The sandcastle wasn't high enough. They were never high enough.

"What are you building for anyway?" the master voice asked crossly.

I glanced at him impatiently. Two halves to make one whole, madness and poetry, a little like myself and Kent. The master voice stood in the shade of a pyramid as he awaited the approaching darkness eagerly. His pale hand gestured outwards to the desert and the receding red rivers. "The blood is going, yours, the sickness, the wolf's, all of it, you'll be a dried up husk, a mummy, perfect for the desert." He let out a cackle before following it with a mournful sigh. "I was so certain that would be freedom from you but I think was a little quick with that hmm yes like a train I need a track, a thread to follow back to the web. Awful troublesome when you forget where you left things you know like cufflinks, boots and bodies."

I ignored the voice and resumed building my sandcastle, it needed to be tall with many turrets to withstand the danger. Of course one had to make the sand damp first to have it firm, that was logic, feed the body of the sand with the blood of the river. Yes, something like that. I picked up my bucket and scurried to the river but the voice was right, it was going.

"Little Sarah I'm not impressed."

I stopped at the edge of the river, now barely a trickling stream of crimson there was a shadowy figure on the other side. I looked up and saw him smiling, when the sun vanished the shadow would be free to strike.

I scooped up what blood I could and returned to the castle.

"Remember Sarah if you don't build it well enough you will owe me something."

No, no, had to build. The blood was going. My movements were slow and sluggish. The darkness was coming. I was out of time and the sandcastle wasn't high enough.

I felt my eyelids twitch as I tried and failed to open them and became aware of a beeping sound. Life. Steady, confident life. Me. My heart. My pulse. I felt heavy and tired, weak and lost. Something was missing. I felt a rush of fear and let out a hoarse groan. "Master wolf?" I realised the oddity then and the fear in me grew. His blood was gone, the lead unclipped and I turned loose. I was mortal again. Weak mortal Sarah, no strength against the bullies, no one will come when uncle makes you scream, no one will hear it. I didn't like it. "Master wolf! Master wolf please! Don't leave! Don't leave!" Wait, hadn't I wanted the wolf to leave and set me free? Freedom or loneliness? Which was which?

A ringing in my ears turned into a roar. The voice fallen from the web scorned, "I want you to die you don't, I want you to live you won't. What do they call this? Irony? My sister would love this. Poetic irony or mad stupidity? So close to the sands, you could build all the sandcastles you want out there."

Voice thought death meant freedom but it wouldn't, voice would be bound to this one's corpse, no way to the web, no way back to the lost body in torpor. Torpor, four dead in the desert, no not dead, sleeping, don't wake them Goldilocks these bears will be very hungry.

The shadow man took form, Rob and dad's dark auburn hair, bright green eyes, a flashing ten watt smile, handsome, single, charming Uncle Charlie. Disgusting, lecherous abuser Uncle Charlie. No one could know, they would only get angry, say you lied, say you made him do it, Sarah the slut. Yes, isn't that what the last master said? Sarah the whore. The fallen master's friends are coming, they feel the disease in the city, they enjoy the unrest, they're coming for knowledge and power.

"She's stable but she won't last."

Charlie was the master of the voices, Charlie was their creator, one night in the shadows he had hurt too much and a voice had come after promising to take away the pain.

"How can she still need the blood?" The mournful wail of the Baron.

"I think with Ariadne this is more complicated than the usual," the dry tones of the scholar. "Her +/*65ndency is based on mental well-being as well as physical, perhaps a trait from being Malkavian, perhaps simply from being her."/

"Been in the dark too long, she can't handle the light, it's not her friend anymore. 'Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness.' Without the strain of darkness she is weak." Beckett's mad friend.

"So she can't ever be human?" My Baron sounded tragic about it but there was a hollowness to his words, he had never wanted me human and now he was glad he didn't have to force the choice, it was made.

"I can give her the blood again."

Master wolf! Yes! I was lost without the pack, no one to hear me howl, no one to know when the danger was near. I missed the clan too, the voices on the web, never alone, I hated being alone.

"It doesn't end then," Isaac lamented.

"You can't embrace her like this," Beckett scorned.

"Well he could," Anatole chirped up brightly, "madness is poetry, poetry is madness, one halves of the same whole somewhat, I prefer the mad side of things mind. Although that sick kindred you have makes the line blur, mad and a lover of beauty, delightful!"

Sick kindred? Kent? The Bishop? Pale cold flesh upon my warm skin, freezing it and yet making it tingle in an odd fashion.

There was a loud boom noise and I felt shaking. Was it in the mind? More voices. Footsteps, yelling.

"Shit is she not awake yet?! We need to go! You need to go!"

"What is it Nines?"

"They're here."

I felt myself sucked down without warning, pulled rapidly into darkness. For a moment there was silence and then I hit the ground and a ringing noise replaced the vacuum of sound. I stood quickly, at once curious about my new situation. I tensed seeing a little girl seated before me with her back to me. Long, wild, dark hair that almost concealed a black pinafore. Her left hand clutched a limp puppy teddy, yellow with brown patches, I'd called him Rusty.

She turned suddenly and looked up at me with an angry grey stare. "He's coming," she hissed out. She started to crawl towards me, rapidly, panting like a wild animal as she did. I wanted to flee but not from her but the man she warned of. I wanted to crouch down and clutch her to me and hide us both to prevent the horrors that would become nightmares. I couldn't move.

I heard footsteps coming from the darkness, the heavy, brown, sand stained boots of Uncle Charlie. The stale odour of cheap beer, salted nuts and the salt of the sea filled the air, his odour. I needed to run.

He staggered into sight with a beer bottle swinging in his right hand, pale blue shirt loose and untucked, and worn jeans held tight with a brown belt. He grinned at me hungrily, his grey eyes burning with anticipation. "Sarah you don't have a sandcastle ready for me," he said with false disappointment. "Guess you gotta make me happy some other way."

I smiled and shook my head. "I'm not Sarah," I said brightly.

"No, who are you then?" he quipped tauntingly.

Good question. Could I take up the mantle of the lost princess without the fangs? Was Ariadne not the Malkavian and Sarah the mortal? Did a ghoul still count as mortal? Wait, was I a ghoul?

I felt his hands slam suddenly down on my shoulders as he gripped them tight. The beer bottle was gone. "You're still Sarah," he said softly with a leering smirk. "Sweet, soft Sarah," he murmured as his right hand reached up to stroke my cheek. "Uncle Charlie's favourite girl because she's a good girl, she doesn't fight or scream, she just makes her uncle happy and stays quiet, ain't that right?"

For a long time that had been right. For too long now I had always seemed to find myself enslaved to another- Uncle Charlie, the fickle whims of Chase and Phil, the vampires in mask, LaCroix who held the hand of the Sheriff with the executioner's axe, the Tzimisce. In the human world a slave, in the vampire world a slave, in the ghoul world a slave. I had to end it.

I reached to the back of my shirt where I usually had a sword ready and I felt the comforting touch of a metal and wooden hilt. I yanked it out swiftly and I swung it hard. The blood splashed my face as Charlie screamed, burning hot and so sweet on the lips. I licked at it rapidly, I wanted it, I missed it.

My vision filled red with the blood and Uncle Charlie was no more, at least in my mind.

"Why must you Anarchs be so prone to rebellion even when it doesn't serve your interest?" I recognised the cutting voice of Strauss immediately.

"We had another offer," Isaac retorted bluntly. I knew from his guarded tone that he acknowledged he had made a poor choice in LaCroix's advice but he would never admit to Strauss. Of course I was still semi-conscious and wondering why the choice in LaCroix had become poor, what had gone wrong?

"And now you will pay a bigger price for your foolish mistake," Strauss chided.

"The Aralu mean nothing to me," Isaac retorted dismissively.

There was a low growl and I became aware of a warm fluffy presence at my feet. Master wolf. I opened my eyes wearily at last and glimpsed a blur of white fur at the foot of my bed.

"And LaCroix means something? We had an agreement and I would have honoured it Isaac, I would have helped you in exchange for him and I would have brought him to justice, proper justice, no Anarch kangaroo court without a fair trial or punishment."

"That jackal is one of the worst of your kind," Isaac retorted angrily.

"Then why?" Strauss quipped calmly.

They were on opposing sides of the bed and only when I glanced to the left and Isaac's way did I become aware of his cool hand grasping at my limp one. I looked to the right to Strauss and felt a prickle of pain as I noticed the tube from my arm that linked up to a blood bag Strauss was waving his hands over. I let out a hiss of pain as I felt a burn.

"Ariande?" Isaac queried worriedly.

I looked to the Baron in again and was soothed a little by his sympathetic honey stare. "What happened?" I queried hoarsely.

"You all tried to cure this disease without my help and failed," Strauss answered haughtily, "but such is the Anarch way to charge on without the guidance of the Camarilla."

"Nines had ghoul hospital workers assist with the blood transfusions," Isaac explained, "it seemed to work for Kent and it seemed to work for you but then you..." He paused and seemed to puzzle over his word choice. "You weren't stable with only human blood."

Human was weak, as a human I had been exploited by Uncle Charlie.

"Then the Sabbat attacked," Isaac added angrily, "the only things worse than Camarilla minions. It was only the scouts so we were able to defeat them but we had to leave. Beckett gave you some of his blood but you didn't take to it."

"So he had to come to me," Strauss concluded coolly. "You and that Toreador who seems in favour of LaCroix would have perished otherwise."

"Yes Strauss," Isaac grumbled crossly, "I will admit that was a possibility and that you did save them. You would have my gratitude if it was enough but it's not." Isaac looked back to me with a dejected stare. "Ariadne you willed me to keep LaCroix out of it for Kent's sake, I wanted to relent but he thought he wouldn't make it, we all did for a while and he begged me. He was throwing up black blood, I couldn't even get near him, he pleaded for that narcissistic pomp though I cannot say I understand why so for you and him I had to renegotiate and quickly."

"You're being unnecessarily dramatic about it, I have asked for no lives or prisoners," Strauss murmured. "I desire only to accompany you when you follow after the Aralu."

I twitched at the word.

"You all mentioned it at once," Isaac murmured darkly.

I looked to the Baron curiously though my eyes were beginning to water at the edges and my head was starting to tighten at the brow and pound.

"You," he nodded to Beckett, "his mad friend and apparently the mad Bishop, all of you screamed about the Ninth Circle where the ancient four lay."

I couldn't recall such ranting and yet it sounded right. "The inner circle where the gods play, the Ninth Circle," I mused.

Isaac nodded grimly. "I would have preferred we were not to go chasing such potentially dangerous foes in the middle of a desert but it is the only bargain I could make with Strauss and still see...that Camarilla fool spared."

I nodded in understanding. "The voices won't be silent about the Aralu, I have to go to silence them," I said softly. I turned my head slowly to face Strauss again, wincing at the stiffness of my neck. "What about Kent?"

"He is in better form than you," Strauss said with a hint of pride in his voice, "and feeding on human blood again."

I had to force myself to look at Isaac again to get a true answer. "What about Kent?" I repeated with a worried stare.

"I just answered that," Strauss grumbled.

"She means his well-being," Isaac chided, "we are more than just blood sucking corpses Max."

"Toreadors," Struass complained. "Really Isaac I don't think us robots or zombies either and I am perfectly capable of feelings but it was an open question, forgive me for thinking she was asking after his health since that is what was jeopardized."

Isaac shook his head scornfully. "Kent is still troubled," he admitted quietly, "although calmer since Romero...dealt with the Toreador woman."

I heard an echo of bloody screams that went on for hours and shuddered. "You captured her?"

"Jezebel, the ugly monster called Brother Kanker and the disgusting worm Bishop Vick whom I personally would have beheaded had Strauss not insisted otherwise."

"We needed his blood," Strauss reminded him.

"Needed not need," Isaac grumbled.

"Well after what your ghoul did," Strauss remarked haughtily, "and given the rare nature of the disease it seemed essential to preserve at least one of them. At any rate this Bishop Vick may yet be cured of his strain too and without the originator of his strain," he added smugly with a flicker of a fanged grin.

"What did Romero do?" I pried with reluctance. I did not want to have images to add to the screams but curiosity wouldn't allow me to leave the issue alone. I recalled Jezebel faintly, the pretty spider beckoning us into her parlour with a sinful stare.

"It wasn't justice whatever you call it," Strauss answered.

"It was vengeance," Isaac admitted with a troubled look, "and that is all you need to hear Ariadne." He leaned down and stroked my cheek tenderly. "You are weak and tired yet and need to rest and the sun will be up soon." He glanced Beckett's way again. The wolf had been so quiet I had almost thought him asleep but his red eyes were wide and sharp and his ears perked, he missed nothing. "Beckett has already agreed to stay with you, at least for now."

"Why is he in that form again?" Strauss pried.

"Ask him yourself," Isaac murmured. He planted a kiss upon my brow and stood upright again.

I knew there was more for me to hear and learn about our predicament but Isaac was right, I was tired and I was sore too and started to long for rest again. I let my eyes close and gave way to exhaustion.

Sorry for the wait guys, December was not a good month for me. Sorry for the shortness of the chapter too, it's more of an interlinking chapter I suppose and it actually was a struggle to write because I wasn't sure about where to take Ariadne from here or Strauss' role. Anyway, I think I've got it all worked out, hopefully, and I hope you enjoy it! Also hope I'm doing Strauss justice, I actually quite like him it's just I can't resist siding with Isaac everytime in the game and taddling on Strauss to Isaac and thus earning his eternal ire.