Black Cat, White Moon

Chapter Three
The Oncoming Night of the Dragon

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Besides just being simply strange
Spawns from some illness of the mind….

It just seems very strange to me
Not Her quiet lonely streets
And draped in all Her mystery
Could be so sweet and comforting

For the Night, She calls me….

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"I don't know who she was," Spencer Reid whispered for the seventh time. How many times did Gideon want him to repeat everything? "But she was just… just... I dunno... she was all over me. B-but not... not in a sexual way. It was more like she thought she owned me or knew me intimately, but... but I swear I've never seen her before."

The special agent scrubbed ineffectually at his face with one trembling hand, his acute embarrassed obvious for all to see. Special Agent Gideon, his ex-superior, understood. He knew about Reid's mother, knew all about his fear of schizophrenia, an insidious madness that would corrupt his genius, and knew how much it had scared him to see that girl in the mirror. Spencer could see all that reflected in the older man's face. What must his old boss be thinking right now? Reid didn't dare tell him the effects that contact with this girl had had on him. How he longed for that brief dark touch again… even though the very idea scared him practically witless at the same time.

"You've never seen this girl before," Gideon reiterated, just to be sure.

"No," the young genius cried, staring up at his boss with wide, wild eyes. His eyes were almost beseeching. The memory of that girl… of the kiss she'd laid on his cheek, it was arousing, and terrifying, all at once.

But Reid hadn't told Gideon about the kiss. Not that. Only that this girl knew about someone trying to kill him. And why wouldn't she? She was a figure of his overactive – suicidally depressed, Reid thought – imagination, and would of course know everything that he himself knew. It wasn't a struggle to comprehend.

But what was a struggle to understand was the fact that he would give almost anything to keep her from being imaginary. If she were not real, then he really was going crazy.

You know better, a rich, velvet purr filled his head. You didn't make me up. You're not going mad. I promise. No madder than you were before, at any rate. The sound of that voice tugged at his heart and made him flinch at the same time. It felt as if the delicate brushings of a spider web were caressing his brain, a soft touch to the backs of his eyeballs. Goosebumps ripped through his skin.

Please, he thought desperately, trying to make that other presence hear him, if I'm not going crazy, if you're real, please for the love of all that's holy get out of my head.

Shhh… hush. There's no need for hysterics. I'll go.

And the touch was gone. With the absence of the touch came a rush of doubt. He'd imagined all of that, surely. But if he'd been imagining it… maybe it was the drugs? Maybe the Dilaudid and Opana – he'd found Opana to supplement the other meds when the pain was exceptionally bad – maybe they were causing these… hallucinations?

But were they hallucinations? Reid wasn't sure, wasn't sure at all. How could he not be sure? Well, he wasn't all that sure about that, either. And why did he feel so bereft at the loss of that touch in his mind?

"Reid!" Gideon snapped his fingers right in front of his face, startling him. His heart leapt into overdrive. The young agent winced at what he was sure was a crack in his sternum from the sudden increase in his heart rate. The older agent snapped, "Wake up! Pay attention. We need to know who'd be trying to kill you. Maybe they're… I don't know, drugging you somehow. Would you know if they were?" The FBI agent demanded of his coworker.

"Yes," Spencer replied instantly. He was incredibly paranoid about poisons and toxins and infectious diseases used as weapons. The twenty-five-year-old was extremely careful with what he ingested, what he allowed near his body, anything. It was almost an OCD thing. "I'd know. And I don't know who'd be trying to kill me. Maybe it's got something to do with the new case?"

"Maybe… but I don't think so," Gideon said. There was a darkness behind the agent's eyes that Reid had never seen before, an anger almost, as if someone had... had stabbed him in the back. Betrayed him. The agent continued, "We'll figure it out."

At that exact moment, all the lights went out.

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She'll suck you dry
But still you'll cry, to be back in her bosom
To do it again
She'll make you weak
And mourn and cry, to be back in her bosom
To do it again

(Pray) Til I go blind
(Pray) Cause nobody ever survives
Prayin' to stay in your arms just until I can die a little bit longer
Satyrs and saints, devils and heathens alike
She'll eat you alive

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Razielle glided through the darkness of Reid's work place. This was where the human worked? The BAU building stank of iron and fear-sweat. What kind of sensitive like him – a mortal, no less, a human mortal who was so fragile and mentally unstable compared to the Children of the Night, who could handle the negative energies swirling about a place that made a study of murder and madness – worked for the fracking FBI? No wonder his wings were so battered and bruised and bloodied. Cupid's whipping boy, with bloody stripes of pride on his back and bloody feathers falling like snow in his wake.

The poor baby.

The huntress's weary heart tried to go out to her mark, but she slapped it back, beat it back into its cage of black ice like a whipped dog. She had no time for compassion. Death was in the cards tonight. Only death, no pity.

"Leave no track; don't look back," she snarled, and drew her favorite gun.

Jackal, its gaping maw of highly polished black steel open and begging to rend flesh, settled into her palm easily. Her skin eased around the leather grip of the handle, and shivers of delight slid up and down her protruding spine. She loved this gun, a gift from her Father. And she also loved the paired gift in the twin wrist sheaths hidden by her black bell sleeves – her twin knives: Thornography and Nightwish.

Razielle could take Reid easily with these weapons. Maybe she'd make it easy on him, take him quickly. He was sweet, after all, and hurting. Battered and broken. Capable of inducing pity in her shriveled up heart. Maybe she'd give him a gift of a quick knife across the throat. Maybe a shot through the back of the head, something he'd never see coming. One minute alive, the next minute dead. It didn't matter what she chose. Just as long as it was quick and easy. All she had to do was follow the smell of him down these midnight halls, blanketed in blackness because when someone like her turned off the lights, it wasn't just darkness. It was night come early, the kind you ought to be afraid of.

All the preternatural huntress had to do was keep following the sweetly intoxicating scent of Eros' beat-up crack-child to what would be the end of the world: his death at her blood-stained hands.

Just follow that scent to death.

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Night had indeed come, following in the hunter girl's footsteps, but he doubted Razielle would be happy about it when she discovered his presence. Sebastian Nox grinned and licked the tips of the fingers on his left hand. The freakish monster tasted venom and pain, blood and the sweet, meaty, spongy taste of raw human marrow. Grinning like a madman, the other hunter began gliding through the darkness.

Sebastian wasn't after Reid's scent, but Razielle's – the stench of feral cat witch on the prowl, hunting, out for blood.

"Bless the child; follow the left hand path. There's a poison drop in the cup of Man." He grinned wider, revealing jagged needle teeth so sharp as to tear through flesh and bone, too many to fit into the semi-human mouth. The demon man didn't seem to mind the strange warping of his mandible and lips. In fact, there were only two two things on his mind.

One: Razielle, daughter of the Hunter, would die, and so would Spencer Reid.

Two: Dragon was going to be so happy.

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Dragon was sitting right outside in his red corvette. His wife loved this color red; ravenous red, she called it. Dragon was getting hot inside his car in the Vegas summer heat.

Dragon was getting impatient.

Dragon was getting greedy.

And Dragon was getting tired. Tired of Spencer Reid and his genius IQ screwing up the best laid plans of devils and monsters. Tired of the entire team, but he figured he'd get rid of the little rat first, the little Thorn Prince so ignorant of his bloodline and power, so that he could start setting his plans back on the chessboard of Hell on Earth and start weaving the black widow's web for the rest of the world. He'd take care of the rest of them later. But right now he was most tired of Spencer Reid. And really, he was getting tired of the wench, too. He was really getting tired of Razielle… maybe Night would get pissed off enough to kill her, too.

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Please feel free to leave a comment!

I really do like hearing from my readers, and this is a labor of love and I want to know if my kid is friends with all the other kids. Or rather, my Reid-fic-crack-baby is friends with all the fic addicts out there. So yeah, let me know what you guys think of this. I love to hear from the readers, to see what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, all that stuff. Ta-ta!

Copyright Information:

The first set of lyrics are from the song the Night by Voltaire. I don't remember what the title of the second song is, but it's by Puscifer. I think I spelled that wrong. And Nightwish is a band, Thornography is a CD released by Cradle of Filth, Jackal is the gun that belongs to Alucard in the manga/anime Hellsing, and the words that Sebastian says are from a song by Nightwish (though I don't know what it's called).