I own nothing in this story that seems familar, but you know that already! Poor Holly and I wish it were otherwise.

Thank you Betas! You are awesome :) Any mistakes within the text are completely my own.

This chapter earns it's 'M' rating for a bit of the "sexy". You have been warned.

"The Nightmare life-in-death was she." - Samuel Taylor

Chapter 8

He was exploring the glen again just as he had when he'd been a boy of thirteen. A thick, long knotted stick acted as his walking staff. He poked it in various soft places in the ground, around a lump of debris, inspecting the dirt. The heat of the sun beat down on his skin, warming him; the long grass crunched under his feet and the birdsong in the trees was melodic, filling him with a rare sense of peace.

Tristan, a voice intoned in his head. There was something familiar about that voice, he thought to himself, something enticing.

Tristan, it came again with the same inflection. He turned towards the sound, lured by the promise of pleasure he heard in it.

Had anyone called to him in such a way before? No, his mind told him. Never. He could see someone between the trees, a shadow, a shape.

He found himself moving toward it as if his feet knew what to do but his mind did not.

Tristan, the voice was insistent this time: impatient, almost. He followed the figure as it remained just out of his line of vision, darting quickly between thick tree trunks and ferns, leading him on a merry chase. Finally, he stopped at the embankment of the pond, his booted feet sinking into the soft sand. Something about this chase was eerily familiar but for some reason he could not recall why.

There she stood, the sun glinting off her black hair and pale skin making her resemble a spark. She smiled warmly at him and lifted one hand in greeting. He watched spellbound as she opened her fist one finger at a time and dried, dead leaves tumbled from it, dancing on the breeze. She left her hand there, hovering in invitation.

Slowly Tristan approached her and drank her in with a curious gaze. The simple gray gown she wore was thin and he could easily make out the shape of her body beneath.

He reached out carefully and ran the back of his fingers against the warm skin of her cheek.

"How is this possible?" he whispered, and Holly stared up at him, her dark eyes shining. He stood so close to her he could feel the warmth and strength of her body, smell the hint of lavender her hair carried. She reached for his hand and guided it to her chest. He could feel the steady thump of her heart beneath his palm and he felt his features twist in confusion.

"I've been waiting, waiting, waiting…" She replied. Her words seemed odd as they fell from her lips. As if he was acting not of his own will, he watched as his hand traveled further down her chest, curving around the shape of her breast beneath her dress. He could feel the hard point of her nipple beneath the fabric as he ran his thumb across it.

He watched as Holly closed her eyes in pleasure. His own body responded in kind and arousal filled him, thick and hot and unexpected.

He bent towards her, breathing in her sweet scent and lightly brushed his lips against hers once, twice, but the third time became deeper, more demanding, and she opened for him with a sigh of pleasure. He felt her impossibly soft hands on his waist, slipping down the front of his breeches, caressing him, cupping him, then around to clutch at his buttocks, her nails scoring his skin and drawing him ever closer to her.

His hands kneaded her breasts and she arched against him in wild abandon, tangling her fingers in his long hair, shaping her hands around the back of his head to hold him in place. Tristan rocked against her, his arousal so powerful that it startled him, but he could not seem to break away from her.

It was then that his sense of her body shifted. Alarmed, he tried to pull away but her hold on him was fierce. With an unyielding sense of wrongness Tristan felt his right hand sink slowly into the flesh of Holly's chest.

A strangled sound of horror escaped him as he watched his hand disappear and slick warmth crawled up his forearm. He heard her pained gasp, watched helplessly as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and stained her lips.

With a great yell he pulled his hand free and with it came a red solid mass.

Holly's chest gaped open. The hole he'd inadvertently created was black and empty, and blood seeped into the bodice of her dress.

Her pale face swam before his vision and she clutched at his forearms futilely.

"You are mine," she gasped before collapsing at his feet.

Tristan could do nothing but stare at the thing in his blood-covered palm. He watched as it slowly beat once, twice, three times.

The sound it made was earsplitting and it reverberated throughout the forest, shook the leaves from the trees and made the birds take to the sky in fright.

He could not tear his horrified gaze away from the pulsing thing in his palm. He wanted to drop it, but he could not move. He wanted to yell but no sound came forth.

With a swiftness that was terrifying, the heart stopped beating and there was nothing surrounding him but a cold and empty silence.

Nothing.

Tristan shot upright in bed, covered in sweat, the bedclothes tangled around his naked form. Breathing heavily, he dug his palms into his eyes as in an attempt to erase the visions. The sound of Holly's heartbeat thundered in his ears and for a second Tristan had a difficult time distinguishing dream from reality.

Throwing off the coverings in frustration, he shoved his clothes on, he stalked from his chambers. The biting cold of the corridor was a welcome respite from the lingering visions of his nightmare.

He pushed his way into the tavern, wryly noting that there were few patrons about at this early hour. A serving girl cautiously placed a tankard in front of him and filled it with ale.

He grabbed it and downed the contents swiftly, relishing the warmth as it hit his stomach. The serving girl mumbled something about food and he barked at her to speak up. She squeaked in alarm and Tristan felt himself forcefully rein in his temper.

He was not one to snap at serving wenches. That was Gawain.

He excused the girl with a dismissive wave of his hand and she quickly scampered off in the other direction.

He was studying the wood grain of the table, images from his nightmare swirling in his memory, when a small satchel was tossed in front of him, interrupting his brooding.

The familiar light scuff of Dagonet's boots against the floor of the tavern made Tristan bite back a sigh.

"I don't need your powders," the scout said, pushing the satchel back toward the healer.

"You're not sleeping and as a result you're starting to vex me." Dagonet pushed the bag back at him and Tristan felt his ire rise.

"Take your mollycoddling elsewhere." Tristan pushed himself to his feet, wanting nothing more than to escape Dagonet's worried gaze.

There were other people in the fort that he could direct his concern towards, Tristan did not deserve the unwanted attention.

"There is something haunting you Tris. I know it." Tristan stopped in his tracks. He turned sharply, pinning Dagonet with narrowed eyes.

Strange that he should use that particular phrase.

"You know nothing."

"You've changed since that night I pulled you from the pond. What…" Dagonet hesitated "What happened? Does it have something to do with Reagan?" Tristan was genuinely taken aback at this.

Did everyone know about his once passing interest in Reagan? By the gods she was Lancelot's wife for a reason. Tristan refused to answer the question, his mouth tightening sourly.

"She's happy, you must accept this." Tristan was unable to smother an incredulous snort of disdain and he waved Dagonet's foolish notions away.

If his problems were something as asinine and simple as his unrequited feelings for another man's wife, he would have taken Reagan long ago and proved he was the better man. Dagonet's vexed expression grated on him: there was nothing for the healer to be anxious over.

Nothing except for the fact that Tristan's latent blood legacy had finally made itself apparent just as his mad mother had predicted years ago, and now he was having erotic and highly disturbing dreams about a dead woman.

A dead woman who at this moment was waiting for him to return to her, he could feel it.

What would Dagonet say if he told him about Holly? Would he go to Arthur? What would he do if Tristan told him he had had strange encounters with the hermit woman Mab, encounters that had disturbed him beyond reason? Dagonet's worried expression did not change in the course of Tristan's internal musings, if anything it had intensified.

Tristan walked back to where the small cloth pouch sat on the table and picked it up. He tucked it into his tunic pocket, gave his brother-in-arms a meaningful look and walked away from the tavern.

Away from Dagonet's bloody unwanted concern.

Holly drummed her fingers on her bent knees as she sat on a fallen log that was rotting and soft in places. If she had been more solid, she was positive she would have sunk into the soft flesh of the trunk. As it was she floated inches above it, barely disturbing the rotten shell.

Holly stared at the man before her, watching with gruesome fascination as he deftly skinned a hare, and then fastened it to a makeshift spit over a flame. She had wanted to instruct him where the driest bracken was when he first built the fire but he already seemed to know. Holly found herself following him to and fro as he stalked the glen; it was starting to make her angry that he did not acknowledge her at all.

She was tempted to play with him and douse his fire. She could easily do it just by blowing the newly fallen snow onto the flame, but to court Tristan's wrath yet again was something she was not willing to do. Holly had worked too hard to build the thin thread of trust that she had with him. Besides, she was a selfish creature and she was not willing to give up her only company, silent and brooding as said company might be at present.

Holly watched as he spun the hare over the flame; slowly the meat turned from pink and raw to golden and crispy and she wished she had retained her sense of smell. She used to love food when she was alive, loved the different tastes and textures on her tongue. Sitting down to a long meal with her family had been one of her favorite pleasures. She missed meals, she missed wine, and she missed dancing. Most of all she missed the feel of a warm fire on her cold skin after a winter's walk.

Holly watched as he tested the meat, mumbling to himself he ripped off some then shoved it in his mouth. Tristan chewed in that awkward way people do when the food they are eating is burning their mouths but they are too hungry to care. Holly wondered at his voraciousness.

"Don't they have food back that that fort you hail from? Surely they could feed you there?" His eye twitched at her words. She smiled triumphantly. She'd finally earned herself an eye twitch from the man. She drifted closer, cautiously, her eyes on the knight, and his eyes on the meat, on the ground, anywhere but her. Holly knew it was purposely done. Holly let loose a long dramatic sigh, then flipped on her side, floating a few inches off the ground.

Her hair trailed across her shoulder and the wind blew a couple of dead oak leaves toward him. One landed on the roasting hare. Tristan gingerly picked it off as if it were a dead rat and continued shoving the food into his mouth. The man had the manners of a barbarian. He looked the part as well, so Holly had to admit the comparison was fitting.

She wondered what he really looked like under all that matted hair and scruffy beard. The Roman men she had been raised around were polished and well-kept, and this man was anything but. She found him fascinating.

"Do you have a woman, Sir Tristan?" Her question made him pause. For the first time that night he looked at her. She smiled brightly and waggled her fingers at him.

Tristan ignored her while he once again began to eat. Holly deftly switched positions so that she was sitting cross-legged across the fire from him, still floating.

"No wife to trim your hair, cook your meals, warm your bed?" She already knew the answer but she also sensed that there was something holding him back and she wanted to know more. Holly wanted to know him.

"Would you leave me alone if I did?" he asked, throwing the bones of the rabbit into the flames. The fire hissed and spluttered but the flame remained strong.

"No." She grinned. He had not actually answered her question and for some reason she hadn't expected him to.

"Is the meat good?" Holly asked, for she was genuinely curious. It had been ages since she had thought of something as enticing as food. He nodded but made no move to offer her some as would be the proper thing to do. Never mind that she couldn't eat.

Holly continued her observations of her companion, watching fondly as he tossed some of the scraps of meat in Fionn's direction. The great bird would swoop down from her perch and gobble up the morsels almost as quickly as her master was throwing them.

Once he was done eating he wiped his hands on his breeches, leaving a smear of grease on the fabric. Holly felt her features twist in momentary disgust, convinced that her earlier assessment of him had been correct: Barbarian.

This brought her attention to the black marks under his eyes. Feeling her scrutiny, he glared back at her, daring her to ask a question.

"Did it hurt?" He paused in his ruminations to look at her.

"Did what hurt?"

Holly brushed her fingers under her eyes, "Your marks."

"Yes, they did." He replied gruffly.

"How old were you?" Tristan shrugged as if he couldn't recall and Holly knew he was reluctant to tell her anything, no matter how much she burned to know. He wiped the back of his hand against his mouth and her eyes followed, her attention changing to a different part of him.

He had a nice mouth, for a barbarian, she conceded. Then she wondered how many women he had kissed with those lips. Did they enjoy it? Was it pleasurable to be kissed by him while his beard scratched their soft skin? She had no doubt that women lusted after his powerful form, and she wondered if he took advantage of that, as any flesh and blood man would.

"You're staring, ghost."

Holly blinked and realized that she was indeed staring so intently that she was leaning half over the blazing fire. Had she been a mortal woman she could have tumbled directly into the fire and, at that moment, not cared one whit. Lust, she thought wryly, was a strange and consuming emotion. It turned scholars into fools and maids into whores.

She had never openly desired after men when she was alive, and to be aware so consciously of a man now seemed wrong somehow.

She had long ago accepted that she would never know the physical pleasures between a man and a woman. And if she were not a spirit who had forced her company upon him, she doubted very seriously that he would pay her any attention at all. He did not seem like the type of man who enjoyed the same things she did. He would need someone strong, yet soft, someone who could tolerate his bouts of silence and take no offence in them. The thought of him with such a woman made something in her shift uncomfortably.

Holly willfully pushed those thoughts aside. She felt a frown crease her forehead and reflexively rubbed the spot less she get a permanent mark. Holly felt herself smile at the old habit.

"Why do you spend so much time alone?" She blurted the question before she even had a chance to really think about the words. Holly had always sensed an inherent loneliness in him but since they had truly become acquainted it seemed stronger in him. He tilted his head studying her. Tristan's eyes gleamed strangely in the firelight and for a moment she wondered if her questions were impolite.

"I have always been apart. Even before these marked me." He motioned to the black symbols on his cheeks and continued to pin her with that steady unwavering gaze. Holly felt a tremor go through her at the look, whether it was from fear or anticipation she did not know.

"You waste the gift you are given. You hide from life the way I hide from death. We're both caught in the middle. Perhaps that is why we are here together now."

"We are not together," he replied with particular emphasis on the last word. If Holly could still blush she was positive her cheeks would be a bright red. Her skin remained in that unearthly pallor that she knew was incredibly unflattering even for a ghost.

"That's not what I meant. I mean, here as companions… I mean…" She stumbled along, trying to explain herself and finding she became more and more tongue-tied. She shook her head in frustration. "I don't understand you, Knight. When I was alive, my family was my whole life. I loved them greatly. I can't understand why you hide yourself in these woods, in the cold, in the dark, when the pleasures of a wife, a home, a family could be yours if only you found the courage to seek them. You live, yet you do not."

"You don't live at all," Tristan said in a tone as conversational as if he were stating that the sky was blue. Holly sensed the hidden meaning behind the words. His annoyance was so clear she could practically feel it, but she could sense the confusion threaded with curiosity that he was so desperately trying to conceal.

Holly felt a slight sense of guilt, that she should at least warn him that she could easily read his emotions to level the playing field between them, but she liked having at least this one small secret. It gave her the upper hand she needed to get closer to him, at least as close as he would allow her.

"Yes, you are correct," she nodded her agreement, hoping she sounded humbled. "I am dead, yet I am more alive than you at present. Don't you find that alarming?"

He shrugged again and Holly wanted to get up and shake him, slap him, anything to get Tristan to show a true reaction.

"Should anything you say alarm me? You are a ghost. You could be a figment of my demented brain for all I know," Tristan replied before cupping some snow in his hands and tossing it on the fire, immediately extinguishing it.

Holly blinked at him and shifted away on instinct. He had no power to physically harm her but he could still wound her with his harsh words. She pushed her fragile feelings aside and looked at him through narrowed eyes.

"Is that how you see yourself?" she asked quietly, daring to creep closer to him. "As demented, insane?" She couldn't help the prodding, but something about his last statement bothered her greatly.

He flashed her a look so raw and full of misery that she realized that he did believe himself to be mad. He blinked and scratched his nose, and the look, just like everything that had come before it, slid behind the impartial mask that he hid behind so well.

"You are not insane. You are gifted. My mother's people held one such as you in high regard."

"One such as me?"

"Yes, messengers between two worlds. You have the power to bring the dead back to the living." At those words something inside him snapped. Tristan turned on her. The full force if his anger was a startling thing to behold.

"Is that what you want from me?" She reared back at the question. Menace hung on his every word and Holly felt her eyes go wide. She had never intended to anger him so. She was attempting conversation, not accusing him of a crime. She shook her head vehemently, holding her hands up in front of her in an instinctual pose of surrender.

"No! No! That is not what I meant! I have accepted my death, such as it was. " She tried to sound apologetic and feared that it came out as patronizing. Tristan obviously took offence.

"That way lays true madness. I have seen it, and I will never do it. Do you understand?" Holly found herself nodding ardently. There was something in his eyes that tugged at her and made her insides twist.

"Never," he added under his breath heatedly. This was not something that he wanted to discuss. Holly could sense that she'd tapped upon something inside him that was volatile, but was confused by his ardent rejection. Gifts like his were blood rights. He had inherited a gift of sight, but he obviously viewed it as a curse rather than a blessing. Unless his blessing had come late in life, whoever raised him had done a poor job of preparing him for what he was to expect.

Holly knew very little of the messengers that her mother spoke of. But the tales she spun of the powerful Druid priests that could see spirits and even raise the dead had frightened and tantalized Holly as a child. She and Dara would cling to each other in the night whispering, recounting the stories and adding spooky twists of their own.

They had been tales then, and she and her sister children who found such things amusing diversions. Holly had always held the faint hope that the messengers did exist, though truth told to be told, the reality of a true messenger never crossed her mind. It had been a child's fantasy. Now she was confronted with one, realizing and seeing him for what he truly was. Holly had been drawn to Tristan since he'd been a gangly lad in strange clothes.

Despite his refusal to acknowledge their solidarity, Holly knew that they were here together for a reason.

"I mean no offence, knight," she said softly, hoping to soothe him. His temper, when he did show it, was a startling thing to behold. God help the man who suffered this knight's true wrath. "I would never ask anything of you that you would not wish to do." She swallowed with difficulty.

She hoped that her sincerity showed in her words. She wanted to show him that he did not frighten her. That he would never frighten her. But at the same time she felt that for some time now she had been fighting a losing battle.

"We shall never speak of this again." His hand cut through the air as if the motion alone could slice the head off the proverbial beast that sat between them. She knew he wanted her word and Holly gave it, albeit reluctantly. She knew that this would not be the last they spoke of it, no matter how much he wished to avoid it. A tense silence fell between them, their conversation still lingering in the air like agitated sparks from a fire.

"Whatever you may believe, you are not mad," she said quietly. Holly watched as he stood before her, wary as a wolf whose leg had been snared in a hunter's trap. He seemed torn between leaving her and hearing what she had to say. Holly half expected him to bolt.

"We are here to help each other. I do not know the purpose of our accord, I only know it exists and I want to…to know you better." She felt her throat tighten as she awaited his response.

He studied her through gleaming, narrowed eyes for a moment. His head turned at a slight angle, braids and tangled hair falling into his face. The sharp planes of his cheek bones and the set of his jaw told her he was sizing up the validity of her offering. His countenance remained impassive but she knew he was striving very hard to hide what he was feeling.

Just as soon as it had come, the moment between them was lost. He nodded at her in a brisk way, a single jerk of his chin that made her blink in disbelief. She watched, confounded, as he packed up his things and took care of the fire.

So that was it then? She thought. He would be leaving now as he always did and she could not follow.

"Will you be back on the morrow?" she asked, hoping he didn't notice the tiny pleading note in her voice. Damn the man for making her crave his reticent and prickly company.

"Yes," he replied gruffly, before he touched his fingers to his brow in a parting gesture.

Holly smiled as she watched his retreating back. For the first time in a long time she finally had something to look forward to. The sharp edge of loneliness still stung at his departure, but she was sure in time that it would dull to the low familiar ache that she would somehow bear for another eternity.

AN: And there is Chapter 8. I can't help myself when I'm writing them, they just love to circle one another it can get frustrating at times, trust me.

Chapter 9 is finished! It's a long one and we get to see a whole slew of knights and some new characters. The story is really going to pick up after this one. I have outlined 23 chapters including an epilogue so we're almost half way there. Chapter 10 has also been started and the plot thickens, Mab makes her return and she's as scary as ever. I got chills writing her...

Thank you to everyone who read/reviewed/alerted chapter 7! Honestly you help make writing this story so much fun. As I stated on my profile page, I am working constantly to get you quality updates at least once a month. Real life can get in the way but it hasn't sidetracked me for too long.