Chapter V: The Meeting of an Old Friend

Nord-Trøndelag, Norway
(21 miles east of Trondheim)
Time: 10:30 am

Arriving at Værnes airport, Lucian was immediately picked up in a sleek BMW…the door opened by a polished concierge and Magnus waiting in the back. The key was business, not a single word passing between them for about an hour. As the journey progressed, the façade of their clothing grew increasingly dilapidated. Almost grungy. Switching cars before they reached the northern wild, their ride growing bumpier. The driver left behind and the two men now clad in low-key, unassuming clothing suited to the surrounding winter terrain…and of course, their newest vehicle. An old range-rover…rusty in some places and probably on its last legs. Snow all around, it'd be a miracle if they made it to the den without having to get out and push at some point. At least the car radio worked, the head of Magnus bobbing in time to the sound of Bono pelting out "Elevation." U2. A new album apparently…though Lucian himself hadn't been following the charts.

They turned down an icy old road, and abruptly, Magnus lowered the music. It would be the first time they would speak since Lucian's arrival, and Magnus was in the driver's seat now…Lucian on his right. English would have to serve as a meeting point as Magnus' German was appalling, while Lucian, strangely enough, had never quite wrapped his tongue around Norwegian.

"Lucian," grunted the pack-leader of the Northern territories, bowing his head in deference. He was a brawny man, short spiky hair dusted the colour of wheat and the slight scuff of a beard darkening his jaw. His face could have been chiseled out of stone, his voice boisterous…deep…and perpetually filled with unruliness. Five centuries old, he acted as a sharp-shooter these days...but he knew well enough how to spear a man through the heart before hacking his head off with an axe.

"Magnus," replied Lucian with a curt nod. His hair hung loosely and the hood of a dark wintry coat swathed his face in shadow, though the day itself was still light. He'd swapped his lavish threads for the fur-lined down of winter. Grungy black long-sleeve underneath, topped with a v-neck sweater. Much good it would do him. Magnus always had a habit of picking at his appearance with a fine tooth comb before pronouncing the entire thing as deficient for the new century.

"You look exhausted." Magnus' hand reached out to wipe steam gathering on the cold windshield. "You know…really bad," he emphasized a second time.

"I see your powers of discernment still haven't changed…" muttered Lucian dryly, his fingers reaching up to adjust the heating vents. Even on full blast, the car interior was a mite chilly. Chilly and uncomfortable. Unable to sleep on the plane, he'd almost considered grabbing one of the plaid blankets from the back.

"Designer suit. Aviators. Versace. You almost dress well," Magnus observed, squinting at the discarded threads on the back seat.

Any minute, Lucian thought skeptically, nestling himself further into his coat and awaiting the next insult. The eyes...the ears...the hair...the skin. Already the man was starting to look puzzled, twisting to try and get a better view into the dark hood. Frowning as if the alpha had committed a grave insult against the modern age.

"Why so much...hair?"

"I was feeling royalist," Lucian said wearily, closing his eyes and allowing his head to lean a bit more against the window. It was going to be a very long drive. He'd gotten off easy with the suit, but Magnus hadn't changed a whit in five centuries. Biting and impertinent. To think he'd renounced the blanket out of politeness.

"A shorter cut?"

"Anything else, my liege?"

"Just saying. New styles...move with the times."

Resisting the urge to rip the man's shoulder blades from his back, Lucian yawned, demonstrating his desire not to continue the conversation, and shifted himself further against the window. Unsuccessfully trying to block out Magnus' voice. All he could feel was dull irritation. Another cage. Caged in Hamburg. Caged in the North with a madman who enjoyed listening to…

Without warning, the air began to turn on itself. He could smell a change. His weariness falling away like old fur.

Something was wrong…something off.

"So how's your wife," Lucian murmured quietly against the window, changing the subject and attempting small-talk as he considered the scent he was catching. He'd never actually met Vienne nor cared to, but rumour had it, she was a fine woman. Magnus' second wife after the death of Leda.

"Fine," Magnus shrugged, checking his rear-view mirror. Adjusting it slightly as he drove.

"Children?" Part of his strength as alpha came from his ability to sense the changing tides. Whatever he was smelling, it was guarded. The kind of whiff you got just before someone knifed you in the back.

"Walking."

"Good to hear it." He tensed.

"Glad to tell it," Magnus grunted, the teeth all out as he suddenly swerved the car to the right, coming to an abrupt stop by the side of the road. Snow all around and the cover of trees. His smile had dropped, eyes squinting strangely as he turned the engine off. From the corner of his hood, Lucian could see the man pocketing the keys and now studying him. He could smell the same scent of wariness. The scent of distrust. Calculating the odds swiftly, he prepared to gut Magnus from the side, keeping his movements hidden...

He'd been expecting assassination for the past six hundred years, though he wouldn't have thought it of Magnus. Perhaps thirty years was too long a time to be living up north. Easy for a lycan to grow too comfortable with the idea of a dead leader. Or go rabid. Both called for a swift gutting, though it all depended on the next words to come out of Magnus' mouth.

"What exactly are you doing here, Lucian?" The words were spoken hard and flat like the surrounding bleakness, a block of ice for all the warmth in them.

"Inspection," Lucian replied calmly, wide awake and not even bothering to turn his face from the window. "…or didn't you read the missive?"

Not assassination then.

If Raze had betrayed his confidence, then Magnus was already aware of the Nightrunner's involvement. He may have informed the Twelve, which meant this excursion would be coming to a rapid close. Though it galled him, he couldn't risk another cut of power.

"You're tense," Magnus said quietly. "...and you're planning something. I can only assume the Twelve would vote against it if they knew."

The Twelve.

Only God knew how that happened.

Originally it had been a strategem to force any contenders for his position into the open while taking a firmer grip on his empire. Since the first world war, anything of dire consequence, inspection aside, was to be taken up before a council of Twelve prior to final decision. Every member chosen from lycans who might have been alpha in former times. Each given their respective packs and spread across Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia...

...but then delegation had turned into communal rule. Like vampires, werewolves had chosen to think with their heads before their claws. Active politics had ground to a halt, while the alpha, first among wolves, was forced to seek council before making decisions.

He ruled them all...but at times such as these, they ruled him.

Keeping his features bland and disinterested, Lucian shrugged... "Take it as you will, Magnus. There is nothing surreptitious in my presence here. I tire of Hamburg and you face inspection, straight-forward and simple. The sooner you grow comfortable with that, the sooner we can be on our way."

"I know you, Lucian...you think quick and move fast, consequence be damned. There's more to it."

"How so, old friend?" His hood had fallen back, his mind moving swifter than the scowl darkening his face, the sarcasm dripping from his tongue. "Consequence be damned, I leave in two days. Do enlighten me as to the form my reckless scheming might take in that time? A meeting with a pack-leader? Perchance even a den inspection?" Magnus had to be aware he was walking on thin ice calling him out on a subject that held grounds for confrontation...but if he played his cards right, there'd be an opening.

"I know you don't travel alone, Lucian. Not anymore…not since the second world war and not for an inspection." The man's tone was surprisingly sharp considering who he was speaking to. "Any plan of consequence should have been brought before the Twelve. We are here to advise you. We speak for the sake of…"

"You speak for the sake of my will. Or have you forgotten your place in the hierarchy of my pack, Magnus?"

"I have not…"

"Then start the car."

"When you tell me why you're here…"

"I do not answer to you," he hissed, shoving the words in Magnus' face, throwing his door open and striding out into the snow. Enough with confinement. Let us see this to a head...

For almost a century now, Magnus had been pack-leader in the North, but did he follow the alpha or his place among the Twelve? Could he be trusted? Enforced democracy had changed so much in recent times...but the man had to choose. Darkness fell in two hours and the plan still needed maps, specifications, weaponry...

"Lucian," Magnus yelled after him. The tension in the car erupting into their surroundings, all pretence at diplomacy lost as the two lycans squared off, glaring at one another from either side of the range-rover. "We are not finished here…"

"Are we not," Lucian growled in challenge, his blood starting to broil as the silver of wolves altered his sight. The colours dimming before him as his aggression rose to a crest. "You worry on the Twelve when our forces would have been slaughtered centuries ago without my leadership. When did it come to this, Magnus, that even you would begin to question my motives?"

"There is no one questioning your motives, Lucian. No one questioning your right to lead us." Magnus was on the verge of temper, the harsh scent of rage starting to pinnacle against his own. The man had enough sense to keep his hands down, claws absent from each finger, but his words were gritted as if it took every ounce of his strength not to lash out. "Every soldier follows their pack-leader, and every leader follows you. But it is you who are bound to the will of the pack as much as you lead it. As long as the truce remains, we fight from the shadows and we live."

"We do not live," Lucian hissed across the clearing, gathering himself before a Change could occur. Anger, he felt. Tremendous anger at the truth in Magnus' words. Anger at the truth in his own. "We scavenge and we scrounge. Our numbers dwindle with each passing year as more and more deathdealers ignore Kraven's orders. Barely a tenth of humans survive the first moon after a bite. Barely a tenth of them are strong enough to withstand a single bullet. Do not tell me this is living, Magnus…"

Close to tearing through metal from the sound of things, the man abruptly growled, sharply rapping the side of the range-rover with his fist. "I do not fight this war so I might live, Lucian. Keep to the shadows and survive the war...or have you forgotten what it is to be lycan?"

Survive, Lucian pondered dangerously, fingers roughly transforming into claws, the talons sharp through the black fur. It had been decades since anyone had dared stand up to him. Decades since the twelve pack-leaders had been chosen to act as his counsel, stripping him of his social freedom. Alphas were never meant to defer. Never meant to seek counsel...

He blinked suddenly.

For a moment, staring at Magnus, it was as if he were challenging Askell, the old lycan master, rather than the man's son. He could see his mentor before him, the mantra that had kept him alive when dark nights threatened to sweep him from the cause. Askell had dragged him back from the brink. Shoving him against the wall and forcing him to repeat the words.

Keep to the shadows, he had told him. Survive the war.

But Askell had died with a silver bolt through his neck.

Suddenly weary of old memories, Lucian flexed his claws away and shoved his hands into his pockets, sniffing the air bitterly. Forcing himself to feel the cold working through his limbs, knee-deep in the snow. Forcing himself to remain in the present. Finally, Magnus was beginning to smell uncertain, as if he believed the alpha he'd spent his childhood following would actually rip his throat up. It was a necessary shame to use Magnus in this way. Confronting him only a few hours after their first meeting in years. He bided his time, waiting until the scent was just right, able to gauge Magnus' temper even after all these years.

Once long ago, they had been like brothers. They'd trusted in one another. Kept each other's backs. During his darker years, Magnus was probably the one lycan besides Askell that he could trust to keep him sane...and then he returned one night to find father and son locked in a brawl. Scratching each others' faces and growling as if they would kill each other in the next swipe. He had parted them, demanding to know what had occured...but neither of them ever told him what happened. Just after the seventeenth century, Magnus left to start up the northern den, while Askell his father cursed him from behind. When he died, Askell passed his memories and skills to Lucian rather than his own son.

Skills that Lucian now used upon Magnus...

The art of forcing emotions. Bluffing a scent and goading another to fight in the wrong situation. Forcing tension into the air when there was none. Causing the reek of desperation so the only option left was submission. The changeability of character used to curb others to his will.

Softly, he began to laugh. Short laughter...a pale shadow compared to the creature he'd once been. Even with the bluff, this still might have ended in a clash, but a millennium had taught him to swallow his anger. Askell had taught him.

Time to test the waters...

"What if I told you there was a quicker way to leave the shadows..." Lucian murmured quietly, studying Magnus as he would a field-mouse. The man's aggression was dissolving rapidly already, the colour of trees starting to emerge in the corner of his eye-sight.

"There is no…"

"I tell you there is a way here and now, old friend." He paused momentarily. "Would you follow me?"

Magnus lowered his palms to the rusty metal of the range-rover. He spat to the side. "You have no eye for the noose," he said brutally, glaring at Lucian and shaking his head in disgust.

The noose...

Lucian's eyes narrowed at the slight. Reckless he might be, but the odds were always in his favour. Magnus was just being stubborn...but there would be no quarter in this matter. The man was coming with him and if he must, he would force his beliefs upon his subordinate. His old friend.

"You will follow me, Magnus," he hissed, the words gritting against his teeth, burying Magnus' futile attempt to defy him. Without blinking, he continued to stare the other lycan down, imposing his right as alpha. Few lycans could bear it for very long, the shadowy face hooded in darkness. The man would be forced to follow him as his father once did.

Abruptly, Lucian fought the urge to blink. He was seeing things.

Like a mirror...

The chill of haunted nights. Perpetually restless hands and fingers. Cracks trailing along a façade worn so thin after centuries of use. The retinue of masks he put before his followers. Strength, resolution, and power. Desperation and anger. He barely knew which was real anymore, and so he pressed all to his advantage. Perhaps he was the one going mad...

Almost, he could see the pale reflection of himself in the eyes before him…

If he could only look further into the depths...

The other man suddenly grunted heavily, breaking his line of sight. "It's getting cold…" the man muttered, opening his car door and taking a seat, turning the engine on for the sake of warmth. Not surrendering an inch, Lucian entered as well, slamming the door behind him and leaning his back comfortably against the window. Staring Magnus in the eyes and waiting for him to give his answer.

Magnus met the unflinching gaze. "I will need details," he said, crossing his arms passively before him.

"Corvinus' blood heir."

"Here?" Magnus scoffed loudly in disbelief. "Lucian, the line has died here. We've combed the place…there hasn't been a new strain for decades."

"I have a source that thinks differently…"

"A source?"

"You heard the first time," Lucian retorted shortly…his patience on edge, his need to act starting to swallow the savoir-faire of his manner. He needed to be austere and cold…the character of one who commanded legions. Yet one who was dictated by legions. But he could not gamble on what Magnus would say of the Nightrunner. After Liam's death, the twelve had become…edgy…at best when the topic of visions came up.

"I need a name. Leave me in the dark again, and we may as well stop right here, have an inspection, and send you back where you came from…" A touch of playful scorn had entered Magnus' voice. In the face of a tyrant, the man had the temerity to smile broadly while smelling obstinate.

Aware he had lost ground, Lucian forced himself to smile...something of a tight smirk trying not to murder the person it was directed at. "I could also relieve you of your duties and place your wife in charge..." The thought had a ring to it. "...but seeing as you're stubborn as a headless cock, we may as well get this over with." He barely left room for breath. "Last night, the Nightrunner..."

At the woman's name, Magnus' eyes widened, shock and outrage.

Before he could bolt, Lucian gripped the situation in his teeth. "Hold before you speak," he said calmly as if he had not just mentioned a woman deemed packless for her part in Liam's death. At the time, he'd had to stop them from tearing her already broken body into shreds, having the execution waived at the last minute for the mere fact that she'd be dead in a year already. "I say again she, and you know of whom I speak, was gifted with a vision last night, Magnus. The blood was mine. She drank it and I tell you, she saw the mortal carrier of Corvinus' blood standing in this very territory in a single day's passing."

"Lucian, the woman is..."

"Think, Magnus. Had she been lying, Liam would be in Dublin, aiding the Council and his father's pack right now. That he did not return only shows the truth in her words..."

"Or the vengeance in them. Liam's father was a chief opponent to her presence."

"But not an active perpetrator," Lucian said assuredly, as if the proof lay before his eyes. "Do not discount words merely because we misunderstand them, old friend. Blood-sight has never been disproven, not in the first days of Viktor. Not even after it was banned."

"You speak as if you..."

"Twice this seer has spoken since the accident, both times in the grip of blood-sight." This seer. As if she hadn't been his mistress once. "Our pack would have her executed as murderer before Liam's body has even been found. Where is the justice in that? If the lycan still lives, would you rather not know for certain that it was Corvinus' blood that lay at the end of his search?"

"You wager this for Liam or the blood-carrier?"

"Both."

Shaking his head slightly, Magnus closed his eyes and quietly asked, "Where then?"

For a moment, Lucian had to pause, suddenly lost at the question and astonished that he'd managed to rest his case. Like the demon of Hunger eating holes in his own argument, he'd been talking out of his ass for the past ten minutes. The gamble was risky, based on bias, and likely to get them both killed. Either Magnus was in his camp or the man wanted him to stop talking drivel.

"Blood on the marketplace floor," he murmured quietly, recovering quickly enough not to betray himself.

"Trondheim," Magnus grunted, crossing himself wearily.

Lucian nodded, his thumb once more stroking the cord around his neck. No words were needed to share his disquietude. Like an axe cleaving through skulls, it was already ingrained in lycan history. The blood-soaked city…an early boundary of Trondheim. Home of the massacred dead. Avoided out of respect...and fear.

"Magnus," he pressed. "Yes or no?"

He saw the man hesitate, bathed in uncertainty. Distracted by a string at the end of his clothing. Tugging at it. Soon tying it into the rest of his sweater as he opened his mouth to speak, his body taut, probably aware of the eyes boring into the side of his head. The words blanketed under Magnus' breath...

"You still feed her lycan blood then?"

Frowning, Lucian blinked at the question. The silence continuing as he weighed it, aware that he was taking too long to speak truth. But there would be no compassion.

"Yes," he said clearly, allowing the obvious to go without dredging it up for morality's sake. The Nightrunner couldn't feed herself, let alone take lycan blood of her own accord. He forced her to drink, and slowly but surely, hastened her death in that way…slower than poison. Whether Magnus approved or not was of no consequence to him. During the trial, the pack-leader had been notably absent, and as a result, his representative Geir had voted for execution.

Moving on to more practical matters and ignoring the scent of regret on his breath, Lucian laid out the trail for Magnus…

"As I listened, she spoke of fluorescent lights flickering. The presence of broken glass, old bottles, and a brown suitcase. A straight-back chair placed by a window ledge. Tracks on the ground. An empty birdcage. A line of ants by a doorway." He paused, considering whether or not to broach the final point. "She says there is to be a man holding a gun. I can only assume this is the candidate that we seek. The trigger goes off…and…and there it stands. Probably somewhere near train tracks. A run-down neighbourhood by the sound of it, one with an apartment building perchance. Even if the man uses silver, we have enough years between us to withstand several bullets," Lucian muttered, restlessly played with the heater vents. He had neglected to mention the Nightrunner's final words…

He hits you. His name is…you.

For some reason he couldn't stop moving his fingers. Tapping the air vent left and right. Left and right. The sound of the motor running…the emptiness pressing in from outside. Blue skies…and dark clouds gathering. The unspoken thoughts hanging between them…the air vent being tapped left…and right. Left…and right. Violently.

"I'm sorry for what happened." Magnus grunted suddenly. Steady and unyielding…his voice becoming a discordant echo in the sudden silence.

Enveloped in the darkness of his shadowy hood, Lucian forced himself to meet Magnus' eyes, keeping his scent unconcerned and yet...unable to control his stance…so rigid…so cold and tense. Feeling the air of attack come upon him. Like the iceberg, the more tranquil an alpha was, the more careful you had to be when treading dark and dangerous waters. Or so the saying went. He himself had always kept his emotions in a firm grip, but lately, he was starting to slip. Lately, he was becoming more aware of the difficulty required for maintaining his control.

The wounds were still there.

Raw.

Suddenly unable to look at his travel companion, Lucian turned fiercely to stare at the window…his gaze intent on the dead trees outside.

Raucous, blood-drinking fiend of a woman with a temper to match. Dark-haired merchant of the ocean rails… The woman was not dead yet, but she may as well be. And he with her.

"Keep to the shadows," he murmured coldly, forcing his eyes to remain on the snow…dead branches. Icicles. The cold north from which the Nightrunner had come.

"Survive the war," Magnus intoned from behind. For a moment, the silence stretching between them...and then finally, the words he had been waiting for. The gruff voice of Magnus confirming his place in the mission. "We'll set out before dawn. Should be enough to find a route by the tracks...maybe a name if we're lucky." With no reason to argue nor linger, the man started the engine again and pulled back onto the road, turning the music back up, the rest of his energy now occupied with moving to the rhythm of Queen.

Lucian nodded, no longer willing to speak. His mind grim and tinged on solitude. His eyes focused on the nature that surrounded them through the glass... Sparse trees on either side of the road. Snow-covered trails and frozen icicles glinting with sunlight. Open skies above ranging borderless and free. The beautiful North. The blues tones as harsh as the eyes of his lost mistress of visions. Immediately, his eyes sharpened on the sky. The cruel beauty around him. The imperfections and gathering clouds.

It was getting darker...

He glanced at Magnus, further confirming his unease. The man had halted in his head movement, his attention focused instead on the sky, frowning as he turned the windshield wipers on. His hand reaching out now and again, wiping steam from the glass. A storm was coming.

"Faster," Lucian murmured quietly, staring grimly at the forest that surrounded them on all sides. It was another forty minutes to the Northern den, and Winter approached in all her fury. Though the storm would keep them safe from the prying eyes of vampires, it would do them no good if they were trapped too far from the den.

The other lycan nodded, stepping on the gas. Keeping the car steady and trained upon their destination. The sound of winter tires spraying snow beneath them as they raced forward.

A/N: This entire chapter has just been reworked (22 Dec. 2007) Please feel free to read and review.