Happy Halloween! Trick or treat? You decide...
This part is suited to the season and all its nasty elements - you have been warned.
Thank you to all the utterly fabulous people who reviewed the last part: pumpkin pie and fluffy black cats to you all! Thank you Shards-of-Ice, Amber , Jewel, Dulce Ambrosia, girltype, SnowMirage, Wasurera, christen and LifeSucksWithoutVamps
I hope you enjoy reading
Ki
The Devil May Care Part Five
Bane Malefici. Bane of her heart, she named him once, and knew it for truth. What was it she wanted from him?
A thousand things, and nearly all of them impossible.
One last time, she drew herself up to face him: and herself.
X - X - X - X - X
I can feel her fracturing.
She wants so much, this child, and she has been denied almost all of it. Like the pitiful creatures before her, she will die knowing that I have given her what she truly wanted – unlike those faithless, fickle heartbreakers who wait beyond the mirror.
And what she wants – this, this capricious boy who keeps her suspended between bliss and destruction, waiting on his decision. And in her most secret, shadowed core, she knows what she wants it to be.
So do I.
X - X - X - X - X
Blue had decided. It wasn't a perfect plan and it certainly wasn't a foolproof one – a shame, given that it relied on a pair of fools for success – but it was the best that he could conceive, and by definition better than anyone else could have concocted.
He let his mind roll out, over the city and its multitude of minds shrieking in deafening cacophony. He brushed aside their joy and despair and boredom, ignoring those few he knew – out, over the lacework of roads, towards a certain town that was just one of many that littering the landscape.
There, among its dilapidated suburbs, was the house he wanted. It was fenced and forbidding, showing the signs of age. Loose tiles, weeds devouring the garden, a broken pane of glass.
He caught the traces of her presence then; in the flattened path of foliage, he knew exactly where her feet had stepped, knew where her hand had lain on the door and where she had paused to look at the house. Perhaps it was the mere fact of her absence that made what remained of her so much stronger: a sense of green, fresh power, loitering in the air and earth as if neither could bear to let her go.
And as much as he might wish to, he could not afford to let her go either.
He dallied no longer.
X - X - X - X - X
Chatoya fought to hold onto the belief that this was not her soulmate. It was a hard battle: his gaze held the scorn and the amusement she was used to. That was his stance, the languid poise of a tiger, his strange, sunless skin which spoke of time spent spinning the night around him like a cloak, his meaningless smile which held the otherworldly gleam of the moon.
And would he drive her to lunacy? She hoped not, but she was afraid.
"Why are you doing this?"
Dizziness and exhaustion sought to overwhelm her, but she somehow forced her weary legs not to buckle.
"Surely you know that by now, witch of mine," he purred, and she knew his voice exactly; the arch of the words, the mocking caress of the endearment, always matched by that note of possession.
It angered her.
With the others, she had been shocked, saddened, wounded by the imitation – a dark pantomime, played out among the glittering mirrors. It had drawn on old memories, on feelings she had entombed in her heart without ever truly grieving the losses, and she had lost them all, however you looked at it. Jepar, Hael, Cougar: all three haunted her with what might have been.
But this...this was different. She had not lost Blue – quite the opposite. However they fought one another, she found herself drawn back to him, fascinated by his complexity and amorality, striving to understand this creature who she had once thought the antipode of herself.
So questing, she had found that she could not merely write him off as evil or empty, defunct of all feeling. In his elegant malignity, Chatoya glimpsed echoes of herself, of what she might become if she shucked off the bonds of friendship and scruples. And through the rare moments of intimacy, she had seen that he did hold to a curious, malformed code of honour, that he did feel hate and envy and craving.
And love. Yes, he knew what it was to love, and he knew because of her.
His love was as dangerous as he: he used it to wound her, but she retaliated with equal spite, and in the lull of the night, he still returned because that was as much part of the game as the cruel words and the schemes. They did not forgive, they did not forget, and so the two of them endured.
And it all mattered less when she was tangled up with him – when there was the heat and the dark and the two of them and it was halfway between agony and ecstasy, and she...
She no longer cared about wrong or right, only that he was there and did not know either.
Those were the moments that were precious to her: that could not be duplicated, however astute the mimic. It was a desecration of something she hadn't known was sacred.
Until now.
"No," she snapped, "I don't. Why are you doing this? What do you gain from it?"
Those azure eyes swept up and down her, measuring. She hated the way she felt diminished by that look, declared worthless. "It's more about what I lose."
"You can't afford to lose me. You wouldn't dare."
"Are you sure?" The question dangled, ripe with contempt.
"You wouldn't dare," she repeated slowly, hurling the words at him like knives. "And you don't want to lose me."
"You seem to know a lot about what I want. Astounding, from someone who can't even decide what she wants."
Fury roared up through her veins and before she knew what she doing, Chatoya was advancing on him, the words tumbling from her lips.
"What I want? I want a life that doesn't involve pricing up everyone I see and deciding whether they're valuable enough to live. I want friends who aren't afraid of me. I want you to treat me as your equal, not as meat or prey or entertainment. I want you to stay one goddamn night so I don't feel so alone every morning. I want you decide whether you love me or hate me, decide one way or the other and gods, I don't care whether you kiss me or kill me as long as you make up your mind!"
He was so still he might have been an ice sculpture, full of blank, chilly beauty. His lack of reaction just stoked her rage – she pushed him hard, not caring that she was draining whatever strength she had left.
He staggered back, and she advanced. She reached to shove him again – and he caught her wrists in an iron grip.
The soulmate link – how could that be? – leapt to life, and she felt his thoughts all around her, slicing at her with his malice and his pride and yes – there, sinuous and avid, his desire for her.
Face to face, his breath on her lips. Chatoya spat the words at him, glaring up into those fathomless blue eyes.
"You say I don't know what I want? What about you, Blue, what is it that you want? Do you even know?"
His laughter was soft and low, a delicious, rippling sound that sent an echoing shiver through her. He drew her in close, closer, the space between them peeling away to nothing, transmuting into warm pressure, into the familiar architecture of his body. And despite herself, she sank into him, sank into the illusion because she was so tired of fighting and of not knowing.
"I know," he murmured, smug and sinful.
Bittersweet pain: his mouth on her neck, licking at her blood, moving to kiss her collarbones and the line of her shoulder, knowing it would draw a shiver from her.
"What?" she hissed, powerless and frustrated. "What do you want?"
"You, of course," he said, and although his voice was cold as the winter wind, his hands were warm and sure.
X - X - X - X - X
Nerine and Salvaje both jumped when Bane returned. One moment there was only them, trapped in stone and mortar: then he was there, a crackling, electric presence, almost painful in his intensity.
Well? demanded Salvaje with all the impetuousness she had come to expect from him. Decided what you're going to put into my head?
Aside from suicidal impulses?
The bite on those words made the coyote shapeshifter flinch. Nerine felt no sympathy – she had warned him countless times about goading Bane. Pain was his natural response to any challenge – and Nerine had to wonder if Chatoya Irkil had become immune to his casual cruelties.
Enough grandstanding, she interrupted. Time is running thin, as you are both aware. Whatever you need to do, do it. I have no urge to wait out another change of leadership, particularly when there's no guarantee Bane's next choice will be as sane as this one.
Ha, muttered Salvaje. If you think she's sane, you should take a look at the company she-ouch!
Honestly. She'd given him a light zap of power, nothing more. He was as thoughtless as a child when he was anxious, and if he wouldn't listen to her advice, she'd do whatever was necessary to silence him.
Salvaje subsided, though the glare he shot her said there would be words later.
I'd like to watch, if I may, she said into the brief hush.
She was a touch offended by Bane's amusement; more so by his arrogance. If you can keep up. This won't take long, but it requires a very fine touch.
Young man, if you speak to several of the gentlemen Nightfire has had dealings with over the centuries, I suspect you'll find that there are very few women whose touch is finer.
Thank you for that singularly disturbing mental picture, he drawled. Very well. Chusson: empty your mind. It should come naturally.
Beneath her gimlet glare, Salvaje swallowed his pride and managed not to respond to the snipe. Instead, he settled onto the floor, lying down. He couldn't afford to be distracted – Nerine knew from experience that one slip while interfering with someone's mind could be catastrophic.
She slipped off her jacket and pillowed it up, ignoring Salvaje's surprised glance as she settled it under his head. He needed to be comfortable. It was nothing to do with guilt over Michael Keane, nothing at all.
Are you sitting comfortably? Bane asked with false solicitousness.
Shut up and get on with it, was Salvaje's succinct response. Nerine leaned back on the wall and opened up her senses. The vibrant orange and brown hues of his mind began to subside, sinking into fugue. He became still, as empty and limitless as a desert.
Into that empty space, she and Bane stepped, two travellers moving deeper and deeper into Salvaje's mind. Memories sped past them – a flash of a gold bracelet on a smooth, dark-skinned arm, a cloud of lurid red hair tumbled over his hands, the smell of meat roasting, birdsong trilling away while he rocked with something small and cool and still clutched in his arms, the great hollow swell of the night as he ran...
Further in, past surface recollections. Voices crowded about her, and she caught snatches here and there.
"Are you planning to fight or merely gossip?" A girl, young, earnest, cocky. Confusion swirled about them, thick as fog – intrigue winding through it.
Another step, another voice. "Are you going?"
She staggered under the emotions evoked by those soft, hesitant words. Desperation, uncertainty, grief, and then a rush of passion and affection so great she had to force herself to walk on. It was like moving through treacle, every step an effort now.
"Not anymore."
On and on – more voices, some she knew, others were strangers hindering her.
"The Furies want you."
"I don't need the Furies, Faith."
"You know, Vaje, you'd be a lot better off if you didn't care so damn much."
"You'd be a lot better off if you didn't talk so damn much."
"The Furies want you. Are you going to refuse again? I'll only come back next year, you know."
"Why won't you let me go?"
"Why won't you let her go?"
"I loved her."
"If you have to love dead things, Vaje, then you do need the Furies."
Further...further...and suddenly Bane was gone. She was lost, trapped in a carousel of faces and memories that pressed in on her with the weight of mountains. She was sinking, crushed beneath his emotions, his mind beginning to absorb her as merely another collections of memories-
Panic set in, further weakening her. Gods above, she was going to be subsumed by this shapeshifter as surely as if she was prey he hunted under the moon. Eight hundred years, the Furies, and she was withering away beneath this. She-
She? Wasn't she he, coyote, shapeshifter, other name?
Nerine...no, Salvaje. Yes? No?
Ye-
She was hauled forcibly from the swamp of memories, flung back into her own body and consciousness. As she blinked and coughed, never so grateful to feel her flesh weighing heavy on her bones, Bane's voice cut across her.
Fine touch? Fine mess, rather. Don't try and follow me again – I don't have time to rescue you, and I can't think of a more embarrassing death than being devoured by Chusson's angst.
He was gone. She had nothing else to do but wait, and trust him. Neither was easy.
X - X - X - X - X
It was a welter of dizzied action, of the familiar touches Chatoya was sure could not be duplicated. Part of her had been supremely certain that she would know if this was not her soulmate, that in some infinitesimal gesture he would ring false on her senses.
But kiss for kiss, caress for caress, in rhythm and ambience and feel, she was deceived. It was as heightened and heated as ever, the soulmate link sizzling wherever skin met skin, a trail of fire and ice. They moved around one another, shifting and tangling in ever-changing patterns – it must have been a strange tango they sketched across the floor to that sumptuous bed, and she didn't even notice when the veils fell down to create a gauzy cage.
So she didn't notice Michael Keane stir in the reflection. Later he said it was dubious that she would have noticed anyway, what with the shadow play he caught through the curtains before he shut his eyes and started banging on the walls of his own prison as hard as he could.
Time and touch and friction: the kisses became more brutal and blood-tinged – it had become a mess of pleasure and pain, but somehow she didn't mind much because that was Blue, that was her, that was them.
Her head was spinning when he drew back – and suddenly she was aware of the expression on his face.
It was detached, and pitiless, and his smile had a razor edge.
It was the look he wore when he killed – and suddenly Chatoya was aware that she was pinned down by his weight on his legs, that the hand that had been scrunched in her hair was closed around her wrists, that she had been expertly and horribly manipulated.
Her breath was short in her throat, and some part of her wasn't surprised – not at all surprised, only fatalistically accepting – when he produced a knife.
"No," she whispered. "You wouldn't..."
Blue's smile bloomed like a poison plant. "I think you've forgotten something, my witch."
And she could only stare up at him and ask hopelessly, helplessly, "What?"
He whispered the words as if they were a secret too vast to be spoken. "Once, you thought he would."
"Not anymore!" she cried. Her illusions shattered like glass exploding. It wasn't Blue, not at all, it never had been – she'd just wanted to pretend, wanted him uninhibited and passionate for a little longer.
"I see no difference," it said, and the knife descended.
X - X - X - X - X
Nerine jolted out of reverie at Bane's voice.
Finished. He sounded weary. If it works, we'll know shortly. If it doesn't...we'll know shortly. I've contacted Pursang – help will be arriving as soon as they can manage.
His presence vanished: Nerine didn't think she had ever felt quite so lonely in her long life.
She stared as Salvaje sat up. His face was smooth and determined, but though the features were the same, it seemed devoid of character.
"Salvaje?" she asked, uncertain.
He turned his head, and his voice was colourless. There was no recognition in his eyes. "I need the gateway open."
She hurried to the plaque and reeled off the incantation, almost gabbling in her haste. There was a flash of light as bright as sunshine – and the last she saw of him was his back as he strode fearlessly through the entrance, walking into the mirror to seek desire.
"Good luck," she muttered under her breath.
X - X - X - X - X
He had no name. He had no time. He had only orders.
This triage of facts pressed in on him as he passed through the gateway. He wasn't surprised by the room of mirrors, nor by the boy who appeared trapped within one of them, weeping piteously. He did not feel so much as a twinge of astonishment at the canopied bed, its veiled curtains splattered with crimson. He had no capacity for surprise.
But something else in the room did.
A metallic gleam; part of the gauze fell away, and he found himself facing a man who seemed vaguely familiar, with his bold blue eyes and equally bright hair. Blood stained his hands, and it was obvious where it came from – that pale, pathetic bundle on the bed, breathing only in laboured sounds. Alive, yes, but seriously wounded. Her mind was waning rapidly, dimming down to a dull green that spoke of defeat and death.
He knew what to do. The command was engrained into his bones, and he reacted: a swift mental blow to the girl on the bed left her unconscious. Dangerous, but necessary.
And with that, suddenly he did not face a man, but a girl.
A very ordinary girl with short brown hair that clung to her face, and a pair of wide grey eyes that looked at him with something like bemusement. She was small, but there was a set to her face that spoke to him of stubbornness.
She frowned, and there was something like wonder in her voice when she spoke. "I...I know what you want."
"Yes," he said, and the words came forth with the careful pace of ceremony. "I want what you want."
Her lips parted, and it was joy that lit her then, suffusing her with a radiance that he supposed some might take for beauty if they cared for such things. "You do. You really do."
Questions moved into his mind with the orderly speed of soldiers. "Whose face is that?"
"Mine," she answered, and laughed, a brazen, natural sound. "I'm what He wants, you know."
"Who?"
"Hades." Her eyelashes dropped, turning her into a coy girl. "Persephone was all he ever desired."
"But what do you want?" he asked, as he knew to.
She froze, but only for a breath. "Freedom," she said in a gush, her voice fierce. "I want my freedom."
"And if I wish you free, will you let your prisoners go?"
"Have them!" She gestured – and suddenly the mirrors were gone, the bed was gone and he could see the bloodied mess that Desire had left behind. It was just a plain brick room, little larger than a cell.
"Go," he answered, his end of the bargain fulfilled. "I want you to be free."
And then a shout tore across the air.
"No!"
He had forgotten the young man in the mirror. His eyes were red-rimmed, but his face was terrible to behold, a ghastly mask of grief and anger.
"You can't let it go – look what's it done to Lady Chatoya, look!"
And he reacted swiftly – but this time, not as swiftly as Desire. It launched itself at the boy trying to deny its freedom, and he caught only a glimpse of claws and horrendous, jagged teeth before the boy was knocked to the ground. His scream overrode its snuffling, snarling sounds – the pair writhed, struggled, blood flew-
He reached for the boy's mind and slammed him into unconsciousness.
Desire rose from the boy's body wearing Persephone's form, as soft and sweet as she had been before the interruption. It was entirely incongruous with her besmeared hands and scarlet-swathed mouth.
"I will not be stopped," she told him. "I won't stay here."
He nodded. "Then go."
She moved to the doorway as if she could hardly believe it, and then, before she left, she cast one last look back at him. Her eyes seemed to hold the swell of rainclouds, but she didn't shed a tear.
"Thank you," said Desire.
And she was gone.
X - X - X - X - X
Nerine started when the mirror rippled – and something rushed out, a hot, bitter wind that seemed to curl around her thighs and brush over her mouth before it blasted through the trapdoor in the roof.
And strange...when it had left, she found herself smiling.
X - X - X - X - X
In the cramped archives, Blue sat at his desk, waiting, patient as the grave.
He couldn't say how much time passed, only that that the world seemed static and staid. Peaceful, yes, but he wasn't entirely sure that peace was what he wanted.
And what did he want?
Not this, that was for-
The soulmate link reappeared with the immensity of a supernova, bright and blinding and full of pain – her pain. It twisted about him, knotted and turgid, carrying with it flashes of memory. He saw his own face, impassive; he saw red and black, and a blade and then – and then he heard his own voice humming a careless tune...
Sign your name across my heart...
Criss-cross, X marks the spot, white pain, red pain, rainbow of pain and misery.
He recoiled, but her mind was squeezed around him tightly as a python, churning out the cinematography of her wounds.
Gauze dragged across the cuts, bringing a smattering of pinprick agony; lips following, teeth and knife and horror, the sound of her voice croaking because she could no longer scream.
Is this love, is love knives and kisses, I don't know...I know it hurts so it feels like love.
And there, soundless, her heart breaking, collapsing, her will suborned by anguish. Something new and strange moved through her mind, slow and sombre as a wake. He couldn't recognise it at first – it was so alien, so unfamiliar, and then he recalled a night long ago, when she had woken him with such heavy, dark thoughts.
Despair. She had given up: the mind around his was growing weaker, bleaker, dying.
Astonishment was the first thing to hit him, and outrage followed swiftly after.
This was completely inconvenient! He hadn't gone to all the trouble of creating his enemy only to have someone else kill her. Especially when that someone had the gall to steal his face, his modus operandi, and from the sounds of it, some of his best lines.
He snatched at the soulmate link, and was startled at how thin and insubstantial it had become.
Witch of mine, he said as loudly as he could, mentally prodding her, if you die now, I will be very irate. I may even be forced to dance on your grave, and my Irish jig is not all it could be.
Something: a flicker, tenuous as the first snowbell of spring.
Not to mention I'll be forced to torture Chusson for failing, and I may as well throw Nerine into the bargain – oh, and Keane. In fact, I may even have to teach Aspen a sharp lesson. After all, if he'd murdered his soulmate in the first place like any sensible person, I wouldn't be in this mess.
He began to push his own energy through the soulmate link. It was the spiritual equivalent of mouth to mouth, and he found it mildly distasteful – but necessary. Still her life flagged, flickering and dim.
And of course, he continued, in that smug tone of voice that he just knew gave her a strong desire to punch him in the jaw, I'll have won.
Her mind flared up around him, green as the northern lights. And he thought he caught the faintest of faint thoughts.
Not yet.
X - X - X - X - X
Some nights later, Chatoya sat in her room, hunched over herself as if trying to make her body a cushion for her bruised heart.
Faint hope.
She had become used to the aches; glassy and sudden when she moved, dull and warm in the moments of stillness. The fragility of her flesh had been revealed, and though she moved in a practiced masquerade – pretending exasperation at their concern, so blithe and flippant that she drove Vaje to furious shouting – she could not shake the feeling that all her defences had been pared away.
Last night, she'd woken cold and trembling. Only when her grogginess faded did she realise that a light had fallen on her.
He was a clean shape on the threshold, hands braced against the doorframe, his eyes hooded, drifting over her body. The bandages, the livid bruises on her neck, the swollen mound of her lip, travelling down the line of her leg, exposed in her tangled movement.
She felt dizzy; she half expected him to saunter over and plunge her into a kiss that was all tension and grazing pain, to taste blood between their mouths, to feel the deliberate pressure of his hands against her wounds. He seemed a promise waiting for fulfilment, stood there, Desire's promise of cruelty and beauty in torturous measures.
"He makes you feel alive, because he denies you your death," it had whispered during the first cuts, when she could still think clearly, when her throat wasn't shredded by her own screams. "And you crave the pain as much as you do his love."
Could that be true? She could no longer tell: she'd lost all ability to judge herself. Desire had taught her that, if nothing else. She didn't even know her own heart – how could she possibly begin to fathom his?
She wanted him to speak, to do something to show her that she was right or wrong. She had to know.
And then the figure moved, and she saw it wasn't Blue at all.
"I thought..." she began without thinking, her voice fuddled.
She caught the white edge of Cougar's grim smile. "Sorry, Toya. The black sheep of the family has business to attend to."
"Sure you didn't tell him to flock off?" she muttered.
"Terrible joke, babe." He shook his head, but she caught the warmth in his voice. "You must be feeling better, but you don't look it."
"Thanks."
She didn't know who had called them, but she was glad they had come: Jepar and Cougar and Lisa, all guarding her. And though she had been banished to the coast to see if seawater would speed up her healing – conventional healing didn't staunch the hurts of Desire, which seemed far too apt – all three had promised to visit as often as they could.
"Go back to sleep," Cougar instructed. "We're here."
As he shut the door, though she tried to stifle her treacherous thought, it accompanied her back into woozy dreams: but he isn't.
Despite his absence, she knew Blue had not left her entirely alone and she drew from that what fickle comfort she could find.
He liked to move around the edges of her thoughts like a moth; Chatoya felt him sometimes, when she hovered in that weighty grey silence between sleep and waking. And if she was honest with herself, there was safety in that brief, discreet touch, as light and bladed as a steel feather.
It meant, after all, that their strange game would go on. It meant that he needed her in some small and personal way.
It meant that she was not entirely alone.
But it also meant that her uncertainty remained, and she was poised upon his decision like a prisoner waiting for the hangman's drop.
One day, she feared, the rules would change and the game would end, leaving her in a vast wilderness, an absence of him that could not be replaced or forgotten. It seemed to her that he had delved so deeply into the process of dying that in that ineffable, feared future, it would call to him with the poisonous lullaby of a siren, overriding her own voice: he would die, severing himself from her with cavalier delight, death merely another voyage into dark places where she dared not follow.
What could remain but loneliness and wilting memories? She could not compete with death.
And that...that was what she could not tell them. That there, in Desire's prison, she had tasted the bitter dregs of her future, and knew she could not bear it twice.
She didn't fear her own death. But she did fear his. That was the truth, terrible and bright in this dark night where she was so lonely. That was her heart's desire: him, above all, and at the expense of all else.
How strange love was.
X - X - X - X - X