Black Cat, White Moon

Chapter Twelve
Cats in the Cradle

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And the last thing I heard
Was a muttered word
As he knelt above me
With a rock in his fist

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Esse the Sloe-Eyed, one of the few original witches from the old tales of her people's history, still as pretty and petite as she had been in those days, rubbed her stomach as another stabbing pain shot through her. So her supper was proving a bit difficult to carry, was he?

Interesting.

She had to admit, Lord Gideon had been right about her own kind tasting better than human children baked in gingerbread batter. They also did wonders for her complexion- Sebastian had taken off almost seven years. Now she was the cutest little witch-toddler anyone had ever seen, and just because she looked five years old didn't mean she was in any way diminished from her original levels of power.

Another pain lanced through her tummy, and suddenly a tickling in the back of her throat made her cough delicately into her fist. When she pulled her hand away, she saw her skin speckled with dark blood.

"What... what the-"

She couldn't finish, though, because another pain, this time like a blade of molten fire, cut through her from pelvis to clavicle, and she fell to her knees, hacking and coughing as blood dribbled from between her lips.

"Gideon..."

"Do you need help, Miss?" At the sound of the man's voice, she looked up into the kindly, concerned eyes of a police officer. He knelt down, taking her gently in his arms. "Are you alright, Miss? You look like you need some help." In the face of such statements of the obvious, she almost laughed, but her belly cramped. Obviously, this human was short a few screws. "Actually, Miss," he added, shifting her in his arms. "I'm not."

At this, she looked up, because his voice had become poisonously cold, and Esse saw him raise a fist clutching a jagged stone, and bring it down on the bridge of her nose. In the moment of agonizing pain, as she felt something cut into the flesh of her stomach and the cartilage of her nose explode, everything went dark.

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And if you aren't shakin'
There's somethin' very wrong...
'Cause I'm the bogeyman...

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Sebastian Nox struggled to his feet. Really, you'd think the FBI would be a little more particular about who they let work for them. Didn't they know that a single armed adult was enough to handle Esse the Sloe-Eyed? She was barely bigger than a human child.

Esse herself lay in a pool of blood, dazed and half-unconscious from the blow to the face she'd received from one of the "local police." Local police who also moonlighted as a vigilante. Of course the people here in LA knew about the people out of fairytales, and knew how to deal with them. Well, relatively speaking. There was no dealing with Esse, really. The best you could do was bash her over the head and hope you knocked her out the first time, then do what you needed to do and get out of town before she woke up and decided to make a snack out of one of your treasured body parts. She was one of the few who were so old, it was almost impossible to kill them.

Kind of like Sebastian himself. After all, it took a very creative person to actually manage to kill a bogeyman. All you ever really managed to do was slow them down a little bit, and when they got back on their feet, they just started to come after you again.

After all, Razielle had inflicted a lot of pain. Even now, the hinges of his knees squeeled like rusty gate hinges whenever he took a step. And they HURT!! And that human had attacked him, for crying out loud! Shot off his fingers! The bullet had lodged in his hip- which also squeaked like rusted metal and hurt like hell fire. Sebastian was going to kill both of those troublesome women, if it was the last thing he did.

After he killed Spencer Reid.

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The tears of snow-white sorrow
Caress the one, the hiding amaranth
In a land of the daybreak...
In this brief flight of time we reach
For the ones...
Reaching, searching for...

She's fading away
Away from this world
Drifting like a feather....

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She was icy, but not cold. You could see it in her eyes, in the burning diamond shards of her gaze. They were so cold, her eyes like the frigid void of space, that to look in her eyes was to feel your heart freeze to ice in your chest. To look upon her was to die a brutal death.

She was in agony, but she was not hurt. Anyone could see that in her eyes as well, and in the way she moved like an old woman with a bad hip, and the way she glanced often at the great portrait hanging over her huge, marble fireplace. A man dressed in lace and velvet, a dozen children of various ages in various forms of dress, and she herself, in a simple gown, wings spread wide. They were the royal family of Cat's Cradle. And now... now they were scattered, separated across the worlds... and she needed her daughter. She needed Razielle now, her eldest daughter, the heir to the Kiss de Carabas.

Shekinah stared out the window of her bedroom, out across the world to the pale horizon, where the sun crept slowly into the shadowed sky. Even Sarastro's light could not force the gloom from the heavens this day. Ever since the Marquis had disappeared....

Where are you, my daughter? I need you. We all need you. Where are you?

Razielle had to come. When she arrived, there would be no fighting, no yelling, no screaming, no throwing heavy, breakable objects. Shekinah would make peace with her gentle, not-so-bloodthirsty daughter.

Or everything would be lost.

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Over the mountains and the seas
A prisoner's life for him there'll be...
Each night within his prison cell
He looks out through the bars...
One day he'll know the taste of freedom.

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Everything was lost.

The Hunter knew it in his very bones. He would have had to be an idiot not to know it. Because, the Hunter knew, he was in no state to escape this trap. And so he was in no state to rescue the children caught in this trap as well, or the human woman who seemed not at all surprised by the creatures holding them captive. He thought perhaps she might be mad, but it didn't matter if she was. It was the mad ones who had always been able to see the truth behind the fairytales. Just like the mortal who had given his life to save the Marquis so long ago....

"When's Raze coming, Papa?" His youngest daughter whispered, tucking herself against his side. She didn't seem to mind the blood pumping from the gunshot wound in his ribs, soaking her dress. Lilya just wanted to be close to him.

Closing his eyes tiredly, the Marquis de Carabas said, "She'll come soon. She's surely received our enemies' message by now." He put his hand on the little girl's shoulder. She didn't mind the blood pumping steadily from the stump where his finger used to be, either. His children never gave blood a second thought. It was so much a part of their lives.

"What about Mama?"

"Your mother and your sister will find us, my little one. Have no fear."

But he had fear - because the bleeding from his wounds should have stopped by now, and it hadn't. It hadn't stopped, and in fact hadn't even slowed down. It was just as steady and strong as when they'd shot him, as when they'd hacked off his finger. He could imagine what that meant - magic, science, divine intervention of the brimstone and sulfuric flavor. Or it could just mean he was getting old. He didn't know and didn't care.

But he had to save his children, before he bled to death from the wounds that the Lady of the Black Glass had inflicted on him. If he died, then the Ancients only knew what the twisted sorceress would do to the children. He had to save them.

Somehow.

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And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little girl blue and the man on the moon
When you comin' home girl?
I don't know when, but we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then

I love you
Does that mean I have to meet your mother?
I love you
But does that mean I have to walk on water?

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Razielle stared out the window, everything inside her twisting and burning. She was nearly home - she could feel it in the way her heartbeat thumped inside her, the way the Car purred like a contented cat. Paka, Lejon, and Tier were purring like mad, rubbing themselves against Gideon, who was also looking better the closer they got to the Cradle.

They had managed to stop the bleeding from the wound - but that was because Razielle hadn't gone in looking for the poisonous barb that had been attached to the great dart in Gideon's side. Instead, she'd made sure he wasn't near death, and told the Car to hurry it up. Then she went to sit beside Reid, who was looking pale. Whereas before, the demon cats had been rubbing against him to ease his pain, now it was her turn. She pressed her cheek to the line of his jaw, purring softly to comfort him and herself. Her fingers kneaded his shoulders, not for him, but for her.

"What's wrong with me?" The young genius mumbled. Every time he turned his head, his nose caught a strange, sweet scent. It was almost as if it were coming from Razielle's hands. "Razielle?"

The huntress pressed her cheek to his - his flesh was sweaty and feverish, hers dry and cool. His eyes glistened in their sockets. A sharp spike of fear slid into her heart like a stake.

"Poison," the Night Child murmured, desperate to keep her voice steady. The fear forced it to tremble. "Don't worry. My people can heal you. Come here."

They shifted, so that his head was resting against the swell of her breast, her arms around his thin frame as they hurtled through what she had called "the climbling ladder." The climbing ladder... the ladder was the woven path that back led to the Cradle... her birth place. She needed to get there, and soon, before Reid grew any worse.

Almost there, Mistress, the Car rumbled in her skull, V8 growls in her mind.

Hurry, she replied, caressing Spencer's burning cheek. Moments later, they fell out of the strange place between the worlds known as the climbing ladder, pulling up in front of Trollesund, her father's castle.

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Promise me....
I love you so
Never let go....
He loved her

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Disclaimer/Author's Note: I don't own anything you recognize. Revamped, more information, etc. In some of the song lyrics, I changed the gender pronouns and nouns to make them fit the scene, such as: father to mother, she to he, etc. This chapter is 2000+ words.

Copyright Info:

Section 1: Where the Wild Roses Grow by Nick Cave, feat. Kylie Minogue

Section 2: Oogie Boogie's Song, the Nightmare Before Christmas

Section 3, part 1: Amaranth, by Nightwish

Section 3, part 2: Not Like the Other Girls, by the Rasmus

Section 4: Over the Hills and Far Away, by Led Zepplin, covered by Nightwish

Section 5, part 1: Cat's in the Cradle (I think)

Section 5, part 2: Simple and Clean by Hikaru Utada

Last section: Ghost of a Rose, by Blackmore's Night