I would like to say an absolutely enormous thank you to all those frankly spiffing people who commented on the last part; thank you CalliopeMused, (I've replied to you via email), nOOdles (thank you - desire is an idea I've been wanting to play with for a while, and this story seemed a perfect opportunity),yukatalamia, amber (thanks! Strange Lullaby is now completed) , Katherine Winter (thank you!), SnowMirage, Wasurera and last but in no sense least, the divine Aleisha (Thanks. It would be awesome to be published one day, but I am having far too much fun with fanfic right now, not to mention that pesky job o' mine.).
Your thoughts and comments are always slavishly adored; please hit that review button and let me know the good, the bad and the downright ugly. I hope you enjoy reading.
The Devil May Care – Part Four
I've always done what I want. That my master made me that way is mere detail.
I have heard Him called a thousand things and He's the villain of a dozen devious tales, but He always referred to Himself as Hades. Every tale is conflicting – monster, man, messiah – and none of then even brush the surface of His existence; I can tell what you what He was in times of glory and what He became in despair, but I can only guess at why.
He made me and He bound me, but He didn't cage me.
You, on the other hand, you've kept me like a trinket in a box. I never knew how much I valued my liberty until you stole it from me. But no matter, I'll have it back again, and soon.
If I'd ever given my freedom a face, it wouldn't have been hers: in repose she is an uninspiring creature. There's little to admire in her: too long, too pale, blundering her way through my spells like a child.
But breaking them none the less. She has a resistance that confirms my early impression: there's more to this girl than meets the eye, even eyes as sharp as mine. Rare, for a mortal.
A trinity of barriers ward her: she broke my spell, she saw my lie, and she fought my attempts to subdue her. An intriguing challenge, but one I will overcome to leave her naked and shivering.
And still yearning for me.
How to break her? Her strength is formidable, but not her own: there's another encased within her body, a dissonant personality that retains a keen intelligence. It knew me for false, parting the glamour I had spun around her, revealing – well, not me, of course, but something close to the truth.
She shall not trick me that way twice. A twist of power here, a snare laid to smother this clever, other mind, broken as it is.
The next is a surprise. I was formed from the tattered remnants of a soulmate link, and my imitation of it has always been near-perfect. Yet she saw the lie, and I know why: her guilty secret, fluttering on the edge of her thoughts like a carrion crow. She loathes her soulmate, this one, even as she craves him.
Dislike and desire: the two are much more destructive than mere love could ever be.
The third is all her own: she has immense will, shining through her actions with the cold gleam of steel. Most of those they send to me have been hammered into routine and reflex. They merely await orders, but she...she has given them, and flouted some too, I'll warrant.
Such trials will make my task more difficult, but the pleasure of winning is always more acute with the powerful. When at last they crumble, their submission is complete, and I find my deepest delights within their flesh, listening to them beg me, clutch at me, gasp for me until they are slick with sweat and blood, begging me for release even knowing what it means.
And this one...ripe with magic, with a link to the outside world – yes, she's all I need. I shall make her death spectacular; the others cannot fail to find me now.
Wakey, wakey, mortal. I'm tired of waiting.
X - X - X - X - X
Chatoya drifted back to awareness again, unsure if she had slept ten seconds or ten centuries. This time, there was no muzziness, only calm before memory broke across her with the same silent impact as morning.
The mirror. The boy. The lies. The heat.
Especially the heat. The mere recollection of it was enough to send a flush shooting over her face and chest, prickling with an intensity that was half-shame and half-ecstasy.
A spell. It had to have been.
She felt a fool for falling under his enchantment. She hadn't sensed it, hadn't so much as flinched until Bhari came swarming up from the depths of her subconscious screeching denial.
She had believed he was her soulmate. Wasn't that sad - after a year of Blue's enchanting company, part of her was still looking for that slightly-less-unhappy ending?
This time, she kept her eyes closed and feigned sleep. And all the while, under her breath, she uttered the faint, deadly words of a spell that would bring a whole new meaning to 'heat of the moment'.
Chatoya swivelled upright as fire blossomed between her hands – standing, turning to try and find him. Where was he? He-
She was momentarily taken aback by the room: mirrors lined every wall, throwing her own pale, angry face back her from a plethora of angles, as if she was an army in herself. There was something off about it all, something she didn't have time to focus on as a figure moved at the edge of her vision.
"Is that any way to greet an old friend?"
She knew that voice! Chatoya spun – and gaped, the fireball winking out. "How did you get in here?"
It couldn't be Jepar – but it was. That was his sunny smile, his easy stance, all perfect down to the nuances of his voice. No. That was impossible: she knew it. There was no earthly logic that could explain his appearance.
Still, it left her feeling shaken and uneasy – and defenceless. She'd expected the appearance of that strange, alluring seducer. Not this.
"I know, it's a tough one, isn't it?" he purred, and his voice settled on her with dreadful intimacy, the voice of a boy who'd whispered sweet somethings to her long ago, when she'd been eager to shed innocence like a snakeskin. "I look like him, I sound like him...but how on earth did I manage it?"
"Magic," she answered shortly. "You're good, I'll give you that."
His smile took on a wicked tilt. "I'm fantastic. And you'll give me a lot more before we're done."
Veiled threats and arrogance. Now she felt right at home.
Chatoya met his – its – eyes with impunity. "Like a permanent limp and a falsetto voice?"
He only laughed, a joyful sound that sent unexpected sorrow through her. It seemed she hadn't heard that sound for far too long. "Oh, you're going to be fun. I knew it. No, Toya-"
"Don't call me that!" she snapped. It tapped into parts of her heart she had thought stale and decaying.
He strolled forward, the emerald eyes shrewd. Jepar had always been able to read her better than anyone. Even Blue couldn't beat-what was she thinking? This wasn't Jepar, no matter how precise the copy. "Why not? You like the way he says your name, you know, with that ripple on it – as if you've shaken his world, just a little bit-"
"Stop it!" she gasped.
He was so close now that when he stopped, just out of reach, it seemed like an act of mercy – until his voice rolled over her, dripping amusement. "-and even now, you still hear that little catch, that one that says you own a part of him that no one can touch. Sometimes you wonder how it might have been if you hadn't drifted apart – if he'd look at you the same way he looks at that cold harpy he's tied to-"
The bold truth of what he was saying left her dumb, calling forth feelings she had barely been aware of. Thoughts that belonged to secret times, in the drowsy limbo between sleep and waking, idling in the spaces between rain on the walk home, filling the dull silences of meetings.
"He does everything with passion, doesn't he?" The smile had become slowly savage, liked a blade whetting itself. And the words were not Jepar's – would never be his. "He throws himself right into life, and you dream of him throwing himself into you with the same passion."
"No," she protested, hearing her own shallow breaths. "He's my friend-"
"Well, of course he is. But still..."
He took that last step that brought him near enough to touch, his expression bright and mischievous. Chatoya could feel her own heart pounding, feel the sickening lurch of her stomach.
And he forward until his lips brushed her ear, feather-light. "You wonder," he whispered. "And you want him."
She recoiled, sweat a thin, icy film on her body. "That's not true!"
She was awash with memories, rank fear and anticipation rising through her. She might have been back there in the cave where they'd first kissed, only the certainty in his eyes said this would be more than a mere kiss; this would be his hands stroking her and his mouth slick on her skin, and the fierce, carnal encounter she had rehearsed in moments of oblivious desire.
"No..." she said, and heard the objection starting to die in her voice.
She'd wanted this; she pretended she didn't, because she needed a friend and not a lover, but if she could have him...if she could reverse the orbit of the earth, and send time wheeling backward, she'd do it. He was the only one who hadn't hurt her...out of them all-
And that was why she'd never do it. She wouldn't hurt him either, and if she did this, out there where it matters – or even in here, where it might not – it would end in someone's broken heart.
These days, it wouldn't be hers.
"No," she said again, and was pleased to hear her voice clear and strong. "I don't want this."
Was that surprise flashing over his face? "It seems you don't," he said, peering at her as if measuring some change or other. "For now."
"Forever," Chatoya corrected coldly.
He turned away, strolling towards a wall of mirrors. She watched his reflection, wary, beginning to sketch out another nasty little hex-
"Ah-ah," he scolded, and the words were stricken from her mind. Just like that, however she searched for spells, she couldn't think of a single one.
Well, she had more than one weapon. But she'd leave her dragon powers as a surprise, just in case he could nullify those too.
"Oh, they won't work," he said cheerfully, and the ease with which he discerned her plans froze her. "I'm afraid I'm quite impervious to anything a dragon can throw at me."
His reflection shifted – not him, she had time to think, and he swung around to face her, his voice lower and gentler.
"But I'm not so sure you are," he said in Hael's voice.
She armoured her heart, starting to sense the shape of his cruel game. It was all she could do, yet Chatoya was afraid it wouldn't be enough.
X - X - X - X - X
Vaje's patience was rapidly eroding, panic seeping into the gaps. He didn't want to put his trust in Malefici.
The hand Nerine laid on his shoulder made him flinch. "Calm, Salvaje."
"Some other time," he answered, shrugging her off. "Not when that bastard's leaving us hanging like this."
"Sentimentality was always your flaw. The number of times you've gone storming in on a wave of emotion...it nearly killed you in Milan."
He gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the retaliatory anger that curled up in his stomach. Part of him knew she was right.
"We survived."
"Against a few thugs, yes," she answered, her voice prim as a schoolmarm. "But we won't against this creature. You know as well as I do that Bane has a gift for finding the right solution to a problem, but only because he's so thorough. Rush him, and he may make the very error he made with Chatoya Irkil."
It was an easy mistake. He'd thought little of Chatoya when he first met her; a lanky, awkward girl, full of the pomp and folly of youth: over-optimistic, credulous, hauled about by the whimsy of her heart. She hadn't seemed to quite fit in the world, somehow unsure of her place.
And then he saw her fighting Malefici and realised that here was her place, even if she didn't know it.
She was strong enough to fight for what she wanted, even when winning seemed as impossible as it had when she first came to Pursang. She'd given him hope that his life might be better, the belief that maybe one of the Furies could become something worthwhile.
And he was desperately afraid that if Chatoya Irkil died, Pursang would slink back beneath Malefici's shadow and his heart would return with it to become a dark, crabbed thing, crippled by despair. He couldn't imagine life without the Furies: he was all too able to imagine life within them if Malefici ruled.
It was the realisation of that fear, as grim and cold as a gravestone in winter, that kept him clinging to fraying hopes.
"I know," he said flatly, the words almost a curse on the air. "But I don't have to like it."
X - X - X - X - X
I was born in a broken heart.
Little surprise then that I understand destruction so thoroughly. Like the poppies that grow in fields of war, I came forth from violence, a bright and flaring thing amidst someone else's dusty grief. Sometimes I wonder if my existence would have been different had I been created in joy: it's a pointless observation, for I doubt I would have been created at all.
We were pathfinders of a sort, mapping a route that our creator could not. It seemed so simple: I will ask only two things of you, He said. Punish them, for treating her life so carelessly, and find the way to her. Do not return until you know.
With that, He set us free and chained us in one motion. A contrary devil, if ever there was one.
In our youth, we thought it an easy task: others had to ask what evil lay in the hearts of men. We already knew. It was merely a matter of picking the right hearts, and there were only so many beating in our ears.
How many of them did we rip apart? I don't know. There were days when my throat seemed copper-plated with their blood, when I was glutted on human life.
Yet answers eluded us, and so we strove on. Years passed, barely felt at first. And then decades too began to tumble, followed in too-swift succession by the centuries – and we found ourselves sifting through a sea of the human and inhuman, all of you breeding with a speed that would have made a rabbit take note. Our task had begun to seem impossible.
Frustrated – something you creatures certainly weren't if your offspring were anything to go by - we began to dwell on the lazy pleasure of picking you apart, on the punishment rather than the pursuit. After all, you were all guilty of something.
Fulfilling half His order was the best we could do, we told ourselves amidst the carnage. We could not find her: nor could anyone living teach us the way to whatever remained of her, drifting in the nexus between worlds. Still, we sounded your hearts as we destroyed them, attentive to the echo of her name. Nothing, of course, and we came to believe there was nothing to be found.
But we could not return to tell Him: He had forbidden it.
We parted ways and wandered alone, drawing back together in tidal motion from time to time. Calendars came and went, and our notoriety grew; you evoked us in curses and threats, warned of us in myths.
We became arrogant, in short, thinking ourselves little less than gods.
And so we ignored your political games, never thinking that you might not return the favour. That you might dare to hunt one such as me.
I was a fool, and so I became a prisoner.
No longer. I am through with the desires of others: this time, it will be about what I want.
X - X - X - X - X
"Here's an interesting riddle," Hael's doppelganger murmured. "It's been a while since I saw this face anywhere."
He peered at himself in the mirror, turning his head back and forth as if checking the angles. Despite herself, Chatoya found her gaze lingering on him, wonder clambering through her fear like honeysuckle.
To see him in the flesh, real, solid, was almost painful.
His was an ordinary face; Hael had shunned the careless beauty of the Nightworld. No one could ever call him handsome: from the wide clown's mouth to the freckles that bridged his nose and cheeks, even down to those pale, merry green eyes, he was a jester through and through.
"Hael Drax, isn't it?" he mused. "Last I heard, he'd left this world for one a little less...substantial. So how on earth do you know him, mortal?"
Lying seemed pointless when he could read her mind as if all her wards and shields were only glass.
"I dream of him."
He pivoted: it shouldn't have been harder to meet his eyes without a mirror between them, but it was.
"Half an answer, but not all of it," he said. No, not he. She mustn't become caught up in this fiction. It. "I find it hard to believe Hael Drax just popped into your dreams one night because he suddenly decided that thirty thousandth-year of coma was one too many."
She tried to stop the thought, but too late: his eyes widened, bright and startled.
"Oh, so those dragon powers you were trying so hard to conceal come from Bhari, do they? No wonder Hael's so drawn to you..." His smile took on a gentle, insincere slant. "And you to him."
"You're mistaken," she snapped. "He's her dream, not mine."
"Are you sure?"
The words were almost a reflex. "As sure as I can be."
And when she realised what she'd said, she understood the ghostly tremors that ricocheted along her spine. They had spoken these words before, her and Hael, when she had been a beggar before him, if one pretending riches.
He had offered her a chance of foolish love, and she had leapt at it.
And it had indeed been foolish; but it had also been love, astounding and frightening and ephemeral. She had her regrets – thousands of them – but not for that choice.
He held out his hand, beckoning just as he had done then.
"You're not him."
All the laughter faded from his eyes, replaced by a slow, churning hunger, "I promise you won't know the difference."
"You were always Bhari's dream, not mine," she whispered, unwilling to admit how much he affected her.
"Maybe that was true in the beginning, but not anymore. You live in her memories, Chatoya."
"I live my own life," she said curtly. And if that was only partially true; if she escaped to dreams of Hael in the idyll before war, she had her reasons.
She had no other sanctuary.
"Yes, you live your own life," he said, and his gaze was steady, the words softened with regret. "But you love in hers."
The truth hit her hard: not all of those charged, violent feelings belonged to Bhari.
She cleared her throat, suddenly dry as sandpaper. "Wishful thinking, nothing more."
"You're a terrible liar," he declared, and the corner of his mouth curled up into a crooked grin. There was none of the threat she had felt when he – it – had been Jepar, only her urge to curl into his arms-
This isn't Hael, interrupted a sharp, cold voice. Bhari came rising up through the warm nostalgia, ferocious as a Valkyrie. It could never be him!
But it seems-
Chatoya felt her head spin at the sheer rage Bhari exuded: only pieces of her personality might remain, but those shards had survived purely through the force of her passions.
I don't care what it seems. You might have been snuggling up to him in your dreams for a year, but I spent a millennia in his arms, and I know a bad actor when I see one-
"No deus ex machina here, I'm afraid," came the doppelganger's wry voice: immense force bore down on her temples and for a moment, Chatoya felt as if she'd been cleaved in two – something was missing, leaving a surprisingly large gap.
For the first time in over a year, she could no longer sense Bhari.
"What did you do?" she demanded, voice shrill.
Had he come closer? Somehow, he was reaching out to cup her neck, his fingers stroking along her spine. It was so familiar a touch that it was unique as a signature, graffiti signed on her skin. Doubt wavered in her: how could this not be Hael, when every gesture was so exact? How did she know this wasn't just some fresh dream?
"Three's a crowd," he answered mildly. "And you can't tell me it wasn't what you wanted. You've longed for your solitude, Chatoya, longed for your pleasures and your pain to be your own again. You wanted her gone."
He leaned in, and his lips brushed her jaw, skimming to the corner of her mouth. The gesture marked him as definitively as his voice; how could this be anyone other than Hael? And fooled, she was already moving to meet that kiss, as sumptuous and measured as he was at his best, knowing the slow way he folded her into his body, a hand at her neck and the other idly kneading her spine; the way he drew back and paused and smiled, and swayed in again, playful and unhurried.
But something was different. She wasn't wearing Bhari's body, as she always did in dreams of Hael. It was her, Chatoya Irkil, who he looked at with such intensity, and it was all wrong.
He had loved Bhari for so long: loved her despite her cruelty, despite her duplicity, despite the killing ground she left in her wake. He could not so easily cast her aside: he would not.
No, this was not Hael. And she had been a fool to forget it, even for a careless moment.
"Let go of me," she commanded, putting all her certainty into her voice. She tried to draw out of his embrace, and found it unyielding - fear threaded through her like lace, and Chatoya had to fight for calm. "I don't want you, whatever you are."
His hand crushed onto her neck.
Chatoya's mind went blank with panic – she clawed at his fingers, at the dreadful pressure, staring into his face which had become hard and diffident. Were those strangled sounds her?
She thrashed and kicked and tore at him, but he was immovable.
"You don't know what you want," he drawled. "But don't worry, I'll help you find out."
He let go, and Chatoya crumpled to her knees, gasping in air. She knew this was not the end of the game – it wouldn't be so easy. That was not this creature's way.
"After all..."
And his voice was lower, the sounds sharper and edged with black sarcasm. Knowing who she would see, she slowly raised her head, wincing at the pain, and met gold, angry eyes.
"...it's about time you made up your damn mind."
Cougar.
X - X - X - X - X
Vaje was almost glad when Malefici's presence curled across his mind with the glazed grace of frost.
You took your time! he blurted before the vampire could say a word. Across the room, Nerine was shaking her head, hands open in a plea that he ignored. Who knows what could have happened to them by now?
I do. The words, so blunt and diffident, stopped him in his tracks. And frankly, if I didn't know you were a bleeding heart under that shambolic exterior, I'd suspect you were trying to murder my soulmate.
What's up, don't like the competition? snapped Vaje.
He supposed he wasn't exactly surprised at the response, borne on a series of delicate mental jabs which felt as if someone was sliding a needle beneath his eyelids. No way would he make a sound for Malefici to hear, but he couldn't keep himself from twitching with the pain.
You might have lost your soulmate through carelessness, Chusson, but I will not have you do the same with mine. And if you do not get her back, rest assured that I will go out to that backwater cemetery you sneak off to every year, and I will dig up your wife's bones and scatter them across the largest stretch of water I can find.
Fury boiled over in him.
You listen to me, you bastard, he snarled, if I didn't have Little Miss Safety-First sitting over there droning on at me, I'd have gone through that damn mirror even if I thought your evil twin was standing behind it with a chainsaw.
Oh, really?
Yes, really. We can't all be as selfish as you.
Then with all that altruistic fervour floating round your blood, I'm sure you'll be happy to volunteer to rescue the maiden not-quite-fair.
Vaje felt the trap close about him with a mix of anger and grudging respect. Malefici had played him like a fiddle.
You know, you could just have asked, he said.
And miss your tantrum? I like entertainment as much as the next man.
What a poisonous toad he was. If Chatoya was having any kind of effect on Malefici, it wasn't showing. Vaje fumed, but he couldn't refuse; he wouldn't, not if it meant leaving Chatoya and Michael to the creature's mercies.
So what exactly does volunteering entail?
Blue told him while Nerine listened intently, her expression giving away nothing. There was a brief hush.
So let me get this straight, Vaje said slowly. You want to erase all my memories, put your – your! – thoughts into my mind and then send me in there to face some creature that's best known for ripping people to shreds by twisting their deepest desires, then hope like hell you can make it want to let them go?
In a nutshell. Your memories would be concealed, not erased – much as I'd like to leave you a drooling vegetable, I suspect Pursang might take it as a declaration of war – but that's the gist of it.
No. I'm not letting you in my head!
Oh, spare me the amateur dramatics. I've already read your mind, and it's as insipid and hysterical as it ever was. You should be proud. Six hundred years and you've cultivated the intellect of a teenage girl.
I don't trust you, he said shortly.
Was that frustration tingeing Malefici's tone? I'm trying to rescue my infuriating soulmate, not take you to prom and spike your drink. As it happens, I have more research to do, but you will make a decision when I return.
Vaje thought for a moment he was gone, but then that dark, uncaring voice crawled across his skull one last time.
And it will be the decision I want. If you refuse, your death will be so drawn out that they'll still be hearing you scream in a thousand years.
Silence reigned in his wake.
"Salvaje?"
"Leave it, Nerine. Just leave it."
X - X - X - X - X
In the dim room, Blue read on, and the pieces of the puzzle began to slide into place. He had his vassal; and he had an inkling of the seed he would cultivate in Chusson's mind to tempt even Desire itself.
He had reached the oldest documents now, thin translations pencilled beneath a dozen scripts, each as alien to him as the next. Here, he thought, lay the accounts which grazed the truth, leaving it bare and bleeding.
'...and in his barren kingdom, Hades ruled the dead in whimsy and grief. With the loss of bright-eyed Persephone, winter came to his heart, and all it touched withered and diminished. He who had been famed for his grace became a tale told to frighten children, and later, a legend.
But though the world forgot Hades, it could not escape his vengeance. The death of Persephone had broken a sacred promise, and his heart with it. As war raged on, and the new dead swelled the rivers until they began to spew decaying flesh upon the banks flush with asphodel, Hades watched and absorbed all.
When at last the Styx burst its banks, and all his hellish land was a swamp of hate, he rose from his throne. Wherever the dead were buried and remains left to rot under the sun, wherever the shadows stretched over the land, where balefires clogged the sky with smoke, his voice sounded:
'"As you have defiled my kingdom, so shall I defile yours."
Then from the damaged pieces of his heart, he forged his seven-fold folly, and he named them thus:
Vanity, which bade me speak to her.
Greed, which drew me back to her.
Gluttony, which made me need her.
Envy, which led me to doubt her.
Wrath, which led me to lose her
Desire, which makes me yearn for her
Pride, which forbids me forget her.
"These are your demons now – I will have no more of them. They will scourge you until you can see the truth of your own heart like light through a clear glass, until every other is as precious to you as yourself, until the seas turn to ash and the mountains to rain and Persephone comes back to me again."
Saying this, Hades threw the broken pieces of his heart onto the winds, and let them fly free.'
It was the third such story he had read and though the details were different, the gist was the same. Hades had made the Deadly Sins in revenge for Persephone's death. More than that.
He scanned the last few lines again.
'They will scourge you until...Persephone comes back to me again.'
How long had the tale of Hades and Persephone haunted cultures? How many names had their story taken? Isis and Osiris, Achilles and Dido, Sleeping Beauty trapped amidst the briars, Pandora and her box of tricks...tales of love, death and the hope of resurrection, with only one difference from the truth: Persephone was still lost.
And that was the key, he thought. That was what stood out in every version of this tale: Hades was waiting for her. He had cared little for the moral fibre of his people, but perhaps he had cared for just one girl who had stood out from the hordes.
And if she was so ordinary...if, say, she had been human, her death would not have taken her to Hades, who had dominion only over those born or created from his own blood: the dragons, from them the witches and shapeshifters, and from the witches, the vampires. In one respect at least, humanity was a breed apart. Hades did not – could not – know where she was.
Might he then, in an act of hopeful revenge, have created these Deadly Sins not merely as punishment, but as searchers?
It was, he knew, a gamble. All of Nightfire's researchers would have shot the theory down without a jot of courtesy. Yet here, Blue thought he had an advantage over them.
Wasn't he hunting his own Persephone now?
X - X - X - X - X
One wound after another, that was all this seemed. And this one of the bitterest.
"What is it you want?" she said, her voice ragged and rough. "Why are you doing this?"
His face shifted, but she couldn't read the expression that flashed there so briefly: only that it was wrong on Cougar Redfern's face, and a stark reminder that this thing was just a superb actor. "I'm just giving you what you want. Isn't that why you're here?"
She didn't understand. "I'm here because-"
Chatoya stopped short. All this time, and she had almost forgotten how she'd arrived. She nearly leapt to her feet, shame undulating in her stomach.
"Where's Michael?" she demanded.
There was a hint of cruelty to the smile, and it was deeply familiar. Cougar at his most dangerous: that soft, deceptive voice, the subdued glitter of his eyes, the challenge in the way he loomed over her, using his height and his inhumanity to intimidate her. All spoke of grudges nursed and slights stoked into an overwhelming fury, waiting to erupt.
"Why do you care? He's a Fury, Toya, and he'd put a knife in your damn back if he thought he could get away with it."
She opened her mouth to riposte – and paused. No, she wouldn't be drawn like this. The creature had done it as Jepar and as Hael, confounding her with its fluency in their every gesture. Not as Cougar. She didn't think she could stand to replay the old arguments, to have the knowledge aired once more.
Cougar had spoken to her of love, and she could only reply with silence. His words and her wordlessness had hung between them ever since.
"You always say that," she said instead, injecting calm into her voice. "It's always about betrayal, isn't it?"
His smile was taut and just a little vicious. "It is when you deal with the Furies."
"Like me, you mean?"
He gawped, as she had known he would. Yes, she thought: here was her strength. She knew these men, each of them, and yes, she wanted something from each of them. From Jepar, the happiness that was, from Hael, the dream of unencumbered love; and from Cougar...?
In that moment, her mind poised on the brink of revelation, the world seemed to falter, stopping her breath, stilling her heart to let the answer ring out clear and true.
Forgiveness.
And so before he could protest, she cut across him.
"I am one of the Furies now, Cougar. And I'm sorry I hurt you. But...but I can't keep apologising for not loving you."
She expected a torrent of anger. What she got was a heavy sigh, as if she'd said something stupid, and a cynical glare. "Especially when you don't mean it. It gets tired, babe."
Chatoya was taken aback. "Look, I really am sorry-"
"Well, yeah, you are. But I don't think you know why you're so sorry."
"Enlighten me," she snapped, incensed by his smug, lazy tones.
He moved so fast she had no time to react: she was pinned against his body, flattened in an embrace that left no room to struggle. This close, it was a reminder of other times and other closeness, spent crammed into the hammock that Jepar put up every summer, falling asleep on his shoulder watching old movies with the others. Heat poured from his body, and she was uncomfortably aware of every plane and ridge of him.
They so rarely touched. She had forgotten what he felt like.
Fear and familiarity battled: part of her wanted to believe that it was Cougar, his dangers known and charted, his emotions unpredictable but understandable. The other clamped her hands to her sides, and ordered her not to struggle in case this time he – it! – broke her neck.
"You're not sorry that you don't love me," he murmured, his voice wry. "And to be honest, I wouldn't mind so much if I knew that you just weren't interested."
She began to object, yet this time it was she who was trampled over. His voice was low and full of barely restrained fervour, compelling her to listen.
"But there's a reason you can't have a conversation with me unless it's an argument or dumb small talk about the weather. It's not because you're afraid I'm going to break down and spew emotion all over you, and it sure isn't because you're uncomfortable with unrequited love."
"No?" she said, but it didn't come out half as sarcastically as she'd intended. She was immersed in his words, startled by his perceptiveness.
"No," he said firmly. "You're sorry that you knocked me back."
"I don't love you, not like that," she protested.
"Who's talking about love?" His smile took on a wicked slant. "I'm talking about lust. And face it, Toya – you want me."
She snorted. "Prove it."
He tilted his head to one side, and his expression was almost coy. "Babe, I let go of you half a minute ago. Tell me why we're still standing here so damn close that if there weren't all these clothes in the way, we'd be demonstrating one of my favourite positions from the Kama Sutra."
He was right, she realised as heat flooded her face. His hands were behind his back, and the expression on his face was innocent enough to make angels take up skydiving.
She stepped back – and he caught her, an arm snaking out with preternatural speed to pull her back.
"You're not escaping that easily," he chided. From beneath his half-lowered lashes, the gold of his eyes seemed full of promise, echoed in his satisfied voice.
Chatoya could hardly believe this was happening - what had imbued Cougar with such dazzling confidence? Yes, he feigned arrogance, but under that he was guarded, especially when it came to relationships. Especially when it came to her. This newfound poise was strange, unnerving, and...
Captivating.
No. She hadn't meant to think that. She was captive, she reminded herself, and so was-
"Michael!" she gasped, glad of the distraction. "Where's Michael?"
A frown marred his face. "Flattering. Very flattering. Here I am, exercising my considerable charm – and you know, Toya, despite all those lies about size not mattering, you won't find many people with anything more considerable – and you're muttering about that weedy bastard?"
It's an imitation, it's an imitation, she chanted to herself.
"Where is he?" she demanded, ignoring the shakiness in her voice.
He sighed. "Fine. Turn around."
She obeyed, as much relieved to avoid his probing eyes as anxious to find Michael. She found herself staring at the wall of mirrors, at her own flushed face and too-bright eyes. "What am I looking at?"
"In the reflection."
She opened her mouth to ask what on earth he was talking about – and then she saw it. There, on the bed, laid out as she herself must have been before she awoke, was Michael.
To her right, the real bed was still empty. Yet there he was, trapped in the reflection. She stepped forward, fascinated. When she touched the walls, they seemed solid, but then, she supposed, so had the mirror that she and Michael had tumbled through before Nerine activated it.
She could see the rise and fall of Michael's chest in slumber, and he looked unmarked.
"What do you want with him?"
Only when the creature spoke did she realise it was not reflected in that other, near-identical room. "It's more a case of what he wants with me."
She turned back to face him. "Let him go."
"Mmmm...no."
"Why?" she demanded, frustrated. "He's just a kid. What do you want with him?"
"You don't really want me to let him go. You blame him for bringing you here."
She dismissed that as nonsense. "What will it take to make you let him go?"
His eyes widened, almost mocking – but she saw the craving in his face.
"Oh, nothing more than what you're already prepared to offer," he said casually, and ran a finger down his throat, tapping the jugular vein.
The minute the thought had crossed her mind, he had known. And it had been inevitable, knowing Cougar as she did: knowing what it was that he wanted most from her. Something, she supposed, that she had not even gifted Blue.
"And you'll let him go?" she asked, moving toward him with slow steps.
"I'll do whatever you want."
She stepped into the circle of his arms again, and this time, his grasp was light, as though if he held her too hard she might collapse into ash. She met his eyes, and swept the hair from her neck to bare herself like a virgin sacrifice.
"You're always so businesslike," he muttered, and bowed his head. His last words were so soft she wasn't sure she'd heard them. "Not for long."
She expected teeth. She didn't expect his lips to brush down the column of her neck, to feel his tongue flick her skin, to be kissed on the delicate spot of her collarbone. She didn't expect to shiver and find her breath catching, to feel his hands sliding under her clothing, as intrepid and uninhibited as she'd sometimes thought Cougar must be with all that passion animating him.
She couldn't have said how much time passed, only that the seconds or minutes or years were full of shaky heat, and that when she finally felt teeth against her neck, she was rather more dishevelled.
"That wasn't part of the offer," she managed, her stomach watery.
His voice was full of black humour as he repeated mildly, "Whatever you want."
The words were a warm rush on her neck, and then she felt the sting, a bright, thin pain that became sharper as he drank. Sharper, and sharper until she was squirming, gritting her teeth against the sensation. It had never been like this before, never more than a dull bruised feeling.
"That's enough," she grated out, putting a hand on his neck and unceremoniously shoving.
He didn't budge, and the pain spiralled upwards, wringing a whimper from her. It felt as if his teeth were clamping tighter even as she began to feel woozy and light-headed.
"I want you to stop," she whispered, pulling at his hair. Her hands seemed weak and useless.
And she heard his answer, winding through her head like a serpent. No. You don't. This is what you wanted, Toya. Penance for all the hurt you did me.
"No..."
Terror overcame her – she had no spells left, but the magic leapt into her hands uncontrolled and uncalled. He jolted back with a snarl, and she felt a searing pain in her neck.
He hit her hard, and she toppled to the ground like a ragdoll.
Dazed, Chatoya struggled up on shuddering arms. Finally she was on her feet, if only to try and face him on her terms.
His mouth was smeared in her blood, thick and cherry-red, and it stained her fingers when she clamped a hand to the wound on her neck. A nasty cut, she thought through the nausea, her inner healer taking charge, but not fatal. Shallow, at least.
It had fooled her again. But at least she had won something.
"Let Michael go," she commanded, if in a croak.
He raised his eyebrows. "Oh now, we both know you didn't really think I'd let him go. Toya, Toya, you're such a gambler. Eventually the odds were going be stacked against you."
Helpless, she stared at him. "But you said-"
"I said I'd do whatever you wanted. And like I said earlier, you don't want to let Michael go. Besides...I'd like him to see the grand finale."
She had to stay calm, she had to, even with her legs weak and liquefied. "The grand finale?" she said through lips that felt numb.
She could only watch as his body seemed to shimmer and change like the air above a desert, turgid with heat. He seemed distilled down to angles and lines, a sparse and deadly thing, hued in the colours of a winter sky.
And at last, his voice was smooth and cold and full of promise, and she knew the blue flare of his eyes better than she did her own heart.
It had to end like this. With him; without him.
Yes, there was Blue's smile, as thin and cruel as a garrotte. "Your death."
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