Wonderland
The Gloaming

1

Beautiful Madeline enters from the far side of the lavish foyer, a slim dark beauty in wine-colored clothes. It has been snowing outside again and she is speckled by it, fat snowflakes beginning to melt on her long black coat and lustrous hair only because of the hotel's central heating. She looks flustered, losing sense of the Masquerade out of nervousness, and she moves across the nearly deserted room just a little too quickly to be human. The rainbow pattern of the Christmas lights play on her white skin as she passes near the enormous, decadently gaudy tree in the heart of the chamber, but she barely seems to notice.

I make the slightest gesture.

I smile as her dark eyes dart to me immediately, instinctively sensing the presence of her Maker, the one to whom she is bound by blood and history. She blanches. How long has it been since we last saw each other? Two years? Always before such a little time would have seemed inconsequential, a flash in the pan, easily missed. Not lately. Things had slowed to a crawl since the appearance of the Red Star and the world was abuzz with fear and anxiety the mortal world only pretended to forget during this holiday season. These were the Final Nights, and if ever there was a time to make every moment count this was it.

She hesitates before approaching. It's not like Madeline to be so indecisive. Something has definitely happened to her.

Madeline looks me over warily before approaching. I ease off the wall, hands in my pockets, and wait patiently. I wonder if she feels the same loving hunger I do when looking at her, gazing longingly over her long, dark brown tresses and faintly pink mouth. Of course, sex means so little to you when you're dead. In life I was a homosexual, though it meant little enough in the repressed era into which I was born, but that's irrelevant now. Male or female, beauty is all that matters. We are so sexless anyway, and Madeline was sublime to look at. I should know. I made her a vampire because of it.

No, no love. I'm an unwelcome reminder of the past. I see that clearly on her face.

I'm crushed by her indifference. I'm used to being watched by mortals and immortals alike for my poise and grace. I'm a beautiful creature, after all. A slouching, long-haired youth, accidentally androgynous, with blond hair and piercing grey eyes hidden behind violet sunglasses. I run a hand over my formless silk shirt, left open at the throat, and across the soft, dark purple of my jacket, feeling vaguely self-conscious for all her lack of interest.

I catch her glance around, wondering if other monsters are here. But this place is dead.

"Madeline," I say, "What are you doing here? When did you come back?"

"Last week."

"Let me have a look at you, at least," I plead softly, stopping her with a gentle touch as she tries to move on past me, "It's been so long."

"Come with me to the bar then," Madeline sighs, brushing away my hands, "I need something hot to drink..."

"But you can't drink anything," I laugh, "You know that. What's wrong, Madeline? Why so skittish?"

"I don't care, Laurent. I'm going to drink something anyway."

I catch her with a light touch upon her cheek. Her skin is freezing cold from the wind and snow outside, and she hasn't bothered to warm herself with the blood. She reluctantly turns to meet my gaze, her amber eyes troubled, afraid and disoriented. I run my fingers back through the thick, soft tresses which spill over her shoulders and fall between us. A privacy screen from the world outside. She is trembling under my fingertips.

"What's wrong, Madeline?" I whisper, planting little kisses on her lips, brow, eyelashes.

"Drink first," she insists, though I sense her resolve crumbling. I have the power of the blood over her, the bond between sire and childe, but I'd rather not abuse it. That has never been my way. Do not make enemies of your children and chosen companions. That is my rule. If only more vampires could learn such courtesy!

"Alright, alright," I laugh, "Come on then. If you just want to be sick."

The hotel bar is a dim place this time of night, sprinkled with travelers, tired businessmen, older women hovering about them, and young kids with nothing better to do. The usual lot you see in the early morning hours. Jazz is being piped in from a satellite feed, hanging heavy over the patrons in the thick, smoky gloom. It's a tacky place really, this bar, but I've always enjoyed it. Glassy eyes and sleeping drunks don't stare, don't question, don't bother you at all. And it was an easy hunting ground.

Madeline orders hot chocolate. I get a hot toddy. Vampires don't eat and drink as a rule. Our stomachs are blackened, shriveled things in the middle of our bellies, shrunken and useless. Solid food is unbearable. Drinks are fine, to a point, though we just vomit them back up within an hour. But we can warm our hands on them and enjoy the fragrances, which is what I plan on doing. Madeline can suffer alone if she wants to.

When you will live forever in beauty, who cares about food and drink?

"Does the Prince know you're back?" I ask Madeline when we've retreated to a booth.

She shook her head and sipped her drink, cupping it with both shaking hands. She made a bitter face at the flavor, so bitter and cloying compared to the blood, but continued drinking nonetheless. "The way things were going when I left I didn't even expect there to be a Prince."

"The Sabbat have been quiet lately," I shrug, "There hasn't been a major attack here in Elysium or in any of our territory since the towers fell. I get the impression they're waiting for something. Gehenna maybe." I laugh under my breath.

"I take it Amanda Chase is still in power?"

Running a hand back through my hair, I nod. "The one and only."

"I take it you finally had your fill of Texas?" I add, only a little mockingly.

"It was peaceful at first," Madeline murmurs dully, breathing in the aroma of the hot chocolate and licking the thick liquid off the inside of her mouth, "You have no idea how much I enjoyed it. So much space. I wanted to live in the open country with the stars where no one would bother me, but things didn't turn out..."

"What happened?"

She shrugs. She is beginning to calm down now, I see, color gradually being flushed to the surface as she takes possession of herself. Her painted fingernails click against the sides of her mug as she sets it down. Amber eyes focus on me, seemingly for the first time. "I stopped in Denton to get my bearings. It seemed like a nice place in the beginning but ended up becoming just as much a war zone as New York was. There was a terrorist attack the other day and the whole place went mad. The government and military swarmed the city and wouldn't let anybody out. When they finally opened the city again I came here to regain my bearings..."

"Is that why you're so distraught?" I ask.

Madeline laughs. "No."

My childe folds her arms on the tabletop and lays her head upon them like a little girl. Sighing, I wind my fingers through her dark locks again, relishing the cool, silky texture of her hair. There is no scent to it now, to either of us, but I still remember the lovely fragrance of her hair and skin when she was alive. I bring the memory to mind, trying to overlay it upon the real sensations of the moment, to relive the pleasure of her lost human warmth.

"Tell me," I plead, "I'm very worried about you..."

"I've come from the Delphi concert," Madeline mumbles, lifting her head slightly, "I'm surprised I didn't see you there, Laurent. You know the group?"

"Who doesn't? Their videos play night and day on VH1, MTV, even between sitcoms. If you spend enough money, as they seem to, you can get tremendous exposure." I grin, flashing only a little of my sharp canines. "Beautiful singer. Rociel? She looks like a cat with those eyes of hers, and her voice is gorgeous. She sings like a man but with a woman's sweetness. I thought about turning her myself, actually, before someone else had the chance. But she's too young yet. And I would've gone to the concert, but I had a prior commitment to Jaqueline."

Madeline starts. "I thought Jacqueline was dead?"

"Mortal hunters are incompetent," I shrug, "Even the new kind."

"So what happened at this concert?" I press gently, "You're still shaking."

"I don't know if I can explain it," she says weakly, sipping chocolate as if it will give her strength. You can make a woman a vampire, I suppose, but she will always remain a woman, with all a woman's cravings.

I roll my eyes. "Now you're just being overdramatic."

"Fuck you, Laurent," she breathes, "I only wanted to be alone when I came here. If you want me to explain you'll have to give me some time. Why don't you just go and turn on CNN? I'm sure it's making all the news there by now. Those like us slipped away before the place was locked down by the police."

"A riot?" I murmur, stroking her hair.

"The singer, Rociel, isn't human," Madeline continues as if she hasn't heard me, "I knew that the moment I laid eyes on her in person. It was obvious the minute she appeared on stage and began singing. Even the mortals felt it. All of us were in awe of her. I wept to hear her sing, Laurent! I couldn't even bear to look at her without crying. And I couldn't move to stop myself or hide the blood from the humans. I felt as if I were being pulled out of my body almost, transported elsewhere..."

It's my turn to blanche now. Frowning in worry, I move to sit beside her, leaning my slender weight against her in the hopes my presence would calm her where words had failed. Madeline doesn't resist. She is my childe, after all, and somewhere in her blackened heart she knows I love her as if she were my very own flesh and blood daughter. As well as a vampire can love anyway.

"What is she?" I whisper, rubbing her back in soothing circles.

"S-she - " Madeline shudders. "She's an angel. I swear, Laurent, I'm not a fool for thinking so. It's true. She is a true angel. I never believed in them..."

Brow furrowing, I stare at her as if her hunched and trembling figure could impart what she'd seen to me. Having lived for three centuries already and never once having seen any indication of providence or divinity, I find this hard - but not impossible - to believe. Aren't we the children of Cain, after all? Surely there must be a God out there somewhere if He cursed (or blessed, depending on your opinion) us, locked away within His kingdom and watching from some remote vantage point? But angels were a myth. My sire, long dead though he was, refuted their existence with derisive laughter, pointing to changelings, ghosts and little spirits which hang about the edges of human existence as the source of such delusions.

"We were swooning by the end of the concert," Madeline murmurs, "I was covered in my own bloody tears but no one seemed to care. We were all awash in ecstasy like nothing but feeding can bring. I can't explain it. The music was beautiful and I was moved but there was more to it than that. It was as if Rociel loved us and could touch each of us regardless of how much we tried to turn away from her..."

"It sounds like you were being controlled," I mutter disapprovingly.

"Maybe." The thought seems to shake Madeline out of her recollections. She looks up at me through a fall of lovely chestnut hair, as if seeking my reassurance. "At the end of the concert, though, something happened. One minute she was standing there singing and the next the entire amphitheatre was silent. You could have heard someone whispering if any of us could move. We were hers, Laurent, body and soul. It seems like it lasted an eternity."

"The next thing I know, Rociel the woman is gone, and in her place is a...an angel is the only way I can describe it. She was made of the purest white light. There were more vampires there than just me but we all reacted with horror. It was like staring into the noonday sun, and I haven't seen the sun in sixty years, Laurent!" She covers her face with her delicate hands, shuddering violently. "It was blissful, beautiful, and every part for me that is vampire wanted to flee. But I couldn't move. I felt like I was going mad. And then these enormous wings unfolded from Rociel's back and embraced her entire band..."

"And that's when it happened," she rasps.

"What? There's more?" I ask softly, laying my head on her shoulder like a child, breathing in the smell of winter upon her skin and clothes. I wonder to myself how much of this is nonsense and how much really happened. Who could have controlled them all in such a manner, especially my own sweet, independent-minded little Madeline?

"There was a voice like thunder," she whispers, "It shook everything, resonating through my body. You didn't hear it so much as feel it. It spoke to all of us. I think even Rociel - or whatever she was - was as terrified of it as we were. As if she had called something here without expecting to. A woman in white appeared in the air above us, glowing with the same sunlight. She was the one who was speaking to us."

"What did she say?" I ask, trying not to sound too incredulous. I know of Rociel and her band's penchant for angelic imagery. It is all over the television news and entertainment programs. It chokes the pages of the celebrity and music magazines. Still, I find it hard to believe that Madeline was taken in by a simple stage show, no matter how elaborate.

"I don't remember," Madeline says in a small voice, "It - something else happened. Like she opened up or something, and there was such a brilliant, overpowering light that I screamed. A lot of us screamed then, but I couldn't hear the others over my own shrieking. The pain in my eyes and skull was unbearable, and the noise was deafening - music, laughter, singing, screaming. I think I must have passed out. When I woke up everything was in chaos. There was blood everywhere, pouring out of beer cups. Out of people's eyes. Everywhere. As if all the water were blood. People were sliding in it! The stench made me sick. It was maddening. I fled as quickly as I could..."

Sighing, I brush her hair back out of her face and force her to sit up and look me in the eyes. I'm startled to see Madeline is crying. It is only a thin trickle of blood against her cold white cheeks, and she is obviously weak. Why hasn't she already fed, I wonder, caressing her delicate features. Why hasn't the hunger overpowered her?

"It was real," she whispers, "You must believe me, Laurent."

I press my forehead to hers and lie: "I do, darling childe. Shhh. It's alright."

She's too shaken up to question my sincerity. At least my tone seems to calm her. Madeline wipes at her eyes with the napkin which came with her drink, and I catch her grimace as she straightens up.

"The drink," she breathes, "Excuse me, Laurent."

"Of course."

I wait in silence while Madeline flees to the restroom, idly stirring the hot toddy with my finger to enjoy its fading warmth. A waitress comes around and asks if we need anything, if everything was alright. I dismiss her concerns with a charming smile and ask for refills of both drinks. I don't know if Madeline will want to drink again (though I hope her experience at the toilet clears her head a little) but I can at least enjoy the scents.

Fifteen minutes pass. Another set of drinks go cold.

Finally, Madeline reappears, just as I'm beginning to think she's abandoned me here. She looks shaken and weak, clutching onto the chairs and tables to support herself. A swell of pity pierces my breast, so I go to her and guide her gently back towards the table. When she realizes where we're going she stops me.

"Take me home, Laurent, I want to rest."

"I'm worried about you," I whisper.

Grunting, she gives me a tired look of indifference. "Home."

"Same place?" I ask, wounded.

"Yes," she says, then shakes her head, "No, no. I don't have that anymore. What am I thinking? I sold the loft when I left New York. I have a room at the Olympic Tower instead. My rental car is still back at the amphitheater, though..."

"I'll take you," I assure her, "Don't worry."

2

"You should feed, Madeline!" Laurent declaimed in exasperation.

They were in her rooms at the Olympic Tower, a bland monstrosity of bronze-colored glass and steel which overlooked St. Patrick's Cathedral, though the church and the adjoining Rockefeller plaza were lost to a veil of snow. Madeline lay in a heap on the sofa, having finally turned the television off, where reports from the Delphi concert and view reactions were flooding CNN. There had been too many strange and ominous signs as of late, Laurent thought, and while this may be but the most recent and dramatic step toward Gehenna, his childe needed him.

Madeline was a dead white against the soft blue tones of the sofa, staring listlessly at the darkened screen and her own reflection contained therein. He could tell she was tremendously weak just by looking at her, all strength bleeding out of her limbs with the passing of time as what little blood she retained since the concert was devoured by the Curse of Cain. By now she was perhaps too weak to go out on her own and hunt, though what could have happened to her at the concert to have left her so shaken? So shell-shocked? The scattershot descriptions she'd offered so far were disturbing, yes, but how could she just sit there and let the Beast gather strength? It was not her way.

"Then I shall just have to go and bring some mortal here for you," Laurent sighed, throwing on his long black coat and sunglasses, "If you will not do it yourself. I will not stand idly by until the hunger takes over!"

"Laurent," she murmured, "That's really not necessary."

The blond vampire whirled around, his voice rising in frustration. "Isn't it? I know you, my love, my darling childe. You probably haven't fed in several days, and what blood you did retain has probably gone out of you from crying and escaping the madness of that damned concert! Why do you do this to yourself, Madeline? Tell me what is wrong!"

"I'm not hungry."

"That cannot be true," Laurent sighed, moving to sit beside her on the edge of the sofa, "You are white as a ghost and I can tell just by touching you that you're hungry. There is precious little blood left in you."

Madeline's head swiveled slowly so she could look at him.

"I told you," she repeated dully, "I'm not hungry, Laurent. Please believe me."

Running a hand back through his long blond hair, pushing it out of his angular, wan face, Laurent growled in frustration. He gave Madeline his most pleading look, which at least brought a soft smile to her pale blue lips, and slid down into the nook between she and the arm of the sofa. "I don't see know that can be possible, not for one as young as you, Madeline. I can almost see you fading before my eyes," he shook his head, "Must I give you my own blood? Is that it?"

"No!" the dark-haired vampire cried, backing away from him on the cushions with alarmed - almost panicked - hazel eyes. At least she has the strength to argue, Laurent thought, and perhaps that might bring her back to her old self!

"You can't do that to me, Laurent," she told him firmly.

"You forget," Laurent purred, his lips turning into a bitter smile, "I have the blood bond over you, Madeline. If I wanted to I could've forced you to drink from me already. But I don't want to force you to do anything, my childe. I love you too much to just rip obedience from your mind like that."

This seemed to reassure her, though her eyes still gleamed with suspicion.

"I'm glad," she breathed, "Please, promise me you'll do nothing of the kind."

Laurent's hands shook. "Then feed for Christ's sake!"

"I can't," Madeline whispered, "I shouldn't. I don't know what it would do."

The blond vampire's eyes narrowed at this. From her tone he knew she didn't mean it in any simple or stupid way, she understood perfectly that it was only the blood which sustained her unnatural immortality. No, she meant it in a strange and altogether more dangerous way, hinting at something she hadn't revealed to him. Ripping off the violet sunglasses, Laurent tossed them away with a clatter, begging with his beautiful blue eyes. "What're you talking about, Madeline? Explain this to me."

Beginning to tremble, Madeline closed her eyes and pressed her thumbnail against the delicate flesh of her wrists. Laurent started to object - she was too damned weak to give up any further lifeblood this way - but she slit open the blue veins there with a flick of motion, ignoring his sharp outcry, and held up the wrist for him to see.

It was not blood that came out of the gash.

Instead, it was a thick milky-white liquid, oozing viscously from the wound like honey, as if her blood were slowly turning to crystal. It ran slowly down the white flesh of her arm. And then the scent struck Laurent like a blow - sweet, its fragrance filling his senses to overwhelm all else, calling him with the promise of ecstasy and intoxication. Growling, Laurent tore his eyes away from it and turned his back to her, breathing heavily as he tried to regain self-control. But the scent of the white blood was pure pleasure. He longed to taste its burning flavor on his tongue.

But it was not blood!

"In the restroom at the hotel," she whispered, "It wasn't just the drink I vomited up. It was the blood. So much of it, overflowing out of the toilet. Every drop inside of me. I could feel this moving to replace it throughout my body. And earlier, when I went to my bathroom to bathe, this is what came out when I cut open a vein..."

"Stop it, Madeline!" Laurent screamed, covering his ears, "Heal the wound already!"

She silently complied, sealing the wound with a grimace of discomfort. The white blood acted more slowly than the real thing, knitting together the slashed flesh with great difficulty, until it ceased to flow. The scent gradually abated but its promise lingered throughout the room, cloying, contaminating the walls and furniture with its fiery aroma. Laurent was red-faced with fury, fear and barely suppressed hunger when he turned to face her again.

"Good God," he whispered in a choked voice, "What is it?"

Madeline shuddered and looked down, chestnut hair tumbling forward to cover her face like a veil. "I don't know, Laurent. I'm becoming something else, because of what happened at the concert. Not human, not vampire, but something alien. And all because of either Rociel or the shining woman!" Her eyes blazed fearfully as she lifted her gaze to meet his. "But I cannot feed! Don't make me, please. I don't feel the hunger at all, nor the stirring of the Beast. The same may happen to you if you drink from me. And I don't know what could happen if I tried to drink from you..."

Laurent stared in shock and mute horror.

"It's a miracle," she rasped.

"It's monstrous!" the blond vampire shouted, "What if it kills you?!"

Trembling, Madeline closed her eyes. "Then I guess I'll die."

"I won't allow it," Laurent said in a tight voice, clenching his fists.

This time Madeline simply laughed. A dry, hollow sound hinting at madness.

"Madeline," her sire whispered hoarsely, kneeling in front of her. Gently, ever so gently so as not to startle her, he brushed her lustrous dark hair back out of her face, smoothing it out with his long fingers. Her lovely eyes were watering, though not with blood this time, but with simple tears. The sight stole Laurent's voice from him for a moment. "I made you what you are so that you would never leave me. Nor grow old, nor die! Do you remember then, how you begged for me to do it? I have loved you like my own daughter, Madeline, and you have been my only constant companion..."

"Laurent," she said, "What could you do to save me? How can you stop this?"

"I will not lose you!" he hissed.

Madeline stared at him helplessly, too afraid of what was happening to her, what she might become, to fear for his loneliness. "If this is a miracle, sweet Laurent, or even damnation, then who am I to try and fight it?"

3

There are so many things you take for granted when you're dead.

You don't need to breathe. You don't need to swallow down on saliva. You don't need to blink. Or move at all. If you want you can be like a statue for nights on end, immovable, and when you want to be strong you can crush stones to dust. In fact, the only thing you really have to think about is the blood. And the ever encroaching madness of the Beast.

All gone now.

The minutia of life, which the living take for granted, is a strain on me. The pressure of my blood, seemingly thin and weak compared to the fire it once held, in my veins makes them sting. My heartbeat is overloud and thrashing in my breast as if it will break out. Every bone and joint in my body aches. My skin hurts from every pore. I have a headache from all the lights in this room even though they've turned them down for my comfort.

I feel small, weak and fragile.

I am no longer a vampire, I tell myself repeatedly, repeating the mantra to force my mind and body to acknowledge the change, I am merely human.

Shockingly, part of me is disappointed at my newly regained humanity. My limbs miss the strength which the cursed blood of Cain used to grant me. I miss the feeling of invulnerability. Despite my damnation (and I am damned for all the murders I have committed, all the human lives I stole to feed myself, regardless of my new mortality) I can't help but feel that the greatest adventure in my life is over.

Katherine Ducote is just another mortal now.

Just another victim waiting to happen.

This is the vampire in me talking. I've grown so accustomed to death, killing and feeding that my mind hardly belongs to that of a human being anymore. I feel the urge to drink the blood and regain my strength despite the hollowness of the desire. My mortal frailties are trying to overcome these instincts - I'm ravenously hungry, even if I can't force myself to eat much in the way of real food - but thus far I feel more like a caged, drugged predator than a young woman.

I'm hungry and I want blood I can't have.

I want to laugh at the absurdity of it. Laugh in my harsh, derisive way. But it comes out as the weakest of chuckles.

The door opens and Kelly Brooke comes in. Or at least I know it's Brooke from what Stephen and the others have told me, because the woman who smiles at me looks utterly different from what I remember. This is Brooke in another woman's body, a bird-boned young blonde with quiet green eyes, a crime victim from Cement City kept alive by medicine and magic until Brooke's soul could be hooked up to it. She reminds me of Melissa Taggart, actually, my former friend at college.

"Good morning, Katherine," Brooke murmurs. The accent is the same, soft and seductive, only the voice is all wrong for her. The blonde's voice was light and clear. No amount of huskiness on Brooke's part could completely mask it. "How are you feeling?"

"Sore," I reply, my voice raspy, "Every part of my body hurts. And weak, too. But it's better than being dead..."

"I know we weren't exactly close before," Brooke smiles wryly, moving to sit on the edge of the bed, "But I thought I'd come around and see how you were doing. We seem to have a lot in common now."

Nodding, I laugh under my breath. Like me, Brooke has been resurrected. Like me, she is currently a normal mortal, no longer either a ghost or a mage. Like Ariel and I, estranged from the very beginning, she may never reawaken her latent talents.

Sadly, I never liked Brooke very much. Her woeful eyes and sorrowful voice seemed like such posturing in my memory, a goth child's grab for attention. But since I left Denton and lost myself to Pinem'e, Brooke had not only been murdered but lost her lover and her entire family. It didn't feel right, however, for me to feel pity for her now when I was ultimately responsible for her suffering. Pinem'e tricked me out of my body and mind when I was at my lowest ebb, the flame of my soul dying to embers, and used them to wreak havoc upon the few friends who had yet to give up on me.

"I'm sorry I hurt you so much," I whisper, "I heard what happened.

"It was Pinem'e," Brooke says reproachfully, "Not you. Don't blame yourself when she deceived and manipulated you. I certainly don't blame you."

I nod, cinnamon curls falling across my tired green eyes. Even my hair has lost luster and vibrance since Stephen and the others saved me. No more flaming red hair. Nor the piercing grey-green eyes which could see in the dark. With Pinem'e and Jennifer Ransom's memories tangled up with my own it's hard not to feel like I was the one in control. That I sent Jennifer to kill Brooke and steal the greenstone ring. That I killed all those people in Cement City. Crushing helplessness and guilt suffocate me, trying to squeeze out the life of which I am wholly undeserving.

"Can you forgive me?" I ask softly, "For everything I've done? Not just to you."

Brooke shakes her head, her green eyes full of such solemn compassion. She is no longer the woman I knew, not by far. She has been through the millstone of suffering and come out stronger. How I hate her for it, jealously and unreasoningly. "You never hurt me, Katherine. That was Pinem'e's doing. And the others aren't mine to forgive."

I give a rattling sigh of a laugh. "Even if you said it I wouldn't have believed it."

We are silent for a moment.

"Are you strong enough to talk?" she asks.

Such a gentle voice she's stolen, I think before I can stop myself. I try to shake off the futile anger lurking in the back of my mind, the accumulated cruelty of my life and Pinem'e's. As if the Beast had not warped me enough!

"I think so," I murmur, "Why?"

"You've been cooped up in here enough, I think," Brooke shrugs, grinning, "Why not come and see the rest of the world? It's a cold and sunny day outside, absolutely beautiful, and I think you'd feel better if you saw it."

Part of me shrinks inwardly at the thought of sunlight.

What have I become? I question myself despairingly, I feel like I'm pretending to be human, as I always have.

"Do you think you'll ever reconnect with your Avatar?" I blurt out.

"Eventually," Brooke shrugs, as if it were of no real concern to her. I wonder if perhaps Brooke doesn't want to be Awakened any longer. If so I don't think I can blame her for feeling that way, considering all she's been through. Am I so afraid of being normal then? Of leading an ordinary life?

"Assuming there's time, of course," Brooke adds, "Why do you ask?"

"Just curious." I feel foolish saying it.

Brooke sees right through me. "Ariel?"

I cringe at the mention of the name, hurt by it. Or, more accurately, hurt by her absence in me. I don't want to be Katherine anymore, I plead wearily with whatever God might be listening, even if that God was as indifferent as the fallen angels claimed. Let me out. Let me escape into someone else the way Brooke has, and take these memories from me. Where are you, Ariel? Come rescue me from myself and all that I've done...

So fucking childish.

Aloud, I merely say, "Yes."

"Ariel's a strong little nymph," Brooke smirks, "She helped keep you alive while you were controlled by Pinem'e."

"I heard her voice sometimes," I whisper, "Near the end. But not anymore."

"She's sleeping."

I grimace, baring teeth. "I wish I could join her."

"You must have some will to live," Brooke murmured reprovingly, "Otherwise you wouldn't be here. The elixir you drank, the Salubri blood, wouldn't grant life to someone willing to throw it away."

"I don't want to die!" I counter sharply, "I just..."

I stop myself and swallow down on my anger.

"I'm just confused," I sigh.

"Come walk with me in the sun," Brooke offers.

"I'm afraid."

The young woman blinks. With the straight blonde hair falling across her cheek, so unlike her old, curly black hair, she looks rather adorable. Winsome. I wonder how much Brooke has changed from merging with this other woman's body. Her clothing style has changed, exchanging velvet and lace for a plum turtleneck and blue jeans. "The sun can't harm you anymore, Katherine."

"Don't you think I know that?" I snap.

Silence falls awkwardly between us. I know I'm being foolish trying to hide from the sun and the outside world this way, as if I can slip away from myself like I've tried to do so many times already. But something is scrabbling at my insides, driving me toward the shadows and semi-darkness of this room. The image of the sun I have - the only image I remember from my entire life - is of the dawn outside Steph's house, and the feeling of terrible heat upon my body as it loomed upwards into the grey sky. Since that moment light has equaled death in my mind.

Brooke holds out her hand. I stare at the long, delicate fingers and the soft, smooth flesh of her wrist and palm. I see the veins pulsing just beneath the surface. My first instinct, ludicrous though it is, is to bite.

It requires great force of will to take her hand.

4

Brooke has to hold me firm so I don't run, which every fiber of my being tells me to do.

The sunlight is dazzling, stabbing into my eyes and skull like needles. Even with my eyes closed I can still see the glare of the sun against my eyelids, and my mind convinces me that the gentle warmth on my skin will soon burn away my flesh, like wax going soft and melting away. I squirm in the blonde woman's grip, uttering a strangled moan, but she is far stronger than I am in my weakened state.

As the panic gradually abates, I realize we're no longer standing. The fragrance of cool grass is everywhere around us. I can hear birds singing even though it's early December, for the Texas winters are so mild few birds feel compelled to leave. I open my eyes to slits but the light is still too bright and I have to squeeze them shut again. My eyes are burning with tears, and I'm whimpering softly, clutching onto Brooke like a frightened child.

"It's alright, Katherine," she whispers soothingly, stroking my hair, "You're fine."

"Please take me inside," I whisper.

"Katherine, the sun isn't hurting you at all. You're fine…"

5

"I'm sorry," Kelly said, "I didn't realize it would be that bad."

Stephen looked up at her, feeling the by now familiar shock of unfamiliarity at her appearance. Strange to think that the small blonde woman standing across from him was actually Kelly Brooke and not a complete stranger. Her hands were in the pockets of her leather jacket, sunglasses riding low on her nose. Kelly somehow seemed more American in this body, even with her rolling British accent. Californian perhaps. She'd even given up smoking since her new body wasn't addicted to it.

"You were trying to help," he murmured, "It's alright. I'd hoped Katherine would deal with it better, too."

"She's just mixed up," Kelly shook her head, "I should've given her more time."

Smiling faintly, Stephen started walking across the courtyard green toward the Better Tomorrow offices, keeping his head bowed against the dazzling morning sun. Kelly fell in step behind him, but before he made it twenty paces he felt her arms come around his waist as the young woman hugged him from behind. Sighing, he allowed himself a minute to enjoy the scent of her hair and the feel of her warmth against his back, then turned to face her again.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, "I know she's a friend of yours."

"You don't need to apologize, Kelly," he replied, weary of guilt and suffering in general.

Her arms were still around him. He didn't resist as she stepped up and kissed him lightly on the mouth, but he made sure to put some distance between them again afterwards. Kelly had fallen in love with him as a wraith, and Steph had to admit his feelings for her had deepened far beyond friendship as well. But her and Jolie's discomfort with discussing the situation left the matter unresolved. Both women were generally avoiding each other, and though Stephen wished they would decide things between them as he'd told them to, he couldn't refuse Kelly's little shows of affection. She was generally discreet and not at all demanding as he'd expected.

"Katherine's in shock," he said, "And her psyche's been...I can't say 'damaged', but it has changed. She may never fully recover but she's the only one who can solve her problems."

"And Ariel?"

Stephen shrugged. He had no answers to give her, or anyone at the moment. This was the first time in three weeks he'd paused to think about anything other than the constant stream of troubling news coming into the Better Tomorrow offices. The mysterious darkness in Chicago and the chaos at Delphi's premiere concert were only the most recent.

Kelly saw the direction his thoughts were taking. "Any word on Rociel?"

"No," he sighed, "There's no sign of her anywhere. Not even divinations will turn her up. It's as if she's ceased to exist, at least here. And we can't get a clear picture of what happened at the concert either. None of the accounts agree on what happened except that it was a sign..."

6

Early in the afternoon, Kelly finally located Katherine sprawled out on the concrete outside of St. Mark's Catholic Church, basking in the sun.

Kelly had taken her in after her release from the medical unit at BTG, allowing her to live in the modest rooms of her small, two-story house, which had recently been rebuilt following the attack on Cement City. It seemed fitting. With her death and subsequent reincarnation in the body of another woman, Kelly had lost her family and her lover, the young musician Jenny Sylva, and if it weren't for the consideration of Better Tomorrow she would have been out of a home as well. Similarly, Katherine had little to her name. To her family and lover, Daniel Vera, she was long since dead to a brain tumor. Even Karen Hughes, the changeling Gwynnion, had departed following Katherine's disappearance into the Mexican desert. All that remained was a small stipend of money left after paying off the White Rabbit's debts, Ariel's sword, and what personal possessions had been salvaged from the Roadhouse.

Kelly wasn't used to playing good Samaritan, but she was finding it came increasingly naturally since returning to life. And she felt she owed it to Katherine, whom she had never trusted as a vampire (with good reason, she thought), and who had become caught up in the schemes of Pinem'e for no other reason than convenience. She pitied the young woman for all that had happened to her, even as Katherine blamed herself for destroying Kelly's life. They were strange bedfellows to be sure, but though Kelly was a private person and preferred to keep her own company, Katherine would almost certainly go to pieces without having someone to look after her. She was mentally unsteady, behaving like a prisoner stripped naked and paraded before her captors for their amusement - frightened, shy, embarrassed and withdrawn. Ready to bolt or crumple at a moment's notice.

Katherine responded by drifting, wandering about like a lost Alzheimer's patient. By now they all knew it was her way. The real world was always shocking to Katherine, exhausting her mental stamina, and retreat was the only way she knew how to cope. Even as a child this pattern held true, and if she were still a vampire she might have gone into the ground rather than face the aftermath of Pinem'e's possession. As it was she accomplished much the same thing psychologically. In a few weeks or months she would slowly settle back into her head, floating into her body from whatever nightmare labyrinth inhabited her mind, and life would flood her face again as if nothing had happened.

They expected it so they gave her time. She was recovering more quickly this time anyway, lacking the constant horror of a dead body or the mind rape of Pinem'e, and though she might be mentally fragile and childlike for the remainder of her life, Katherine was at least beginning to seem more like a living woman than a ghost. She had, however, taken to having visions, though she wouldn't explain much about them to the others. No one could tell if they were "real" visions, evidence of lingering trauma or psychic residue from Ariel, Jennifer Ransom and Pinem'e. They were dire stuff, certainly, but there was no sign of outside interference or influence. And while Katherine had never been especially religious (many changelings weren't) she had started going to St. Mark's to find solace, though mostly she just basked in the sun outside. She didn't feel right about going inside, understandably.

Kelly just wanted to make sure she was alright and hadn't hurt herself somehow.

At first her prostrations had caused quite a stir, seeing as Katherine chose a random Sunday morning to throw herself onto the paved parking lot and block traffic from entering and leaving the grounds. The secular authorities, who were already quite curious about her miraculous "escape" from "Mexican drug runners" following the discovery of her wrecked car two years ago, were more than a little annoyed by this specific demonstration of obeisance but the intervention of the priests had kept them at bay. With a little cajoling they'd convinced Katherine to stick to the grassy areas or the lesser used concrete paths where she wouldn't attract as much attention.

Kelly didn't know what to make of this sudden piety. She had never been especially religious, her mother and the ghosts saw to that, and she preferred to let the matter drop through professed agnosticism. Rociel and the fallen angels had changed that, of course, though it had not been as earthshaking for her as it had been for Stephen. Or for Katherine, who had been intimately connected to a fallen angel's thoughts and memories for over a year. In fact, if it weren't for the general impression Kelly received of a distant and Machiavellian God, she might have warmed to the idea. As it was she had lately felt as if something were watching her from high above, especially when she went outdoors under the sun, and that this presence was waiting for her to acknowledge it. A lot of people she talked to seemed to feel the same thing these days.

Perhaps Katherine had given into it. Received it, so to speak.

The thought didn't exactly comfort her.

Kelly strode across the green lawn, such a strange sight in late autumn but one she'd grown accustomed to living in warm, evergreen Texas, and watched Katherine's unmoving body up ahead. A cool breeze blew across the flat plain on which the church was constructed, stirring the fine strands of her hair. Except for the wind everything was dead silent with not a soul around. At times like these it was easy to believe she was still a raven-haired, velvet-clad ghost and not the golden-haired beauty she'd so recently become. Kelly ran a hand back through her hair, so much shorter and softer than she was accustomed to, just to reassure herself of its reality and fidgeted with her expensive aviator sunglasses.

The feeling of being watched grew stronger; or, more accurately, another presence was added to it. It didn't feel like a threatening presence, per se, though without the magic that was merely her intuition guessing. She paused, summoning her concentration, and used the sunglasses - a gift from Steph, bearing a mild enchantment - to scan the area under various forms of magical sight. There was nothing to be seen, however.

Frowning, Kelly shrugged off the feeling as her own paranoia.

Katherine was lying on her back at the intersection of two concrete walkways which connected to the main parking areas, her face turned heavenwards. Her clothes were new, Katherine had thrown out or given away most of her old clothes, being a thin white dress that was probably too light for the cool weather, something she might have purchased from a department store looking to shed its summer excess. Her feet were bare, Kelly noted with a faint sigh, and there were no sign of shoes anywhere nearby. What looked to be a pigeon feather was tucked in her cinnamon hair, fat, grey-white and glossy in the bright sunshine, and Kelly was eerily reminded of Billy, the Gangrel who fathered her into the ranks of the Kindred.

In some ways, Kelly thought, Katherine was still animal, no matter the white dresses and clothing she'd taken to wearing, as if trying to erase the stain of many murders from her soul.

Kneeling beside her, Kelly touched the young woman's arm. She was surprisingly warm from lying out in the sun. "Katherine," she murmured, ignoring the oddity of her British accent in this bright, crystalline voice she'd gained, "Are you alright?"

Katherine nodded without opening her eyes. "Yes, I'm fine."

"How long have you been here today?"

"Since dawn."

Kelly nodded. Though she found this behavior strange, she managed to keep the bemusement out of her voice. "I noticed you were gone this morning when I went to work."

The woman said nothing. She was smiling faintly, Kelly noticed.

"Have you eaten?" she inquired gently.

"No," Katherine shook her head, "I bought some water on the way here but it ran out."

"Aren't you hungry? You hardly ate yesterday either."

With a shrug, Katherine's smile widened. "Not because of your cooking, of course."

Kelly laughed under her breath. "But you are, aren't you?"

"Of course. I'm starving."

Shaking her head in amused puzzlement, Kelly squeezed her hand. "Then come on. I haven't had lunch yet either and we can have something together. My car is parked over there..."

"I'd rather stay, Brooke."

"Kelly," the blonde murmured, "Call me Kelly. I told you already."

"Alright. I'd rather stay, Kelly."

Sighing, Kelly bounced into a squatting position as the concrete started hurting her knees, flipping honey-gold hair out of her eyes. Katherine still hadn't opened her eyes, seemingly content to lie here under the warm sun. To the casual observer she might have been asleep. "I know, Katherine," Kelly said softly, "But you haven't been eating or drinking much at all, and you're going to make yourself ill. You're under my care, remember? What would Steph think if I brought you back to BTG one day sick with dehydration and malnutrition? He'd bloody well berate me, wouldn't he? Deservedly so."

"You don't have to talk to me like I'm a child," Katherine replied quietly. She opened her eyes, bright green and strangely catlike in this light, hardly flinching at the glare of the sun behind the blonde woman. "I'd like to stay here, Kelly. It's peaceful. I can feel..."

"Feel what?" Kelly murmured.

Katherine frowned. "Him. Her. Whatever you'd like to call them. God. I've been waiting her for Her every day since I found this place. I have to empty myself before She will come. I have to break down my defenses and my fears. I've been ignoring her all this time, blocking her out. But I don't want to anymore. Her messenger was already here," she touched the feather delicately, as if afraid of jarring it loose, "And I know he'll return..."

Studying the young woman quietly, Kelly searched her expression for signs of madness. There was none, at least nothing obvious, and Katherine had never been skilled at concealing her fractured self from others. Nor did she have the blazing eyes of a fanatic. In fact, there was more than a little trepidation in her eyes, which were clearer and more aware than they had been lately, as if she weren't exactly sure of what she was doing either.

"I know it sounds stupid to you, Kelly," she added softly, "But it's important to me."

"It doesn't sound stupid," the blonde replied as reassuringly as possible, "I just don't understand it."

"Neither do I, actually. I just..." Katherine's brow furrowed and she met Kelly's gaze. "I want to do this, now that I know He or She exists and isn't some fairy tale." A small, self-conscious laugh. "I can feel Her out there somewhere, waiting patiently, like a pressure on my mind. I just want to throw myself down and ask forgiveness, to receive Her love and Her grace. I've never believed, Kelly. I've never had faith. I've hidden from everything like that behind philosophy and science. But I'm too...empty to do that anymore. I feel stripped down. I may never have another chance like this..."

She may end up destroying the world, Kelly thought darkly, If we don't pass muster in her eyes. I hardly consider that "love".

"You think I'm crazy," Katherine muttered.

"No, I don't think that," the blonde sighed, "I just don't understand it. Who was this messenger you mentioned?"

"One of Her angels. He called himself Remiel..." She closed her eyes and grimaced faintly as if forcing an image to come to mind with difficulty. "I know what Rociel said, that God and the true angels aren't here. But in my vision he came out of the sun, and I didn't notice him at first because it was so blinding. It hurt my eyes too look at him for too long, but he led me inside the cathedral and spoke to me. And when he spoke I realized my skin was marble and my insides were stone, like a statue, like how I was before you and the others saved me. He told me I was still cold. I was closed off inside of myself, inside my own grief, and wouldn't let anyone in. Not even God. That my visions were meant to open me to Her and other people. So I came back out here to try again..."

Katherine sighed in frustration, rubbing her eyes. "I know it sounds mad. I'm sorry."

"Was it a dream?" Kelly asked gently, hoping the young woman was lucid enough not to react indignantly at the idea.

"Isn't everything?" she laughed softly, "I don't know. It's hard to separate them out."

"Well," Kelly said, then realized she didn't know what she meant to say. Frowning, she tried again on her original tack. "Either way you should try and eat something, Katherine, so you can think more clearly if nothing else. Lying here trying to force it to happen will only frustrate you. And god doesn't want you to make yourself ill on her account. I know I wouldn't."

She offered the young woman a small smile. "Come on, luv. Let me help you, alright?"

Katherine considered this.

Reluctantly, she sat up and allowed Kelly to help her to her feet, dusting off the thin white cotton of her dress. She nearly lost her balance in the process, and Kelly held her hand until Katherine regained her equilibrium.

"I guess you're right," she laughed shyly, "I feel dizzy..."

Kelly grunted. "I told you so, didn't I?"

Nodding, Katherine gave her a chagrined smile. But her eyes strayed over Kelly's shoulder to look at the church itself, her expression turning wistful and confused. She doesn't understand this anymore than I do, Kelly suspected, And it frightens her. I wonder what she is seeing in these "visions", whether they're really her delusions or something real.

"Where shall we eat?" Katherine asked, flexing her toes on the warm pavement.

"Anything you like," Kelly replied softly, leading her away from the church, "There's everything within five minutes of here. The blessings of civilization..."

7

Blood poured from the mouths of the Kindred

And the statues bled from their eyes and hands

Until a river of blood drowned the streets of Manhattan

Bathing us all in a scarlet tide

Remiel appeared, following the disc of the moon

The white lady spoke and her daughter answered

She dropped the crystal into the sea, and it became stone

The blood turned white and became ice in our veins

Our throats, our stomachs, our hearts, sealing us in marble

Diamond blossomed in our eyes and on our lips as frost set in

A cold breath spreading outwards, toward the state highway

Turning we who touched the blood to alabaster purity

Until none remained

Stephen frowned as he read the last line of the poem, the black letters innocuous against the blazing white background of the Apple laptop's LCD screen.

"That doesn't sound good," he remarked, "She wrote this?"

Kelly nodded, hugging herself. "When she's not sleeping the day away, or lying in front of St. Mark's, or working on her endless artwork," she gestured to the various pictures hanging from the bedroom walls, "She locks herself up in here with her Macintosh. You can hear her typing all the way down the hall, it's like a machine gun. Ah, and Remiel is the name of an angel - though not a fallen angel, mind you - whom she claims to have spoken with in visions and dreams. I've already run it through the computers at BTG. Remiel is believed by certain medieval cults and New Agers to be an angel of awakening and a keeper of knowledge."

Stephen absorbed this information, leaning back in the chair. His eyes drifted upwards to the black ink drawings which lined the walls of Katherine's room. Images of herself, of wings and angels, of Ariel with her long black hair, of Ariel's blade, of Ariel's lover, Nicolas...Too many drawings to count, all done on thick parchment paper. The skill of the rendering was impressive, he had to admit, though he could see the progression of her technique through time just by scanning the drawings. The earliest were very sharp, precise, like an explorer's sketch of an exotic new animal in a dusty book. As time went on, however, her style grew more fluid and imaginative, and small snippets of poetry or phrases dotted the paper.

Smiling faintly, he turned back to the laptop computer, the little silver one which she'd stolen from a college student four years earlier.

"Do you think she's cracked?" Kelly remarked, not entirely joking.

He shook his head, rereading the neat lines of text in front of him. "If she hasn't already she's probably not going to. How long ago did she write this?"

"Last night, " Kelly replied, her young, cigarette-free voice lilting with her British accent, "She hasn't slept well. Trouble adjusting to a daytime schedule and all that. She was sprawled in front of the computer when I came in this morning to check on her, and I had to put her to bed myself. That was on the screen when I found her. Other than her strange behavior she's seemed fine, and well aware of how odd this all seems to other people."

"You can't be mad if you know you're mad," Stephen commented.

"I suppose so. I've been impressed by her clarity. Is it important then?"

"Probably," he murmured, scrolling up and down within the program to assure himself there was nothing else to the poem, "If I had to guess. The language is very specific. She makes references to the Kindred, Manhattan, this angel Remiel, a state highway...Many of the witnesses at the Delphi concert reported seeing a woman dressed all in white, which they equated with the Virgin Mary, an angelic figure, a representation of Gaia, the goddess Dana, and even Kali in one case." He laughed under his breath. "Several people claimed she spoke to them, though they couldn't remember what was said afterward. It almost looks like Katherine had a dream about it and jotted down notes when she woke up. Did you ask her about it?"

"No," Kelly shook her head, "She was gone when I came home. Probably at St. Mark's."

"Does she know anything about Rociel? The Delphi concert?"

The blonde woman shrugged, swiping aside the bangs which fell in front of her eyes. "Just that she disappeared. Katherine and I haven't talked about work since she left the hospital, though she knows about the End Times, of course. I don't even think she ever met Rociel, come to think of it. At least not since being released by Pinem'e..."

8

Nighttime in Denton.

Despite the warmth of the afternoon the air turned cold quickly once the sun went down, and the glittering panorama of stars danced into view overhead, clear and twinkling in the dry, chilly air. Katherine watched the sky more than the world around her as she wandered about Fry Street and the college area, pausing now and then to make certain there was no broken glass nearby that she might walk into, given her bare feet and all. In particular she fixed her mind on the looming shape of Orion, situated near Gemini and Taurus, her birthplace in the Zodiac, and he was her guide in the heavens since childhood. As a vampire his shape had been so clear, glittering like jewels in the velvet blackness of the sky, come to life as all the constellations had. But now she strained with her human eyes to see the dim nebula which wreathed his sheathed sword, and none of the other abstract constellations made sense to her any longer.

She walked the night without fear, padding silently across the numbing pavement, though she kept her distance from the most popular centers on Fry Street, where kids danced and got strung out at clubs even on a Tuesday night. There would be vampires there almost certainly, staying close to the human herd, and there might be others lurking in the darkened streets farther away, looking for loners who strayed from the pack. But Katherine had no concern for her safety, nor even perhaps for her own life. She once hunted these grounds, too; she knew the passages and best places to find the blood, and she guarded herself from these - and from falling easily into her old footsteps. And she had become a familiar figure since her return, which some people - especially when high - mistook her for a ghost. The rest left her alone.

Denton was full of eccentrics and madmen, after all.

Night was the waiting time. The eye of the sun was gone, if not Her presence on the periphery of her thoughts, and wouldn't return for hours. And while she was still most comfortable at night, basking in the cool, comforting radiance of the waning moon, it was the daytime she craved, and a return to St. Mark's to begin again. If she could manage it sleeping at night and waking during the day would be simpler, keeping her close to the loving, patient warmth of the God, but her mind refused it still. Only insomnia and bad dreams awaited her in her little bed, back home at Kelly's house, and she didn't want the distraction. So instead she walked the backstreets around there, waiting out the hours until daybreak, when she could embrace the thrill and the terror of seeing sunrise.

Katherine sang to herself softly, everything from half-remembered nursery rhymes to snippets of opera to snatches of popular music, dancing over the cold pavement. She was tempted to nab a piece of chalk from somewhere and play girlhood games on the sidewalk, but the idea was fleeting. Madness was like this, she supposed. The jumble of her thoughts rarely held one shape for long, especially with her periodic mental lapses. Schizophrenia was by now a familiar friend, and she looped her arm through his to go skipping down the avenue. Allowing her mind to skip off the grooves now and then made the nights go by faster. The glimpses of old friends and sunny childhood memories that came with it were a welcome distraction from the languid sense of waiting.

Footsteps. Off to her right.

Katherine strolled on with blissful indifference, dancing through imaginary patterns on the concrete beneath her. It would not be a vampire, she knew; vampires wouldn't allow themselves to be heard by the likes of mortals. Always hunt by stealth to enjoy the game, letting the victim believe herself to be invulnerable even in the absence of street lights and other warm bodies. It heightened the enjoyment, the amusement, not that any human could dream of keeping up with a vampire's silent, catlike movements. The illusion of the chase was what mattered, like a cat toying with a wounded mouse. When you mean to feed on someone's blood, someone human like you once were, rules went straight out the window.

The taste of blood sprang to her lips, a burning sweet memory.

"Stop it," she whispered, lurching to a stop in the middle of the street and clutching her head, "Stop thinking that way! You're human. Human. She would be so disappointed to hear you think this way! How am I ever going to gain Her forgiveness if I can't even stop myself from thinking about it?! From wanting it?"

"You're like Alice in Wonderland, crazy-girl," a voice laughed, "I love watching you."

Katherine turned about, frowning at the intrusion. It was a teenage girl, perhaps fourteen, sitting on the rickety wooden step of an old house's front porch. (She knew the house, Katherine realized distantly, recognizing its rusted chain link fence and tall grass. She'd killed a man there the first night with Andrew, leaving his body in the weeds like so much other trash.) It was hard to guess her true age. Her body was thin, poorly made out under her black velvet dress, with pubescent breasts just making an appearance, but she had a womanly face and an adult's smirk. A wild tangle of red hair was mashed down around her ears by a black felt hat, falling in front of her startlingly green eyes. With her pace painted white it would've been easy to mistake her for a vampire. But that was true of most any kid in this neighborhood.

She was alive, yes, but there was a shadow over her.

"Oh, whatever shall I do?" the girl mocked her in a sing-song voice, clasping her hands together in a pose of sweet natured desperation, like a maddened Dorothy, "She loves me, She loves me not, She loves me, She loves me not!" Viciousness crept into her voice. "However shall I get home at this rate? And where the fuck did that white rabbit get to?"

"You're a very strange girl," Katherine said softly.

"What do you know about strange, living-dead girl?" she sulked, her fun ruined by the older woman's gentle reproach, "You think just because you're a bloodsucker that She cares anything about you? You're spit on the ground in a fairytale land. Alice with blood on her hands! Repulsive. She, if She even pays attention to the world anymore, couldn't give a flying fuck what happens to your broken little soul! Let me tell you, the Wizard of Oz has very sharp teeth, the better for chewing us up and spitting us out."

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" Katherine murmured, "It's late."

The girl's eyes blazed indignantly. "I'm not a little girl!"

"You act like one."

In an instant, the girl leapt from her perch and flew at Katherine in a rage, like some black-clad faux-vampire on a rampage, shouting obscenities at the top of her lungs. Her nonexistent fingernails sprang out like claws, long and dangerously sharp but glossy with a coat of black lacquer, a monster of a teenage girl. She got within three feet before stopping dead and lurching backwards as if struck, stumbling to the cold concrete with a screech of agony.

"Fuck!" she wailed, rolling away from the white-clad woman as if trying to douse invisible flames, "What is a vampire doing with so much fucking faith?!"

"I'm not a vampire," Katherine replied faintly, "Are you alright?"

"Stay away from me!" the girl roared, her voice slipping into a masculine shout.

"I won't come close," Katherine offered kindly, "But are you alright? I didn't mean to hurt you if that's what happened."

The girl tumbled over onto her back, glaring up at the young woman. She tugged her hat down hard to keep it from slipping off her curly mass of hair. "Of course not! You never mean to do anything, do you? Two weeks I've been watching you bumble from place to place like a drunk woman, never going anyplace in particular except that damned church. Even as a vampire you were like that, weren't you? Never meaning to hurt people but killing them anyway."

Katherine frowned. "Do I know you?"

"No, but I see through you easily enough."

Puzzled and curious, the young woman sat down in the middle of the road, folding her skirt under her legs to protect them from the cold. This put the girl at eye level again, though she scurried back like a frightened animal from her presence, staring hatefully at Katherine from under the brim of her hat. The claws were gone, Katherine noticed in passing. Her fingernails had returned to normal.

"What are you?" she asked gently, "Who are you?"

"A demon," the girl sulked, "Mad Hatter."

Katherine's brows came together. "A demon? Like Rociel?"

The girl issued an abrasive, barking laugh that echoed down the street. "Maybe once, somewhere over the rainbow. Nevermore. Nevermore? Nevermore."

"You're not quite right, are you?"

"Neither," Mad Hatter sneered, "Are you."

Katherine studied her in silence for a moment, trying to pierce the greasepaint she wore to find the person behind the baleful glower in her eyes. Mad Hatter spat at her for her trouble, though hitting nowhere near the woman in the white dress, and tentatively eased into a sitting position as if testing the boundary of Katherine's aura. She then folded herself up on the ground, mimicking Katherine's posture and smoothing her skirt out over her long, thin legs with their fishnet stockings.

"Tea for the lady," Mad Hatter crooned in a horrid Cockney accent, grinning from ear to ear like a lunatic, "Would you like some, my dear? Sweet, sweet tea straight from India! With milk cream and sugar cubes and Turkish delight for dessert! How delightful! What shall we talk about then? The weather? The times? Or shall we stride gaily down Majestic Avenue in search of lovely things? You never know what you might find here in Wonderland!"

She mimed pouring tea into a cup and slid it toward Katherine.

To her evident surprise, the young woman picked it up and mimed sipping from it.

"Tea time is splendid, isn't it?!" Mad Hatter smiled, though the hate didn't leave her eyes.

"Yes, it is," Katherine murmured, "Tell me, what hurt you a moment ago?"

"Anything and everything, my dear," the girl quipped, sipping her tea as well, "You cannot imagine the panorama of wounds you collect over thousands of years. Since the dawn of time itself! I daresay my pocket watch is running down and tarnishing. The face is cracked. Like everything and everyone. Kablooie! I should like to sink my teeth into someone like you do. I think that should taste sweet indeed."

"Biscuit?" she added, suddenly impeccably polite.

"Yes, please," Katherine nodded, and took the imaginary cake from Mad Hatter, "But why did you fall when you lunged at me? You said something about faith?"

"Alleluia!" Mad Hatter cried in mock horror, lifting her teacup in a salute, "Glory be to God! Holy, Holy, Holy! Lift up your hearts! Sursum Corda! Lord have mercy! Kyrie Eleison! Our Father Lord, bless us! God save us! She doesn't understand!"

"Faith hurts you," Katherine murmured, "I thought you needed it."

"Like sweetmeats and candy apples, my darling dear, my Alice!" the girl grinned fiercely, "It sweetens the tea but you do not take the sugar by itself, oh no, that would be sacrilege! Sugar without tea? Pish-posh! You believe, or you know, for knowing and believing are as often the same thing as not, deep in your heart of hearts, crazy-girl. Belief shields you! Belief kills!"

She took a sip of tea. "Just look at the Crusades."

Katherine drank as well, holding the teacup daintily on its imaginary saucer.

"Faith turned against you is dangerous?"

"Not dangerous, my lovely child!" Mad Hatter laughed as if it were the most absurd notion ever uttered, "Painful, yes. Sweetly and exquisitely so, like a knife blade across your wrist! Like the blood you so devilishly gorged yourself on to the point of bursting! The holy places and the holy people are forbidden to the likes of me. Holy ground and all that rot. Not important, though! Won't kill me. Why would anyone want to suffer with churches and temples anyhow? Have some more tea!"

She poured Katherine another cup, ever the gracious host.

"I rather like churches and cathedrals," Katherine replied.

"You would," the girl scowled.

The loathing lasted only a moment, however, and immediately Mad Hatter was back to her charming, demented façade. "Faith is bread and butter and sugar cubes for the tea, yes, but not everyone wants us demon-kind, we white rabbits in our tuxedoes and finery who bled for you and yours. Have another biscuit, they're scrumptious! Religion teaches hate. Hate of us, hate of the different, hate of vampires." Pausing thoughtfully, she stirred her invisible tea with a silver spoon. "Oh, yes, it's true. Glory be to God, Amen, for teaching the art of the bloody sword, Amen, and cursing the outsider and the innovator, Amen, and spitting on the Blessed Devils who tried to save the world, Amen."

"So you can't enter churches," Katherine murmured, "Or approach someone whose faith rejects you?"

"Tea is sometimes bitter and tea is sometimes sweet," Mad Hatter rambled on enthusiastically, lifting a declamatory finger to the Heavens, "It depends on the cut. I prefer Indian, myself, over Chinese. Precious little buggers, the Chinese, but they like to poison their guests. Bad form, I say. Dreadfully bad. Mao Tse-tung would be very disappointed in all his little Red Army Ants. Not everyone likes tea, of course, and what they drink at parties I'll never know." She paused and tapped her lip. "Coffee, perhaps. Dreadful."

She shuddered for effect.

"Harmless, though, those coffee-drinkers. A pick-me-up for work and dying but not for serious play. No, not at all. Doesn't have the same bold flavor, now does it? The same sweetness. The same bloody civility!" Mad Hatter's eyes blazed passionately. "Ring them round for a party and you end up with a funeral. Ghastly business that, socializing with the apish masses. No charm, no bonnets, no 'yes, sir' and 'thank you, ma'am', just 'pour me another cup, I'm too busy to talk!' And where is the fun in that?"

"I'm afraid you've lost me," Katherine remarked, eating her cookie.

"Oh, 'tis a shame, I know," Mad Hatter sighed, "The suffering of the under privileged! You missed your schooling, didn't you, my dear? Maybe I will be Anne Sullivan and you can be my Helen Keller, blind, deaf, dumb child. Now. Let me put it more plainly. God is dead. Nobody wastes their fucking time on faith anymore, and I've nothing to fear from the little fools when they gather together in their empty chapels and gaudy cathedrals. Might as well be afraid of my own fucking shadow. No, you, crazy-girl, are a genuine rarity."

She dashed her teacup against the concrete.

"Lesson's over, Alice," Mad Hatter sneered, "Get the picture?"

"But She hasn't graced me yet," Katherine said softly, "I haven't allowed myself to receive Her."

"Haven't you?" the girl clucked her tongue impatiently, "Then you will. How can you stop yourself? You've got the mark on you, branded into your heart, fumbling living-dead girl, I can feel it from here. I'd rip the faith from you if I could but I'm too weak and you're too strong. Not like it used to be." She sighed. "You need Her. You pine for Her like a child or a lover the way fucking Rociel did until fucking Rociel went fucking away. You might be Her servant, who knows? I can hardly stand the sight of you!"

"I'm not forgiven," Katherine murmured.

"Never are!" Mad Hatter snapped, "Never will be! Give it up."

"You're not very helpful."

"I'm a demon!"

The white-clad woman smiled sadly. "And I used to be one, too."

Mad Hatter grunted, lolling back and stretching her legs out, crossing them at the thighs. "Always were, always will be. She is not about Forgiveness, Alice. She is its very antithesis! There is neither Heaven nor Hellfire waiting for you, lovely crazy-girl, only Oblivion. Your soul, like I said, does not matter. Your faith is unfounded."

"You would say that, you're a demon," Katherine shrugged.

"Quite." She sighed, suddenly crestfallen.

The girl lifted her eyes, watching with bleak curiosity, as the woman in the white dress took one last sip of tea and gently set the cup and saucer aside. A ghost of a smile crossed Mad Hatter's womanishly full, pouting lips.

"What is your soul?" she asked with surprising calm, "It isn't human."

Katherine started slightly, caught off guard for the first time by the demon's perception, and wondered how deeply into her heart and mind Mad Hatter's eyes could see. A pang of doubting sadness went through her then. Not human. Never really human, ever. She shook it off easily, however, meeting the girl's green eyes with the utmost honesty. "Faerie. But partially human, if not mostly so by now."

"Fairy? Fey?" Mad Hatter echoed.

"Yes," Katherine nodded.

"What does that mean?"

"I wish I knew," the young woman laughed, shrugging, "I consider myself human."

"A Wyld One," Mad Hatter murmured, staring intently at her, "A wind-dreamer. A mask-wearer like us. Forest and river creature. Something not from here. At least, nothing we made. But belonging here all the same. You," she smirked, "Are very peculiar, Alice."

Katherine took this as a compliment of sorts.

"I know," she said, smiling softly.

"And you, a believer," Mad Hatter remarked, "Whatever is the world coming to?"

"Oh, yes, the End," she added as an afterthought, "That's right, of course. Where is my mind going? Two bold words written in blood: The End. The end of Wonderland, Alice. I suppose," she giggled, her smile turning bitter, "You should steal what peace you may from Her or someone else while you still have time. Receive Her or rip it from Her, take your pick. You may be Her daughter and visionary, Forest Child and Blood Drinker, but it'll all come to naught in the end. Only so much tea in China. After all, even Christ was just a man, and see how well that turned out..."

Katherine frowned, missing the girl's momentary lucidity.

"Don't you believe in anything? She made you, didn't She? Isn't She your God, too?"

"Oh, yes, she made us," Mad Hatter laughed, "And broke us, too. Playthings for the watchmaker, toys for the Wizard in Her Emerald City. Some might say a Reason justified it, but then what holy purpose could excuse such misery and horror? Does a Reason remove the stain of murder from your soul, Forest Daughter? Do you feel cleansed of your atrocities by the knowledge that She might have had a Grand Design? One which leads us inescapably into destruction? I pity you, River Walker, for being bound to the fates of Angel, Demon and Man. This is not your place or your homeland, Ariel."

"I've taken it as my own," Katherine replied, before the shock of being called Ariel even had a chance to hit her, "And I would be forgiven. The world hasn't ended yet."

Her voice trailed off as she eyed Mad Hatter uncertainly.

"I know your name, yes," the girl grinned, "It springs to your lips when you speak. When you cry to God for forgiveness. It clamors in your ears when someone calls your human name. Aside from your love and desire for Her, it is the only living passion inside your hollowed, hallowed shell! She should be the one begging for your forgiveness, Forest Daughter! From all of us! We suffer because of Her!"

"I would gladly forgive Her," Katherine murmured, "I accept Her Reasons."

"Pfft," Mad Hatter sneered, "You want to be a saint."

The young woman shook her head. "I just want to be healed."

Surprisingly, an affectionate smile slowly spread across the girl's features, and she tipped her hat to Katherine with a sardonic light in her eyes. For a moment, one could see the little girl within the Mad Hatter, or at least the frightened mind lurking within her. "I could become addicted to you, little Nymph. You make my heart ache with your honeyed tongue and piety."

"And I feel sorry for you," Katherine replied gently.

"I know," she smiled thinly, "Why do you think I hate you so much? And love you? Tomorrow, when She sees what you've done to me, She will be pleased. And when you become Her martyr and Her gift, I might even come for blessing! Shove a wafer and some wine in my mouth and send me on to God. Maybe with my mouth full I won't say something to get myself well and truly Damned. This time."

Mad Hatter laughed softly, her eyes gleaming under her hat.

"Come with me," Katherine offered.

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't, said the white rabbit. I'm sure She would smite me on principle anyway, no matter your everlasting compassion. Ahhh-men."

"If I can help you somehow..." the young woman began.

"Don't trouble yourself over it, pretty crazy-girl," grinned Mad Hatter, "I'm in love with the idea more than anything. It tastes bittersweet, my favorite flavor. The best sort of tea, too, you know. Keep the flavor and the sweetness both. I'm in love with you as well, not Her nor redemption. Perish the thought! No, you fascinate me. A monster who became a saint. You have one of our names, you know. Ariel. 'Lioness of God'. So fitting for what the Curse of Cain made you into. Beauty and the Beast rolled into one."

Katherine shuddered and closed her eyes, remembering the misshapen twist of her feet, transformed into padded cat's paws, the taste of her rough tongue in her mouth, the loss of color from the world, the slanted, tapered ears, the mewling cries which rose in her throat at night. She pushed away those memories of her warped vampire self, and when she opened her eyes again she found Mad Hatter watching her with startling compassion.

"Come to think of it," the girl murmured, "I think I once knew an Ariel."

"One of you?" Katherine asked, "An angel?"

"Mayhaps," Mad Hatter shrugged, taking the imaginary teacup and saucer back from the woman in the white dress, "It's slipped out of my fingers again, like most of my memories do from those times. I can't bear to think of it you know. I fell quite a long, long ways and broke my crown." She chuckled darkly. "And the others came tumbling after. So sad, really. But, like I said earlier, once a demon always a demon."

"And I do apologize," she added, sweeping away the invisible silverware with a wave of her hand, and bounced to her feet with a low bow, "But I really must dash. People to do and things to see and all that bother, you understand me. There's another fairy on the hunt for me and I'd rather not be caught by him. Not yet at least."

"Another?" Katherine echoed, "Who?"

"Why your lover, of course!" Mad Hatter grinned, setting her hat at a jaunty angle, "Or have you forgotten? You did break his heart so cruelly, after all."

The young woman frowned. "I don't know who you mean."

"I know. Pity, isn't it?"

With a wry smile, Katherine looked up at her. "You're not going to explain, are you?"

"Absolutely not!" the girl replied briskly, her skirt swirling about her legs as she started walking away, "Not my place, you see! Wishers can't be horses and demons can't be angels! It's your problem, darling Alice, not mine. I can't solve all your problems for you. Too many rabbit holes to jump down, you see, and watches to keep running on time. Too many things to eat and drink and bleed. I'll see you in church, maybe, Saint Ariel the Forest Child, if She doesn't crush you first!"

And she was gone.

9

Liam came into the street a few minutes later, calling the name of "Alexiel".

He drew to a halt when he saw Katherine sitting in the middle of the empty road, her hands clasped in her lap and her skirt folded discreetly around her legs in the chilly night air. Long, dark auburn hair fell in disheveled ringlets around her, her large green eyes staring patiently at the spot from which he'd entered the street, expecting him. With her pale skin and white dress, he thought she was an apparition at first, perhaps even a vampire, but no, she was all too human. Or was she? There was something unusual about her - that is, beyond the slightly wild look in her eyes and her waiflike appearance - which stopped any words he might have uttered dead in his throat.

He recognized her. Didn't he?

"Excuse me," he called, his faint Irish accent creeping in around the edges, and flipped his bangs out of his eyes in exasperation, "I'm looking for a young girl, her name is Alexiel. Red hair, green eyes, wearing a black dress and hat? I thought I heard her voice..."

"Yes," the pretty woman said wryly, "We just had tea together."

"Tea?" Liam echoed, nonplussed.

"Yes, tea. And biscuits. Don't worry," she offered a knowing smile, as if to alleviate his fears about her sanity, "It was just a game. I should think a changeling like yourself would better appreciate make-believe. A lot of the time it's the last refuge of a troubled or frightened mind. I should know. She likes to call herself Mad Hatter, I take it?"

"Yes," Liam nodded warily, "That's her."

"Hello," Katherine smiled politely, "I'm Alice."

The young man gave her an odd look.

"Katherine," she corrected herself, "My name is Katherine. Katherine Ducote. I think."

Liam frowned, giving her a more cautious appraisal this time - noting in particular her bare feet, which must have either been numb or stinging from the cold air - but this only made the woman smile more. When he made such serious looks his blue eyes gleamed with a light all their own, belying the somberness of his demeanor. It was a charming trait in Katherine's eyes, and one which seemed dearly familiar as well.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

The young woman nodded, curls tumbling about her face in tousled waves. "Yes, I'm fine. Your friend, however, seems to have some issues, though she's saner than she lets on. Enough so that she made the most sense of anyone I've talked to lately, not that I've talked to a great many people. What's your name and interest in her? She mentioned you were looking for her and she didn't want to be found..."

Only the mad can understand the mad, Liam thought, his footsteps echoing in the empty street as he drew closer. Katherine's direct, gently confrontational manner caught him off guard, but it was the undertones in her voice which troubled him the most, as if he could hear another woman speaking underneath her. She didn't seem dangerous at all. However, she had the invulnerable self-possession and erratic qualities of a saint or madwoman. There was no brittleness or self-consciousness to her, which made her mental state all the more difficult to puzzle out.

"Liam," he answered, "Look, do I know you?"

The young woman nodded. "I think you might."

"You look familiar."

"I'm not surprised," Katherine remarked, toying idly with the hem of her skirt, "I've been in the news lately. I was missing for a long time, a kidnapping victim, you see, and I was recently rescued. Or does the name Ariel ring a bell?"

Ariel.

Liam started, his memory called back to dim scenes from his past, his other lives. Back to a young beauty with porcelain skin named Gabrielle, dressed in the absurd clothing of the 1920s or in no-color traveler's garb, with piercing blue, almost violet, eyes and long black hair falling in sheets about her face. To warm nights spent on the Mediterranean or in the blazing deserts, and glimpses of the ancient wonders which only Arabia could offer. But Ariel had been her true name, her Faerie name, which she had been born with seemingly at the beginning of the world. A nymph, a wanderer and storyteller like himself - his true self, at least, just as immortal as hers - but from softer lands of streams and forests and cool mists.

The young man reeled as the images washed over him.

"Are you okay, Liam?" Katherine asked, concerned for the first time.

"How do you know that name?" he questioned her, blinking dazedly in amazement.

She shrugged, climbing smoothly to her feet. "It was my name once, a long time ago. Mad Hatter said you might know it. She said you were the same as I am, or was, a mask-wearer. What," Katherine eyed him solemnly, "Is your other name, Liam? And what do you know about Ariel? She said the two of you were lovers once."

Liam didn't know quite what to make of this. He hadn't shared anything of his past with Alexiel - what would have been the point? She rarely deigned to speak with him, especially since Rociel left her in his charge, and her running away after his lover's disappearance made clear her disdain for him. Rociel told him once that Alexiel had some talent with reading other people's minds, a gift she used skillfully when taunting others or mimicking another person's shape, but Liam hadn't expected it to be so subtle, nor to burrow so deeply.

Still, he quickly dismissed these thoughts for later, as well as the painful fears which Rociel's disappearance left in him, instead returning his attention to the lovely, half-mad woman before him. Katherine's hands were clasped behind her back and she stood with legs set apart, as if at attention. Or as if readying to pounce.

"Eben," he murmured, walking up to Katherine to get a better look at her. Her green eyes, so wide and piercing, followed his every move. From the calm set of her features it would've been easy to believe she were sane, even a normal woman, but the eyes betrayed her. There was something about their shine which troubled him. They peered into his soul, stripping away all layers of dust and pretension. "And that's not exactly true. I loved Ariel, yes, many years ago. And I've been searching for her ever since I began remembering those times. But we were mostly friends. If not, in some ways, father and daughter, in that lifetime..."

"But how do you know this?" Liam asked roughly, wanting to touch her as if that alone would shatter the illusion of her human façade, "Looking at you, I can see you're not awakened. But you seem to know more than I do."

"Ariel couldn't have loved you," Katherine told him gently, "Her heart already belonged to someone else. She had already given the Oath of Truehearts."

Liam flinched as if struck. He knew immediately, though he hadn't remembered it until now, that she was correct. He and Gabrielle, or Eben and Ariel at any rate, had this conversation once, standing on the rooftops of Constantinople. Pain welled up inside of him, tangled up with all the uncertainty and fear over long Rociel.

"No, I'm not awakened," Katherine continued, reaching out to gently caress his face, smiling at the feel of the short, bristling stubble on his cheeks. The touch was almost apologetic, as was her soft tone. "Nor do I remember you, Eben. But I've learned a great deal about my past from dreams and from other people. I even have Ariel's sword, silver with black roses etched into the blade, which I acquired from one of Rociel and Mad Hatter's kind, a demon who used me. Who raped my mind and left it tattered. But I don't know if Ariel will ever come back."

"Why not?" Liam asked. He missed the warmth of her hand as she withdrew it.

"Because my soul has been twisted and torn too many times, Eben. I nearly awakened to Ariel a few years ago when I was in college, but I was murdered just as she was starting to emerge. Murdered," she repeated the word slowly as if tasting it, reassuring herself of the reality of the event, "And turned into a monster. Between that and the demon my soul is in pieces. If I die - again - she might come back in my next life, who knows? But not this one. This life belongs to someone else."

"I don't understand," Liam breathed, "You're not making any sense."

Katherine smiled wryly. "Exactly."

"But Ariel's still inside of you," he argued, "I can feel her with the Kenning."

"That may be," she murmured, "But if you could see into my heart, Eben, you would see me bloody and broken, caught up in the gears of some horrible machine. Ariel is no different. You can't imagine the things I've lived through. The horrors I've inflicted on other people! If she awakens again in this life, so be it. All I want anymore is forgiveness, Eben, for the things I've done. And only She," Katherine glanced upwards to the stars, "Can offer that. I've given myself to Her, to God..."

There were tears in her eyes, Liam saw. Not sadness. Longing verging on desperation.

He wasn't sure what to do for Katherine, for Ariel, especially without knowing what had become of her. On the outside she seemed sane enough, aware of her own failings and eccentricities, but it didn't take much to crack the icy surface and find the torment lurking within. Yet she seemed so fully in control, so peaceably calm, it left him doubting.

"You must be freezing," he said softly, "You're shivering."

"I am," she replied, "But I don't mind. She looks after me."

"You mean god?"

Green eyes smiled at him. "Yes."

She is beautiful, Liam realized, Madly so, definitely. But still...

"Well, then, do you have a place to stay?" he stammered.

"I live with a friend of mine not far from here," Katherine replied.

The young man nodded. "Shall I walk you home then? You shouldn't be walking around out here dressed like that, even if she's looking after you. You'll fall ill."

This earned him the brightest, loveliest laugh.

"As you like, Eben," Katherine agreed with a girlish grin, "Perhaps She sent you as She sent Mad Hatter to make things clearer to me. In her own disjointed way, of course. Either way, thank you. We make strange angels, don't we? Faeries searching for their wings. And I wouldn't worry about Mad Hatter either," she added, seeing the bemused look on Liam's face, "She seems like she can take care of herself. And I'm pretty sure she'll come looking for me sooner or later..."

10

The shadow from the hallway light caused him to stir.

Outside, the storm was blanketing New York in a glaze of deathly silver, reducing traffic to a crawl and choking off business, travel and all the mundane necessities of mortal existence. Yet still, leaning against the windows with his brow pressed up against the cold glass, Laurent saw that life persisted down below. Men and women went to work as they could. Children had been released from school and though the blizzard had obliterated all evidence of their play the blond vampire knew they had been there. It did nothing to impede the blood drinkers like himself overly much, aside from the mild inconvenience of cold, but still Laurent cloistered himself up in here, watching and waiting for the storm to pass. He had survived many winters and many catastrophes of greater scope, but this snow storm troubled him. The romantic, morbid part of his mind wondered if this one would ever end.

Glassy fingernails clicked against the glass as he pressed his hand to it, caressing the burning cold surface, and he glanced halfway over his shoulder through a tumble of blond hair to see the silhouetted figure behind him, standing in the open doorway.

Nicholas.

He stood exquisitely still with his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans, dressed in the same old grey sweater and leather jacket Laurent despised and loved for their familiarity, his auburn hair falling in curls around the gently masculine features, so unlike Madeline's delicacy and Laurent's own androgyny. It was hard to read his eyes because of shadow and tousled hair, but he imagined he saw Nicholas' eternal patience and sadness there. His bearing was that of one who no longer cared to impress but presented himself as he truly was at all times. Careworn sweater, fraying at the edges, and uncombed hair falling loose. Like Madeline, Nicholas was a modern vampire, the product of sheer infatuation. And like so many modern mortals, like a priest and a musician - both of which he triumphantly failed at being - damnation was merely one of many crosses to bear.

They stared at each other for a long moment.

"You know, I didn't think you'd come," Laurent murmured, turning farther toward Nicholas and the hallway light, "Not even for Madeline. Or have you forgiven me finally for what I did to her?"

Nicholas shook his head, immediately weary. He didn't care for this conversation. They'd had it too many times and worn out the subject. In his own measured way the young vampire wandered into the room, his soft brown eyes scanning the snow-suffocated cityscape outside, glittering in the darkness. He drifted over to the window, resisting the urge to embrace its cold as Laurent had, and took a closer look at his maker. They hadn't seen each other in ten years, a pittance in the old days but an eon in the modern world. The blond looked more frazzled than he remembered him, his shapeless silk shirt open at the throat and baring the white flesh of his neck and chest. Laurent still wore his violet sunglasses here in the dark, and the sight made Nicholas smile ever so slightly.

"You always ask the same thing," he said in a wry, exhausted tone, and Laurent savored the warm, mellow flavor of the words as much as he dreaded them, "And I always tell you - it is not my place to forgive you, Laurent. It's Madeline's. It's her life that you took away from her, not mine. If you want to ask forgiveness, ask it for what you did to me."

"You wanted her," Laurent protested softly, though it felt dry in his mouth.

"I loved her," Nicholas agreed, shrugging at the futility of the emotion, "That's all. You stole her from my home and made her one of us, when all I wanted was to see her again. But let's not have this argument again tonight. You called me, I came. What is wrong, Laurent? Your message said that Madeline was in trouble."

Closing his eyes, Laurent took a deep breath of the stale warm air of the room, Madeline's rooms at the Olympic Tower, and smothered the smoldering anger, hurt and lust Nicholas' presence always engendered in him. Still, his eyes were burning when he opened them again, caressing the young vampire's features with his gaze. Laurent dared to reach out and touch him. Nicholas didn't resist. Slowly, ever so delicately, the sire took the childe's hand and planted a feather soft kiss atop it. The skin was cool, kept flush with the stolen blood but chilled by the storm outside. Nicholas once loathed cold like the plague, sequestering himself in warm restaurants and hot climes during this half of the year. Desire for cold had always been Madeline's peculiar obsession. Perhaps he adopted it in her memory, Laurent wondered.

"You loved Madeline," he murmured thickly, "But I have always loved you."

Nicholas sighed, gently withdrawing his hand.

"Get on with it, Laurent."

"I did what I did because I wanted you to be happy," the blond flushed with indignation, though his tone grew desperate, "That's all. Yes, I murdered her, just as I murdered you, but only because I didn't want you to be lonely. You couldn't bear my presence. And now I don't know what to do for her! You're the only one I could think of who might be able to help her, or at least help me make sense of what's happening. I can't comprehend it!"

"Calm down, for Christ's sake," Nicholas replied sarcastically, stuffing his hands in his pockets again. "If you want me to help you're going to have to explain what's going on first. Why me? What's going on?"

Clenching his teeth, Laurent took a moment to strangle control out of his emotions. His hands quivered as he ran them back through his thick blond hair, eyeing the beautifully despairing auburn-haired vampire with openly frustrated desire. Strange how this hunger - this love - could burn through the bizarre events which followed Madeline's return to New York and the fear they provoked in him. He paused. Felt the chill from outside the window seeping into the room, penetrating the thin silk of his shirt, and focused on the sterile cold as a way to arrange his thoughts.

Nicholas waited calmly. Always calmly.

"I called you because you love her," Laurent whispered, "And some of those same feelings survive in her. Because you are still very much a priest no matter how you try to deny it!" His blue eyes flashed. "Madeline is changing. Something happened to her at a rock concert a week ago, the Delphi show - "

"I know about it," Nicholas said curtly, looking away from his sire with an expression of pain, "It's been all over the news. Nobody seems to know what happened, of course, but some people are calling it a modern Fatima. The Virgin Mary appearing at a rock concert in New York City, speaking to the faithful. The usual bullshit. The cranks are already talking about the Rapture, not that they ever need a reason. Several other kindred, mostly Toreador, have gone missing since then as well. Aubrey swept through the city last night, checking in on everyone. The Justicar is also looking into it."

Laurent nodded impatiently, glancing away in the direction of Madeline's room. Aside from these disappearances he knew all of this already, of course, from watching CNN with her. He could have guessed the rest. Madeline herself said she wasn't the only kindred at the concert. He wondered, did Nicholas sense the wrongness surrounding Madeline? The cloying perfume of the white blood which still hung over that half of the suite?

"You don't believe a word of it, do you?" the blond murmured probingly.

"Should I?" Nicholas snapped, "You know me better than this, Laurent."

"Yes, I do, and you know I don't believe in such things either," his sire returned, "But Madeline does! You're the one who taught her faith, Nicki, even after yours died. And even now she holds onto it with surprising strength. That's also why I called you here. She believes. Even if you don't she wants you to. She still wants to convince you, the way she did that night in the café with your mortal friends. She will talk to you in ways she cannot talk to me."

Growling under his breath, Laurent turned away from the young vampire.

"Something happened to her," he sighed, "I don't pretend to understand what because I can't get a straight answer out of her. Nor do I think that what the mortals are saying is true. But I do know what I have seen, Nicholas. The blood was forced from her. All of it. Replaced by a thin, oily liquid resembling nothing so much as sap, the color of watered down milk. Madeline hasn't fed since then, nor has she been hungry. Not even the Beast has stirred in her. She's been lying in a stupor for three days now, staring listlessly at the wall, and the only time she seems alive is when I try to pry answers out of her! She calls it a miracle, and when I can get her to speak all she talks about are angels, a lady in white, and drowning in a sea of blood..."

Nicholas stopped him with a firm grip on his shoulder.

"Laurent, stop. You're not making much sense. I've never seen you this frightened..."

The blond spun about. "I'm horrified! I love her just as much as you do, if not more!"

The childe's expression hardened, sealing away pain before it reached the surface.

"There's more," Laurent breathed, calming himself, "This white blood of hers...Its scent is overpowering. I've only stopped myself from diablerie by retreating to this side of the suite and avoiding her. I've looked in on her now and then only to make sure there's no change. But no matter how well I have fed the smell of it overcomes me. It lingers in the air from when she showed it to me..."

There was worry in Nicholas' eyes when the blond met his gaze again, though the auburn-haired vampire was otherwise impassive. Laurent was a hedonist and too passionate for his own good, almost womanly at times, and Nicki knew better than to expect self-control from him. This little drama seemed too fantastical to believe. Still, there was a franticness in his sire's blue eyes, which he was using to poorly conceal his fright. Laurent was never scared. He lacked the self-consciousness to think too deeply on guilt or conscience. Only desire and its appeasement mattered to him.

Nicholas glanced in the direction Laurent had looked before, seeking out Madeline with his thoughts, then returned to his maker with a frown. "I can smell it, too, though it's faint in here. I thought it was her perfume or something when I came in. Where is she now? I take it she's in the bedroom?"

Laurent nodded apprehensively. "Yes. You will see her then?"

"For her sake, yes," Nicholas murmured, "Not for yours."

11

Laurent was right, the scent was very strong.

It struck him like a fist as he opened the doors to Madeline's side of the luxurious hotel suite, though he didn't let it deter him from pressing onward. To Nicholas the fragrance seemed to embody everything he loved about her and every pleasure he enjoyed in the world. The scent of jasmine she wore when they were students in college. The lush aroma of roses in some garden where they talked about God and salvation by moonlight, drinking sweet wine and playing music on his old guitar, now long smashed and gone. The delicate, feminine taste of her mouth in the one kiss they shared. The scent of coffee and cinnamon tea from that long ago romantic evening when Laurent stole Madeline's life and made her merely another jewel in his tawdry collection.

Laurent would not go in with him. Staunchly refused in fact.

Nicholas had shrugged, indifferent to the other vampire's fears. His sire's company was tiresome, Laurent's dramatics quickly exhausting whatever emotion he'd rekindled in the time apart. Nicholas loved him, of course. He couldn't help it. Laurent made certain to bind his heart and will using the blood, and though he professed an aversion to using it, Laurent forced love from the auburn-haired vampire in subtle, wheedling ways. Nicholas was too young to resist. Perhaps he might have loved Laurent without it, in some twisted fashion. The blond never gave him a chance to find out. Either way, Nicholas relished the peace in this side of the suite, glad to put distance between he and his maker.

Unlike Laurent's side, which he kept dark, all the lights were turned on here. The indefinable, heady scent grew stronger as Nicholas entered the living room, glancing idly at the television set, where 24 hour news continued to pour in from CNN. The sound was turned down low but well within the hearing of a vampire. Financial news right now, entertainment in the next thirty minutes. Nicholas ran his long fingers over the top of the television, smiling faintly at its warmth, and moved toward the bedroom on the far side.

Madeline lay awkwardly in bed amidst a tangle of blankets. Her back was arched over a hump of sheets where they had bunched up, thrusting her chest and hips upwards as if she were lingering in a post-coital haze. One slender arm was splayed off to the side, the other rested on the swell of her breasts. Her legs were crossed at the ankle. Long, dark brown hair spilled out around her head where it lulled back, forming a makeshift halo.

The scent was actually lessened here. He guessed she had cut herself in the living room and bled upon the sofa, the floor, something. Blue jeans and a black turtleneck lay crumpled on the wooden floor with her underwear, and Nicholas nudged them with his foot in passing. Madeline herself was dressed in panties and a grey tank top, thin and soft to sleep in, as if she were still a human woman. He lingered at the edge of the bed for a moment, staring at her. Madeline was beautiful, her white skin glassy smooth, and some memory of sexual desire rippled through him as he followed her curves, her supple outstretched limbs. Nicholas grimaced at a crush of pain in his chest, and he hovered for a long time to get over the feeling.

Love for her. Desire of her. Despair. Curiosity.

"Madeline," he said softly.

"Yes?"

Nicholas frowned. She was fully conscious. From Laurent's description he had expected her to be catatonic. His fear evaporated, replaced by disgust with the blond vampire's paranoia.

"It's Nicholas," he murmured.

Madeline lifted her head at this, stiffly and not without a grimace of discomfort. She obviously hadn't moved in some time. The cursed blood might grant one immortality, Nicholas thought with dark humor, if you had the stamina and the heartlessness for it, but their bodies were still human on many levels and they suffered human aches and pains on occasion. He watched the movement of her breasts against the thin fabric of her shirt with distant interest, recalling more than feeling any sense of attraction. She propped herself up with her arms to look at him, her soft hazel eyes remarkably clear and intelligent. Nicholas' lips twisted into a bitter smile, thinking of Laurent.

She stared at him in disbelief.

"Nicholas," she breathed, "He called you?"

The auburn-haired vampire nodded, offering her a gentle smile.

"I didn't think he'd let anyone in," Madeline whispered, sitting up fully now, "He hasn't come in here in days. He looks from out in the hall occasionally but he won't enter. I think he's afraid of me. Of what's inside of me..."

"What is inside of you?" Nicholas asked quietly, "You look the same to me, only..."

"Only paler," she suggested, "As if I were becoming translucent."

He nodded in agreement but said nothing, watching her. There was no malice in her bearing and her tone was relieved but there was still something off about her. She did indeed seem that way, as if she were fading. Her white face looked like porcelain, her arms and legs like those of a marble statue. He wanted to close the door against the thick aroma from the living room, but he was too captivated by her. Madeline was, as always, breathtakingly beautiful. Perhaps even more so now for all this icy perfection, which had once seemed monstrous.

"I'll show you, Nicki," she whispered, glancing past him out into the hall as if fearing Laurent could hear them, "But you have to get me out of here first. Laurent is afraid of me, of what's happened, and while he's too frightened to feed from me - even though I know he wants to - he's even more terrified of letting me loose..."

"Why?" Nicholas asked warily.

"He wants it," Madeline explained, her expression tightening in bitterness and loathing, "As much as it frightens him he wants the white blood from me. Part of him knows the others will want it, too. All of us. And he wants to keep it for himself. To horde me like he hordes everything else, to rip it from me when his hunger overtakes his resolve..."

Studying her uneasily, Nicholas circled around the bed to sit beside her, shoving aside a bundle of tangled blankets. He immediately realized this was unwise. The aroma was heavy upon her, heady and stirring the hunger within him. He didn't touch her, however, remembering Laurent's warnings. As much as he hated Laurent sometimes, he wasn't sure whether to trust her either. Though she looked and sounded like the Madeline he loved there was something alien about her, something within her that shone with a pale radiance.

"What is it?" he asked, "This white blood?"

"At first I didn't know," Madeline murmured, shaking her head. He stiffened but didn't refuse as she put her arms around him and leaned against his reassuring strength, the fragrance of the blood washing over Nicholas in a hot tide. He coiled his fingers into her thick chestnut hair as she pressed her cheek against his chest, pushing away the dull hunger that rose in him.

"I've been lying here, trying to remember what the lady in white told me. I know the people on television think it was a vision of Mother Mary, but I know that's not true. She was an angel, Nicki, like the woman Rociel whose band we went to see. She...touched me, in a way I can't describe. Touched the inside of me, into my soul, and started these changes. It's a miracle, Nicki, a blessing from God and His angels..."

"But what is it?" he insisted, irritated by this talk of angels and miracles.

"The end of immortality," she whispered, leaning back to smile up at him with blazing eyes, "The end of our kind, Nicholas. She gave me the blood so I could give it to others, to start an tide that will eventually sweep the Earth clean of vampires. Those who drink are forgiven of all sin, Nicki, and can give the white blood to others. Those who refuse will be punished when judgment comes. And it is coming soon. At some level Laurent knows this. He sees the white blood as honeyed bait to trap him, and he doesn't want to lose the Dark Gift, this immortal existence he forced us into. I'd be happy to leave him here if I could but he won't let me go. He says he wants to protect me, but that's a lie. And I don't have the strength to fight him..."

Nicholas stared at her in disbelief. The image of her lying here in bed like some kind of nubile, womanly Christ on the cross came back to him, startling him out of the pleasant haze the aroma of the blood produced. It was blasphemous, alluring and horrifying all at the same time. By his expression, Nicholas openly questioned her sanity.

"How do you know this?"

"She told me," Madeline said softly, with the eyes of a fanatic, "At the concert. A sea of blood surrounded me, pouring out of every man and woman there. A sea of never ending life for the taking. She asked me to choose between this existence and the one we had before. I chose life, Nicki, unlike so many of our kind! Unlike Laurent. I gave myself to her willingly. My heart and soul. And she transformed me into the vessel of God's grace, pouring white light into every part of my being until the tainted blood of Cain was eradicated or expunged."

Reaching up, she clasped his cheeks in her hands. Her touch was shockingly warm, like a hot brand on Nicholas' skin. The sensation was decadent after the cold outside. "I'm human, Nicki. Or very close. It won't be much longer. I can feel my heart beating fitfully. My lungs are on fire from wanting to breathe... I'm...hungry. Starving. Not for blood but for food and drink. He won't bring me anything, no matter how much I ask. I've been drinking water from the bathroom sink for God's sake. I almost think Laurent meant to starve me to death, just so this wouldn't get out..."

Stunned, Nicholas' voice failed him.

"I would ask you to drink from me," Madeline whispered, "I know that you want to. I can feel the hunger burning under your skin. I see it by the look in your eyes. The wolf's look." She laughed under her breath, glancing toward the living room and Laurent's side of the apartment. "And you will. But I don't trust him at all. If he fights us you'll need the strength of the blood to get us free. Even then I'll need a protector so we can bring this blessing to the others. But soon. I wouldn't dream of keeping this from you long."

"Laurent is frightened," Nicholas rasped, "He's possessive and often cruel, and I hate him as much as you do. But whatever else he's done he's as afraid for you as I am now, listening to you talk this way..."

"I know you don't believe in miracles?" she smiled thinly, "Believe in love then if you refuse to see His Providence. Don't you know how long I've loved you? I want you to drink from me, Nicholas. I want to make love with you before the end. But you are the only one of us who can get me out if Laurent tries to stop us. The rest of our kind will drink from me and find salvation. Those who refuse can flee into the darkness for what little time remains. I don't care. I don't even care for Laurent's soul, not for what he's put us through."

Nicholas swallowed hard upon the ball of hunger inside of him, gnawing at his insides.

"This is madness!" he breathed, "Listen to yourself. You've never spoken this way, like a zealot! Do you think you're going to become Christ this way? How do you even know what will happen? It sounds more like a plague than redemption!"

"This is Providence!"

Madeline was breathing heavily, her breasts rising and falling with each angry, desperate gulp of air. Sweat stood out on her smooth white skin. It looked and smelled like real sweat, too, not the bitter tang of the blood which suffused a vampire's body. It turned the perfume of the white blood into something sharper, driving a lance of painful desire through the auburn-haired vampire's body. Nicholas clasped her shoulders, leaning against her as a wave of hunger-driven weakness came over him.

"You can smell it, can't you?" Madeline murmured, her voice strangely seductive for all its earnestness, "I'm virtually human, Nicholas. What else could this be but a miracle of God? The Curse of Cain is God's own creation! Only He could unmake it."

Nicholas squeezed his eyes shut, trying to blot her words out. He needed time to think about this, to peel away the layers of simple faith and possible madness with which she surrounded the truth. But he found himself believing her. Or at least wanting to believe her. The evidence of his heightened vampire senses was overwhelmingly in her favor, but he refused to let untrustworthy knowledge turn his heart so easily.

She kissed him gently on the forehead, her lips like burning ashes.

"Either way, Nicki, take me away from here. Please. Please."

12

Laurent woke a few minutes after sunset to find himself in a dark, stinking place.

It was the sewer, he realized with a grimace of disgust, sitting up out of the cold, putrid-smelling slush in which he lay and shaking out his dripping hair. He must have crawled in here with the last of his strength after Nicholas pushed him out of the window, his body crashing and splitting open on the hard, icy concrete thirty floors below, to escape the sun. He didn't know how many days had passed, perhaps a few days, though at least he was healed. Every bone in his body ached from where they had knitted back together, and the hunger leapt in his throat as he tried to clear his head. Furiously, he leapt to his feet, nearly slipping in the nauseating slime, and let out a roar of frustration with his disobedient childer.

He should have known better than to call Nicholas! Of course Madeline would bend his mind against their sire, whispering her delusions that Laurent had kept her prisoner, fearing what she was and what she might do in the outside world if loosed. Madeline, if she even was the Madeline he knew any longer, had a noose around Nicki's throat more powerful and more cutting than even the blood bond. Looking back on it, Laurent not only understood what had happened in Madeline's suite amongst all the confused arguments, but he also saw the folly in embracing two mortals so haplessly in love with each other.

He was going to kill them both for this.

"Live and learn," he muttered, inspecting his surroundings.

There was a sewer grate and rusty ladder nearby, though it admitted no grey light into his sanctuary from the electric-lit world above. It must have been snowed under during the storm, Laurent realized irritably, and sure enough, upon inspection this proved to be the case. Clinging to the ladder by one arm, he pounded against the grate to try and free it, sending little trickles of ice and snow falling onto his cheeks and into his eyes. At least it was clean, he thought darkly, glancing down at his ruined silk shirt and designer jeans. The noise of his blows was deafening in the confined space of the tunnel, the clang echoing back at him from all directions.

Finally, with a sharp crack, it popped open.

Laurent thrust himself out into the deserted, snowbound street between the Olympic Tower and St. Patrick's Cathedral, panting a growl and shaking the sludge from his body as best he could. His home and sanctuary were miles away from here, and the thought of running through the wind-whipped streets in such a horrid state only further embittered him to Nicholas and Madeline. But there was hunting to be done first. The effort of healing his wounds had consumed virtually all of the blood in his system, and between rage and hunger, Laurent didn't trust himself to keep the Beast down long.

Hunting in the middle of a snowstorm. How charming.

He was fortunate to find a maddened homeless man wandering the streets in an old overcoat, too addled to find his way to a shelter in the growing cold as everyone else had. There was alcohol in his blood, of course, and though Laurent loathed the taste of chemicals in his meal he drained the man of every drop he had. The victim kicked up a plume of white powder when Laurent finished with him and dropped the corpse to the ground, already feeling the contamination of the alcohol in his own body. He spat blood upon the victim's chest before leaving him there, the Masquerade be damned.

It was an hour's run in a red-dimmed haze before Laurent was home, locking himself safely within the warm, stuffy rooms he maintained on Fifth Avenue. The stinking clothing he tore off and threw in a plastic trash bag, but with his hunger sated his immediate concern was to get the smell off his skin and out of his long, fetid hair.

It was a long time before he came out of the shower.

Toweling himself off, the vampire flopped down into one of his leather chairs, long blond hair falling about his face, and brooded. The Beast had calmed somewhat under the constant, hissing spray of the water while he stood like a statue, struggling with his rage, and he calmly reconsidered his earlier murderous thoughts. He had allowed Nicholas and Madeline to get away with many things over the years without reprisal, to have their own lives separate but connected to his own, but they didn't know the lengths to which his rage might go when fully provoked. In truth, he loved them both dearly and the thought of living without them was, if not unbearable, at least highly unpleasant. Besides, Nicholas was just a fool in the equation. It was Madeline, deranged and paranoid beyond comprehension because of her "angels", who was the real problem. And who knew what she might do on her own?

Dragging in a deep breath, Laurent snickered to himself.

"No more," he whispered, "I've let you get away with too much. It is time you listened to me, as you should have from the beginning!"

His anger sated for now, Laurent set about the business of getting dressed again. It was like donning armor, pulling on his fine silk shirts, a pair of black jeans and walking boots, throwing on a long black coat like a cape. His purple sunglasses, his favorite, were probably smashed to bits by the fall. But vampires always have other pairs to hide their eyes, which so often give them away to mortals, and Laurent dug out another pair from a dusty, otherwise empty cabinet. These were green tinted and delicate, with lenses made of thin plastic. It was good quality plastic, the best even, but still tacky in his eyes. He would simply have to buy another pair of his favorites. Perhaps twelve this time, just to make sure.

He made a mental note.

Now fully dressed and comfortable, he could think clearly. He didn't need to decide what to do with Nicholas and Madeline, he decided, nor did he need to hunt them down by himself. He would tell Amanda Chase, Prince of New York, what had become of Madeline and the potentially dangerous nature of the White Blood. She and her cronies could locate them far more quickly than he could alone, and if Amanda insisted on letting the Tremere chantry examine his errant little daughter, so much the better. Discover the nature of the threat she posed, if any, and then reprimand the two of them when the fuss was over.

Neatly solved.

Laurent had nearly reached his cozy grey Jaguar on the street when Jacqueline appeared out of the gloom. She looked dazed, her long black hair was falling sloppily out of its usual braid, a long cord which fell between her shoulders, and her brown eyes were glassy. Her black and white dress, an expensive one in the Chinese style, was torn at the seams in one place. She wasn't even wearing a coat despite the falling snow, and downy flakes of it were collecting in her hair and on her shoulders. To Laurent's eyes she looked paler than usual, despite the thin layer of makeup she normally wore to conceal her white, glassy features.

"Jacqueline," he muttered in annoyance, more with the situation than with her, "If you're about to make my night even worse than it already is, please don't. My childer have turned on me and I have to see Amanda - "

"Shut up, Laurent," she snapped, "Shut up and listen."

He stopped, one hand on the door to his car, and waited.

"You can't see the Prince," Jacqueline said dully, "Or go to court. Stay away from there."

Falling back against the side of his car, Laurent studied her over the tops of his sunglasses. Jacqueline was one of Amanda's servants, trusted by Amanda Chase and the Prince's inner circle of cronies and advisors. There was hardly a night when she couldn't be found there, at the Prince's luxurious suites on Park Avenue. It didn't take any great mental leap for him to discern her meaning or what had happened.

"Madeline and Nicholas have already been there," he murmured.

"What happened to them?" Jacqueline demanded, "What do you know that you haven't told us, Laurent?!"

"Nothing I had time to report!" he retorted, "I would have come to Amanda earlier if my own childe hadn't pushed me out of a thirtieth floor window and left me to die when the dawn came up! Do you have any fucking idea how much my bones ache right now?!"

The woman glared at him but said nothing, swallowing down on her panicky anger.

"They came to court soon after sunset," she told him in a thick voice, "Asking to see the Prince and asking after you, Laurent. Nicholas looked anxious, even frightened, but Madeline was clearly not in her right mind. Amanda deigned to see them out of curiosity, because I saw that she was no longer Kindred. Nor was she human either! What is she, Laurent? What has happened to her?"

"I wish I knew," Laurent muttered, throwing up his hands in frustration, "You've heard about what happened at the Delphi concert a week ago? Madeline was there. Something happened to her during the chaos, though I couldn't get a straight answer out of her to save her life. Some nonsense about angels and visions of blood..."

"Others were there as well," Jacqueline whispered, "Tristan, David, Amadeo - "

"Amadeo was there?" Laurent blinked.

"Susanne and Marta as well. All missing since it happened, though Aubrey saw Amadeo leaving Manhattan two nights ago but she was unable to stop him. Good God, Laurent, if they are anything like your Madeline..."

Laurent frowned, alarmed at the news about Amadeo, one of his few true companions among the Kindred of New York City, and he was quickly growing weary of her scattershot explanation. "What are you talking about?"

"Plague bearers!" Jacqueline hissed, crumpling to the pavement with a dejected air, "They strode into Amanda's chambers and before anyone could speak Madeline opened both wrists. The scent of blood was overpowering. Only it wasn't blood now, was it?" Her eyes blazed as she looked up at him. "I was there when it happened, Laurent! I saw Amanda Chase and the entire court descend upon her! Even Donovan, the Justicar, fell upon Madeline in a frenzy for the blood. I would have done the same but I was the weakest of all present." She laughed bitterly. "Amanda herself threw me out of the way. I had just enough reason left over to run for it then, and run fast..."

"Good idea," Laurent sighed, "The same nearly happened to me."

Jacqueline blanched. "She called it the White Blood."

"Yes. What happened to them all?"

"I don't know," she grimaced, "I went back a short while later and most of them were gone. Only Amanda was still there, lying on the floor of the meeting hall, and there were two young ones feeding on her. She was still alive, or at least she was moaning. But I didn't stay to help her. The smell of her blood was the same..."

"Then it is a plague," Laurent murmured.

"Of what sort?" she sneered, "What do you know, Laurent? You don't look surprised."

"If I knew I would tell you, Jacqueline," he snapped, "All I know is what it did to my childe. It restored her to life but not to humanity, a sort of in-between creature. Possibly it or the experience at the concert warped her mind. Who knows what it might do given more time? Either way it will probably do the same thing to the others. From what they told me Madeline means to bring this plague to all of our kind!"

He sighed. "Are there any others left? Anyone in power?"

"No one," Jacqueline sighed, rubbing her face, "Your childer broke the Camarilla power structure here. Once the others learn about this there will be a war for control. And it won't take long for the Sabbat to realize we've crumbled." She shuddered. "God forbid they get a hold of Madeline or any of the others who've been infected. They crave diablerie and their numbers are enormous. This plague could spread with frightening speed through them..."

Laurent sighed. "That is her intention, I'm afraid."

13

Kelly was accustomed to the sound of conversation in the next room. It didn't wake her.

Katherine had been talking to herself for hours, lying on the floor of the small shrine they had constructed in what had been Kelly's storage area previous to her death, where she accumulated knick-knacks and trophies from her various travels and adventures, but all of that had been destroyed in the fire over a year ago. It was indeed a small shrine, with a single large window through which she could see the sun in the morning and the moon in the evenings. It was cluttered with an artful arrangement of religious iconography and beautiful artwork they purchased for her, and Katherine was so comfortable within that to move anything out of place upset her greatly.

There were crucifixes and depictions of Jesus, Buddha statues, golden dragons, yin / yang symbols, jade statuettes, Voodoo masks, statues of Papa Legba, Native American headdresses, scented candles (all white, at her request), oriental rugs, colorful yantras, a Zen rock garden, an endless variety of flowers (which she changed daily), depictions of Ygdrasil, golden bowls and chalices (Kelly's own, from when she worked magick), a golden bell, burning incense, a carved wooden pentagram and Katherine's own endless drawings. It was a mish-mash, definitely, but it pleased Katherine and it kept her away from the cathedral at St. Mark's, where she had, until recently, lain prostrate on the floor, speaking to her ghosts and devils, greatly upsetting the priests there. It had taken a great deal of coaxing to get her here, but the same inertia seemed to have taken root in that little shrine.

There was magick in there. Kelly didn't need an Avatar to feel it. The magick of faith, of profound and sincere ritualism, an outpouring of grief, worship and contrition. Katherine had even successfully roused Elise, the haunting spirit of the house who had been silent since the fire, such that her ghost occasionally made itself known in little ways. But Katherine was far too obsessed with her own hauntings. Late into the night Kelly could hear her speaking with the shades of Billy, the Sabbat vampire who had brought her into the ranks of the Damned, and sometimes other members of his pack. The name of Diego Velasquez also came up on occasion, as if Katherine were patiently explaining to her tormentor's spirit why she had done the things she did and encouraging him to seek forgiveness as well.

There were others. Far too many to keep track of. Maybe one for each of her victims.

Padre Martinez had been here today, and had taken tea with Katherine in her shrine, since she had refused to come out in days. His presence had a calming effect on the young woman, like a cool cloth pressed to a feverish brow, and she had been remarkably coherent afterwards. The priest pronounced her to have true faith, perhaps even the capacity to work miracles, though the state of her mind troubled him greatly. Katherine seemed to be genuinely in communication with something outside of herself, though no true spirits or ghosts had touched her aside from Elise, and she did so only out of curiosity. Katherine's most extreme behavior reminded Kelly of men and women who "spoke in tongues", or of possession by loa, but Martinez had little to recommend other than giving her peace and comfort.

"She will come out of it when her spirit is ready," he advised Kelly, discussing the conversation in the living room afterwards, "If at all. Best not to disturb her too much, she's in a delicate state, and she's not prepared to cope with the outside world. I might suggest a therapist or a psychologist, someone to guide her back to the world, but there's no one, I think, who might understand what she's going through."

"Ashley might have been able to help," Kelly said softly, "If she hadn't gone..."

"A friend is all she really needs. Someone who will understand and comfort her. Though she seems content at the moment there is a lot of pain within her, Kelly. She may be deciding whether she really deserves to live or not, and you should be careful with her. Watch her closely so she doesn't hurt herself." He smiled gently. "It's very kind of you to take care of her like this. I will try to visit when I can, as regularly as I can. Katherine seems to enjoy my company and I may be able to help her further when she's comfortable with me."

And so Katherine continued speaking to her ghosts and demons, discussing salvation, damnation and the end of the world, while Kelly felt increasingly helpless to aid her, let alone play a useful role in the times to come. 

The constant murmur lulled Kelly to sleep, sending oddly pleasant dreams swirling out of the smoke of her thoughts. She dreamed of talking to her father on a pleasant, overly warm June evening in his study, discussing precognitive or clairvoyant dreams they and other people had over the years, and the feelings of déjà vu which certain places or things caused in them. Her father's soft, playful voice wound deeply into her thoughts, remembering a cathedral in Germany he once visited on business and how the place had stirred such longings in him, longings he couldn't explain or justify, and memories of serving a medieval Mass on a cold Christmas morning.

"It was the queerest thing," her father said, and he was the only person Kelly knew who still said queer about anything but homosexuals, drinking brandy from a small glass, "Standing there in this enormous hall, my mind fixed on this image of me reciting prayers in Latin to all these cold, tired little faces. It utterly captivated me, as if I were remembering something from my childhood that I'd forgotten, only I knew I was a grown man in this memory."

"When I told your mother about it later, she didn't know whether to be insulted or pleased by it, me bringing reincarnation into it and all." He flashed a quick grin that Kelly always adored in her father, for it made him look so young and boyish. "She suggested it was a call from God to become a priest, that there was perhaps - and you know your mother, and what perhaps means with her - that there was perhaps a higher purpose to my life than designing these ugly modern buildings she didn't like."

"And what did you say to that?" Kelly asked wryly, combing her fingers through her hair. It was long and luxuriantly black, a little curly, as it had been then. As it always was when she dreamed of herself or examined her own self-image, inaccurate though it was now. Even the voice was different. Lower, huskier. Her own voice, not the blonde woman's whose body she now inhabited.

"I said, 'Bugger that, I make too much money doing this'," her father chuckled, "And that infuriated her. 'Maybe when I'm seventy-four and I'm too old to do anything else I'll give it a thought, if the Lord still wants me.'"

"I'd almost like to see that," Kelly remarked, laughing.

"There is a certain respectability about being a doddering old vicar," her father smiled, brushing his longish dark hair out of his eyes, "Maybe I will give that a try. It's not like I can't design buildings in my spare time. The way architecture and people's imaginations are declining I'll only have to draw boxes by then. It might even be worth it. Perhaps God would forgive me then for letting the state of modern architecture decline so precipitously..."

Kelly awoke with a bittersweet smile and immediately missed her father.

She let the sadness suffuse her as she sat up on the living room sofa where she had been dozing, since it was going to do so regardless of whether she fought it or not. The oil lamp was still burning on the table beside her, its familiar, subtle scent filling the cold room. It was running low now, though. Brushing blonde hair out of her eyes, finding herself perturbed by its shortness as she always was when waking, Kelly ignored the disorientation of this strange body and got up to make herself a cup of tea. She was wide awake now, momentary grogginess aside, and there was no point in trying to sleep while her thoughts were on absent family. And, besides, she would eventually convince this body's overly Americanized taste buds that tea really was as delicious as she remembered.

Kelly was waiting for the water to boil when she realized Katherine had gone silent.

Frowning, the young woman glanced at the grandfather clock in the living room, appreciating the fact that this body's eyesight was better than hers had been, and saw that it was only 3:27 in the morning. Far too early for Katherine, who retreated to bed shortly after sunrise and awoke with the coming of twilight, being still locked into the vampire sleep schedule by choice or habit. Mildly uneasy, Kelly turned off the stove and let the water sit, moving back through the darkened corridors of the house to check in on Katherine. Along the way she picked up the oil lamp, knowing from experience that it was better to shed a little light on uncertainty than to blunder haplessly into the unknown.

She was especially glad for the lantern when she opened the door to Katherine's shrine and found it was dark inside.

All of the candles and incense had been extinguished, though their sweet scent lingered in the air, reminding Kelly of a church. The air was chill despite the building's modernized central heating, and her eyes went to the windows opposite her, which had been opened and was still slightly ajar. The screen netting which normally covered the exterior of the window, keeping out insects and the like, which was of the utmost important in Texas, had also been removed and a thin, cold breeze seeped into the house from the opening. Silver moonlight bathed everything in half-illumination, casting thick shadows amidst the clutter and giving a glaze of frost to the otherwise warmly comforting décor of the room.

Opening the door wide, Kelly held out the lamp to search for Katherine.

Her heart skipped a beat. Her breathing stopped cold.

A pair of glittering eyes, the eyes of an animal, glowed in the light of the oil lamp. Only they belonged to a porcelain doll of a woman sitting in the middle of the floor, upon an intricate oriental rug. They were a piercing green, not merely bright but luminous, shining with their own inner light, and heavily shadowed. A spill of blonde hair, so pale as to be nearly white, fell across the woman's angular, surreally beautiful face, coming to her shoulders. Her mouth was a pale pink, the color of dusty roses, aside from a faint smear of blood on her full lower lip. The woman was dressed in a thin blouse, opened down to the tops of her white breasts, with a long suede jacket, almost like a frock coat, and tight black jeans with boots.

For a heart-stopping moment, Kelly thought it was Katherine, become a vampire again.

But it wasn't. When she was able to breathe again, she realized Katherine was cradled in the vampire's arms, her head resting in the blonde's lap like a sleepy child. Her long, dark auburn hair tumbled in thick curls, pooling in the vampire's lap and spilling over her thighs like a red, foaming tide. Katherine's thin arms, lightly tanned from lying in the sun outside of St. Mark's, were wrapped around the blonde's legs in a fierce embrace, as if she couldn't bear the thought of letting her go. Her expression, what Kelly could make of it between hair and shadow, was sweetly sad. A lover's expression.

The vampire was perfectly motionless, but Katherine was still breathing, she noted.

"Kelly Brooke, I presume," the vampire said, smiling thinly. It was a darkly cruel smile but an eerily attractive one nonetheless. Her waxen features looked all the more icy and inhuman by this light. Kelly was reminded of Darryl Hannah pretending to be a doll in Blade Runner. "Don't run or bring your weapons, please, they will avail you nothing. I've left you in peace because my love wishes it, but I will defend myself if necessary."

Kelly considered doing so anyway.

"Don't," the vampire smirked, "It would be pointless."

The young woman grimaced and did her best to close her mind against the vampire, wishing (not for the first time) that she still possessed some of her old magick. A telepathic vampire in her own house. Bloody charming.

"Who are you?" Kelly asked, wobbling the oil lamp as if her arm were growing tired when she was really testing its weight in case she had to throw it.

"Michelle Avoyelles," the vampire replied calmly.

"I don't know that name."

"Really?" Michelle's smile turned slightly bitter, and she curled her long fingers into Katherine's thick waves of hair, making Kelly nervous. "There is a picture of me there on the wall. Splendidly done, don't you think? She is really a gifted artist. Mad, too, as all truly gifted artists are. Consumed by their passions. But then Katherine embraces catastrophe like no one else I've ever known. She lives and dies by it. Her soul hangs in the balance at every moment..."

Frowning, Kelly didn't glance away to look at the drawing. Now that the blonde mentioned it, she did recognize her from one of Katherine's many nameless pictures, done in black ink against stiff parchment paper. There were so many different portraits which the young woman had done, tacked up on the walls with care and exactness, but she remembered this one. Katherine must have known Michelle when she was still alive, for the portrait had none of the waiting ferocity she saw in the vampire's cold features. Indeed, she had looked very much the gentle young woman, smiling softly with bright eyes, and there was obvious longing in the way Katherine had drawn the woman. Longing and love.

Kelly remembered it because of the note scrawled at the bottom:

Her throat closed up at the realization: "She made you a vampire."

"Good guess," Michelle smiled, dipping her chin slightly so that her eyes blazed with the reflected lamplight. Or did they absorb the light? The pale green of her eyes seemed to drink it in, shifting colors as the flame danced in Kelly's hand, pitching the shadows under her brows even deeper into darkness. "Yes, she is my sire. She gave me everything I desired most. My freedom. My very life itself. She was more than my maker, you see, at least for the year we spent together. She was my lover."

"I tell you this," she added wryly, "Only because you would understand it. And because you care for her. That is also why you are still alive."

"You've fed from her," Kelly murmured, blanching.

Michelle nodded ever so slightly, her smile breaking into a wolfish grin, and she licked away the blood from her lower lip. There was still blood on her teeth, though, staining them red, and Kelly restrained a shudder. "Just a little drink. Barely more than a taste and certainly not enough to harm her. She's sleeping now. She was so tired. Besides, would anyone refuse the taste of a martyred saint? Isn't that what Communion is for? How could I resist drinking the mortal blood of my maker, my love? It is so much the same as I remember, her immortal blood, and so sweet. Not even Katherine would deny me that. She offered it, in fact."

Kelly made a disgusted face. "She wanted you to feed on her?"

"Is that so hard to believe, knowing what I am? If you could hold and kiss your father one last time, wouldn't you? There is little difference."

Kelly's face flushed with outrage that the vampire had burrowed into her sleeping thoughts, introducing into the dream of her father.

"And she only wants to save my soul," Michelle added, her tone growing tender as she stroked Katherine's hair, combing away tangles with her fingers, "As foolish as that is. It was a gesture of love only, and of understanding. She knows what it's like for me, what our desires and temptations are. You should have seen her when she drank from her mortal lover, Daniel, while he was sleeping. It had a profound effect on her. By letting me drink her blood she hoped I might touch something of her faith, which is so very strong. I doubt I could've come near her if she hadn't allowed me to."

"And did you?" Kelly asked. Her arm was starting to weaken now, aching dully with the effort of holding the lamp this way. In fact, her entire body was starting to ache from standing so still, rigid with caution and alarm.

"No," Michelle smiled thinly, "Not even with my gifts. Perhaps my own desires interfered with revelation. Perhaps because I'm 'damned'." She chuckled softly under her breath. It was a dry, unnatural sound, like dead leaves stirring in the breeze. "I experienced her feelings, of course, while I drank from her. But I can't vicariously receive God's grace when I really don't want it. Her passion for God and forgiveness is overwhelming, however; it overrides everything else for her. Even the basic necessities of living. If it weren't for you she might have starved to death by now."

"I'm aware of that," Kelly replied stiffly.

"Don't look so frightened, Kelly," the vampire clucked, "I won't bite."

"What are promises to a vampire? Don't you all say that before you attack?"

"True," Michelle chuckled, her eyes glittering, "You know us too well. How shall I put your mind at ease then?"

"You can start by releasing Katherine."

Smirking, the vampire shook her head slowly, amused by this little demand. Was it actual cruelty in heart, Kelly wondered, or was it the predatory beauty in her features which made every little expression seem so mean? Was there a difference? Katherine stirred, partially roused by Michelle's movement, and moaned fuzzily against the blonde's thigh. Michelle rubbed her back in gentle strokes, urging her back to sleep.

"Do you think I want to harm her?" she asked when Katherine stilled, "Why should I do that? She made me a vampire to save my life. Hell, to give me life. She has hers. There is nothing to save, except perhaps her soul, and that's between she and the Lord Almighty now. If Katherine wanted to be a vampire again she would have been so before you ever came into this room. It is her choice - the choice I never had - and she gently refused me."

"Yes," she added, seeing Kelly's look of alarm, "I offered her the blood."

"Why?" Kelly whispered, "Don't you - "

"Want to be human again?" Michelle mocked, "No. Forget that little romantic conceit. You can't go back to a life you never had. I knew five years of precious humanity, and I was too young to remember any of it. My mind has never been human. All of my life I lived amongst blood drinkers as their slave, and Katherine set me free. She gave me a life of my own. A magical life that would never end, like in a fairy tale. I was prepared for it in a way Katherine never was. What knowledge I lacked Katherine gave to me. She taught me with kindness."

"Katherine understands," she murmured, "But unlike me, she has a human heart."

"Is that why you came here?" Kelly frowned, "In the hopes she would accept?"

"Partially," Michelle smiled.

The oil lamp trembled in Kelly's grasp and she was forced to lower her arm from its ready position, much to the amusement of the silver-tinged vampire. "What else?"

"Will they hunt me if I come back again, your friends in the Better Tomorrow Group? What will you tell them about me after I've gone? That I'm a threat? A vampire without remorse, deserving of destruction? Or will your friends hold to the treaties which keep this city in one piece instead of falling into anarchy? I have already introduced myself to the Prince of Denton, after all, the great and wealthy Andrew Pierce, and I hunt peaceably within the city as he allowed me to do."

"Then you intend to come back," Kelly grimaced, holding the lamp with both hands.

The vampire grinned, flashing teeth. "You didn't answer my question."

"I don't know," Kelly said flatly, hating having her thoughts scanned like this, "If they think you're dangerous to Katherine then maybe. You did break in through my window and feed from her without me knowing. They might give you the benefit of the doubt, at least at first. It's not their way to shoot first and ask questions later. But my involvement with them has been somewhat lessened since I started taking care of her."

"Katherine opened the window for me," Michelle shrugged.

"I'd love to ask her, but she's unconscious."

The vampire stared at her for a moment, and though she was still smiling there was a coldness to it. A coldness Kelly well remembered from when Katherine was Kindred. It was both calculating and chillingly feral, considering whether to let her live or not, as if the mask concealing the real creature - she couldn't call it a person - underneath the politeness were stripped away. You are insignificant to me, that look said, Nothing more than a pretty bauble, prey for me to feed on. If it weren't for Katherine, I might have killed you in your sleep.

"I'm a proud monster," Michelle smirked, "But I'm a loyal one, too. Katherine and I parted on loving terms, so I won't harm you. She could never forgive me for that."

Slowly, so as not to startle Kelly, the vampire reluctantly released Katherine from her grip, laying her out gently on the floor, where she would have been lying anyway, caught up in her otherworldly conversations. Michelle rose to her feet in a smooth motion, giving Kelly a challenging smile.

"Ask her when she wakes," Michelle suggested, "But allow her to rest."

"You'll be back," Kelly frowned.

The vampire grinned. "You know I will."

14

"I awoke to numbing cold.

I was lying, half-buried, in a small drift of snow with the spires and towers of New York City surrounding me on every side. It was still snowing in fat, wet flakes, stinging my cheeks and my hands as they fell, but at least I was still in the same city. In the same basic place that I had been, to my mind, only minutes earlier.

How much time had passed?

I quickly realized that I was lying on top of a building, near the very top of the Coliseum as it turned out later, but the cold was so overpowering that for a long time I couldn't think of anything but unearthing myself from it and finding warmth. I had awoken face-down and the core of my body was freezing, my lips burning and cracked from pressing against the metal and snow for so long, my breasts aching dully. I'm not used to the cold, obviously, and this was more painful than anything I've ever felt. My every joint ached. My muscles were taut.

If I weren't so dazed I might have screamed.

As I lifted myself up out of the snow I realized that my wings were still manifested from my earlier 'encore', and the memory was enough to thrill me despite the cold, recalling that endless sea of human and inhuman faces held in rapture by my angelic visage, Alison Drake stripped away to reveal the naked truth of my own true nature, of Rociel. And the shining lady in white, one of my own kind, a true angel! The magic of the moment, that I had called and been answered by one of the Heavenly Host despite my damnation, was exquisite. You can't imagine the wicked glee - and I'll admit, awed reverence - upon seeing one of us again, undimmed by the Abyss, a true Daughter of God. Or so I thought, anyway...

Sorry, didn't mean to go off like that.

Let me resume where I was.

My wings swung outwards as I spread them, feathers fanning out - which feels luxurious, by the way, like a cat stretch only more so - shaking off the accumulated snow and frost which covered me, and moaned aloud in pain and relief at being able to move again. I stretched, arching my back and working life back into Alison's weakened limbs. I'd expended most of my strength during the concert and, though I couldn't remember much after the white lady appeared, I had apparently spent even more. Still, I used what little power I had to repair the damage the cold and events within the Coliseum had done to her body.

I was covered in cuts and scratches. My clothes were bloodied and torn. It had been utter chaos inside the Coliseum after the white lady appeared. Her words still rang in my mind as if burned into my soul. She had spoken to everyone there, but I could only hear what she addressed to me:

'So here you stand, Rociel, Herald of Dawn and Accursed, Beautiful Devil, lost in the world again, raising empires of your own while Creation ebbs!  You've seen one world end and another begin in its place, and mankind has proceeded in your stead, stumbling in your footsteps. You lurk in the twilight, fighting as always but hoping for nothing now but Destruction!  But there is so much you have yet to see. Your immortal sight has failed you, for the divine impairs and wearies your human senses, and the dread of judgment wears heavily on your mind. You would make a Hell of Heaven instead of a Heaven on Earth.

Would you be free of this War, Rociel? Would you go home and proclaim your guilt, pleading for forgiveness for what is not your failing but the very Purpose for which you were made? Or will you once more rally arms so that we may yet regain Heaven, here and in the Other World, and keep All from falling to Oblivion? That is the Test and the Judgments which lie before us, Beloved Rociel. Will you fulfill your purpose in Creation or turn away from this Path? What is your choice?'"

Rociel's voice faded away. She held her head in her hands.

"I couldn't answer her.

Since escaping from Hell, I have fought within my own heart and mind to continue the War against Heaven, to prevail against the impossible odds facing me. A fallen angel within a mortal woman's body - a mortal woman for all intents and purposes! - seeking to dethrone God, or at the very least prove our point. And there I was, torn between this and wanting to go home. To be Rociel again, as if none of this had ever happened. As if I had never betrayed Her. Never Fallen! Just the thought of it plunged me into unbearable doubt.

I'd had these thoughts before. That our Fall and the Fall of Humanity had been planned, part of God's scheme for Creation. I'd spat on the very idea. Not that I didn't believe it, but I cursed Her for putting us all through so much misery for some inexplicable Plan!

But perhaps it wasn't inexplicable. Or pointless.

These thoughts consumed me.

'Who are you?' I asked, speaking in my mind and not the real world, where no one - not even a true angel! - could have heard over the din, 'Tell me, I beg of you!'

'I am what you are becoming. One chain unbroken through eternity, with a single mind unchanged by time or place, fully angel and fully human simultaneously. I have lived while you made a parody of life. I fought wars, raised pyramids, bore children and bore lashes. I wore out many names. Yet in every place I was born I resumed the great work against an overwhelming tide of human despair and misery. To win the War and redeem us all in our own eyes, the eyes of humanity, the eyes of God Himself! To bring Salvation to humanity and bring the Circle to completion. To preserve Creation and to bring the Path of Mankind to fruition! Our bitter Fall need not be for nothing. We fell so that Man would be free of Eden, of us, and start on the Path without our interference! That is what we were created for, my Beloved Rociel. The purpose which lies behind All.'

I thought I might go mad with joy then. Or despair.

'Lucifer?' I whispered.

I felt her touch me, caressing my brow, while the horror rampaged around me in the Coliseum. It was a caress, as from a mother to a daughter or between lovers. Her touch was cool, calming. It soothed the ache in my breast. But all I could think of as I stared into her brilliant eyes, shining like two stars, was this: 'I am no angel. Not anymore. I am Alison Drake. I am a human being, and I have lost everything I once was. Please do not ask me to do this, to carry on this War when I've been a fool for so long. I am weary. I no longer want to continue fighting, my Prince, my Queen, my Love, My General.'

'But you are,' she whispered, as if in my ear, 'You are both. Inescapably. As am I.'"

Rociel fell silent.

They realized from the quiver of her back and shoulders that she was crying, tears trickling between her fingers and down her pale cheeks. For a long moment no one in the room could move or breathe, caught up in her tale. Her pale blue eyes shone wetly in the light of the computer terminal and displays around her as she looked up at them, scanning their faces for reactions. But it was the expression on her own face that concerned them all.

So this is Rapture, Stephen thought.

Rociel took a sip of the coffee finally, grimacing at the bitter flavor for it had gone cold while she was talking. Taking a deep breath, she set the cup aside on the table.

"What could I say? How could I answer her? I had been searching for her, we all had, and now she came to answer my call, my scream in the night about the horrors of the world and what we had to do to fight it. My own call to arms and to love...

I gave her the only answer I could, instinctively.

'I will fight. I will see this through to the end with you, if it is God's will and yours that we suffer these things for their sake and the sake of Creation. I want to bask in Her light again, proud and humble both, proven right and proven a fool, as whatever Alison and I may become. If we succeed.'

Then the clincher.

'What must I do, my Queen?'

And she smiled.

Then nothing. Nothing I can remember anyway, not until I was lying there on top of the Coliseum, the flames of the riot having long since died down, half-frozen and dying of cold. But something was imprinted upon me, branded into my soul. Some purpose or instruction from either Lucifer or from Her, I don't know which. I only know that as I shook off the snow covering me and climbed shakily to my feet that I had undergone some profound change. I was no longer either Rociel or Alison Drake. Nor even both. But I don't know what I am except a reflection of her, of my Queen.

And my wings, which have been raven black since God cursed us and made us Demons, were now as white as the snow around me. Just as they once were..."

Rociel took a shaky breath, a whisper of a sob escaping her, and she gripped the edge of the table firmly in her delicate hands. Bowing her head, she let the tears dribble down her cheeks, spattering softly upon the glossy tabletop. Rook of all people offered her a handkerchief from his coat pocket, reaching across the miles to grab one off of his desk at the laboratory. The young woman gratefully took it, wiping her eyes and face in slow, deliberate movements.

"I nearly fell off the roof when I discovered it. I cried. Not as I'm crying now but in screams and sobs, echoing upon the towers of glass and steel which surrounded me. I shrieked. At first I didn't know whether to feel joy, shock or horror, for part of me felt like I'd betrayed my own heart and the beliefs I'd held for centuries. The only beliefs I could possibly have when the truth of all this, which Lucifer had so plainly explained, had been kept from us until now, the very end, when it was virtually too late!

But as I knelt there in the freezing snow, another feeling came over me.

Ecstasy.

There was a Reason for it all! However cruel or callous it might seem to torture us so, to condemn us to Damnation, God had given us a Purpose beyond mere service and enslavement. There was meaning to our existence and the suffering. And there is meaning for the dark times in which we live, the last chance of Humanity to Ascend. I was foolishly, deliriously happy with the idea. I don't know why. Looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight, why feel joy at the workings of such a God? And yet I still do. I cannot help it, I swear. I see the logic for it, as I'm sure some of you do. Humanity were sheep waiting to become Gods. How could they ever reach their potential if they were always doting on God, on us, on others?

And yet they've failed repeatedly. They ran from their own destiny.

And now we're running out of time.

I stumbled off the roof and fell hard to the ground below, nearly crippling myself from the impact against the cold concrete of the parking lot. And I kept stumbling, trudging through the snowy streets of desolate New York, until I learned what became of the others, my beautiful, screaming fans and the Awakened who came as well.

Everyone saw something different, I learned.

Everyone heard a different call, but the message was the same.

I wonder who will listen."