Portraits

In a daze, Julia Salas heard the car drive up.

In fact, it was the first thing she was aware of upon waking.

The second thing, of course, were the two mangled corpses in front of her and the sheer amount of blood staining her hands and fingernails.

Shuddering, the young woman shrank back from the mutilated bodies, her eyes going wide with shock. She was in a familiar grassy nook between tenement buildings on Paxton Avenue, in plain view of the street behind her. She walked by this place almost every day on her way home from night school and work - it was usually crammed with drug freaks and local thugs. As a neighborhood girl, even a white one, Julia was usually left alone. Everybody knew her after all. She grew up in this neighborhood, and even if she wanted nothing more than to escape it, Julia was an accepted part of the local scene.

She recognized the corpses in front of her. Two men, men she had seen before. And she remembered the first part of what happened. She had gone home early with a splitting headache, pissed off at her white pompous professor, pissed off at her prissy boss at her shitty data entry job, pissed off at the sweltering summer heat which felt smothering even at night, and then these two men jumped out of the alley and tried to grab her.

Figures.

After that, there was some dream about ripping these two men apart with her bare hands and a nightmarish, earth-shattering roar which seemed to come from her own throat.

But no. That was impossible.

She looked okay, though. Not a scratch on her. Not even a bruise where the man grabbed her wrist, so hard she thought it might have broken. Just the sleeve was ripped on her black tee shirt, her favorite one, with the words Fuck You printed in bold lettering across her chest, and her sandals were missing somewhere in the grass. But that was the least of her worries at the moment. And it was nothing compared to the grotesque sight before her. The men were bent and twisted in horrid, unnatural ways, with blood all over the tall grass around her. She realized she could see inside of their rib cages, where a pulpy red mass gleamed.

Julia shivered violently, nausea climbing up her throat. She glanced up at the moon, a pale crescent of bluish light in the sky, and then to the man walking up to her from his car.

He was tall, black and maybe in his early fifties, with a grizzled, grimly smiling face and a salt-and-pepper beard, dressed in a duster, blue jeans, boots and a white shirt left unbuttoned in the thick, humid air. He was stoutly built with a wiry, muscular strength and a light step which carried him from the sidewalk to her darkened cranny.

"Ah," he said in a smiling, weathered voice colored with a Texas drawl, glancing up at the sky, "Good moon tonight. You must be something special."

Trembling, Julia tried to crawl away from him on all fours, her hands pawing at the moist earth and her bare feet slipping in the grass, but that only brought her closer to the gory remains of the two men, so she stopped.

"Don't be frightened, I'm not going to hurt you," the man said gently, "In fact, I'm here to help you. You can call me Townsend."

"W-What?" she stammered, though her question was really, What is going on?

His gentile demeanor left her reeling.

"Townsend. My name." He smiled beatifically again, but with a quick glance around, his eyes sharpening as he did so. "Don't you worry about that right now, though. We've got to get out of here before somebody notices and calls the police. Don't worry about those boys there, though - " He gestured to the grisly mess behind her. "They were trying to hurt you. You did good. They got what they deserved. Best something like that your first time."

"W-what are you talking about?" Julia breathed. Though the more she looked at this man's smiling face and listened to his calm, soothing voice, the more she found herself instinctively trusting him. She tried to shrug it off, looked down at the blood on her hands, and started to panic in horror at what she must have done - but how?!

It wasn't possible!

"Been building for a while, has it?" Townsend smiled knowingly, "I know girls like you always try to squeeze it down tight, 'cause that's what you're taught to do. Makes it all the worse when your rage finally explodes, though."

Seeing her uncomprehending look, he offered his hand.

"I'll try to explain. But right now, you'd better come with me. Don't worry. I'm not gonna try anything. I'm too old and too much a gentleman. And besides, we're cousins. Same moon, same stars, same destiny. Fate loves to play games with me, I think."

Without knowing why, Julia clasped his hand. She nearly threw up then and there as she felt a trickle of blood run out between their fingers.

He easily hauled her to her feet.

"Been a while since we had some young blood in these parts," Townsend said mildly, indifferent to the blood, and he led her back to his car, an old gunmetal grey Chrysler whose engine rumbled ominously as it idled, "And always good to meet a new cousin. But let's get going quick. Fate's been kind to send me your way, but let's not take our chances."

Julia nodded dumbly, glancing back into the darkness. Then down at her hands.

"What's happening to me?" she whispered.

"Nothing that hasn't happened to you before, in your other lives. But you've done nothing wrong, if that's what you're asking. Though regular folks won't see it that way. Now hang on, get inside, and I'll tell you everything where it's safe."

In a dreamlike haze, Julia found herself climbing into the Chrysler.

And even as they drove away and Townsend began to explain the truth in his breezy, grandfatherly fashion, and her heart leapt into her throat at the sound of a word she knew yet didn't recognize - Garou - all she could do was stare down at her own bloody hands.

* * *

"Such beauty. Such beauty should be timeless, my dear..."

As he wound his fingers through her thick, dark brown hair, Madeline Cross wanted to close her eyes, to stop looking into the vanity mirror where her own waxen face with its fierce amber eyes and pale bluish mouth stared back at her, the tips of her fangs just barely visible below the soft cupid's bow. To stop looking at Laurent's long white fingers plunging lovingly into her tresses, gathering great masses of it in his hands as if it were gold. To stop looking at the cream-colored designer dress he poured her into. To stop looking at her closest and oldest friend, Nicholas, standing in the doorway behind them, watching all of this with an expression of crushing helplessness.

"Such beauty," Laurent whispered, pressing locks of her hair to his lips.

Madeline shuddered.

The past few nights had been surreal, and she still found herself hoping this was all a horrific nightmare, that she would wake up soon and it would all be over.

Over and over again, Madeline's thoughts raced between the disjointed memories. The hazily-remembered attack in the street while Nicki walked her home, and his troubling absence afterwards. The stillness of his loft when she went to check up on him, only to find the elegant, gaunt figure of Laurent DeLouvois waiting for her. His attack on her, the devouring of her as the vampire drank every drop of blood in her body. Then the blazing ecstasy as the blood was returned, the revivification into a monster of her own kind. And then a seemingly endless supply of wine glasses filled from Laurent's own bleeding wrist.

It was beginning to dawn on her that she would never wake up.

Laurent hunkered down beside her, resting his chin upon her shoulder. His handsome, drowned face smiled at her in the mirror, his violet eyes glittering. Already she hated the sight of him, his coyly charming smile, the white-gold curls which swept across his back and fell across his angular, wolfish features. Yet even as the hatred boiled up within her, it twisted, bent backwards over itself into a perverse kind of love. She couldn't help herself. The more his burning eyes met hers, the more she found herself ensorcelled by him. The more she felt as if she were falling completely in love with him. And no matter how much she despised him, loathed his touch, she was helpless to stop her adoration.

"Look at yourself, my dear," he whispered his cool breath spilling over her cheek, "What do you see? A beauty, forever young. A rose in bloom, which need never fade nor die with age. Free of the constraints of your mortal life. Madeline, I gave you eternal life, and I shall show you how all the world is at your fingertips. How you need never want for anything ever again."

His eyes darted to Nicholas' dark figure in the background, and his expression hardened almost imperceptibly. "Not even love."

Madeline's mouth worked soundlessly. Her eyes burned with tears that wouldn't come.

"Such things you shall see," Laurent breathed, "Such glorious things you shall do."

As if answering a silent command, Nicholas approached, moving around to Madeline's other side. His slow, measured walk spoke to his grief, but that grief was meaningless compared to her own, which threatened to swallow her whole. And what did his sorrow mean when he led her into this hell, deliberately or carelessly? She felt like a china doll, her porcelain skin ready to crack, her dead eyes shimmering and bleeding with unnatural color, staring out at the world as if pleading with others to hear her mute screams.

Nicholas crouched beside her as well, and he stiffly held out a single long-stemmed rose.

"There is nothing to hold you back now, my dear," Laurent whispered in an urgent, almost desperate voice, his lips just barely brushing against her ear, "A timeless beauty can know a timeless love. A fairy tale romance - " His voice tightened upon speaking the phrase, glowering with unspoken menace. " - in a magical world unlike any you have ever seen before. And I, sire to you both, shall see to it that this love never dies. For like a proud father, I shall watch over you and guide you and correct you when necessary. Isn't that right, Nicki?"

Madeline blanched, her white face losing whatever color it might have had.

It seemed monstrous for him to call him that - her pet name for him.

Nicholas' jaw clenched. He said nothing.

Laurent chuckled as he rose to his feet, and he answered his own question: "Yes. One big, happy family. But for now, there is more to show you, my dear. This new world of yours demands certain...sacrifices. The sooner you learn to accommodate them, the more easily these nights shall pass for you both." He clapped his hands together, smiling broadly. "But this is something for which, I think, your love should teach you, with all the radiant warmth in Nicki's heart. With the kind gentleness as only a lover can."

Madeline felt Nicholas clasp her hand, wordlessly, and in a haze she was led to the parlor door on the far side of the room. She could barely breathe in the dress Laurent provided her; the bodice was too tight across her chest and stomach. The sense of suffocation rose as they stopped at the door, nausea and vertigo fluttering through her. But did she really need to breathe? Would it matter if she stopped now? She couldn't feel her heartbeat, and the room was cold without human warmth - living warmth.

Closing his eyes, Nicholas opened the doors for her.

When Madeline saw the two girls sitting in the next room, little more than teenagers, with dazed looks upon their faces, a nervous laughter bubbled up out of her, which she fought and failed to stifle. But almost immediately, the scent of their blood struck her like a slap in the face, and her laughter took on a harsher, despairing tone. Nicholas fell lightly against the wall beside her, leaning against it as if overcome with exhaustion, but Madeline could only laugh.

She knew exactly what she was meant to do.

And inside, she was still screaming.

* * *

"Come now, Ms. Brooke, is this really necessary?"

Panting, watching her breath plume before her in the chill, foggy air, Kelly grimaced and hugged the wall, clutching onto the small treasure in her left hand - an oval of rose quartz dangling from a black silk chord, whose warmth and strange, pulsing heartbeat she could feel pulsing through her without even touching it. More than likely, Jonathan Ash and his younger companion could feel it as well, just as they could probably see right through the brick wall she was using as cover.

Roland hadn't warned her about this, she thought grimly, pulling the shiny snub-nosed revolver out of her jacket pocket with her free hand. He certainly hadn't mentioned that the Heartstone was wanted by the Order of Hermes, and particularly by Ash, who seemed quite ready to kill her for it. Granted, it was a beautiful bauble, seething with Quintessence, and it felt almost alive in her grasp. And it definitely didn't help that she and Ash almost instinctively recognized each other despite the different names and faces they wore.

After all, it was the charmingly English, scarred Mr. Ash - or his prior self, at least - who killed Evelyn Whitlock, Kelly's last incarnation, and sent her screaming into the Underworld to become a wraith. Coincidence? Hardly. The threads of fate were so tightly wound around her, binding her to the same karmic purpose which had dogged all of her previous lifetimes that she could remember, that all of this seemed inevitable in hindsight. Such things were par for the course with her. Though England had hardly been full of warm receptions lately.

Hurriedly, Kelly glanced left and right. The alley ended in a solid wall to her right, but with her magickal senses she could already sense Ash's younger companion circling around to block her retreat there. Ash himself was remaining stationary, trying to pin her down with pointless banter, and the young woman took advantage of the lull to hastily murmur an incantation in Enochian under her breath. The spidery rhythm of the words calmed her mind and channeled her will, and there was a faint shimmer around her body as she applied her Will.

"Ms. Brooke?" Ash chuckled, "What wonder are you cooking up over there?"

"Generally, it's accepted that when someone is trying to kill you," Kelly called back in mock anger, trying to keep him busy while she slid the Heartstone into one of the many secret pockets in her green velvet smoking jacket, "You're entitled to run. Especially when that someone has already betrayed and killed you once before!"

Ash's voice smiled: "Come now, Ms. Brooke, that was a long time ago."

"And I've had nightmares about it every day of my life, you bastard!"

"The delicacy of your mental state is hardly my responsibility," Ash replied with a dry, cultured laugh, "The man who killed Evelyn Whitlock has been dead for over two centuries. Come now. This is foolish. The Heartstone is my only concern here. Hand it over, please, and I'd be more than happy to let you live."

"What are you, a Bond villain?" she called back, "Do you really think I'm going to trust you, after what you've done?"

"I think there's nowhere you can hide from me."

Kelly grunted and checked the right again. Ash's colleague was rounding the block and approaching the cul-de-sac from the opposite side, literally glowing to her senses as he readied his own magick. Producing a silver pendant from her jacket, she wrapped it around her right hand, allowing the shiny silver coin, carefully inscribed with a Chinese hexagram, to fall flat against her palm. Kelly gave the pendant a brief kiss and muttered a short prayer, then cocked the pistol in that hand. Then turning about, she glanced up over the wall appraisingly.

There was a chill of menace in Ash's voice this time. He knew she was up to something.

"Ms. Brooke, this is your last chance."

That's right, Kelly thought, Keep talking, asshole.

Aloud, she scoffed. "Do you think I'm just going to walk out into the open? You're getting as bad as the Technocracy. You shot at me!"

"Indeed I did, for which I do apologize. It was simply a matter of expediency. But now, having gone this far..."

The young woman didn't hear the rest of what Ash said, because just then his companion silently clambered over the wall on her right, clinging to the brick surface like Spiderman, and fell into a nearly horizontal crouch in the corner with one foot planted on either wall. He outstretched his arm to strike at her with magick, but Kelly caught him out of the corner of her eye and whirled, dropping into her own crouch, and popped off three shots with the pistol. The bullets hit with preternatural accuracy, shattering both of his knees and exploding his hand in a bloody spray, and the man fell from the wall, screaming.

Amateur, Kelly smirked.

Hissing a curse, Ash bolted around the corner, but Kelly kicked up into a jump which launched her high into the air, and his fingers merely grazed the hem of her skirt as she hurtled upwards and landed on the roof above. His face was a mask of hatred as he craned his head back to follow her movement. Once, Jonathan Ash might have been a handsome man, with square royal features and neatly trimmed red hair, but a long white scar ran from his left temple to his lip, and he glowered at her with only remaining good eye.

Once she caught her footing on the roof, Kelly turned and fired off three more shots at the Hermetic, emptying her revolver, but the bullets were deflected by an invisible barrier of force before they ever came near him. In a flash, Ash's own pistol was up and firing, and brick exploded at the young woman's feet as she danced backwards from the ledge and began to run. Her feet nearly slid out from underneath her on the slick stone, but somehow she regained her balance and dashed toward the far side in search of escape.

I can save you, a voice whispered in her mind.

She blinked in surprise. "What? Who are you?"

In answer, heat suddenly lit up upon her breast, and the Heartstone throbbed dully inside the jacket pocket there, as if it were breathing.

"I can save myself," Kelly laughed shortly as she reached the other end of the roof, stowing the empty pistol and clutching her father's gold pocket watch, "But if you can keep them busy for a moment, please, be my guest!"

The young woman whirled as she heard someone land on the alley side of the roof, and she saw Jonathan Ash there, already muttering an incantation under her breath. A jagged aura of blood red lightning danced around him as his changing reached a crescendo. The Hermetic's lips twisted into a leering grin as Kelly backed against the ledge, murmuring her own hasty prayer to the unseen spirits surrounding them.

Trust the Hermetic to use magick instead of his gun, Kelly thought.

She shuddered as she felt something dark and smoky erupt from the Heartstone, and a nebulous, vaguely human figure launched itself toward Ash. Startled, the mage gestured toward the spirit to strike it down, but it stopped short and drew itself up, uttering a piercing shriek. Ash clutched his head in agony, allowing his spell to dissolve around him in a whiff of ozone and electricity, and his mouth opened in a silent scream Kelly was too deafened to hear.

But she didn't need to hear to finish her prayer.

Ash fell to his knees, clutching his bleeding ears, but Kelly didn't stop to watch the rest of Moloch's "distraction". Instead, gritting her teeth against the pain she knew was coming, the young woman threw herself into the spirit world and the hell out of there.

* * *

One minute, Hawthorne was standing there, chatting up Angelica, his favorite female cog in the Hierarchy's bureaucratic wheel in the architectural train wreck of downtown Stygia, and the next he was ripped screaming through the violent cacophony of the Tempest, his ectoplasmic corpus shredded on all sides by the blistering winds and corrosive rain, only to find himself deposited with a jarring lurch in the center of a magical circle of runes and black candles.

The wraith lay there for a moment, gasping for breath he didn't need.

Then a voice spoke his living name, which even he hadn't spoken in over three decades, and he found himself thrown against an invisible barrier, arms and legs flung outstretched, as if shackled to a wall: "Alexander Hawthorne."

Sometimes it sucks to be dead, he thought grimly.

Blinking weakly, Hawthorne glanced around at his captors. They were definitely a mixed bunch. One was a handsome Mexican man in his late thirties, bearded and dressed in a pristine white suit, idly smoking a cigar. His aura seethed with crackling potential, the nimbus of a true magician dancing around him. The one wielding the binding magic, however, was smaller and female, Japanese in appearance, wearing a black dress with a black lace veil covering her face. She was enshrouded in a cloying dark mist, tendrils of it trailing after her hands as she clasped them together in front of her.

It was the third, however, which captured Hawthorne's attention.

She was tall, thin and young - his favorite - with a mass of dark brown hair pulled back from her wan face with a red silk ribbon, dressed in a scarlet brocade jacket, matching crimson vest and a white blouse. From the silk choker at her throat hung a pendant, bearing a symbol Hawthorne knew very well from experience. It was a deathmark, one of those which often appeared upon the Enfants tithed to the Lady of Fate. Hawthorne shivered at the sight of it. Or he would have, at least, if he had been able to move

It was the woman's wings which startled him most, though. Big and black, like those of a giant crow, folded against her back as she strode between the other two, the magician and the creepy Japanese girl, smiling thinly at him. The flesh around her dark green eyes looked almost bruised from exhaustion, yet they blazed with a ghastly light all their own. A light which matched the blazing power of her hellish aura, like writhing flames enveloping her body, which dazzled Hawthorne the longer he tried to stare into it. Her body was dying, he could tell that much. But with such a spirit, Hawthorne doubted even death would bother her overly much.

"Would you mind releasing me?" he croaked, smiling feebly, "We Dead are miserable enough as it is without being summoned at random like this."

The woman smiled. It was not a smile he liked.

"I am afraid you are mistaken," she purred, "This is hardly random."

She gestured to the Japanese girl, who did not so much as twitch, yet Hawthorne gasped and nearly sank to his knees as he felt the grip on his corpus suddenly relax.

"What do you want from me?" he demanded in a rasping voice. He tested the strength of the summoning circle with one fist, which he jerked back with a wince upon touching the searing cold of its magic. "I'll have you know I'm a very important person in Stygia, and I happen to know a lot of other important people besides. The Deathlords and me are tight. If you harm me in the slightest, they'll send the entire Stygian Legions to rescue me."

The magician grunted a chuckle. "Of all the threats I've ever heard a ghost utter, that would have to be the most pathetic."

Hawthorne winced, but he was inclined to agree.

The winged woman grinned, folding her arms under her breasts. "Give him some credit, Caesar. Even in captivity, with his fate in our hands, he still has the heart to threaten us. I respect that kind of courage, foolish though it is."

"But is it balls," the Caesar muttered, "Or incompetence?"

"He is accustomed to playing the fool. That is all. The better to hide his treachery. Is that not so, Hawthorne? So let us dispense with the threats. I do not wish to waste my time or breath on them now, when we are all monsters and traitors here, of one breed or another."

Caesar frowned at her.

"If that's what you're looking for," Hawthorne sighed, idly examining the magical circle around him, "You came to the right place. Let me guess? You need a favor. Am I right? You need somebody stabbed in the back. People like you don't go summoning up the Dead unless you need something seriously dirty and underhanded. But what can a ghost really offer...?"

"You know a woman named Kelly Brooke."

The wraith's eyes brightened. "Oh...so that's what this is about."

Hawthorne gave her a more canny examination this time. "You're the Harvester, aren't you? The Soul Collector in the Denton Shadowland? I can smell the stink of spectres on you even from here. Hell, inside you even. What'd you do to them, I wonder?"

The woman smiled serenely. "I devoured them."

The wraith blanched.

She chuckled. "You see, Caesar? He is not such a fool."

Hawthorne swallowed down on his anxiety, giving the three of them his best steely look of confidence. Lifting her head, the Japanese girl's eyes glittered darkly behind her veil, and her black lips twisted into a smile as they locked gazes. For a minute, the wraith tried to stare her down, but there was a deeper darkness within her eyes than in any ghost's he'd ever seen. A soul-wrenching hollowness the likes of which he only ever saw in the eyes of spectres, and the longer he stared the colder he felt himself becoming.

Finally, she gestured lazily, and an invisible hand crushed down on his ribs with a series of sharp cracks, squeezing like a vice. Only for a few moments, but it was enough to drop Hawthorne to his knees, whimpering in agony.

"Okay," he wheezed, when he was able to speak again, "Great. It's a pleasure to meet you, too. So what do you want done? I'm a busy man, too, you know. People to do, things to see. And I've got at least fifteen demons who've already got dibs on my soul..."

* * *

With a guttural, ragged gasp, Katherine convulsed on the slab.

Her eyes snapped open.

For a long minute, she could stare wildly into darkness, breathing in the coolness of the dimly lit chamber, which burned in lungs that hadn't really tasted the air in over five years. Her eyes were swimming in tears, the pupils nearly erasing the jade green irises as she gaped into the blurry gloom. She felt as if she were being held by a dozen sets of hands simultaneously, pinning her neck, arms and legs, and she thrashed wildly for a moment before realizing she was wrapped in soft gauze. Then the sense of suffocation and confinement kicked in hard, spurring the part of her mind driven by wildness to fight furiously to escape.

This time real hands gripped her arms and legs. Soothing voices spoke her name.

As she was gently pressed down against the slab, Katherine closed her eyes with a fuzzy moan, panting desperately for breath, too disoriented to beg the hands to hurry as they began cutting the wrapping which pinned her. Having spent three days and nights as a bound spirit, locked within her own corpse, left to the madness in the darkest recesses of her soul, the young woman was insensible to the world. Simple sensations were startling. Sounds were overly loud, the aromatic scent of the bandages too strong, the sense of conferment too suffocating.

It barely even occurred to her that she was alive.

Gradually, as her senses calmed into something resembling order, allowing her thoughts to do the same, Katherine realized her legs were free and she could feel cool air upon the bare skin there. She could move them. And the soft tearing sound of cloth being cut was drawing nearer and nearer, until the chill air breathed across her naked stomach and chest, which were slick with sweat. She feebly moved her fingers, her toes, this time more to test the working of her own body than to relish the newfound freedom.

Finally, the wrappings came loose and fell away from her face.

Katherine lay there on the ceremonial altar for a long while, half-delirious and half-dreaming in the languid stillness that followed. The fragrant wrappings, inscribed with ritual symbols and prayers, lay ruined about her nude body like a caul. The young woman lolled her head against the stone, feeling the first tickle of hair against her cheeks and throat, blinking groggily up at the ceiling. Her fingers and toes moved almost of their own accord. And ever so slowly, she became aware of a sound thudding in her head, a sound she hadn't heard since Billy stole and murdered her.

She realized it was her heartbeat.

The voice was speaking again, more softly this time, telling her to lie still. A soft, warm blanket was gingerly draped over her shivering body, and Katherine almost immediately felt warmer. Soon came cool fingers and a cold metal instrument, which touched her chest, her throat, checking her pulse and breathing. And ever so slowly, while they examined her, the young woman realized that not only was her heart beating, but her skin was warm. The blanket was warming her with the heat of her own body...!

I'm alive?!

She must have spoken it aloud, because the voice answered: "Yes, of course you are."

Katherine laughed. It was a faint sound, because her throat was parched.

"She's thirsty," said another voice.

The young woman felt herself being lifted up slightly, and a cup of cool water was brought to her lips, from which she drank deeply. It felt cold and clear, washing down her throat in a blissful tide, bringing renewed vigor to her weakened body. Katherine's hands came up and clasped the cup - a chalice, she realized, blinking dazedly. It was gold and ornately worked, beautiful really, but the water was all she was interested in. Because with the water came strength. And very quickly clarity as well.

She drained the chalice dry.

Laying it in her lap, licking her lips to catch every precious drop of water, Katherine looked up to see Angelo standing at the foot of the slab, smiling thoughtfully at her with his hands clasped behind his back. Even in the chamber's dim lighting, her eyes recognized him as something other than human - the highly reflective white skin, the vaguely luminous eyes, the stillness in his bearing. For as long as she'd known him, Angelo had always been simply another vampire, Kindred like herself, which made him rather ordinary in a way. But now...?

The chalice clattered against stone as it fell from her shaking hands.

Lanthinel was there as well, standing on her left, with his long blond hair neatly brushed back from his face, watching her with a pensive expression. Sung Lee leaned against the far wall, bright blue hair falling across her eyes, smiling slightly. And as Katherine sat up slightly, clutching the blanket to her breast in a gesture of unconscious modesty, Stephen released his hold on her, circling around to make his presence known as well.

Suddenly, everything hardened to crystal clarity.

"I'm alive," she whispered.

"More than that," Angelo bowed, "Welcome to the ranks of the true immortals."

* * *

Well, there is someone here, Lanthinel thought.

Treading lightly upon the floor matting, the Sidhe scanned the darkness of the Dojo with eyes opened to true magick, which allowed him to see not only through the thin wooden walls but the very flow of Quintessence in the Patterns around him. He was certainly unusual in this regard - he knew of no other Changelings gifted with the Art as he was - and he took quiet pride in this, appreciative of the advantage it gave him, particularly at moments like this.

Walking a slow circle, the pump-action shotgun resting snugly in his hands from its leather shoulder strap, Lanthinel glanced all around him, trying to pick up the source of the movement he sensed. With life magick, he could sense the myriad little creatures which made Ashley's Dojo and the surrounding area their home, yet the presence troubled him because it was so starkly not alive. It was a void in the flow of life around him, a dark spot. That it was dead and animate could only mean one thing: a vampire, hiding using their blood arts.

Wonderful.

Neatly brushed, golden blond hair swayed around Lanthinel's face as he stepped carefully over a fallen support beam, which had been shattered by the impact with something very large and very heavy that left a deep gouge in the floor near it. Judging from the hypertech machinery he had already discovered and deactivated, the Sidhe was almost certain Ashley had been the target of a H.I.T. Mark attack - operatives of Iteration X, the Technocracy's masters of machines. The thought brought a small chuckle out of him - even Undone, her Fae self destroyed, Ashley still managed to attract the worst kind of trouble.

What else could he expect? Even before falling asleep, Ash was hardly a typical Sluagh.

But she had also been one of his closest friends and companions, as well as the greatest swordswoman he had ever known. Also a treasured confidante, for Lanthinel had turned to Ashley for her kind advice and support during the long years when he watched Katherine feebly struggle to awaken to her own Fae self, the nymph Ariel. Another old friend, his affection for her tangled up with the love of his mortal sister, whom he chose to let awaken on her own - a decision he came to bitterly regret when Katherine was murdered and changed into a vampire, shattering Ariel, perhaps forever.

And even then Ashley proved invaluable, for in those first few months of Katherine's vampire existence, when her survival - both physical and psychological - was deeply in doubt, the Sluagh had taken in the young Gangrel. She taught Katherine to wield a blade, something his bookish, fickle younger sister had never seriously even thought of doing. More than that, Ashley taught her to care about holding on to her humanity, her very soul, and revealed the truth about Ariel to Katherine, which was something that Lanthinel, horrified and disgusted by what his sister became, simply could not bring himself to attempt.

The irony was not lost on him, of course. It was originally Ariel, whose gradual evolution from fey wood nymph to bard to knight of House Liam he observed in fits and starts, who taught Ashley the art of dueling and swordplay late in the 15^th century. And remembering nothing of it, Katherine was forced to start over from scratch. Ashley was glad to take on the role of mentor, to watch over their old friend's slumbering spirit, for which Lanthinel was deeply grateful. As a Sluagh, Ash was far better equipped to handle Katherine's devolution into a brutal, martyred killer than he was. How many times had he considered simply killing her, after all, to free she and Ariel both?

And now Katherine was gone, having abandoned everything she built in Denton to wander aimlessly, and Ashley was Undone, having gone out in a blaze of glory. Lanthinel hated the sense of decay in everything around him. The feeling that everything they once fought for was beginning to crumble.

Lanthinel's coat swung behind him as he stopped suddenly, struck by a strange odor.

It smelled almost like cat fur...?

Grimacing, shotgun at the ready, the Sidhe turned, hunting for the hidden vampire again. His bright blue eyes swept over the ruined Dojo, the numerous racks of antique swords and practice weapons left bare for the first time he could remember - a sight which left him feeling somewhat sad. And as his gaze skimmed over the broken support beams and scorched walls, penetrating the thick gloom with his magick, Lanthinel's jaw clenched as he spotted here in the doorway to the kitchen.

Katherine.

Of course. Who else would it be?

His sister was crouched on all fours, her back arched, peering at him with feline eyes that glowed red in the darkness. The Gangrel's hair was shorter than Lanthinel remembered, cropped back to a shoulder-length bob, but it was still a wild tangle around her white, angular face, curls of it falling across her eyes and brushing her bluish mouth. The leather biker jacket she wore was dusty and her blue jeans were ripped - by claws, he noted - in numerous places. Yet despite her animal appearance, there was no ferocity in her expression. In fact, once Lanthinel looked past the catlike shimmer of her eyes, he found them to be remarkably human.

That was different.

Katherine smiled a little catlike smile, her voice soft: "Hi, Lanthinel."

He sighed.

It was going to be one of those nights.

* * *

Distance. Distance was very important.

And tactics. Group tactics. None of this flying by the seat of your pants bullshit.

They had been watching her for the past week, having been directed to her by Caesar, who learned of her and her mentor, a Morgan Freeman-looking man calling himself Townsend, through his connections in the Arcanum. They had watched from a discreet distance while Julia Salas, a pretty, slightly built Hispanic woman, twisted into a massive, powerfully built she-wolf and butchered two men in black suits who came to her house in a secluded, woody part of Eastside, as well as a misshapen Thing that joined the fray shortly thereafter.

Eastside Fort Worth was full of that kind of shit, Lee knew.

The three of them - Lee Dubois, Benito Rodriguez and the tough cookie who insisted on calling herself Domino - had then watched as Julia transformed back to normal and fled the scene with a bagful of precious possessions. Which was a wise thing to do, Lee decided, because it wasn't long afterwards that more men in black suits arrived at her house, carrying weapons that looked like something out of Star Wars, and picked the place clean. Lee didn't know what they were searching for or why they had attacked the werewolf - except, of course, that she was a monster, the sort of thing they as Hunters pursued all the time.

Still, there was something undeniably sinister about those men in black. So while they might have been potential allies - Arcanum? A new breed of very organized and resourceful Hunters? - Lee ordered a withdrawal, preferring not to poke his nose into something that was obviously much bigger than Caesar let on. In the Hunter game, after all, survival was key. What good was a dead Hunter to humanity, really? Instead, they watched Julia Salas from a distance, observed as she went about her daily routine, and waited for Caesar to get back to them with something resembling useful intelligence.

She was a looker, too. Creamy, lightly tanned skin, a swish of dark brown hair she normally wore back in a braid or French twist, leanly muscled limbs, pert breasts tight against the earth-toned clothing she usually wore. And quite intelligent as well, judging from the records Domino got her hands on. Jumped from Tarrant County College to UTA in Arlington, from which she graduated near the top of her class with a degree in computer science. Shot from a meager data entry job to doing programming work at home for Texas Instruments and a handful of respected software firms out of California.

"In fact, if she wasn't a werewolf," Benito remarked one evening, "And a bloodthirsty killing machine, I'd fuck her in a heartbeat."

"You'd fuck anything with a pulse," Domino replied sourly.

"Yeah. I fucked you, didn't I?"

"Yeah, and you could tell how much I liked it by how badly I faked it."

"Will you two shut the fuck up?!" Lee demanded.

They both turned to glare at him, Domino smoking her cigar and Benito sipping coffee from a thermos, but they deferred to his authority, lapsing into a sullen silence.

"So what is she doing?" Benito muttered, climbing up into the front passenger seat.

Lee grunted, adjusting his nightvision binoculars. "She's meeting Townsend again."

"Ah...finally! Something interesting."

Lee grimaced but said nothing, scanning the field about a hundred yards away. For all their bullshit, Domino and Benito were good people. They had all served together during Bosnia and Rwanda, when Captain Keys gave the panicked order to fire on a crowd of civilians. They weren't Imbued like Lee - "touched in the head by God", as Benito put it - but they were good soldiers nonetheless. Easily bored, yes, but he trusted them when it was most important: when the shit hit the fan. And despite the fact he'd held off on a major hit - the vampire in Denton, Katherine "Ducote", his former high school friend - they still respected him and followed his lead, for which Lee was relieved.

What the hell happened to you, Katherine?, Lee thought distantly, thinking back to that night in the Official, when he watched the gaunt, catlike creature who was once his best friend as she sank her teeth into a helplessly drunk young man and drank his blood. For a moment, the image swam before him with nauseating clarity - the bass rhythm pounding over the speakers as Tease played their set, the throng of ignorant young bodies thrashing to the music, the sorrowful expression in Katherine's grey eyes as she licked the blood from her lips...

Here and now, he ordered himself, Focus.

By the green, washed out light of nightvision, Lee watched as Julia strode briskly across the overgrown field, moving gracefully even through a thicket of cactus and thorny bushes, to meet the other werewolf, Townsend, who dressed in his usual faded cowboy glory. They huddled for a moment, speaking urgently, though of course he couldn't make out what they said. The military hadn't exactly trained him for lip-reading.

"What are they doing?" Domino murmured, peering into the night.

"Talking."

"Now's our chance," Benito enthused, "We can take them both out, no problem."

"That's two werewolves," she hissed, smacking the back of his head.

"And we've got silver bullets and RPGs! Boom, no more werewolves."

"It takes more than explosives and silver rounds to stop them," Lee reminded him in a grim voice, observing as Julia passed an object - something he couldn't make out - over to Townsend, who stashed it in his duster. "No, we go with the usual plan. Long range sniper shot to the head. If that fails, at least they'll be seriously fucked up and hopefully can't transform."

"Fuck!" Benito spat, "So we're passing on another hit?"

"We plan our shit," Lee replied, "We don't go off half-cocked."

Domino blew cigar smoke in Benito's face. "Yeah. We live longer that way - "

Suddenly, something heavy landed on their van's roof with a loud thud.

"What the hell was that?" Benito hissed, grabbing the Uzi on the dash.

The others scrambled to ready weapons just as a black-furred werewolf's head appeared through the windshield, its eyes shining brightly and its teeth bared in what Lee could only imagine was a very, very pleased grin. Its growling chuckle rumbled through the van's interior, and for a moment the three of them were frozen in shocked horror. Lee overrode his first instinct - to bolt out of the van - because it never worked against werewolves. Then he was gunning the engine and the tires squealed as he threw the van into reverse, flying backwards from the small copse of trees they were using as cover and back onto the rough country road. The Garou merely rolled with the momentum and landed easily on its feet, still grinning at them.

Two other werewolves melted out of the woods to flank it.

"Fuck!" Lee roared, spinning the wheel to speed away from there.

But it was going to be a very, very long night.

* * *

Daniel Taggart stared in awe.

Where his longtime friend and band mate Alison Drake had been standing just a moment before, there was now a shimmering, prismatic being of pure light, splaying his home recording studio in shifting bands of brilliant, colorful light. Terror gripped him like a vice, and for the longest moment Daniel found he simply couldn't breath. Yet at the same time, this was absolutely the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, this blazing, vaguely female figure whose white-hot wings arced outwards from her shoulders, beginning to scorch the walls as burning feathers brushed up against them. More than just terror overcame him - joy, ecstasy and amazement all competed for his attention.

He was dimly aware that Alison exulted in his reaction.

After a moment, however, there was a heat shimmer around the figure - the Angel! - and the light folded inwards somehow. And then there was Alison again, more or less. Only it still wasn't the young woman Daniel knew, the sensual singer whose husky, breathy voice entranced everyone who heard it. She wore Alison's appearance, of course, except for the pair of black wings she folded against her back. Her black hair also struck him as crow feathers at first, where it fell about her seductive features. Her bright blue eyes seemed almost liquid with color, fixed upon him as they were as Alison indulged in a slow, solemn smile of satisfaction.

But it was a pained smile, Daniel saw. The transfiguration was obviously taxing on her, and he saw the fringe of silver hair shot deeper through her usual black.

She offered him a hand, quirking an eyebrow. "Do you believe me now?"

"My god," Daniel whispered.

"Don't invoke God around me!" Alison snapped, "This has nothing to do with Her!"

Taken aback, he shrank away from her, eyeing her warily.

"I'm sorry," she growled a sigh, forcing herself to calm, "Please, Daniel. You have nothing to fear from me."

She offered the hand again.

Hesitantly, Daniel took it, and Alison helped him up with a feminine grunt of exertion. Her strength, it seemed, was still no more than Alison's had ever been. Swiping a hand back through his shoulder-length blond hair and adjusting his glasses, Daniel gave her a quick once-over, looking especially at the silver in her hair - and the enormous crow's wings, of course, whose feathers made a sighing sound as they scraped against the walls. For the longest time, he simply stared at her this way, trying to absorb what his eyes were telling him, yet what his college-educated mind told him was clearly impossible.

"This is why you've been calling yourself Rociel," he said finally, trying to get a grip.

Alison - or Rociel, really - nodded. "Yes."

"You're - "

"Yes?"

Daniel reconsidered what he was about to say. "That was...beautiful. I mean..."

Laughing once under her breath, Rociel ducked her chin and looked up at him with a coy smile playing on her full, pouty mouth. Daniel's breath caught in his throat as she did so. It was such a familiar gesture, one he'd seen from Alison numerous times over the past seven years. If he were a straight man, he thought it would have been terribly seductive. It certainly used to work well enough on Robert, the de facto leader of their rock band.

"W-what," he started to say, blinking in confusion, "What happened to Alison?"

To Daniel's surprise, she smiled softly at the question.

"I - we, that is, have merged together. Mind, body and..." Rociel frowned, her voice trailing off for a moment in apparent confusion. "And soul."

She closed her eyes and stiffened, and Daniel rocked back a step as her wings, which nearly filled the room, suddenly dissolved in a plume of black mist that dissipated almost instantly. The effect on Rociel was clear, however. She staggered forward and nearly fell before catching herself on the mixing desk with a grimace of pain, her back bowed. Blue eyes gleamed as she looked up at him, panting slightly, and before he realized what he was doing, Daniel reached out to help her, easing her into the nearest chair. As always, he was struck by the lightness of Alison's body, the fragileness of it.

"Why does that hurt you...?" he asked tentatively.

"I'm bound up within Alison," she said quietly, shooing off his concern with a wan smile, "And I'm not nearly as strong as I used to be. It makes it difficult to manifest, and puts a strain on her body. But if you want to help me, there are other, better ways to do so. That's why I came here tonight, Daniel."

His brow furrowed. "But why are you...and Alison...?"

Rociel laughed and shook her head. "We found each other, so to speak. We needed each other. Remember last month, when you found me in that alley in Dallas, bleeding to death?"

Daniel nodded, sinking into the chair across from her.

"Alison would've died if it weren't for me. The bullet did too much damage, and she was bleeding internally. I came upon her - not accidentally, mind you, but almost deliberately, even though I didn't know it. And I needed an anchor to remain in this world. When she realized I was there, calling and reaching out to her, she demanded I help her. More than that, actually. She literally forced me to merge with her, to save her own life. I actually didn't have much say in the matter, come to think of it..."

"And the two of you...?" Daniel gestured vaguely.

"We merged, yes."

He digested this in thoughtful silence.

"Then what are you here for?" he asked.

"That's a very long story," Rociel chuckled dryly. Daniel was struck by the curiously melodic, masculine tone which seeped into her voice then, as if another person - this Angel? - were speaking through her more clearly. "Suffice it to say I'm here to help humanity. The world is in a sorry state, as I'm sure you know, and it's my intention to save it. And to that end, I hope to rally mankind in the only way I know how in my weakened condition. To bring about a revolution in every sense of the word."

"Join the crowd," Daniel remarked, then blushed in nervous embarrassment at the glowering look this earned him from Rociel. The anger in her eyes, seething and kept carefully under control - for now - dried his mouth out when he tried to explain: "I mean, everybody from John Lennon to Gandhi have tried it before."

"Oh, the history of revolution runs longer than that," she grinned, not altogether kindly, "But where others failed, we shall succeed."

"We...?"

Hearing the trepidation in his voice, Rociel shook her head, shrugging off the bitterness Daniel glimpsed within her. When she looked at him again, her eyes were milder, clearer. "We're the rock band Delphi, aren't we? You, me, Sophia and Miguel. And is there any better platform from which to shout your message than good old fashioned rock and roll? Imagine what we could do, Daniel, if a thousand people in an amphitheatre saw what I really am! Imagine the change that might come over them! I can touch their hearts, their very souls. I can touch them in ways they've only ever known in dreams. Humanity is crying out for faith in something, Daniel, and I would give them faith in themselves."

He was taken aback by the conviction in her voice, which brooked no argument. It was something Daniel had never seen in Alison before.

"And as part of Delphi, you need my help," he murmured.

"More than that," Rociel smiled, "I need the strength which you can lend me, like when you helped me into this chair. You care, Daniel, what happens to other people. You stayed by my side in that alley and all the way to the emergency room. You held my hand while the doctors worked on me. You're perhaps the most compassionate man Alison knew. You have faith in that. And I'm asking that you have faith in me as well, in what I mean to do with Delphi. I'm offering to make all our dreams of rock stardom come true, at the very least."

Almost despite himself, Daniel warmed to her words. For as long as Robert had led Delphi in his uninspired and autocratic manner, the band enjoyed only marginal success, and given their high aspirations in the beginning, even that was a crushing disappointment. They had all begun drifting apart as of late, moving on to other projects and allowing Delphi to quietly die. Yet here was this miraculous woman - or whatever she might be - offering to revitalize it. And something told Daniel she wouldn't tolerate any interference by Rob.

Still...

"Did I hear a 'but' in that statement?" he asked.

Rociel flashed him a girlish smile. "Only a little one, of which I'll be completely honest. What I'm offering is a pact, Daniel, between the two of us. I mean to offer the same to Sophia and Miguel. It's the pact that will bind us together for a common purpose, and which will channel your faith through me to make it happen."

Daniel leaned back in his chair, trying not to look dubious.

"I know what you're thinking," she grinned, "You're wondering if everything I've told you is true, and if I'm not some demon trying to con you out of your soul. Even though you didn't believe in demons anymore than angels ten minutes ago. Well, there's a lot I haven't mentioned yet, yeah, but I mean to tell you everything beforehand. You're not signing away your soul without full disclosure, trust me."

"In fact, your soul isn't even at stake here. As I said, the only thing I'm asking from you is your faith, precious though it is. And I will be bound by this pact as well. In some ways, even more strictly so. I don't want to sound like a Time-Life magazine commercial, but you can cancel the pact at any time, simply by willing it. It will also be broken if I don't follow through on my end of the deal, though what we're talking about is a long-term proposition. I was created to serve humanity, Daniel, and to protect it. I won't betray you."

Daniel chewed on this for a long moment.

"Do you think we can really do this?"

Her answer was immediate: "I'm sure of it. Believe me, there's nothing I want more."

Frowning thoughtfully, he studied the young woman across from him, whose eyes blazed with the quiet conviction of a religious fanatic, yet held the softness, the yearning, which was achingly familiar from Alison. Daniel found himself wanting to believe her, to stand on a stage with her again and create magic. He wanted that very much.

Daniel took a deep breath, then smiled solemnly.

"Then I'll make a pot of coffee," he said, "And you can explain away."

Rociel grinned.