Chapter LVIII: A Grinding of Teeth
April 24, 1900. 10:40 am
The Tilbury Garrison
It took an hour for news to rise up the chain of command, travelling up and then swiftly across the Line, causing lycan transmitters to curse at every dot and dash spelling disaster. The sudden disappearance of the greatest leader of the lycan horde creating widespread panic, and among other things, the possibility of a coup d'état. Whispers said it was only a matter of time before one or more members of the Lycan Council reneged their vows, while they waited for news from the military.
It was said Raze would be leading the next incursion into the tunnels. The autonomy of the London Den swiftly reinstated once it became clear that any charges could wait until all parties were safe in hand. Two contingents had been sent to comb the tunnels for the last known location of the lycan-master. Despite their best efforts, they had found nothing. No blood. No bullet casings. No weapons. As though even now, someone was still cleaning the underworld of their presence. Determined to wipe away every trace of their mishaps.
Weylan sat in an interrogation cell at the Tilbury garrison, waiting for the next officer to tear into him for venturing into the underground without appropriate clearance. He could no longer count the number of times he'd explained what had happened. A sound. Clacking. The lycan-master had ordered him to retreat. Run, he'd signalled. Silent. Back the way we came. Take the first tunnel to the docks. Find a safe-house before the sun goes down.
He was no longer impeccable. His fine hair sticking up and out and every which way, his skin perspiring in the heat. It was true he'd never served in a red zone, he realised. True that he'd been looking to impress when he threw in with the Tilbury expedition. He'd been expecting adventure. A frightened security guard at most.
The youngest advisor to the most infamous lycan in history…and this was his legacy. Fear. Running as fast as he could with Sabine in his arms, the reflection in her eyes serving as a reminder of what he protected. His own skin making him run faster than he'd every run in his life. He'd heard shots being fired behind him. Six shots fired in succession, followed by another six shots…
…he'd wanted to turn around…but he could not. Not until the child was in a safe-house above ground. Not until he'd followed the lycan-master's instructions to the point, he'd told himself. But it was fear that drove him. Fear for his life. Enough to make him think twice on whether it was his scent or Sabine's that stank of piss.
The girl taken from his arms as soon as they reached the safe-house. Useless he was. His arms still covered in scratches, their blood mingling as though somehow her fear had seeped into his veins. He'd felt uncertain for the first time in his life, worrying over her. Picking at the strands of red on his shoulder as they marched him off to the garrison.
But she was in good hands, he told himself. They would be bleeding her…tasting her blood, searching for what knowledge they could piece together. Questionable what knowledge they could discern without a living blood relative to do the tasting…but then he was no expert, he decided.
Since then he'd been locked in a cell, his ears bleeding for whatever news he could scrape together through three walls and a corridor. Scent was the word on everyone's tongue. Voices rising and falling as they discussed what could only be seen as a new weapon, this poisonous gas that could burn away a scent-trail with its presence.
It was the same gas now seeping into the Tilbury tunnels. Forcing all who came upon it to run out of the tunnels, coughing into their hands as though Hades himself had taken residence in the underground. Word had it that Singe was working around the clock, trying to break down the components. Trying to understand what it was made from so they could fight it. A scent made of a thousand scents, he called it.
The thought distracting him to the point where he almost didn't hear the key turn in the lock of his cell. It meant another interrogation, but at least he'd have something to do with himself, he thought. The silence, the shame starting to weigh on him when he saw who held the key …the urge to impress still trying to wrestle its way to the surface.
He stumbled to his feet. "Sir."
Raze did not remove his coat. His face blending with the shadows as he swept to the desk in the centre of the cell and unrolled a piece of parchment.
As though still mindful of the one who was not there, he aligned the parchment with the desk…and then stabbed directly in its centre. "This was your last known location?"
Weylan came around to look at the map, at first unfamiliar with what he was seeing. It was all in a different scale, a different angle than the original. He wiped his hands on his breeches, feeling the need to hold back…before turning the parchment clock-wise…reading the legend, searching for the river, the different symbols along the edge. Why was he so uncertain?
The stare, the lengthy pause, spurring him to answer even though he felt unready.
"Yes, sir." His memory still fresh, the lines becoming more familiar as he studied them. "We entered at the Tilbury Riverside Station…" He following the line, pointing to each location. Trying to remember the smudges where Lucian's finger had been. "We walked north…veered south…away from the guardhouse, and then east, towards the docks."
His tone was hopeful. The tunnels had been close behind. He could have made it if they just…
Raze cut it in half. "The docks have been closed since sunrise, Weylan. All exiles restricted to their quarters." He heaved a weary breath. "And there is more," he said. "Twenty minutes ago, Gwen Saunders reported her husband missing. The harbourmaster Ewan Saunders. We have added him to the list of suspects."
Ewan Saunders.
The name sounded familiar. The vampire of Tilbury, he realised. One out of sixty-three lycan-vampire unions registered within the British Isles. One hundred and twenty six names listed on a piece of parchment…the number updated annually at the behest of the lycan-master.
Raze did not look up from the map. "Did you see the perpetrator?"
"No, sir." He had gone over every detail in his mind. "I heard twelve rounds being expended. There was a blade out of his reach, but he may have been able to reach it in time."
Raze clicked his teeth together. "Not in that state."
It was a simple fact and they both knew it. Orders or not, the lycan-master should not have been in those tunnels. Without his stubbornness, they would never have found Sabine. And yet…
Perhaps his scent was speaking for him. Raze glancing up with a steady gaze, the kind that knew how to calm even the most maddened of souls. The kind that was there for every homesick miscreant and vagabond in his first week in the barracks. "You are not at fault, Weylan."
You are wrong, he thought bitterly. Keeping his outward appearance calm as he had always been taught. Feeling a chorus of rage threatening to take over his mouth. Guilt-ridden words that had been eating him up since the moment he felt the sunlight on his face. Not even sure where to begin.
He dropped into his chair, letting his chin rest on his hands. Shaking hands. "I left him there." The words tumbled out. "For forty years I have followed him…" He could not even look Raze in the eye. "…and today, I just…"
He couldn't even say it. All he could think about was getting away from that sound. That clacking, that incessant clacking. Dreaming that he was a great warrior before the mirror, only to find in himself running from a sound. A lycan pup fleeing before the enemy had been sighted. It should have been him that stayed behind. His teeth before the enemy. Not Lucian.
"You did what was necessary," said Raze calmly. The great warrior still plotting his hunt, he stared at the map for a measure longer and then rolled it up. "Sabine is alive because you were able to run."
Weylan swallowed…and then nodded, curling into himself, breathing hard, trying to find some reason in the frustration he was feeling. He was not used to failure. Walking perfection, another lycan had called him once. Sneered it really…but that was the thing.
He'd done it.
Perfectly.
He'd finished his studies in record time. Late medieval law his first passion, something that led him to delve deep through the history books until a day came when he made more connections than his instructors would condone. A day when he came back to his quarters to find a man with discerning eyes, burning his thesis on trials and abomination in the fireplace. Six years of his life on fire. He'd been incensed…only to find out that the man…
…that immutable man was the subject of his thesis. They never spoke about what he'd written, but in time, he found himself assigned not to the lower barracks…but to the upper house. He'd studied hard. Listened hard. Politics. Economics. Languages. Granted he could not…quite…follow Latin as quickly as the lycan-master and Miss Jeanne-Antoinette spoke it; but in every other way, he had been perfect…
…and now it was ruined.
He heard the door handle turn. Raze holding it steady…and then letting it go, turning to speak from the door. The burden of the past two nights also weighing on his shoulders.
"You know, if anyone is at fault, Weylan, it is the one who should have gone with him in the first place," he said. "I do not pretend to understand everything that happened in those tunnels…but I do know where I have failed in my duties."
Failed.
He could not help himself, his doubts creeping into his mind like a cancer. Raze had never failed. Raze was stalwart. Strong. Raze would have stood his ground, he realised. He would never have run. The shame again threatening to overwhelm him.
Like a great hound nudging his pup, Raze again roused him from his despair. "You've heard of the incursion I expect?"
He nodded weakly.
Raze looked to the side. "Then you know I cannot leave here until it is over," he said.
As always, a great deal of thought seemed to precede every syllable. Only a flicker of a grief showing as the lycan explained what the infirmary had told him. The words giving Weylan some reason to pause in the midst of his own turmoil. The possibility of redemption, that he could still be of use now that he had shamed his entire race.
It was unfortunate, he was told. But the girl was not likely to recover soon…and there was need for someone to watch over her until the Lady Allegra arrived.
It was the only instruction Raze gave and then as members of their rank were wont to do, without another word, he was gone. The entire request spoken with no need to speak her name for there was only one whom they could both think on in times such as these. One that he could watch over.
Sabine.
The red strands of her hair still twined on his coat like the last leaves of autumn. His pride, his ideals suddenly paling in comparison to the horror this child had gone through.
Immediately, Weylan stood and called out to the hallway guard, requesting directions to the infirmary where she was being sheltered. The door unlocked. The way open now that Raze had spoken for him. The need to prove himself worthy once again. He would do it—he would watch over this child, and on his life…he would keep her safe.
A part of him already knowing that there was more to this child's fate than just a line of poetry. That it was more than just fear that had taken root in her conscience. Her scent in those first seconds of sunlight and safety…starting to fold over on itself. A kind of absence settling in the place of fear. No longer a child on the brink of chaos, but a void. Empty. As though she had seen something that she would never forget, her mind frozen in that single moment. Stuck. Like a clock ticking, but never passing from one second to the next.
It reminded him of Lucian of all things.
o…o…o
The Tilbury Underground
Meanwhile…
…beneath the garrison, not three hundred feet from where Weylan stood, the exiled vampire Ewan pored over a tattered piece of parchment, clutching his kerchief to his head. The bleeding hole where the old crone had stabbed him. It was her. He should have known it was her. Ferocious eyes peering out of an aged face, pretending she could not remember. He could almost pity her. But he could not forget. After all these years, the dead-eyed whisper of death that once trailed the steps of Nikolai Proshkov Andreev.
The stubs of his fingers still itching at the thought. The last time he'd seen her. 1634. Just outside of Smolensk. He'd deserted the Russian camp, taking an old horse and two of their birds for food. She'd caught him at the border. Forced him to turn around and face the wrath of Nikolai. Only to have Nikolai turn his back on him. Banishing him from his sight…the words still haunting him to this day. Do what you will with him, he had told her. Do you what you will. It had taken three nights for her to do her will. Worse than a rat nibbling at his toes.
"The way is shut," he said weakly. The map was in a sorry state. Torn, stained with blood and sewage, but it still served well enough to show their location in the Tilbury Underground. He still did not want to think about whose hands they had got it from. "We may have bought ourselves time with the scent-cover, but they are still watching every entrance."
Nikolai paced before him, clacking his blade against the walls, his rage intensified by his wound. His desire to be gone from this place causing him to lash out on the world. "Make a way."
Ewan sighed. Out of all the masks that Nikolai wore, Hrafn was his least favourite.
"There are four tunnels that I know of leading from this section of the underground." He ran the stub of his index along the map. "The docks, the pauper's district, the one he came through…" He gestured wildly to their right. "…and the one leading to the den."
Blood, that had been a shock. Nikolai railing about his lady…his promise…how he'd snatch her from the den like a raven. Posturing, he'd told himself. The knowledge that there was no way to the London den starting to lose its poignancy as they followed Grace to the blood-forsaken London den. Grace Marsden of all people. Leader of the blood-forsaken Blackmarks, smelling like she'd pissed herself three ways and then some. All of them smelling of piss in the end.
Seven hours of crawling through tunnels on the brink of collapse and at the end of it all, he'd seen light. Cracks of light through the panelling from a bygone age, the staircase about ready to break beneath their feet as they climbed it. Grace had led them up through the walls, her Little One clutched by the hand as Nikolai prodded them all on with fear and his blood-forsaken matches.
For thirty minutes, they waited in a stone room behind the fireplace while Grace went about her business, setting fires, leaving cards, and the like. Nikolai polishing his silver flask with a vengeance while the rest of them skirted his shadow: the Little One cowering in the corner, the tongue-less Blood too exhausted to do more than gape, and he…just lying there, watching his future burn to a crisp. All of them too tired to do more than march, following the monster who carried their chains.
"We make for the docks as planned." Nikolai veered towards the right, his eye twitching like a maggot crawling out of the dark. "There is time. We will outrun them."
"There is no time," he heard himself whine. "They may not be able to track our scent anymore, but they will find us within the hour."
They always did.
Lycans were hunters, he knew. Patient, they would circle the entrances, waiting until the prey came to them. One by one, they would pick them off until it was just entrails and teeth waiting for the vultures.
He could feel the itch starting again. Things had seemed so simple in the beginning. Get the supplies. Bring them to Nikolai…
…only things were a bit more complicated than that. More so when Nikolai was…
Well.
Not Nikolai.
Something he'd never told his wife about, the company he used to keep. The monster he used to follow. But they'd never understand, would they?
Two centuries since the lycans started dealing in exiles…and it was still early days when he first showed on their doorstep. The paperwork not nearly so rigid…and the harbourmaster…the woman who'd taught him his trade strong enough to look past the way he lied about his fingers.
Course she'd known…
But she was kindness itself, the lycan harbourmaster. A bit of a task-master, but fair. Showing him the ropes so he could take over for when exiles needed quarter. It was her idea…easier for bloods to trust if it was a vampire, him who welcomed them. For decades, he worked alongside his Gwen. Until one night, she shifted a pair of dice across the table at him.
Ivory dice.
Best night of his life, he realised. Trying to remember what it felt like to hold his Gwen. And now he'd never see her again. Sure as the north, he'd never see his Gwen. His life ruined. His feet halfway in the grave…
…and the rest of him still keeping his eyes front, trying not to see the bleeding corpse slumped against the wall behind him. Forty-five minutes he'd been lying there. Over sixty tunnels they could be hiding down, and of all the places in the world, this was where he ended up.
Grace was still on her knees, scrubbing the stones around him with soap and water, sniffing every few moments as she scoured away his trail. They'd moved him twice already. Even in her grief, the woman knew how to clean. The ability to make a body disappear something that scullery maids seemed to know a great deal about. The two of them still trying to buy themselves time while Nikolai talked to himself.
She had quieted down some—enough to help him carry her scent-pots along the tunnels, the Blackmark haze that covered their tracks—but there was no solace for the haunted look in her eyes. He used to think the Blackmarks were dangerous…but no, they were small, petty creatures beside Nikolai. Their teeth now decorating his furnace. The smell making him want to retch.
He turned, instinctively veering for the side of the room less occupied. Skirting the corners, his shoulders hunching down as he peered over his shoulder. The face seeming to follow him every which way he turned.
Like somehow the man was watching him even in his sleep, he thought with a nervous laugh, tallying up the damage. More bruises that he could count. A festering knee, the smell of something rancid coming from the wound in his stomach. Stranger still, the man wore old clothes, a filthy workman's coat covering a gentleman's shirt stained with all manner of sewage rot. His beard was unkempt, his hair uncut.
Three times he'd seen Aleksey Itzhak. First when his Gwen vouched for their union, second, a century later when they made him harbourmaster in Tilbury…
…and today.
An odd man, Aleksey Itzhak.
He would cross borders. Leave exiles at the edge of a new world and then vanish. Never more than three in a decade…but still something he always wondered on. The question of why a rich merchant with more gold on his hands than blood would still be saving exiles when so many others had given up the cause…
…and why was he here, he thought frantically, trying to scrub the sweat off his brow. It was not supposed to happen this way. Even with the supplies, they were not ready for a lycan incursion. The crates still loaded with dynamite, but the original plan shot to hell now that the lycans had found them.
And how was that even an answer, he wondered all of a sudden, handkerchief pressed to his forehead. How was blowing themselves to hell supposed to get them out to the docks?
He heard a throat wheeze from behind. Could have been his own throat for all he knew.
Or Grace.
Likely regretting her choice of friends now. Blood, he didn't want to think on that…
…but he could still see them. The two girls on their backs, petrified on the carpet, staring into the eyes of Nikolai as he tried to choose which one he was going to kill. Red or white, he asked them. In the end, it was Grace who made the decision for him. Her own fault for panicking…trying to grab her little one and make a break for it. All she needed to do was wait until they reached the fireplace, but no…
…she had to run.
She pressed him…and now she was tied to him as surely as the rest of them. Nikolai could always tell the ones who feared his match. The ones who'd do anything to save their own skin.
They'd all been there. Even the old crone. But at least the two of them knew what they were up against. Grace and her Blackmarks…well, that was like rats beside a viper. Small and persistent, building up their finances on dirty money, pilfering silver without the hoard tapping into their resources. No taxes. No statements to worry about. Reckon they thought Nikolai was an easy target. Willing to kill, easy to control. The lot of them up to their noses in the business of swindling exiles before they left for the Americas.
'Course he'd known they were there…but as long as they left him and his wife alone, it was none of his business. Last he'd heard, it weren't even the Hoard who owned the distillery no more. Just some Lycan-Irish conglomerate backing the purist cause. Made him wonder where they got the scent-cover from…
…but that was lycan politics for you. Always a backer available if you cried hard and long enough…and for Grace, they came out in droves. Finnegan the martyr. Finnegan and his daughter who'd been cheated out of her inheritance. People whose hands twitched at any mention of exiles living within the Hoard.
Things he ought to have told his Gwen. His frantic thoughts, the nightmare he was living, suddenly interrupted by the smell of burning flesh. The damage already half done by the time he turned around.
Nikolai was crouching over Itzhak, his tongue between his teeth as he worked, running the tip of a silver steak knife along the man's forearm. It was like watching a child draw. Up and down and around, scratching this way and that. The knife soon turned sideways, scraping and sawing until the skin came off like a fish being flayed with a dull knife. It was a sticky mess, it was.
He held it up.
A trophy.
"Business," he said decisively. The eye wild as he wiped his hands on the man's shirt. "If we cannot run…then we will do business with the lycan dogs of this city, Ivan."
Oh blood.
Ivan.
Ewan closed his eyes. He didn't want to be Ivan. He wanted to be Ewan…
But there was no choice now. His past…his fate as the crone would say had caught up with him. Grudgingly, he stepped forward, trying not to think on how much dynamite he'd collected over the past four months. Trying not to quake as Nikolai gave him instructions. Trying to forget the exiles who slumbered above their heads as he reached down for a crowbar, opening one of the crates by the wall with a creak.
He'd hoped it would not come to this.
But then hope was never a useful thing when forty-eight sticks of dynamite were concerned.
o…o…o
Fifteen minutes later, a message was found a quarter of a mile down an eastern tunnel close to the Tilbury docks. It had been nailed to a wooden board and chucked into the sewage line to float downstream to the heavily-guarded entrance. Like the eye of Ina Jacobsen, it was transported directly to the head of the incursion.
Raze was briefing his men when he received the news. The message quickly laid out on the table. Bleeding onto the reports until Arlington had the presence of mind to stretch the thing out. Eyes widening as they read the text burnt into what could only be lycan flesh. The skin, the scent of blood and sweat, as familiar to him as his own fur. In that moment, everything changed.
Raze, it said. 1 hour. Crossroads. Come alone.
The hour passed swiftly and Raze soon found himself lurking in the eastern section of the Tilbury tunnels, stepping over the putrid bones of rats and birds on his foray to the meeting place. His face was covered by a thick cloth, but the air was still damaging to his nose. Remnants of the noxious cloud of yellow gas wafting around his head, hinting at a thousand and one scents that could only be twenty for all he knew.
His path showing evidence of the previous lycan incursion. Chalk indicating the initial direction of the scent…the line starting to skew as the scent-mask threw them off course. It was a dangerous weapon…and as yet, they still had no base to examine. His eyes scanning the stones, even now searching for a smouldering end, some clue that he could bring back to Singe. Whoever was burning the source was careful to take their tools with them.
Nothing else then but to wait.
So with the cross-roads in sight, Raze crouched with his back to the exit, waiting for Grace Marsden to show her face. His decision to come alone provoked in part by the shotgun in his hand. The knowledge that he was not battling a laudanum withdrawal, he could Change at the drop of a hat, and he could tear through this creature's throat before she had time to blink. In the end, it was not Grace who came to negotiate.
It was Kolya.
His hackles rising, but his control in place for he had come to deal…and though he would rather bury his fist in the face of this blood, he needed to keep his wits about him.
He rose from his haunches, pointing the shotgun at Kolya. "Terms."
The vampire lingered in the shadows. Looking over his shoulder and then creeping forward to peer over and round his back. Searching for some sign that he was not alone. The shadows showing a rusty metal canister without a cap, an unlit match, and a winsome face that had been scarred brutally in the last few hours. "You have followed my instructions?"
Rather than repeat himself, Raze lifted the shotgun a measure higher. He hoped it was Lucian who took the eye.
The vampire twitched…and then splashed the open canister over the ground beneath their feet. The walls. Paraffin oil by the smell. He put down his canister and pulled a tattered map from his coat. The same one Lucian had taken from the Registry. "Transport to the eastern docks for myself and three companions. In exchange, we will give you the one called Itzhak."
"Alive?"
"Of course."
Hard to deal without a handle on his opponent's scent. There was an air of unpredictability about him. Something he was not entirely unfamiliar with. "I need proof."
"You have the skin."
Raze shrugged. "He could be dead by now."
Kolya turned his palms upwards, the map and the match raised up. "You must trust me."
He could almost hear Lucian's voice in his head. That settles it.
"No deal." Raze turned and began to walk away, his back stiff despite the years Lucian had spent preparing him for this moment. The choice made for him as surely as if he'd made it himself. His steps taking him as far as the end of the tunnel, almost a dozen yards, before he received a second offer.
The vampire called wildly after him. "If we are not on a ship by sundown, I will burn him," he warned.
A counterpoint to the balance that Lucian instilled into his soldiers. One that he could use.
With a glower on his face, Raze glanced over his shoulder. "You are trapped," he said softly, forcing the other man to listen carefully to his every word. "…and when the sun sets, I will burn you alive and scatter your ashes across the eastern pier."
The vampire turned a violent shade of purple in the dark. His coat shifting aside to reveal dynamite. "Do not think to threaten me, dog…I know what lies above these tunnels."
"Actions speak louder than words," he observed dryly. He might be the subordinate of Lucian, but he was nothing if not clay moulded in the form of his leader.
As expected, there was a splutter of frustration. "You would sacrifice the port of Exile's Quarter out of pride."
"Necessity." Raze turned his shotgun back towards the dark. "You have an hour to prove Itzhak is alive. In one hour, I will come back to this cross-roads. You will bring Itzhak. You will show me he is alive with no further harm to his person…and then we will deal."
"He cannot walk."
"Then carry him."
He could hear the grinding of teeth. Kolya held up his match, a wild light showing in his eye. "The terms are not good. In one hour, I will send you another piece of his skin. Every hour…" There was spittle flying from his teeth. "…you will get another message until you agree to my terms."
Raze did not lower his shotgun. "One hour. Alive…and unharmed," he countered.
Kolya hissed. His face transforming as he did. The eye starting to darken like a milky-white egg sinking into a pit of black tar. The change happening so swiftly that it was black before he turned away. Sweeping back towards the tunnel, the match held high as he walked. Even if he did agree to their terms, there was nothing to say he would not blow it.
Exile's port.
It was the first place you landed and the last place you saw before leaving London. Some waiting on scent-cards. Others on transport. At least a third, if not more, of the inhabitants were lycans: tolerated but not welcome in Whitechapel. All of them able to evacuate, but their mates and the other exiles of the port left behind—just under a hundred souls if the lycans chose to stand their ground.
The Council would prioritise a daylight raid. The rescue would lead to a direct confrontation in the tunnels below the port. Lucian would be rescued…
…and the port would be decimated.
Raze already on his way, checking his time-piece as he stormed back to the garrison. Ten after twelve. The sun would not set for another seven hours. Every second of their conversation giving him another piece of the puzzle. Kolya was off his head. Exile's port had to be evacuated…
…and Lucian was buying them time with his skin.
Seven pieces of skin.
Seven hours until sunset.
A/N: This is the part where I get to hang my head in shame for (again) having spent a long year between chapters. The first gap year, I had to deal with something awful in my personal life. The second gap year, I spent the whole time going over old chapters, writing future chapters, writing impossible chapters, before getting the whole story categorised in Scrivener instead of posting more immediate ones. All in all, lots of writing...and I am sorry that I left you all hanging.
On the plus side, someone posted yesterday that they thought this story would never end and I became very frustrated. I ended up standing in a bathroom at work, railing my fist at the ceiling, mouthing "OH yes it will!" for about fifteen minutes. Hopefully I live up to that statement. Either way, this chapter is dedicated to Eileen. Because as much as her review frustrated me, it also got me writing furiously for two days, hissing "GO away" to my cat and my husband because "I'm writing damnit!"
Huge huge thanks to CeliaSingsSongs, RedWheels88, Romantic Journalist, QuiBee, icecoatedsha, NicoNepenthe, CelticAngel86, Lialovefood, for luck, cantos, YippieKaiYea, cocobyrd87, xoAox, audt19, BothHandsInHerPocket, mrs. elektra akasha malfoy, nana, kcam1621, TheVengefulMermaid, , willow faerie, K9Train, leenieB, Draegan88, Chibara-san, katcello, DurinsDaughter, DurinsDaughter2, Wynter Phoenix, Kicki von Berger, Prismic, The Fox Familliar, Animefreak217, Aya-Fay, Violette Penn, Chesires-Ace, thezombieguru, StrictlySomething, Georgette, Soladwi, sleepinglionzz32, Kaitaiagirl, Suz Singer, belindaprkr, grandazzo8, .54, TheDevilsDaughter267, Taylorharvell1997, SupernaturalLove, and of course, Eileen for the reviews, story alerts, and favourites.
On that note, feel free to read and review while I plough forward.
Note: Usually I would leave responses to all the lovely folks who have reviewed and encouraged me over the past year, but this time, I am just going to go straight back to finishing Chapter 59. Better to just get on with it so we can all get there. :)