'Then I'm spinning and I'm diving like a cloud of starlings. Darling is this love?'*

Lena got her new CD's from Amazon and had to go to the studio immediately, of course, because it had the best sound system and she might need to dance to something, so best be prepared. Hal picked up the pieces of packaging as he followed her down the hall, chuckling to himself at the way she tore the thing open with her teeth as if it were a meal she couldn't wait to devour.

"This one first," she said, "Alex recommended the group. She was appalled that I didn't already know about them."

"What are they called?" Hal asked as he assumed his usual position in his comfy chair in the corner.

"Elbow," Lena said as she put the CD in the player.

"An inauspicious name. Let's hope the music is better," Hal replied.

The music was much better. It was extraordinarily beautiful, and poignant, and honest. Hal thought the lyricist must be a true poet, and one who knew his deepest secrets, because suddenly he was hearing them in a song: 'acting like I hadn't dreamed of marriage: you are the only thing in any room you're ever in: I'm stubborn and selfish and too old; a horse that's good for glue, and nothing else: find a man who needs you more.'* It was all there, his flesh laid bare for him to see.

It rolled over him then, the gross selfishness of his silly dreams, of his joy at the notion of spending his life with her, of his belief that she would be happy investing years or decades or centuries in verbal sparring with a dead man.

He could never escort her onto a crowded dance floor. He could never take her on a holiday that required a train, a cruise or a flight. He could never give her children to replace the ones she had lost or the one he had taken from her.

All he had to offer was a never-ending dance with the devil and a battle they couldn't win.

By the time the last note of the song had faded, Hal was gone.

She heard the crash and splintering of wood at the same time she sensed his desperate resolve. She flew to the kitchen to find him with a busted chair leg braced against the wall, the jagged end being drawn into his chest as he pushed himself against it. He had thrown off his shirt and she could see the blood seeping from around the wound and the grey cracks beginning to form in his skin. He had penetrated his heart.

She threw him backward onto the floor and flung the stake across the room. She covered his heart with her hands as she knelt over him and tried to take the injury into herself, but it didn't work. He was too far gone.

He fought her, pushed at her hands. "Let me go," he gasped. "I'm setting you free."

She felt blood and dust under her hands and screamed, "NO!" and straddled him, pulled off her t-shirt and tore off her bra and clutched him to her, heart against heart.

"My heart for his! My heart for his!" she screamed with tears rolling down her face. She felt her heart begin to weaken and crumble as she drew his death from him and took it into herself. She grew cold and weak as her heart disappeared and her lungs fell into dust and she slipped into darkness.

Hal felt a heartbeat within him as Lena held him against her chest. The bleeding ceased and his crumbling body reformed in her arms, but she weakened and he caught her as she fell silent and collapsed. Her body began to hollow out as her organs turned to dust; he couldn't be sure what was happening to her, but he guessed it quickly enough when the song of her blood faded along with her heartbeat and breath. He gathered her corpse in his arms and closed his eyes, searching for the sense of her that would tell him she was still in the world. He couldn't find her. She had gone beyond his reach.

He knew she was dead but he refused to accept it because her death was more than he could bear. He lost himself in grief as he clung to her body and called to her, begged her to stop teasing and come back to him. He spoke as if she was playing a cruel game of hide-and-seek, and he hoped it was true. He spoke as if she was his saviour, and he knew it was true. He clung to her because he knew that when he released her at last he would find the stake and finish the job, and he wanted to hold her as long as he could before leaving her forever.

Lena opened her eyes to see her mother looking at her. She was in the timelessness of eternity. "Did it work? Did I save him?"

"Yes, dear, you brought him back. He's grieving your death right now," Agraja replied.

"But Mom, I'm not dead. I'm going back, I have to. He needs me." Lena watched her mother for confirmation that she could return to the world, but saw worry on her mother's face instead.

"I have to go back!"

Agraja shook her head as she replied. "But my dear, your insides were turning to dust. It will be agony to rebuild your body, and there is so much pain in that world anyway. You've been there a very long time. Are you sure you wouldn't rather stay with us?" She continued gently. "You can, you know. It would be easy for you to just stay. We would love to have you here."

Lena shook her head, negating her mother's suggestion. "My place is with Hal."

"You need to stay here while you can," her mother responded with a note of warning in her voice. "If you go back to the world, I can't say that you'll return to us. You've nearly gone to hell with him already."

Lena caught her mother's meaning. "You're afraid he'll be the ruin of me."

Agraja nodded. "Let's just say you've finally met your match," she said grimly.

"Which is why I'm going back to him."

"Inanna, wait." Agraja took her daughter's hand. "You must stay. Please stay, for my sake."

"You ask me that, when you refused to stay in the world for my sake? No Mother, that time is past."

Agraja didn't beg for anything, but she begged her daughter now. "Please! Stay with me! I can't lose another child!"

Her desperation made Lena suspicious. "What makes you so certain you'll lose me? What are you keeping from me?"

Agraja could contain herself no longer. Fear resonated through every syllable as she cried out, "You have given too much of yourself to that creature! Your time, countless years of your life offered for his safekeeping. Your body for his use. Your love—oh, I know you love him, it is in your nature to love—and I believed that you needed to do those things, for your own happiness. But it has gone too far! You've shared your soul with him. You must feel it, you must know that he carries part of it now. Inanna! Your heart beats in his chest! Don't you know what you've done?"

Her daughter's puzzled look told Agraja that she didn't understand. "You are bound to him. His fate is yours. If you return to the world now, that creature will own you. And Lucifer owns him. Don't you see? When he dies, he'll take you with him! If you leave us now, you will never return."

Lena shook her head. "Do you really understand me so little? I bound myself to Hal long before I shared my soul or my heart with him. Of course I'll go to hell with him if I can't find a way to save him from it. That's why I must break the curse or defeat Lucifer."

"Your love has blinded you, and now it will destroy you," Agraja said bitterly.

"No it won't. Love doesn't weaken me like it weakened you. It makes me stronger." Lena looked at her mother, once the strongest creature on earth. Agraja's love for her weak-hearted son had ruined her.

"I. am. not. you." Lena said.

Her mother had abandoned her own body and turned her back on the world millennia ago. Now she begged Lena to do the same. "If you leave, you will be lost to us forever. You can't win this battle, Inanna. I'm begging you, please! I can't bear to lose you, too."

"If you have so little faith in me, you've lost me already," Lena said sadly. She bowed her head for a moment, then squared her shoulders and nodded once, firmly.

"Goodbye, Mother," she said, then directed herself back to her body.

Lena returned to the time-bound physical world and to her own death. She was immediately engulfed by the cold, weak, helplessness that she had fled as her heart dissolved, but she beat it back and turned her will toward rebuilding herself. Her motor nervous system was corrupted so she was unable to move at first, which was good because she would have been writhing and screaming in agony as her organs reformed and her sensory nervous system began firing signals to her brain.

As her body regained function she became aware of Hal holding her and calling her name, begging her to come back to him. He was so desperate he probably didn't even notice that he had a hand on her boob. Wait a minute, she thought, this is Hal we're talking about.

As soon as her lungs allowed, Lena drew a breath and spoke," Get your hand off my boob, you perv."

He unceremoniously dropped her, scrambled to his feet, and backed away in awe. "You're dead!"

"So? Do you usually grope dead women?"

He reflected on her question for just a moment too long.

"Seriously? Ugh! Help me up," she said as she held out a hand. "Oh shit, I'm a mess." She realized that her hands and chest were smeared with his blood.

Hal didn't move toward her. "You were dead."

"Yeah, for a minute," she said as she slowly sat up.

"You can't come back from that." He stared at her. He didn't believe what he was seeing.

"Apparently I can. Who knew? I've never tried it before."

He could hear her heart beating in her chest again. He could see her breathing. He could sense her with him, and he knew she was alive. He tentatively helped her up and over to the kitchen sink so she could wash.

She rambled as Hal carefully assisted her. "My brain hadn't turned to dust, which is why I could come back, I guess. Just my heart, lungs, and some of my stomach. And my liver was crumbling, I think. Whatever had happened to your innards before I stopped it, anyway. Did it hurt when you reformed? Hurt like hell when I did."

Hal made no response—he was still in shock and could hardly glance at her.

"Could you find my clothes?" she asked as she washed. He set her shirt and bra on the counter. The shirt was bloody so she tossed it aside. The bra hooks had been straightened when she tore it off. She leaned against the sink and worked on bending the hooks back into place.

He stayed a few feet away. "You died for me."

"And I'd rather not do it again, so no more staking yourself, okay?" She mumbled as she bit down on her bra hooks to close them.

"You should have let me go." Hal had begun the slide into hell and had seen the devil, laughing, waiting to greet him. He knew what she had saved him from. He believed he should go back, for her sake. He looked at her then, in wild-eyed agony.

Lena stopped messing with her bra and went to her Hal. She drew him into a hug and held him until she thought that he was calm enough to hear her, then spoke softly into his ear.

"Listen to me, Hal Yorke, because I'm only going to say this one time. If you die I will follow you to hell and wrestle you from Lucifer's grip. I must have you with me always."

"How?" He wanted to ask how she could possibly care that much for him, but he choked after the first word so she took him literally.

"I'd find a way," she said as she pulled back to look him in the eyes. "I'm not scared of hell, or the devil, or the million minions that live there. The only thing that scares me is the thought of losing you."

She saw the lights firing in his hazel eyes and knew that he was with her again. He pulled her to him and covered her face with drying tears and loving kisses. Soon the kisses deepened into a prelude to the kind of sex that was likely to shake up her newly restored innards.

"Hal," she gasped when he finally broke from her mouth and moved his kisses to her ear, "your hand is on my boob again."

"True," he murmured into her ear, his breath sending chills through her, "but you're not dead any more so I'm allowed. Correct?"

"God yes!" She wasn't just talking about her boob any longer.

He lifted her up, sat her on the counter and buried his face in her breasts, ignoring the traces of his own blood still on them. He listened to her beautiful heart quicken as he kissed across each breast; he took turns teasing her nipples with his tongue and his fingers and watched them harden under his touch.

"Hal, get back here," she said as caught him under the chin and pulled him up for another luxurious kiss. While she had him occupied trying to catch her tongue Lena was able to get his trousers undone, and dropped them and his pants into a puddle on the floor around his feet. She got his lovely large erection in her hands, at which point he decided the kitchen table was a better height from which to proceed. He stepped out of his shoes and the tangle of clothes at his feet in a couple of deft moves that didn't even require him to stop kissing her.

"Hang on!" He threw her own words back at her with a laugh, and she wrapped her legs and arms around him as he carried her across the kitchen, kicking aside the busted chair to lay her on the table. She flicked off her shoes on the way, and her trousers and pants followed as soon as he could get his hands on them, and then he pulled her to him as she wrapped her legs around him again.

He planted his hands on her firm backside and buried himself in her with a force that shook the table. She felt it sliding out from under her as he thrust again so she stretched out her arms to either side and gripped the edges to keep it steady. He held her as he continued to drive himself into her as her legs tightened around his back and pushed him forward.

The table got shoved against the wall as Lena arched and twisted with fierce orgasmic pleasure; tears of joy and thankfulness slid unnoticed from her eyes as she clung to him and to the knowledge that she was with him again. Hal finally came with a gasp and a shudder and leaned over her, hands on the table on either side of her chest, his own chest heaving from the exertion and emotional release that accompanied it. Sweat was beading on his forehead and upper lip. She wanted to lick his face.

They felt the table give way under them and she flung her arms around him as he pulled her up, held her tight and stepped back. They stood wrapped together and watched the table break in the middle and sag to the floor.

She looked at him. "Hal?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you ready to put me down yet?"

He shook his head. "No, not just yet," by which he meant never in a million years.

"In that case, can I lick your face?"

"As much as you want."

She sucked the sweat from his upper lip and licked it from the edges of his face where it had started to run down his sideburns. He bowed his head so she could kiss the drying sweat from his forehead. She ended with a sweet and salty kiss on his lips.

"Hal?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you ready to put me down yet?"

He shook his head again. "No, not just yet," by which he meant that he loved her more than life and was terrified at the thought of being without her for even a moment.

"In that case, could you carry me upstairs? Tom and Alex should be home from work soon and I don't think they want to see this."

"Of course I can," he said. He carried her upstairs and took her to their room.

"Hal?"

"Hmm?"

"I have to pee."

"Very well," he said, and he carried her into the bathroom and carefully stood her on the floor in front of the toilet. "I'll be right outside," he said as he closed the bathroom door.

When Lena was finished in the bathroom Hal was indeed waiting right outside the door.

"You don't have to carry me around, you know. I'm not going anywhere," she said.

"Yes, you are," Hal replied. "You're going to our bed, where I'm going to spend the next hour or so making sure you are completely regenerated and fully functional." His eyes sparked with desire as he drew her to him and quickly swung her into his arms.

"What about the mess in the kitchen?" she asked as she put her arms around his neck and kissed his face again.

"Fuck the mess in the kitchen!" he said roughly, as he carried her into their room.

"Hah! We already did!" She laughed and kissed him again.

Hal was happily working his way through a full body massage on Lena when Tom and Alex got home. Lena was stretched out happily on the bed with vibrant tattoos in place at his request. She was enjoying his hands working her lower back and the occasional tickle of his man parts on the back of her leg as he shifted position.

Tom smelled Hal's blood and ran to the kitchen, where he saw a broken table, broken chair, and bloody stake. He also saw clothes, some of them bloody, scattered around the room. He charged through the house and up the stairs yelling their names.

Alex rent-a-ghosted immediately into their room, clapped her hands over her eyes, and rent-a-ghosted to the hall to stop Tom's charge.

"They're fine Tom. I dunno what happened in the kitchen, but they're both fine," she said, putting her hands on his chest to keep him from pushing past her to their bedroom door. She feared that Tom would knock it down and keep going.

"We're fine, Tom," Hal called to his friend.

Lena raised her head from the bed and added, "Sorry about the mess in the kitchen. We'll clean it up."

"You sure you're a'right?" Tom asked through the door. "What happened? I saw a stake."

Alex tried to shut him up. "It's okay Tom, just leave it, will ya?"

"That's not a stake Tom, it's a chair leg," Lena said. "We tried a—dance move—didn't work, it was a disaster."

"There's blood on it," Tom persisted.

"Slip and fall, Tom, nothing to worry about," Hal said. "Lena fixed me up."

For fuck sake Tom, let's go," Alex said, pulling on his arm, but Tom wasn't listening.

"But the table, and the blood, and the clothes…"

At this point Hal threw open the door and gave Tom and Alex an eyeful. "We had sex on the table and broke it. Now do you mind?" With that he shut the door and returned to his massage, leaving Tom with the image of full frontal nude Hal and Lena's colorful and curvaceous nude rear burned into his brain.

Tom stood, stunned, as a wave of red washed over him from the top of his head clear into his chest. He had never blushed so thoroughly in his life.

"I told you to leave it," Alex said.

"They broke the table," Tom stated flatly.

"Yeah, I heard."

"They had sex on the table and broke it," he looked at Alex. "I didn't know you could do that."

"What, have sex on a table? Or break it in the process?"

"Either. Both. I don't know Alex, I'm not really thinking right now," he said. "I got too many feelings."

She put her arm through his. "Well Thomas, why don't we go to your room and work through those feelings together?"

And they did. They walked to Tom's room and helped each other out of their clothes, and Tom didn't even blink when Alex's tights disappeared as soon as they left her body, because he was thankful that he could feel her body growing firm and her skin getting warm under his hands. He kissed her carefully at first, then more passionately as she was able to respond to him. He felt her hands ruffling his hair as she did so often at work, and he felt her fingers tracing the muscles of his shoulders and arms, and although Tom had never experienced a living human lover, he was certain that Alex was very much alive when she was with him.

Alex felt Tom's touch on her, and in it his respect for her and his belief in her, and it gave her the strength to be tangible. Tom wasn't interested in shagging, he was interested in being with her, in the most intimate way he could, in the best way for them both. His touch made her feel treasured.

They made love slowly, carefully, letting the heat between them build as her strength grew, and Tom was considerate of her even as he entered her and began to move, holding himself tightly in check until she dug her nails into his back and stared him down and said, "Go for it!"

He called her name like a blessing or a prayer and he grinned from ear to ear when she started chanting, "I'm comin' Tom, I'm comin' for sure, oh god Tom you got me comin' for sure!" and he laughed when he felt her orgasm.

"We did it, 'Lex, we did it!" he said triumphantly, and was surprised to hear her reply "We're still doin' it Tom!" because he didn't know it worked like that.

"I think it's my turn, 'Lex," he said as he came with a strength that he was afraid would send his semen shooting right through the top of her head and onto the headboard of his bed (not that he had ever had that happen before) but she was tangible; she grabbed his backside and held him to her and gently rocked with him until it was done and he had to roll off of her or drop on top of her.

He rolled and she moved with him and stayed there. She felt Tom's arm around her, his hand absently rubbing her arm, one of his feet absently rubbing her leg.

"Do you ever wish you was with Hal instead of me?" he asked.

"No, not for a second!" She shuddered. "Now that I know what he is, what he's done and is capable of, there's no way I want him touching me." She looked at Tom. "Why would you ask that?"

"Well, he knows everything, and knows how to do everything, and does everything better than me, I reckon," was Tom's simple reply.

"Knowing what to do isn't as important as doing it the right way, Tom, and you do it just right for me," she said as she snuggled against him. "Besides, Hal isn't human like you."

"None of us are human, Alex."

"Yeah, but he's inhuman. Lena too. I can't explain it, but I can feel it. They've spilt too much blood. They know how easy it is to kill a person. I can see them sometimes, weighing a person up, thinking how easy it would be to just end a life. They both do it."

"I've seen it too," Tom said. "I reckon Lena knows things that none of us do, and she judges people like we can't. Hal, well, that's just the vampire. As long as the vampire is in him, the notion to kill will be there too."

"They aren't fit for anyone but each other," Alex said. "At least they balance each other out."

"Yeah, but I'd hate to see Hal if anything ever happened to Lena," Tom said.

"I bet Lena would tear the world apart if she lost Hal," Alex added.

I'm glad we're not them, aren't you Alex?"

"Very much glad, Tom, very much." They were quiet for a moment, until his stomach growled. "I think you forgot about dinner," she teased.

"I'm remembering it now," he replied. "Sorry, Alex, but I worked up an appetite."

She laughed and sat up, her clothes returning to her as she did so. She felt a warm blob land on the bed under her. She stood up. "I'll get a tissue for that," she said, and she started to leave.

"It's alright, Alex, don't worry about it," Tom said easily, so she stayed and watched him get dressed instead so she could admire his body just a little bit longer. Alex popped back to the bedroom later and discreetly cleaned up their mess while Tom was rummaging through the pantry for something to eat. Tangibility was great, but superpowers were great, too.

It was very late at night by the time Lena came back around to the subject of Hal staking himself. They were resting together and her head was on his shoulder. She was idly playing with one of his nipples while he traced the blossoms and branches up her arm.

"If you hated the song that much, you could have just told me."

"I don't hate the song," he replied. I hate the song because it tells me what I am, he thought.

"You let it drag you into self-pity and despair."

"Something like that," he said. Damn. How does she always know? he thought.

"You need to stop it." She raised her head and looked at him. "I'm not suffering and I'm not missing out on life by being with you. Anything you think you are keeping me from doing, I've already done. I've been and seen and done whatever I wanted for a very long time. What I want now is you." She put her head back down on his shoulder.

He turned to kiss her forehead. "I'm a vampire," he murmured into her hair. "I'll always be a vampire."

"Maybe. Possibly. Probably." That was as close to Lena would get to admitting that she still had no idea how to break the curse. "But that's okay, Hal. I'm glad you're a vampire."

He raised his head to stare at her, certain that he had heard her wrong. "I beg your pardon?"

She met his look honestly, and he saw tremendous sadness in her eyes. "I'm glad you're a vampire, because it means that I don't have to watch you grow old and die. You have no idea how important that is to me."

He held her tightly then and remembered her tears on their son's birthday, and decided that maybe, just maybe, it was okay for him to want to stay with her. Maybe, just maybe, she needed him after all.

*Lyrics from "Starlings" by Elbow.

Epilogue—Book One

Agraja mourned her loss as her foolish, headstrong daughter threw herself back into the arms of the creature who would destroy her. Michael held his wife and worried that he had lost both of his children to the beast he had driven from heaven before the world began. Raphael watched his plan for his granddaughter's happiness take a grim turn and hoped that she was truly as strong as he believed her to be.

And in the pit a timeless evil stirred and leered with malevolent glee as his nemesis' truth reached his ears. "The only thing that scares me is the thought of losing you," she had said. It wasn't a profession of love, but it was an admission of weakness. It was enough. For the first time in her existence Inanna knew fear, and that fear could be used against her. Yorke would be her ruin. But how?

Lucifer dug into the crevices of his comprehension and studied what had occurred between Inanna and Yorke. The vampire had tried to kill himself and she had taken his death from him. She had died in his place but had the strength to return to the world. If only her brain had been destroyed as well as her heart. It was a close call nonetheless, and it showed Lucifer just how far Inanna was willing to go for Yorke's sake. If she would die for him once, surely she would do it again.

He would need to move carefully. Killing the vampire would only bring Inanna to the pit, and Lucifer didn't want to face her unless he could arrange the circumstances to his advantage. The latest proof of her strength of will and of her power only made him more determined to avoid a one-on-one confrontation with her. No, he would need to use the vampire to kill her instead.

He needed a plan. He needed a weapon. He needed Hetty.

Book Two—War in the Shadow of Wings

will begin after a brief hiatus.