
He was serious. Perfectly, deadly serious. She averted her eyes, looking at the body of her soulmate. That was better than what she saw in Blue, and it was only the sound of frantic footsteps that rescued her.
X - X - X - X - X
Rob was drowning in an ocean of fire. It danced and hissed around him, and cindering lava melded his feet to it, so he couldn't do anything but stand and hurt.
And god, it hurt.
He kept thinking he could hear a voice that was telling him to stop fighting, to just relax and stop resisting.
He couldn't remember how he had got here. There had been...a party. And windows shattering. And a pouting black mouth. Features seemed to grow outwards from the mouth, flowing into a blunt, flat nose, and round swelling cheekbones. A face like a snake's, curving and predatory. And-teeth. In his neck.
A vampire had bitten him.
Would you stop fighting? an exasperated voice spat at him. God, I hate the mental links this makes. You shouldn't be able to fight me!
Yeah, he thought to himself, but Tam always said I was stubborn and stupid, and that I liked banging my head against a brick wall until I wore a hole in it.
The fires were starting to shiver around him, and other ghostly shapes were laid over them, He rubbed his eyes, and blinked several times. The shape...of Ellie's study. And the horrible, nettle-like pain of teeth in his neck, only magnified, and ringed by the warmth of her mouth.
Oh god, it was like having a huge leech attached to him.
He could move his arms again. She had one in an armlock, but he pushed at her head frantically.
It struck him that he was fighting for his virtue.
He could sense her in some vague, eerie way. With every mouthful of his life she swallowed, the feeling grew stronger until he thought he had two hearts, one beating the slowing, comatose rhythm of himself, the other the strong drum of her pulse.
The gunshot rattled twice in his ears, one seeming to echo the other.
And then the voice came, curt and cold. Telerana. ana...ana...ana...
She, Rob realised, was Telerana. That was her real name, not Therese. She lifted her head from his neck - oh, thank god - and he slumped limply, trying to cope with the unnerving sensation of being two people.
Bane? ane...ane...ane... Her voice was fainter now that they weren't physically connected. But she was...influencing him, making him stand still. What is it? is it, is it...
Got to do something, Rob thought sleepily. Really, he didn't mind the slow, balmy mist that trickled into his thoughts. He felt strangely reckless, as though nothing really mattered at the moment.
Aspen's been shot, ot...ot...ot... And then came an image that pounded some of the stupid fogginess from Rob's mind altogether.
Tam. With blood on her, and Rob didn't know whether it was hers or Aspen's. Kneeling on the ground, with blood on her.
Who did that? he shouted, in a shockingly accurate imitation of a foghorn.
Ouch! Tel-Therese pushed him away to clap hands to her ears.
He recognised the dark voice then as Blue's. Your friend Eleanor Saxoine did. Tiny hints of malevolence. I don't appreciate her shooting Aspen. It's inconvenient.
The drowsy feeling swept back over him as Therese wrapped a hand around his arm. Should shake her off, he thought. Should fight.
No...you don't want to, her voice said, soft as silk. You don't want to fight me.
I think I do, Rob thought, but all his defiance was seeping away. I think...I don't know what I think.
Entertaining though this is, do you think you could possibly get yourself out here? Blue demanded. We need to discuss how this is going to affect the future.
The world was a grey blur, and before Rob's eyes, it cleared into strange and wrong shapes. Someone lying on the ground, and a current running through him like voltage, and in the midst of all this wrongness, the heavy smell of blood.
It made him hungry. Really, achingly starving-
How are you doing that? Therese asked, her fascination intruding on the strange feeling. Malefici, he was seeing through your eyes.
Telerana, I believe that your unhappy meal has got some witchblood in him. Think you could take it out? He's a little too perceptive and quite frankly, irritating.
I'm not killing him! Therese protested. Rob squinted at her through his blurry vision. She was licking his blood from her fingers like it was ice-cream. If I leave him alive, I can taste him again.
Get yourself out here, Blue ordered. If you stay there, you're just going to play with that human.
No. Therese said defiantly. Rob was suddenly afraid...or was it her who was afraid?
Pain smashed over Rob like a tidal wave, knocking him to the floor and leaving him breathless. It cleared the vagueness from his head. For the first time since Therese had looked at him, he felt like himself again.
A very angry, vengeful self.
He staggered up, rubbing at his itching neck, and saw Therese curled into a tiny ball, moaning...Blue had done something. He didn't like Therese much, or even at all right now, but that had just been...wrong.
You should leave her, a voice said. She bit you. She deserves the pain.
No one deserved that, a rather more shaken than stirred voice said.
Get out here, Blue drawled. It rang in Rob's head, echoing the pain, full of absolute confidence and authority. Vermin, if she can't walk, drag her. Enough of my time has been wasted tonight.
X - X - X - X - X
The witch - and Tam was surprised to see it was Chatoya Irkil - was flushed from running, and flung down a bag to the ground. Bandages spilled out. "You said he was shot," she said to Blue. Tam couldn't help but notice the loathing in the witch's eyes as she glanced at the lamia. "What kind of bullets?"
"They weren't at all kind, witch of mine," Blue said coolly. "More of the lethal and metallic nature."
Witch of mine? Were they...together? Tam couldn't see it. Chatoya was...weird. And Blue was weird, but in an acceptable sort of way. The kind of way that said accept me, or pay.
"You-" The witch blinked slowly, her serene face astonished. "Tam? Tam Slone? Why are you here?"
Why's Blue calling you? Tam wanted to say. Chatoya obviously didn't like him, and he was looking at her in an avid, peculiar way. She felt like she should be searching for cover right about now.
"I was here when he got shot. He's...a friend."
A pause, then the girl let out her breath and with quick, efficient hands, pulled her black hair back into a ponytail that trailed down to the middle of her back. "All right, let me have a look."
Tam could only stare with awe as an aura of crisp green fire rippled around Chatoya, then expanded over the wound. The blood stopped, and as Chatoya made flicking gestures with her fingers, evaporated into a smoky mist that swirled up into the sky.
"Tam!" She turned at the voice, and saw a pale Rob, half-dragging Therese with him, for reasons she couldn't quite fathom. "Are you all right? Toya...what are you doing here?"
"Hiya Rob," the witch said quietly. "Right. Do you know what he's been shot with? There's something blocking me here...I've never felt anything like it before. And what are you planning on doing with him? He's going to have a nice scar from this, and it'll take at least a week for him to recover fully."
"We're taking him to my house," Tam said.
It was the equivalent of the Pope revealing his former life as an exotic dancer.
"We bloody well are not," Rob snapped.
They locked stares.
"Yes," Tam said through gritted teeth, "We are."
Rob snorted. He dropped Therese, and she lay on the ground, whimpering quietly. "What are you planning to say? Hi Mom, I know that he looks like an audition for the Godfather, but really, they only shot him because he's humanly challenged."
"I'm not going to tell them," she retorted. She had it all perfectly worked out...there was no way she was letting him out of her sight now. "I'm going to hide him in my room."
"Tam?" Rob waved a in front of her eyes. "Hello, is anyone home? Can we look at the practicalities of this situation? I mean...putting Aspen Martin in your bedroom?"
"What are you implying, Rob?" she said levelly. I know, but I'm going to make you say it.
He squirmed. "Look...the guy's got a reputation."
"Rob, he's been shot. If he has the energy to get up and ravish me in the middle of the night, I'll be pleasantly surprised." You've got teeth marks on your neck, she noted silently. Interesting...
"Pleasantly?" Rob's eyebrows shot up into orbit. "Where are you going to fit him so your parents won't see? Unless your wardrobe is a gateway to Narnia, nowhere! Be realistic."
"I am." Her eyes flashed dangerously. "Chatoya...can you put a spell on him so they won't see him?"
The witch paused in her healing. "Do you know Aspen is a vampire?"
"He bit me. That kind of gave the game away. And incidentally, if I hadn't known, that would have won you no prizes at all for subtlety."
Chatoya exhaled, her face briefly distant. "All right," she muttered to herself. "I can cast a hex to make anyone who sees him feel like he should be there. They won't realise anything is out of place. I can come over every day and check on Aspen. But look, it really would be easier to put him somewhere else-"
"No."
She had promised she wouldn't let anyone hurt him. She had left him alone for one fraction of a second and this had happened. She wouldn't trust anyone else with his life, however nice or powerful they were.
She couldn't say that though.
Chatoya looked taken aback. "Okay...well, we're going to have to carry him. Teleportation is beyond me."
"One of many things," Blue put in, his eyes the deep, smooth blue of a shark's skin.
The witch glared at him. Tam was grudgingly impressed; she couldn't have met Blue's eyes. Not knowing what she did.
But Chatoya pointed a finger at him, and in a voice that shook with anger, told him, "Either help, shut up, or get out. I am not in the mood!"
His voice became low and suggestive, almost purring, yet the air hardened into opaque marble. "You never are in the mood, witch of mine. Why don't you cast your mind back to just why you owe me?"
"Why don't you cast your mind back a little further? To my brother. And my parents. And my friend."
"Ah, the good old days," Blue sighed. Pleasure in his voice was a tiger rolling in the sun. "I miss them so."
Tam didn't have a clue what was going on, or what either of them was talking about, but she had the feeling that this argument was like a minefield. One wrong step and they'd all be sushi.
"You do try so hard not to be afraid," Blue murmured. "I'm quite impressed. So...let me help you out. Ms. Saxoine used oak resin in that gun, but it was melted down then mixed with diamond dust. It's a little known fact that diamonds hurt us, because it's a rare day when one encounters a maniac armed with a diamond knife or diamond bullets. That's what's blocking your pathetic little powers. You might want to try one of those highly illegal purifying spells. Or alternatively, an industrial vacuum."
"How do you know that?" the witch said sharply.
"Diamond reeks." A little smile, as if he found them terribly amusing, like a kindle of kittens.
"How do we know you're telling the truth?" Tam said sharply. Where had Ellie's gun gone? For the first time, she looked around - her eyes widened as she saw Ellie, heaped on the ground, a massive bruise sprawled across her skin like a blackberry stain. The firearm nowhere in sight.
"You don't, of course. Oh..." He gestured casually, and there was a strange ripping sound. Tam suddenly felt as if she'd put her forearm on a hot iron, and her arm jolted up reflexively.
"What was that?" she said angrily. Then she saw the black spiral burnt onto the hollow of her elbow.
His eyes stabbed into her. "Just in case you think about mentioning our conversation to anyone."
With that last cryptic sentence, he disappeared.
Literally disappeared. Where had he gone so quickly? One moment there, and next...empty space.
"I have got to start mining my house," she heard Chatoya mutter under her breath. "It wouldn't hurt him, but at least I'd know he was there."
Tam prodded the mark. It felt just like the rest of her skin, and it was hardly noticeable against the dark tone anyway. "What is it?" she wondered aloud. "It looks like a tattoo."
Chatoya glanced over. "I've never seen it. It's not a Nightworld mark. Okay...that's done it. Is your car here? Please don't tell me you walked."
"I drove," Rob said cheerfully. "I passed last week. Tam - are you sure?"
She met his eyes, and knew he could read the determination there. "Positive. What about those two?" She gestured to Therese and Ellie. Both, as far as she was concerned, could stay there.
Rob grinned. "Why don't we leave them there and see who wakes up first? Survival of the fittest."
Not to be speciest, Tam thought, but I hope Therese wins.
X - X - X - X - X
You watch as they leave, your beloved and their escort. Such fools, wrapped up in their own problems. Not even noticing the figure watching, always watching and waiting.
So close, that time. Almost close enough to touch.
But the shot had ruined everything. Another moment and it would have been right, it would have been perfect...
You blink, and for a moment, you see her. Anastacia, as she was the last time you met. The last time you stole her, and watched her betrothed's pain burn scarlet trails across his soul. So sweet, that victory.
And then you see her as she was finally, with the noose tight about her neck and her dress still because there was no wind that day, only a light damp rain that dripped down her swinging form.
You lost her then.
Lost her to her own guilt, her own folly.
But this time...oh, this time, you will only win.
X - X - X - X - X
Tam opened the door cautiously. Silence and dimness, only the loud tick of the hallway clock. Good.
She held it open as Chatoya and Rob shuffled in, carrying an extremely unconscious Aspen. Along the hall, stealthily creeping, feeling the relief sinking into her stomach. And-
"Tam, is that you?" A light under the living room door, she realised. Damn, damn, damn.
I can't let her see me like this! she thought, looking down at her torn, and blood-covered dress.
Her mother was intensely wonderful. Unfortunately, she was also psychotically protective when it came to her children. Tam gave Rob a desperate look, knowing he would understand.
Tam's mother's first reaction to Rob had been to sit her daughter down and teach her the facts of life, how men were only out for one thing and how you must never, never let them have it.
All right, Mom, Tam had said. Can I go and play in the sandpit now?
She turned her most hopelessly pleading, damsel in distress look on Rob. Since the day she had practiced judo on him ('It'll make men respect you,' her mother had said.), he had never been fooled by it.
He shook his head.
She turned her do-it-or-I'll-kick-your-ass look on him.
"I'm going, I'm going," Rob muttered under his breath, gesturing with his head that Tam should come and get hold of Aspen. They switched and Tam and Chatoya began a hurried, desperate shuffle up the stairs.
"It's us, Mrs Slone," she heard Rob shout as he disappeared into the living room. Tam fervently hoped her mother didn't demand to check her for signs of male ravagement.
"What are those on your neck?" came the sonic scream.
"Oh my god, the fang marks," Tam hissed. Her eyes met Chatoya's. "He got bitten..."
They could hear Rob, slipping into his boy-next-door charm with bashful ease. "Aw, gee, Mrs Slone, there was fondue, and someone got me with a fork."
Aw? Gee? Had they stepped into the Waltons?
Tiptoeing up the stairs, Tam waited to hear if her mother would swallow such a blatantly obvious lie.
"Fondue?" her mother said sharply. "Is that what you call it now?"
Along the corridor - and god, Aspen weighed a lot for someone so disturbingly scrawny - past Billy's room, past Celia's room, kick open the door and kick shut the raging panic, and drop him on her bed.
"That was close," Chatoya muttered. "I'll start setting the spells up...hang on!" she said, alarmed as Tam turned to go and assure her mother she was in good health.
There was a blinding light, like a camera flash, and the smell of static. When Tam looked down, her dress was clean, and her hair back in its immaculate styling.
"Well," her mother said when Tam came down. "Do you want to tell me how Rob got those marks on his neck?"
Rob was making strange gestures behind her mother's back that suggested horrible skiing accident rather than fondue.
"They had fondue," Tam explained. "It just got completely out of control."
Her mother gave her the look that said she didn't believe Tam one bit. "Hmm." Then her eyes widened.
Oh god, what have I forgotten? Dress still on, make-up intact, hair styled perfectly, no signs of mud or-
"Where are your shoes?" her mother shrieked furiously. "What have you been doing?"
Oh no...she had forgotten to go back and get them. Tam scuffed her feet and wondered if there was any possible way she could explain this that didn't sound highly suspect.
"I was giving her a...uh...foot massage," Rob leapt in bravely, straight into the line of fire. "I have a..uh...fetish."
No, no, bad phrasing. "What he means, Mom," she said hastily, "is that it's a hobby. Rob wants to be a chiropractor, and Ben didn't believe him, so he was proving his point."
"And if he wanted to be a gynaecologist would you let him prove his point?" her mother snapped irately. "If you think I believe that, young lady, you're in for a surprise. Now tell me the truth? Who was he?"
"He wasn't!" Tam protested. "Look, Mom, you don't have to believe me, but that doesn't make what I'm saying any less true!"
It was an argument her mother couldn't think of a reply to. Finally, she glared. "If I find you're lying..."
It was half an hour later before Rob escaped, with a hasty, "No, I'll steer clear of the fondue next time," smuggling an exhausted Chatoya out with him, and an hour before Tam did, having reassured her mother that there had been no drinking, no drugs, no smoking and no rampant sex.
It was with relief that she slept.
Lie here and rest your head and dream of something else instead.
X - X - X - X - X
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