a/n: erm…. I don't own the Mediator… but Jesse is still tied up in my closet. Mwahahahaha!

La Sangre

Susannah wasted no time. She flung herself towards the window, not even paying attention to the shards of glass she had left littering the ground. As she did the Father's head rammed into the door again. Susannah was fumbling with the window.

"Uh, hurry, please?"

She gave me one last glance and jumped down into the parking lot.

The howling winds stopped as suddenly as they started. Heather had realized that Susannah was no longer in the Mission. As if sensing defeat the metal head fell with a dull thud to the ground behind me. It felt as if time had stopped.

Still breathing hard I rematerialized outside the school.

I had expected Susannah to be hightailing it home on her bike. Instead I was surprised to see her screaming hissing through the window, "Jesse, come on!"

She hopped nervously and then shouted, "Jesse!"

I was flattered but still alarmed. Heather could still be coming and while I couldn't die Susannah could.

"I thought I told you to run."

She gasped and spun around, clutching her heart. "Oh my God."

And then she did something I will never forget. She reached out and grabbed my shirt. "Oh my God, Jesse. Are you alright?"

Her heart was beating so fast that I could feel it through my shirt. Her hands shook as she grabbed at my shirt. I didn't know she cared so much. She had more or less threatened to kick me out of my home our previous two encounters.

"Of course I'm all right. Are you all right?"

"Me? I'm fine."

She glanced nervously at the darkened window.

Her voice shook. "Do you think she's… done?"

I couldn't feel the electric crackle of Heather's anger anymore. "For now."

"How do you know? How do you know she won't come bursting through that wall there and start uprooting all those trees and hurling them at us?"

I actually smiled, she was talking so fast. I felt kind of cruel about it. I mean… the poor girl had been through an ordeal. I shouldn't be laughing at her. I shook my head, trying to regain my nobility.

"She won't."

"How do you know?"

"Because she won't. She doesn't know she can. She's too new at all this, Susannah. She doesn't know yet all that she can do."

I hope…

My answer didn't exactly cool her frantic nerves. She looked alarmed that Heather might be able to hurl trees at all, even if it did take her some practice.

She pulled away and started pacing the parking lot, a crazed look in her eyes.

"We've got to do something. We've got to warn Father Dominic and Bryce. My God, we've got to warn Bryce not to come to school tomorrow. She'll kill him the minute he sets foot on campus."

"Susannah."

"I guess we could call him. It's one in the morning, but we could call him. We could tell him there's been a death threat on him or something. That might work. Or… we could leave a death threat. Yeah, that's what we could do! We could call his house and I could disguise my voice, and I could be like, 'Don't come to school tomorrow, or you'll die.' Maybe he'd listen. Maybe he'd…"

"Susannah."

"Or we could have Father Dom do it! We could have Father Dom call Bryce and tell him not to come to school, that there's been some kind of accident or something…"

"Susannah."

I stepped in front of her grabbing her arms to steady her.

"Susannah, It's all right. It's not your fault. There was nothing you could do."

Her eyes were still crazed.

"Nothing I could do? Are you kidding me? I should have kicked that girl back into her grave!"

How had she survived all these years with that mentality?

"No," I said, shaking my head. "She'd have killed you."

Her eyes were still panicked but had lost some of their fire. Uncertainty was in it's depths.

"Bull! I could have taken her. If she hadn't done that thing with that guy's head…"

Green. Her eyes were the greenest green I had ever seen.

"Susannah."

"I mean it, Jesse, I could totally have handled her if she hadn't gotten so mad. I bet if I just wait a little while until she's calmed down and go back in there, I can talk her into…"

Her eyes, green they were green, had been drifting back towards the thick adobe walls of the Mission.

"No," I said in my firmest voice, a voice I had used to use on my youngest sister Alejandra when she wanted to ride Vienta, my mare who had been way too big for the little girl. If she had fallen she could have been hurt easily.

Just like now. If Susannah went back into that school she would be killed. There was no doubt in my mind.

I wrapped one of my arms around her shoulder and began steering her away from the school.

"Come on. Let's go home."

"But what about."

I felt her muscles tense to fight. I gripped her tighter.

"No." I said in my firm voice.

Still shaking a little the girl said, "Jesse, you don't understand. This is my job. I have to."

The priest, he was a mediator too. What had Heather said his name was?

"It's Father Dominic's job, too, no? Let him take it from here. There's no reason why you have to be burdened with all the responsibility yourself."

She sighed. "Yes, there is. I'm the one who screwed up."

She had only been trying to help and now she was punishing herself? Heather had chosen what she had gotten.

"You put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger?"

She looked horrified.

"Of course not. But I'm the one who got her so mad. Father Dom didn't. I can't ask Father Dom to clean up my messes. That is totally unfair."

Unfair. My death had been unfair.

I shook my head.

"What is totally unfair, is for anyone to expect a young girl like yourself to do battle with a demon from Hell like…"

Her green eyes flared.

"She isn't a demon from hell. She's just mad. She's mad because the one guy she thought she could trust turned out to be a…."

I felt something wet trickle down my arm. I looked down at my shirt. It was covered with blood.

"Susannah."

I jerked to a stop and pulled her close to me inspecting her. Looking around I saw that she had left a trail of tiny droplets of blood. Finally I found a source.

Her wrist.

"You're bleeding."

Her eyes popped wide open.

"I am not."

Then she looked down, her eyes registering the smallish stains on the pavement below. They looked black in the moonlight. Searching herself she found the source of the flow.

"Oh," she said, watching it trickle. "What a mess. I'm sorry about your shirt."

"It's nothing."

And then without even realizing what I was doing I reached into one of my pockets and pulled out Maria's handkerchief. God, how I hated it, but it would make a decent bandage. It was painful watching anybodies life blood flowing out of them. Blood hadn't bothered me when I was alive but now….

I gently wrapped it around the lady's wrist a few times and then tied it into place.

"There, Does that hurt?"

Looking into her eyes I realized that she was watching me with fascination, hardly breathing.

"No." She cleared her throat nervously. "Thanks."

Feeling a little embarrassed, I had cured worse hurts sore feet at the top of the list, I just said, "It's nothing."

"No," she said. I suddenly noticed that glint women get in their eyes before they cry. Living with six sisters I had seen it many a time.

"I mean it." She said, "Thanks. Thanks for coming out here to help me. You shouldn't have done it. I mean, I'm glad you did. And… well, that's. That's all."

I fidgeted uncomfortably. It was strange. One moment she seems to hate me and then the next she is thanking me profusely for saving her life.

Even after one hundred and seventy years I still did not understand women.

So all I said was, "Never mind."

I stared down the empty road. At one time Carmel's hills had just been exactly that, hill. There had been no cars or neon lights. Women dressed like women. Most men were gentlemen.

"Let's go home," I added softly, wondering if this ever could truly be my home again.