As always, disclaimers on the first chapter!

Sorry for this being posted over 2 hours late. had a bug up it's butt, apparently, and didn't like anything that I tried to upload. ::shifty eyes:: Maybe someone's trying to suppress Shifted! Viva la resistance!!!

::passes out after a full night of fighting with a website::

The Why

"...and then he told me again to find Eve, and let her know that Esus sent me if she gives me any issues."

I flinched as Jeremy tied off the cloth he wrapped around my wrist as a brace. I'd be fine before dawn, but Jeremy had insisted on a full inspection and bandaging. Paige was also at the cottage with us. Since she had an experience with Esus before, I insisted that she be there. Jaime was already at the cottage, and I didn't want to think about why...or what was going on while Nick and I were gone.

Jaime nervously picked at her perfectly manicured nail. "Eve's in one of her away periods. I haven't been able to contact her for a couple months."

I opened my mouth to say that if that was the case, I knew exactly where she was, but snapped it shut. It was almost like something told me it was better that no one else knew that Eve was, surprisingly, an angel. She couldn't tell anyone, but I knew...because of the very reason that I was in this damn madhouse of a world.

"There has to be a way to get her. Kristof, maybe?" I said.

Jaime blinked at me.

"Well, why not? If a go-between is the quickest way to her, why can't we?"

"What else did Esus say?" Paige interrupted. "Anything?"

I shook my head. "No. Other than that, he was pretty useless, especially since his temporary vassal of choice was an Expico half-demon. You know, for a god, you'd think he'd be able to have a better grip on something like that."

Jeremy's lips twitched, the closest I had ever gotten to getting him to smile.

"Well, if it's Eve you need, then it's Eve we'll get." Jaime reached in her purse and pulled something out, but it was hidden in the palm of her hand. She closed her eyes and we all sat in silence, watching her. After a few moments, she opened one eye and glanced at all of us. "Uh... I can't really do this with this big of an audience..."

"We'll step outside, then!" Nick suddenly jumped up beside me and grabbed my left hand. When I let out a small yelp and winced, he mumbled an apology, switched which hand he was holding onto and pulled me to my feet, toward the kitchen and out the back door.

Once we were outside, he turned around and pulled me into a hug tight enough that I coughed and gasped for breath.

"Bloody...'ell...!" I croaked.

Nick didn't respond. He just stood there, holding me in that crushing embrace and he didn't let go until I actually began to think that maybe he was going to suffocate me. When he dropped me, I gripped his arms to keep from falling over until I had my footing back.

"What..." I gasped, "...what was that for?"

He avoided my eyes, but held onto my hands. "I... When I didn't hear you behind me... I panicked, I guess." His voice lowered to a quiet mumble, "I was...worried about you..."

I smirked and reached up to ruffle his neatly combed hair, something I knew irritated the crap out of him. When I didn't see his usual glare of irritation, my smirk turned into a frown and I moved so that I was right in the path of his averted gaze.

"Hey... I'm okay, aren't I? I only sprained my wrist. Technically I didn't even get caught."

"I should've..." He suddenly growled with his frustration. "Clay would never have let something like this happen to Elena!"

I furrowed my brow, confused by his sudden outburst. "You're not Clay; and I'm not Elena. Why are you comparing us to them?"

Nick avoided my gaze this time by fixing his eyes on something over my head and behind me. I stood my ground and just stared at him, waiting for an answer. The longer I waited, the tighter the corners of his mouth got. He finally turned away with a grumbled "never mind."

My hands balled into fists and I stomped my foot in frustration, which only made me feel juvenile and even more angry. "You're fucking impossible!" I snarled. "One minute you want to tell me every secret you have, and then the next you want me to drag it all out of you. I'm not your father! I'm not going to baby you, Nicholas!"

As I turned to storm away, I felt Nick grab my arm and pull me toward him. I struggled half-heartedly, not really in the mood to try and make nice with him. Before I knew it, he had me in another hug and his lips were pressed to mine in a kiss almost as crushing as his earlier hug. My eyes went wide with surprise one moment and the next I was relaxing against him as his kiss became softer and more passionate.

Alarms went off in my head, reminding me that this was the Pack member who had at least three girlfriends at any given time. I ignored them. Nick's attentions felt so good that I didn't care at that moment if all he was doing was finding a way to temporarily cure an itch while he was away from home.

When he released me from the kiss, I blinked and licked my lips nervously. "I... Uh... I mean..."

I felt him chuckle and brush his lips over mine once more. "Just don't scare me like that again," he whispered. "Promise?"

My lips turned up in a small smile as I nodded.

When Nick and I returned to the cottage, I was nearly steamrollered by an over-excited Jaime Vegas.

"Finally! There you guys are! You two are always disappearing at the worst times. I've got her! She's here!"

I blinked dumbly at Jaime then looked over her shoulder at Jeremy and Paige still sitting in the living room. It took me a moment to remember who "she" was and why Jaime was so excited that contact was made. Eve. I was supposed to be looking for Eve. I felt my face warm with embarrassment as I pushed past Jaime and into the living room.

Just as I was about to sit in the armchair that I had claimed as mine, I noticed someone was already sitting there. "Oh, uh... Sorry..." I muttered as I stood back up and looked around for another comfortable spot.

As I searched, my eyes passed over Paige first, who was looking me strangely and then Jeremy who had his own version of the same look in his eyes. I looked over at Nick, who did very well at not hiding his look, and Jaime seemed more surprised than anything else.

"What?"

I looked behind me at the chair I was about to sit in. Still sitting there was a black-haired woman, waggling her fingers at me with an almost too-friendly smile on her lips. "Hi! The ghost hunt is over."

"Guh--?"

In the time it took me to mutter that half of a word, my brain made the connection. Eve Levine was sitting in my chair. I'd love to say that I was polite, reached out to shake her ethereal hand with a nice self-introduction, and was as witty as I am with the living. Yeah, that's what I'd love to say I did, but I didn't. I screamed and jumped the end table to hide my face against Nick's chest. Very brave of me, right?

Behind me, I heard Eve laughing. After a few moments, I managed to pull myself back together and turn around to see Jaime glowering at Eve who was still laughing at my little spaztic outburst. I shivered again, my brain screaming at me that this was more than captured images of ghosts. This was a ghost, sitting right in front of me. No, wait. She wasn't a ghost. She was...

"Stop laughing at me," I grumbled. Every living eye turned toward me as I spoke with what was only supposed to be visible to one person. "Stop laughing, or I start singing bad country music...about angels!"

I felt my nose wrinkle at the pathetic threat that I made, but it got Eve to stop laughing.

"I'm not surprised that you know, kitten."

"And I'm not surprised that you're here."

"Wait! Wait..." Jaime stepped between myself and Eve as she looked at me. "You can hear and see her?"

I nodded. "Up until you blocked my view of her, yeah. Thanks for that, by the way."

"I can still hear you!"

The strangest thing about contact with the dead is that one can't really hear anything they do. I didn't hear Eve get up out of my chair, nor did I hear her feet on the carpet as she closed the distance between us. I heard Jaime step back though, back toward Jeremy and Paige. I watched as she whispered an explanation to them, that I was able to see and hear Eve myself. I turned my attention back to the woman in front of me and waited for my explanation.

"Look, I'll just cut to the chase," Eve began.

"Well, that's nice of you," I smirked, tilting my head to the side.

She glowered at me and continued. "The Fates need you because there's been a break in. Something that they can't quite get a grip on because it's not from around here."

"Soooooo... Get someone from that area of the world. What does that have to do with me?"

Eve crossed her arms and glared at me, all but freezing me in place. "That's why you're here. You are from that area. Not only are you from that area, but you created the thing that got in."

I blinked. "I... Who... WHAT!?"

Eve's gaze softened and she grinned. "Got your attention now, don't I?"

I felt my jaw tighten as I waited for her to continue.

"I don't know how the Creator thing works, and quite how it's linked to the Fates," Eve waved her hand dismissively, as if it was an unimportant detail, "but, who or what ever the Creator is knows every Tom, Dick, and Harriet who might have some sort of power. The Fates are supposed to be the gate keepers and the moderators of this dimension's supernaturals. You've got something similar in yours. There's one for every world created."

I looked at her like she had gone off the deep end before I leaned over to look at Jaime, the index finger of my right hand aimed at Eve. "Do you believe this cock-and-bull story? I think she's been on one too many 'adventures'!"

Jaime shook her head. "I'm not hearing a thing Eve is saying. It's all censored from my ears."

I frowned and glared at Eve again. "Great. I'm the only person subject to listening to a crazy person. Tell me again why you were made a—"

"DON'T!" Eve interrupted, holding up a hand. "Don't even finish that sentence. I know you know that they're not allowed to know."

I shook my head, my brain spinning from the number of knows in her last statement. "Uh, right... Okay, let's say this mythos is the one I gotta live by, since I'm here and all. You still haven't explained what got loose and why I'm the one who's gotta catch it."

"Like I said earlier, you created the thing that got loose here. There's nothing like it that even the Fates have seen, and with that many sets of eyes, I'm sure they've seen a lot."

"Don't the Fates only share one eyeball?" She ignored my jab and just stared at me, point blank, so I asked the next obvious question with a roll of my eyes. "What did I supposedly create that got loose here?"

"The Leviathan."

Any sarcasm that I may have had ready to fire at Eve froze in my throat. I even got that horrible tingling feeling in my tongue and fingers when I get a sudden adrenaline rush. "The... You're fuckin' shittin' me!"

"Seems I've really got your attention now, huh?"

It took some fighting, but Eve finally got the approval from the big wigs to talk freely among the other "mortals" of our group. Paige, grudgingly, had left the cottage to attend to other Council business. I knew she wanted to know more, so I promised to fill her in and keep her in mind in case we needed help geared toward her talents.

By the time Paige left, Eve returned and Jaime had already prepared what she needed to allow Eve to speak through her. Eve returned to my chair, across from Jaime and Jeremy who were on the couch. During the wait, Nick had sat down in another armchair and I perched on the arm part, his arm wrapped casually around my waist with his hand resting on my thigh.

It was strange hearing Eve telling the others her half of the information (sans the part about the Creator and the Fates), while Jaime echoed it with a slight delay. It kind of reminded me of when my mom got her first cell phone. She tested it by calling the house from right next to the phone and had me pick up. I'd hear her voice next to me and then a moment later in my other ear over the phone. But this wasn't a telephone system, and what I kept thinking was: But, they're not in harmony...

My turn to talk finally arrived in the form of a simple question from Jeremy: "What exactly is this Leviathan?"

I sighed and rubbed the back of my neck nervously. "I was writing a fanfiction where the original character was...possessed, for lack of a better term...by a creature called the Leviathan. I based it not on the most common knowledge of what the Leviathan is, but on a mash-up of what a friend of mine said the Hebrew version was and, uhm...." I paused and glanced at Eve, "...and the Nix."

"Shit!" Eve exclaimed as she sat straight up in her chair.

"Yeah..." I flinched a bit. "Though, in my defense, you can't really fault me for this! People write creatures all the time, and they just usually stay in their own world." I spread my arms wide to indicate the people sitting around me. "Let me point out Exhibit A!"

"Yeah, okay, but how do we stop it?" Jamie asked.

"I...don't know..." I slumped a bit in my seat, leaning against Nick's shoulder as I felt his arm tighten a bit around me.

Eve raised a surprised eyebrow in my direction. "What do you mean you don't know? It's your creation!"

I shrugged. "And!? It was a story that I never finished! How was I to know that it would come back to bite me in the ass?"

The room got unnaturally silent after I said that. I could feel my self-doubts prodding my brain for a reason why they were silent, and the biggest one was that they were trying to find a way to place the blame on me. Eve was right, though. It was my creation, and it had to have had a weakness. I just couldn't remember what, or was it that I didn't think one up? No, if it was developed enough to shove it's way into another dimension, then I must have given it a weakness. All I had to do now was remember it and put that into action.