Here we go!

DISCLAIMER: No own Gone!

DEDICATION: As always, to my good pal Caris L. Clearwater! Go read her Drake\Caine story "Possessive" ;)

WARNING: No Bug fans. Wait... Are there any of those? I think not.

Chapter Fourteen: Blackbirds

"Lay the sick ones down,

the bells'll ring,

put pennies on their eyes,

let the dead men sing..."

-Linkin Park, "Blackbirds"

"Are you sure you don't want to give him to me today?" Nala- the real Nala, not one of her mindless clones- asked, her tone sickly sweet. "You can still save yourselves while you have time, you know." She tapped her designer shoe-clad foot against the squalid floor of the church.

"Go to hell," someone shouted from the back corner. Nala scowled. Drake. That little cretin. Inside the church, the rebellious cry had intensified into a chant that the weary kids soon adopted gleefully, every single one.

"Go to hell,," they bellowed, some of them pumping their fists in the air in victory. "Go to hell!" Nala's scowl deepened.

"You are in hell," she spat, and grabbed the ear of a chubby looking boy that had been trying to sneak past her, thinking of himself as invisible. Yawn. She could see though that easily. She pulled her whimpering prey after her, slamming the church doors shut after she had stalked through them.

"Kill him, please," Nala snarled at one of the underlings of herself has she shoved her victim behind her. "I don't feel like doing it myself."

Usually she loved it; the shriek of a life leaving the body, the way the eyes dimmed, the way the heart slowed, but not today. She wanted Peter. She wanted to watch him writhe under her power, to finally submit to her. But today wasn't the day.

But it will soon come, Peter. And when it does, oh, you'll be sorry.

She could still hear his thoughts, if she concentrated. They still had that age-old bond of what used to be trust. Peter probably could hear her thoughts as well, and she hoped he could, because she was thinking feverently about his death.

Their bond of thought began back in the 1200's. Peter had been a physician in a royal court, but he had also, secretly, been obsessed with forbidden magic, particularly magic that granted longevity.

And his experiments had succeeded.

Every rat, dog, even larger animals like horses that he tested had lived, presumably, forever. And then Peter picked an orphan off of the streets, a ten-year-old blond girl with striking blue eyes, and tested it on her.

She lived, and couldn't be killed.

Peter applied the magic to himself.

Both the magician and his acolyte never aged. Peter began training the little girl, who called herself Nallah, even though the spelling of her name changed with every different place they traveled to. He began training her in his trade, teaching her all of the magic he knew.

And they lived on.

The two of them traveled, alone, to the New World, where Nallah had been drawn to what she called a place of great power. Peter couldn't resist the lure of that much might, and he trekked over mountains, through rivers, across plains, until he and Nallah reached the ocean, and what is modern-day California. And the source of the power.

It was a deep cave, full of green crystals that made Peter's ageless skin tingle with pain, but Nallah had been mesmerized.

"We need to get away from this place," Peter said urgently, pulling at Nallah's pale arm. She tugged herself away, still gazing into the roiling green mass. "This is bad magic!"

"No." Nallah broke herself away and gazed her mentor straight in the eye. "This isn't magic. This is power." Peter's eyebrows furrowed and he finally saw sense as the green particles shot up into the air.

"If it's power, then it's the kind of power no human has the right to wield."

"Then it's a good thing I'm not a human, eh, Peter?" She sneered when he looked confused. "You stripped me of my humanity the minute you forced me to become one of your never-dying experiments. Now back off, coward, and let me claim my rightful power."

Before Peter could stop her, she had flung herself, headfirst, into the cave of swirling green. As a final, parting gift, she shot a blast of the green sparks directly at Peter, causing him to glow briefly, then disappear.

Nala had injured herself and the thing under the mountain, which then had fused together and formed a lump of green particles, which lay in the cave for more years then it could count, but she had injured Peter even more. He no longer had a body, but was a detached soul, which could inhabit one body at a time, but never die. Both Nala and Peter were both gifted and plagued with eternal life.

Peter had inhabited many bodies, all in the same family line, all men, and all conveniently having some form of the name Peter. The first was a servant of a wealthy merchant in the 1700's, who attempted to colonize California. The servant, who's name was Petré Ellizona, had a son, and he had a son, and thusly the small town of Perdida in California was founded.

After years of pondering how to keep Nala in the cave and the people of Perdida out of the cave, Peter, through Pete J. Ellison, marked the entrance to the cave as a dangerous mine shaft back when Perdida had a sister town, a gold-rush community called Ariza. The people of both Perdida and Ariza stayed far away from that cave, which pleased Peter greatly.

In 1893, when Perdida was changed to Perdida Beach, a man stumbled into town. He was passed off as another drunk traveler, but then he began raving about a monster under a mountain. Peter, through the body of Petras Ellison, saw his eyes.

His crazed, dark eyes with swirls of green molecules in them. Thankfully, the man was put away as insane as soon as he began blathering about being able to see through walls.

In 1944, the Perdia, Now Perdido Beach Nuclear Power Plant was built, and every Ellison generation that Peter inhabited worked there. And then, in 1987, the meteor struck and a man was killed.

Peter began to get frightened, if only a little bit. He suspected that Nala fed off of radiation; and that's what the green particles were.

But thirteen years passed, and nothing happened.

Then, one afternoon, Peter was roughly yanked from his body in Pete Ellison Sr., and transported to the next male in the Ellison line, Little Pete. As soon as he was in the mind of the four-year-old autistic, Peter was immediately blown away. There was power here. Power that had stopped whatever had just obliterated all of the adults from reaching the kids, as well. Power, maybe, that could even combat Nala's.

"Who are you?" Little Pete asked in his mind. Peter answered, if a bit startled. No one had ever sensed his presence before.

"My name is Peter, like you. I don't have a body of my own, I'm afraid, and I'm rather attached to your family."

"It's fine," Little Pete answered. "Do you know about the evil, Peter? I can feel it. It's hidden, but I don't think that it will stay hidden for long."

"I feel the same way. And when she- it arises, we're going to be the ones to stop it, Pete. We need to stop it, even if every other person perishes in the attempt. It's what we're here for."

o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.

Nala pushed Peter's trivial thoughts from her mind and concentrated on the matter at hand; the supervision of her creation.

Even though she had no need to eat or drink, she had an ice-cold bottle of lemonade in one hand as she lounged beneath an umbrella as one of her underlings fanned her; watching the construction of her colosseum.

Review, please!

:Hyperactive Lioness: