Moving Forward - Alternate Ending

The tires spun out as Hikaru peeled out of the parking lot. “This shit is so over with,” he said, gunning the engine enough to send the vehicle onto two wheels as it tore around the corner onto the road.

“Where are we going?” Ruth said, feeling positively giddy. The death of Roland had eased tensions quite a bit. Perhaps, at some point, Ruth and Hikaru might even let the rest of the pack know where they were going.

Hikaru deftly shifted the gears, tearing through a stop-sign, “We’re stopping by my place to pick up some stuff. Then we’re heading to Madison to get this taken care of,” he pointed at the scar leading from his left temple, down past his eye, ending near his lips. “After that…who knows? Anywhere but here.”

Ruth licked her lips, hunched her shoulders and leaned forward eagerly, almost childlike, “London?”

Hikaru grinned, “We could cause some havoc there. I don’t see why not. A return to civilization.”

“But first,” The car roared into the Marriott parking lot, slightly dinging the fender of a black Mercedes with a bumper sticker reading ‘World’s Best Grandma’ as it pulled into an open spot.

Lysander looked at Jess. Jess looked back at Lysander. They both looked at Shani, disbelief stamped on their faces. Blue had not even taken the time to look at either. His haunches were firmly planted on the ground, jaw hanging open, too stunned to even wag his tail.

“Shani-dance, Shani-dance, this is a happy Shani-dance,” the Russian said with faux sternness, “Look at Shani dance, Blue, Shani doesn’t dance often, only when she’s really happy.”

“Do you…er…do you think the world is going to end?” Jess asked Lysander nervously, “I mean, what with Shani acting this way…and…and…”

Lysander forced his attention away from the spectacle, “Well, maybe we should have a few drinks. I mean, you should be happier with Roland dead and all. That’s got to be a weight off your shoulders.”

Jess sighed, “Yeah, it should be I guess,” forcing a smile she continued, “Alright, you’re on, last one standing loses because they obviously didn’t drink enough.”

There definitely wasn’t any want for drinks. The St. Paul sept apparently were prepared for any eventuality, including a new Prohibition, and hauled around what looked to be enough alcohol to inebriate a small nation. Two dozen hands, a majority attached to redheads, toasted to Lysander and Jess as they downed their first drinks.

Jess nursed her second drink instead of downing it. Why did she feel this way? She had just slain the one who had held her life in his hands like an abused toy. She was free now, able to start on what would definitely be a very long road to self-forgiveness and contrition.

Her shoulder burned viciously, like it did whenever Roland was near. The hideous thing inside her still lived, she should have known better to be optimistic about that. Yet she had held onto the wild hope that the creature, the Bane that resided in her tattoo/scar would die when Roland did. No such luck. She could feel it coiled within her, eager, expectant.

Something was very wrong here.

The Marriott receptionist looked up, a warm inviting smile on his face, in reaction to the doors opening and someone coming in. The smile faltered as he recognized the two figures, and within a few seconds the face had become a rictus of fear. Absentmindedly grabbing some papers, he turned and bustled into the back rooms, cringing slightly as he heard the chime of the elevator. Hadn’t that terrifying, Japanese-looking bastard, his creepy little goth-girlfriend, that freaky tattooed Russian chick, the scary blonde, and that hulking freakshow with the dog left yet?!!

Ruth giggled sweetly as the elevator doors closed. It took effort, but she managed to stop the giggle from turning into a cackle of delight. “Did you see the poor sot behind the counter? He looked like he was going to have an heart attack when he saw us!”

Hikaru smiled winningly, “But of course, someone as stunning as I can be frighteningly intimidating at times.”

“Oh piss off you arrogant twat!” Ruth countered. There was no real venom in it, though. She was in far too good a mood after killing Roland. Besides, if Hikaru’s mood was anything similar, there was a good chance, no, a certainty of some particularly hot sex tonight. Ah, if only Lysander knew about that. The receptionist wouldn’t be the only one fighting off a heart-attack.

“Eleventh floor, Men’s Wear.”

“What?!” Ruth said.

“Oh, sorry,” Hikaru replied, “An old habit of mine, I’d name the departments of various floors while on an elevator.”

“Lift,” Ruth said as the doors opened at the twelfth floor, “Call them by their proper names, lifts.”

Hikaru knocked on room 126, “Hey, Buddy, you awake?”

A few seconds later, there was the sound of a deadbolt being pulled, and the door opened. “Oh, hey boss, you came back again? Did you run into the guy who was here earlier, looking for you?”

Hikaru froze, Ruth felt the tenseness radiating from him, “There…was someone looking for me here? What time?”

“Well,” Buddy said, “You came back around six-ish, I heard you upstairs, was going to say hi but…er…I had some female company over at the time. Then after you left, this guy comes knocking at my door around six-thirty. Said he had a package for you, but you weren’t home. Kinda looked like a punk, no offense ma’am,” Buddy nodded his head to Ruth’s decidedly fishnet and studded-leather intensive outfit.

Hikaru was now leaning against the door, breathing heavily, “He left a package?”

“Yeah, got it right here boss,” Buddy disappeared, reappearing a second later with a small box, “Said to give it to you when you got back.”

Hikaru took the box carefully, looking at it as if it were a bomb. Ruth whispered, “Six-thirty, we weren’t here at six-thirty,”

“Er, boss, did you need me for anything else?” Buddy asked, “because that company I was telling you about earlier…er…she’s still here and…well…”

“Yeah yeah, no problem, have fun,” Hikaru said distractedly, “Oh, and one more thing Buddy. Keep the door locked, don’t open it for anyone but me, Ruth, Lysander, Jess, or Shani.”

“Sure thing boss,” Buddy said, closing the door.

“So what’s in the box?” Ruth asked, all lightness gone from her voice.

Hikaru opened the flap of paper on the cover of the box. Ruth craned her neck to see. Scrawled on the inside flap was a single symbol, done crudely in red ink. The letter A, drawn inside a circle, upside-down. “I…I know that symbol,” Ruth said.

Hikaru’s face was paled as he opened the box.

Jess frantically tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Why was she feeling like complete and utter shit right now? Lysander had bugged her briefly when she didn’t continue drinking with him. But his attention was quickly drawn away by a sweet-talking redheaded girl who offered her own drinking challenge to the Metis.

Jess continued to nurse her own drink, looking thoughtfully into it. It was then that she caught it. Inside the reflection on the bottom of the glass, distorted by several ounces of alcoholic fluid. It was nothing but the merest shimmer, most likely provided by her own imagination, but it made her shiver anyways. She swore that for the briefest moment she saw something at the bottom of her glass…through the bottom of her glass. Something black and squirming.

There wasn’t much time to reflect on this, for in the next moment Jess was bodily yanked into the dance-circle that was forming. She was physically buffeted to the left and right, quickly losing her drink. She tried to make her way back to Lysander, but was somehow yanked back into the circle each time.

The faces and bodies danced faster, howling and shouting with wild glee and abandon. For a brief second Jess swore she caught a glimpse of two Saint Paul Garou viciously making out beneath one of the trees. No, that couldn’t have been right, a Litany breach like that in the middle of the Sept?

Jess tried to blame it on her imagination, on her paranoia. It didn’t work, there was something wrong here and she knew it. The entire dance, the faces around her. It was like they weren’t inviting her to be a part of it, but merely dancing around her. An illusion. Jess was spun around several times. As she was, her eyes unfocused slightly. Instead of trying to concentrate on individuals, she caught a glimpse of the overall pattern of the dance. Participants in the center engaged in a twisted beat, while those on the outside joined hands and rushed in a circle around them.

The hollers and howls suddenly took on a sinister tone in Jess’ ears. It was still a celebration, but there was now a mocking tinge to it, a gloating of something about to be revealed. She saw the circle-dancers on the outside begin to press inward, tightening the radius while still maintaining a circular motion.

Turning the circle into a spiral.

Even as she was buffeted about, Jess deftly whipped out a pocket-mirror. She looked at the reflection, then tilted the mirror, tightly holding onto it in the chaos, trying to look beyond. For a second there was nothing, but eventually the gauntlet was pierced and she saw the spiritual reflection of the sept.

Jess’ face went pale as she dropped the mirror. Black things, squirming things, swarming throughout the Umbral sept, in a sickly spiral pattern, mimicking the dancers exactly. Banes. The circle itself centered around a growing area of weakness and instability, a rip about the form between the material world and the spirit realm.

It was as if a veil had been lifted from Jess’ eyes. She now saw the dancers for what they were. Her shoulder was now in agony as the Bane inside her practically thrashed about for release. All around her, she saw through the cleverly put-together disguises. Everyone from the Saint Paul sept, they all had the marks of the Wyrm. Carefully covered up, though now Jess saw through them. They were all Black Spiral Dancers.

She panicked. Trying frantically to breach the outer rim of the ever tightening spiral, Jess also reached inward, grabbing hold of the bond that connected her to the rest of the pack. She shouted mentally to them, trying to warn them. Then she felt the needle jab into her neck, and the world quickly swam into darkness.

Ruth tried to look into the box as Hikaru opened it, but failed to see what was inside. Hikaru obviously saw clearly enough though. His face, pale before, now went white. Ruth saw his lips moving just in time to completely miss the word he had silently mouthed.

She jumped in fright as the box clattered to the floor. Hikaru turned and bolted towards the stairwell. Kicking the door open, he flew up the stairs, disappearing around the corner.

Ruth looked down. The box lay on the ground, opened and upside-down. From under one corner protruded what looked like a metal buckle. Ruth picked the object up carefully. It was a bracelet. An incredibly well-made bracelet. The leather was obviously incredibly high quality. And slight burning sensation that the spikes studding the outside gave her informed Ruth that they were made of high quality silver.

Her eyes were attracted to something written on the inner band of the bracelet. She looked closer. Carefully burned into the leather were a series of Japanese characters, and next to them, what was presumably the English translation. Ruth sniffed the bracelet curiously. Blood, very old. She looked once again at the inscription, noting how simple and Hikaru-like it was, yet so very unlike anything she had seen from him before.

Confused, she read the words aloud, “For the only one as truly awesome as I am, May.”

Ruth was already waiting at the car when Hikaru ran out of the hotel. She hopped from one foot to the other impatiently as he bolted towards the car. She noticed that he somehow had picked up the bracelet on the way back down.

Hikaru jumped in the car, unlocking the door for Ruth. “We need to get to the sept now,” she said.

“No fucking shit,” Hikaru shot back, “When did you figure that out? That voice in your head that sounds a lot like Jess?”

Ruth looked back at him, stunned. “I was just saying…”

“Well I fucking know!” Hikaru shouted, “So you don’t need to say it.”

Ruth twitched as if slapped. In the space of seconds, he had completely closed off. “We get down there, bail the rest out, and after that, I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

Ruth caught that. No longer the ‘we’, but ‘I’. She gripped the door as the Jag tore around another corner. Trying another tactic to try and break through Hikaru’s wall, she asked, “Who’s May?”

The car nearly screeched to a halt, throwing Ruth into the dashboard. Recovering, Hikaru stepped on the gas again, throwing Ruth back into the seat. “Shut up! Just shut the fuck up! It’s nothing!”

Ruth pressed on, “You made that for her, didn’t you? The bracelet?”

Hikaru was whispering something, Ruth managed to catch what his lips were saying this time. “She was the only one I ever loved.”

Shock took away Ruth’s ability to stop herself from reactively shouting, “What?!”

She was ignored. She tried it again, still no reply. Hikaru dug out his cell phone and quickly dialed Shani’s number. As he talked on the phone, Ruth made a feeble attempt to concentrate on the more pressing matter at hand, rather than on the growing rage at Hikaru’s behaviour. She managed to catch Hikaru’s side of the conversation, “They did what? … Missing? … Alright, the clinic then,” and the phone slammed shut.

The third attempt to ask Hikaru what was going on failed as Ruth was once again thrown into the dashboard. This time, Hikaru was spinning the car around in the middle of the street and gunning the engine again, heading southwest. “We’re going to the clinic?” Ruth managed to cough out, still trying to catch her breath.

“We’re meeting the rest at the clinic, Jess is missing,” Hikaru said. Cold, no feeling behind it.

The rest of the five minute trip was done in silence. Each in their own world. The clinic carpark was relatively empty, the pavement dully reflecting the last dying rays of the setting sun. Lysander and Shani sat inside, the former carefully binding two bullet-wounds in the forearm of the latter. Lysander’s shirt had a rip extending up the back, beneath it a deep gash glared angrily, still dribbling blood.

For a moment, Ruth saw Hikaru drop his walls slightly, running in to check on Shani and Lysander. Ruth followed a bit more slowly, still lost in her own thoughts.

“What the fuck happened?” Hikaru demanded.

Lysander looked up, “Those assholes jumped us. Cheap redhead whore fucking stabbed me in the back.”

“The Saint Paul sept, they were all Black Spiral Dancers,” Shani explained, “They did some fucking ritual, released a shitload of Banes into the sept.”

“And Jess?” Ruth asked.

“After she gave that warning?” Lysander said, “Gone, couldn’t find her anywhere.”

“Blue and Cole are upstairs,” Shani said, tenderly massaging her bandaged arm, “We haven’t heard from anyone else yet.”

Shani shuddered. She still didn’t fully understand how she was still alive. There was dancing, and enjoyment, and for the first time in a long time, a lack of fear and worry. Then that mental shout from Jess, telling her that the Saint Paul Garou were actually Black Spirals. Lysander running into her, grabbing her and asking where Jess was.

After that…chaos. She remembered Lysander’s claws suddenly gouging into her arms as that redhead popped up behind him and slashed him with a dagger made of some black metal. She saw Lysander grab for something on his neck…and suddenly disappear from view, from right before her eyes.

Then Blue was with her, already with a long red line running up his flank. Somehow he immediately found her even as the Garou from St. Louis turned as one and began tearing into the sept. Something whizzed by overhead, letting out an ear-splitting shriek. Banes? Here?! Shani was confused, slightly drunk, and totally lost. People were screaming and dying around her. Deformed, ebon things were flying about overhead, tittering gleefully. Somewhere, Cole was shouting something about a rallying point and retreating. That sounded like a good idea at this point.

It was about that time that everything suddenly slowed down, assuming an even more dreamlike quality to Shani. Blood splattered in her eye. She tried to wipe it away, then realized her arm wasn’t responding to her commands. There was no pain, just a sort of numbing cold as she looked down and saw the two ragged holes that had suddenly appeared on her forearm.

A dying, screaming thing grabbed her other arm as it fell to the ground, dragging her with it. A sudden gust of hot, humid air on the back of her neck. Movement. Blue, dragging her out of the sept by her shirt collar, the five foot tall dire wolf physically ramming over anyone and anything that stood in her way.

Someone pointing something at her heart. A long silver tube. Gun, Shani thought. She warned Blue, but it took her a second to realize all she could muster at this point was a pained whisper. She waited for the shot, then watched in shock as another pushed the weapon down. She even caught a few words, “…tattoos…the one…alive…needed…”

After that, a blur. They somehow got out of that hellhole. Lysander, looking as pale as Kitty normally did, driving the truck around to pick them up. Blue and Cole jumping in the back after Shani was put in the passenger side. A blur of streets, then here.

She saw Hikaru heading towards the door. “Kitty? Where are you going?”

“Away from here,” Hikaru muttered, “Come along if you want.”

“Um…what about Jess?” Lysander asked.

“What about Jess? There’s not really anything we can do for her now, is there?” Hikaru shot back.

“She’s a part of the pack,” Ruth said, still not quite sure why she was saying it, “We have to go after her.”

“Why? For what? She’s either dead, or on the other side of two dozen Black Spiral Dancers, there’s nothing we can do,” Hikaru stated flatly.

“She saved our lives,” Shani said, “If she hadn’t warned us, we’d be dead, and you’d be walking back into a trap at the sept.”

“Good!” Hikaru shouted, “Then she got to make the ultimate sacrifice for us, that special act of contrition so she can die at peace with herself. Who am I to interfere with that?!”

Lysander’s mouth hung open. Ruth, likewise, gaped. Shani whispered, “What is this about, Kitty? This isn’t like you.”

“Then maybe you should stop interrogating me about it,” Hikaru hissed, “I really don’t give a shit about what you have to say about it. I don’t give a shit about Jess. I’m getting the fuck out of here, if you want to tag along, fine, but don’t you dare get in my fucking way.”

“So…you’re running away again?” Ruth asked.

“Oh fuck off!” Hikaru growled, “Why don’t you go hang out with your buddy Malinko? Maybe he’ll help you guys re-take the sept. I don’t fucking care!”

Glass shattered and metal squealed. The entryway to the clinic creaked slightly, half off its hinges. The last fading slaps of Ruth’s boots against the pavement echoed into the lobby.

“Maybe you’ve got a point,” Shani said, “There’s not much we can do here.”

“The hell there isn’t!” Lysander protested, “We just took out Roland. We’ve been in and out of the Tellus Center multiple times and survived! We’ve taken worse than this, we can head to my cabin and hide out there, work out a way to strike back.”

Shani ignored him, “Kitty, let’s go to St. Paul. There’s business Blue and I have to finish there, and it will put a lot of miles between you and Cedarburg.”

“You’ve got five minutes, then I’m leaving, with or without you,” Hikaru snarled, walking out the one unbroken clinic door.

“Wait, what?!” Lysander shouted, “You’re just leaving?”

“Got any better ideas?” Shani asked.

“This is my fucking city!” Lysander said, “I’ve lived here my whole life, I can’t just leave it like this.”

Shani shrugged, “Okay then, stay, die. Or come with us, we’ll show you a bigger world to be a part of.”

She headed upstairs, shouting for Blue to come with her. Lysander glowered at her as the two walked back across the lobby and out the doors, “You fucking bitch, you’ve got no care in your heart, do you?”

Shani ignored him, walking out the front doors. For a second she feared that Hikaru had left without her. There was no sound of an engine in the parking lot. Shani’s heart stopped for a second, then she saw him. He was standing by the Jag.

There was something wrong. It was dark out, so she couldn’t tell what it was right away. The outline of the car seemed too low to the ground, though. And was that a puddle underneath it? Shani ran up closer to check. “Shit!”

All four tires slashed. The gas tank punctured. And it looked like all the belts and hoses were severed. There was heat, but not from the engine, it came from Hikaru. “That fucking BITCH!”

Ruth stormed up the street, fuming. She knew why, even though she triedher best not to admit it to herself. It wasn’t the fact that Hikaru was acting like he didn’t care about Jess or the rest. She expected that from him. She knew he was scared shitless right now, that the vampire who was stalking him had just made his presence known, and Hikaru wanted nothing more than to get the hell away as quickly as possible.

It wasn’t that. She had dealt with that before. Hell, that was how they had first ended up inadvertently having sex. No, it was something else.

Ruth tried as hard as she could to deny it, but the truth was right there. She was jealous. She was insanely jealous. As soon as Hikaru had seen that bracelet, the one belonging to this ‘May’ woman, Ruth had suddenly become a secondary concern in his eyes. She could see it written across his face, and it made her burn inside.

And if that weren’t enough, Ruth had heard that name before. Years ago, mentioned in passing. Time had erased the specifics, just the name. She could tell herself that it was nothing but a coincidence, just two people that happened to have the same name. But somehow she knew it had to be more.

Hikaru was being stalked by a vampire, and somehow a woman named May was involved. Ruth lived for and served a vampire, and somehow a woman named May was mentioned several times during her service. Somehow, this made everything even more infuriating. More personal.

Ruth froze at the sound of the voice coming out of the alleyway. A long, drawn-out drawl, clothed in a piss-poor fake English accent.

“Dahling, you’re hell to track down!”

Slowly, carefully, Ruth uncoiled her fingers from the hilt of the klaive. The night was a warm one. There was a fitful breeze idly tossing papers and detritus down the gutter. The voice had come from a figure standing in the alley. Hidden in the shadows, yet just visible enough to let anyone passing by know that there was a mysterious figure almost-hiding in the shadows. In other words, trying very hard to remain highly visible while giving the impression of trying to remain invisible. The figure’s cape was imposing, but the breeze was muted enough around it that, instead of billowing majestically, the ends merely fluttered in a nearly comical fashion.

“Malinko,” Ruth said. A flat statement of identification. Not a greeting, invitation or threat.

“Why so glum, my raven-haired beauty?” Malinko said, “I thought that one of those who had slain that asshole Roland would be in a brighter mood.”

“You should know I never really cared for him,” Ruth said, “Just one less thorn in my side.”

“Yes, the feeling is mutual, dark wandering spectre of radiance, the feeling is quite mutual,” Malinko drawled, “I owe you a debt of gratitude, one that I will find a pleasure repaying, in whatever form your alluring voice may ask of me.”

Ruth had intended to keep walking. The last thing she wanted tonight was this pathetic LARPer continuing his laughable advances. She had actually let this minger sleep with her once? Of course that was before things started happening between her and Hikaru.

Hikaru, that arrogant, ignorant fucking cat. Ruth shuddered. It felt as if something slimy had uncoiled inside her gut. Suddenly everything, the jealousy, the impatience and boiling rage at that damned cat came to the forefront of her mind. Why shouldn’t she make him feel some of the pain he put her through?

Ruth closed her eyes, a small voice in the back of her mind nervously spoke up, suggesting that the feelings, and the ideas pouring into her head may not be her own, but rather from something outside her, wanting to influence her.

“Is something the matter, dear?” Malinko purred, “Perhaps you need some rest.”

At the sound of his voice, Ruth had a flashback, to something that happened not one hour ago. She saw Hikaru’s face when he had seen the bracelet, the bracelet that he apparently gave to that ‘May’ woman. She saw it in his eyes, the closing off, the walling. It didn’t matter what she did, he would never actually love her. And she was to sit here and let him fuck with her own feelings like that? Make her feel lower than shit? Someone who was that much of an insensitive asshole deserved to have their eyes opened, forcefully.

Ruth sauntered over to Malinko, “Yes…I think I’m feeling a little out of sorts. Perhaps you could give me a place to stay this evening?”

Malinko opened up his cheap cloak, enfolding Ruth within, “Of course, my raven-haired be…no, used that one already, um, my irresistible creature of darkness, it is the least I could do for one as darkly sensual as you.”

Ruth smiled, a cruel, jagged thing. Her eyes glinted with the eager light of the gleeful sadist, “Good, then once I am comfortable, we can discuss repayment for what I have done for you. I was thinking of someone who had…done me wrong, as you yanks might say, I feel we should repay him in kind.”

“With pleasure, sweetheart, with pleasure,” Malinko cooed, leading her to the black Mercedes parked at the other end of the alley.

“And after that,” Ruth purred, dragging a single fingernail in concentric circles on Malinko’s admittedly well-sculpted chest, “We can see about satisfying some…other desires of mine.”

Blurry darkness greeted Jess's eyes as they fluttered open. Instinctually, she jerked up into a sitting position, blinking away the blurriness and moaning at the feeling of her brain trying to physically keep up with her sudden movement. She looked around in confusion. Where was she? How did she get here? Her hands noted the familiar texture of asphalt beneath her fingers. She couldn't remember what exactly happened, and what she did was hazy at best. Spirals? Did they kidnap her just to discard her among the trash in this alleyway?

Perhaps it was just a message to the rest of the pack.

In any case, there was no use in sitting around here pondering different possibilities. She needed to find the rest of the pack.

She propped herself up, realizing with mild distaste that she had been reclining upon a few damp bags of trash. Ambling through the mouth of the alley, she obeyed the subtle voice of Aeolus in her head directing her towards the clinic.

Hikaru blinked, moaning as he turned away from the sunlight streaming in through the window. A hand, half-guided by sleep, tried to fold the rather flat pillow over his head. Another hand reached out to the end-table, trying to find the alarm clock, “Just five more minutes,” he muttered.

The questing fingers found something that wasn’t an alarm clock. It was metal, with a gently curving surface. Wait a minute, that didn’t belong there. Hikaru let out a rather un-Hikaru like grunt of confusion. Blinking some more, the werecat allowed the room to come into focus.

This wasn’t his room.

This looked like…the clinic. Suddenly everything came back to him. After he had found the car, HIS car, in that condition. Lysander had come up to him, offering him some hot chocolate.

What the hell was he thinking? He mindlessly took it and drank it. After that, everything went a little blurry. By Gaia he must have been out of it last night, he downed an obviously drugged drink without second thought. Those fuckers.

They weren’t stopping him this time. In fact, they made things a little easier now. During the day, the chances of him…Kaoru…catching up to him were nil. He could jack a car, or use Shani’s help, and put a hell of a lot of miles between him and Kaoru. The possibility of Shani deciding not to help never even crossed his mind. He had work to do, his life was at risk here and he needed to get moving.

“Morning,” Cole said, almost cheerfully, looking up from the laptop she had hooked up to the clinic’s DSL line as Hikaru stomped down the stairs.

Hikaru ignored her, heading for the clinic doors, “Shani, come on, we’re getting the hell out of here,” he said, nodding briefly to the Russian lounging on a sofa with Blue.

“Um, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Cole warned.

“Watch me,” Hikaru replied, not even looking back.

“Alright, your funeral,” Cole sighed.

Hikaru stopped. Looking at Cole through narrowed eyes, he asked, “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, we figured once you woke up, you’d be trying to leave again…and we can’t have that,” Cole explained.

Hikaru smiled, reaching for his sword, “So you’re saying that you’ll try to kill me if I leave here?”

“Oh put it away, Hikaru,” Cole admonished, “And no, we won’t kill you. Hell, we won’t make any effort to stop you. But then again, we aren’t the ones you’ll have to worry about.”

Hikaru sighed, “You have ten seconds before I get bored with this and leave anyways.”

“I have an email here, and a long list of recipients I’m ready to send it to,” Cole said gleefully, “As soon as I hit this enter key, every sept within a five-hundred mile radius of here will get information linking you with the betrayal and overthrow of the Cedarburg and St. Paul septs. You show your face in any city or town, and you will be hunted down and killed…” Cole chuckled, “…like a dog.”

Hikaru crouched, ready to decapitate the smug fucker, “You’re…framing…me?”

“No, not at all. You see, I find it incredibly suspicious that you’re skipping town right after all this went down. Seems a little too convenient to me,” Cole giggled, “I’m just putting the information together, and emailing my conclusions to everyone on this side of the nation who might find it interesting.”

“You can’t hang around that computer all day,” Hikaru hissed, “You’re fucking dead the moment you drop your guard.”

“Well, if you insist, but that would rather suck for you,” Cole replied, holding up a cell phone, “You see, unless I send a special code, five times a day, from this phone to my home email address, twelve other computers throughout town are set to automatically email this message out. Sort of the internet equivalent of the whole ‘Open in the event of my death’ thing.”

“And you want me to stay?” Hikaru snarled, realizing he was backed rather firmly into a corner with this.

“We’d like you to stop being such a self-centered ass,” Cole replied evenly, “And help clean up this mess.”

“You have no idea what you’re fucking with,” Hikaru spat back, “If you knew what you…”

“Oh shut up you spoiled little shit!” Cole snarled, growing in size, fangs and claws extending, “You’ve done nothing but show disrespect and dishonour on someone else’s territory. If it were my choice, I’d have you nailed to a fucking tree until you learned some fucking respect. Unfortunately, your arrogant ass is one of the best fighters we have left here. So pull your smarmy little head out of your ass and SHUT UP!”

Hikaru shut up out of pure shock. Cole didn’t give him a chance to recover, “Now swear that you will stay and help us until this mess is over.”

“Why should I…”

“SWEAR IT!”

“Fine, you geeky little shit! I swear I’ll stay and help until this mess is over! There, are you satisfied? Are you…graaaugh!”

Hikaru doubled over in pain as the ground around him began glowing. A circle of glyphs surrounded the werecat. Various cables and wires that initially looked haphazardly strewn throughout the lobby began glowing, and it quickly became apparent they were actually laid out in a very specific pattern. A pattern centered around where Hikaru was now gasping on the floor.

The light faded after a few moments. Shani looked worriedly over at Cole, who was simply smiling. Cole looked back, the smile widening, “See, I told you it would work.”

“What…What the fuck was that?!” Hikaru gasped, trying without much success to regain his feet.

“Oh that?” Cole giggled again, “That was the Rite of the Sealed Oath, though we Glasswalkers kind of made our own name for it, the Terms of Acceptance Rite. You completed the ritual yourself, when you made your oath.”

“The…fuck?” Hikaru slowly wobbled to his feet.

“Alright, I tweaked it a little just for you. Normally, if someone breaks an oath that’s been sanctified by this rite, they die a horrible, painful death. As annoying as you are, I don’t really believe you deserve that, that was just a show on my part.” Cole continued giggling, trying to work the explanation in around her laughter, “For you, though, it’s going to work a little differently. If you break your oath to stay here and work with us until this mess is cleaned up, you’ll get your own curse. Your skin will become wrinkly and leathery, and you’ll smell…well…like your own litter-box after two weeks’ neglect.”

Hikaru glared venomous daggers at Cole. This was not going the way he planned.

Shani watched this in combined interest and trepidation. Yes, she was ruthlessly efficient. And she managed to do what few could even dream of: Take Kitty’s ego down a few notches. But still, Cole’s secondary personality scared the crap out of her.

After Lysander had taken the drugged cat to bed, Shani had stayed up talking with him. In the end, she had apologized for what she said earlier. She didn’t tell him of her own curse, nor did she have any real plans to. But she had realized something while talking to him. The Black Spirals were from St. Paul, which meant, quite probably, that the sept in that city was likewise overthrown. So if Shani wanted even a chance of survival in that town, she would need a good plan, and a load of back-up.

She would have to stay here, then, to see if she couldn’t help get things cleared up before asking for whatever aid she could on her trip to St. Paul.

"Are you sure you're okay Kitty?" Shani asked with concern.

"About as well as I can hope to be," Hikaru snarled, "stuck in this horrid little shithole of a town. Any particular reason you're so curious?"

"Well, I don't know how to put this, but," Shani waved a grease-smudged hand at the tray of lugnuts Hikaru carrying, "You're not only helping out, but also getting a little dirty, and haven't said a thing about it."

Hikaru shrugged, trying his best to look nonchalant, "I want out of here now, and if soiling my delicate fingers makes things quicker, I guess I'll make the sacrifice. 'Course, Ruth didn't make things easy for us."

Shani visibly winced at the mention of her name and Hikaru had to stop himself from doing the same. It had been three days now since she had stormed off. No one had heard any word from her or seen any sign of her. The unspoken agreement was that she had, in fact, gone off to see Malinko. Hikaru privately hoped that she had been quickly torn to pieces by the Spirals. Not because he wanted her dead. Yeah, the whole incident pissed him off beyond belief, as she had a habit of doing, but in the end it was just a car, he could get another.

The fact was, if Ruth did come back, covered in new scars, with Wyrm-glyphs tattooed in her skin, seeking to kill him...he didn't know if he could truly defend himself against her. He had seen one woman die because of his actions, he wasn't sure he could live through doing that again. He blamed himself for this, it was his words that had sent her off, even if she was a murderous psychopath.

Hikaru squinted, the sun would be gone in an hour or so. Which meant yet another sleepless night. Cole and Shani were agreeable enough to Hikaru's insistence that they never stay at the same place for more than a day. Daylight was relatively safe, the Black Spirals were less likely to try anything then. It was at night that they all had to be careful. As far as anyone knew, it was Hikaru, Shani, Lysander, Jess, Blue and Cole against two whole hives of Black Spiral Dancers. Those weren't good odds.

Things were even worse from Hikaru's point of view. He was here, and he had made his presence known to Hikaru. In Hikaru's eyes, the Black Spirals pretty much paled in comparison to this threat.

Still, three days had passed, and there were no signs of anyone. No attacks at the clinic, no further molestations of Hikaru's hotel room. The repairs on Hikaru's car were almost done. As peaceful as things were, everyone knew that it was merely the calm before a new storm.

The Blue Diamond was never the most bustling bar, but it did a decent business. Tonight wasn't too much different. Granted, things had dropped a little ever since that incident at the Tellus building, and rumours abounded of the company pulling up stakes and going elsewhere. Even with the severe drop-off in the corporate crowd, business still went well as a small army of various investigators, conspiracy-theorists, realtors, and ghost-hunters, for some reason, took their place.

The two that walked in from the darkness outside didn't look like they fit into any of those groups. One looked like he could have been a realtor if you stretched your suspension of disbelief far enough. Impeccably clad in a three-piece suit, sporting a pair of sunglasses that must have cost somewhere in the realm of triple digits, he would have to be one of the richer realtors in existence. Even with the sunglasses, the hair and height gave the impression that the man was of Japanese descent. Something about him screamed 'organized crime'.

Perhaps it was his companion. Well over six feet tall, bald, thick, and covered in tattoos of stylized dragons, he looked like he'd be more in place in a film about the Chinese Triads than in a rural Wisconsin biker bar.

The two sat down at the bar wordlessly. The smaller one cast a quick glance around the room, his gaze eventually settling on one of the bikers, an attractive leather-clad female specimen. He took off his sunglasses and continued staring at her. She stopped her conversation with the other bikers, got up dreamily and wandered over to him. The well-dressed man was in the middle of delicately caressing her cheek when the other bikers noticed what was going on. Harsh words echoed back and forth across the bar until the well-dressed man calmly suggested they take this outside. He looked at the woman and muttered a single word, 'Stay', before walking outside.

Noises could be heard coming from outside, yet the woman sat there, staring blankly ahead. Eventually the sounds stopped, the doors opened, and the well-dressed man and the tattooed man walked back in, the former wiping something red off his hands with an expensive handkerchief. He walked up to the counter and called over the bartender. A few words were exchanged and the well-dressed man pulled a photograph from his suit. It was a picture of someone with burgundy hair with a shock of white on one side. The bartender nodded, wrote something down on a napkin and handed it to the well-dressed man. The well-dressed man touched the woman's hand, who jumped as if awoken from a deep sleep. He whispered something in her ear.

As the two men left, the woman got up dazedly and followed them, not even offering a single glance at the small pile of unconscious bodies in the parking lot outside.

Malinko smiled at the pale figure in bed next to him. Even as he watched, the network of lacerations that covered her skin disappeared, healed. "Satisfying?"

Ruth sighed, forcing a smile as she rolled over to face Malinko, "I needed that."

It was true, she had desperately needed a good lay. The only problem was that that wasn't a very good lay. That damn cat had spoiled her. She'd eventually have to do something about that, but at the moment keeping up a facade was more important.

"Good, my darling, now we can get to work on helping each other out a bit more."

Ruth slipped out of bed, "I agree, there's a lot that needs to get done, I was thinking," she stopped, rooting through her clothes, "I was...thinking..." a confused look crossed her face, "Where are my knives?"

"I had them removed last night, while you were...otherwise occupied," Malinko grinned, tracing patterns on the blood-soaked sheets.

Ruth's eyes narrowed, "Why?"

"It makes this next step so much easier," Malinko gloated, snapping his fingers.

The doors to the room burst open and several burly men came through, each wielding a strange looking device that looked somewhat like a collar on a stick. Ruth fell against the wall in shock, half-wittedly trying to cover herself with the clothes she had been digging through. Before she could react, two of the men had snapped the collars around her neck and a third had managed to catch her hands.

Ruth moaned at the tingling sensation of pleasure. Silver. On her exposed skin, with her nerves re-wired as they were, the normally agonizing metal sent small rippling waves of ecstasy through her slight frame. Malinko got out of bed, ignoring the naked struggling figure, and put on a pair of velvet pants, "Bring her to the basement, is the ritual circle ready?"

"Ritual...what? You fucking arse I'll..." Ruth sputtered as she was dragged unceremoniously out of the room. As she was pulled out, Anastasia slipped in the doorway past her.

"Everything's prepared," She giggled nervously, "The spirit's ready to be let loose."

"This girl's special," Malinko cautioned, "The normal method of breaking won't work on her."

"I've got it covered," Anastasia reassured him, "I summoned this one specially for this, it's just as...special...as the girl."

Malinko chuckled, "I always knew I kept you around for a good reason, come'ere and give me a kiss."

"What?" Anastasia said, "After you were in bed with that slut?"

"Oh come on hon," Malinko protested, "You never raise a complaint about any of the others I bring to bed with me, and I do the same for you."

"That's because you never get obsessed with the others like you have with her," Anastasia countered.

"Only because I see her potential for...other matters. Now are you going to give me a kiss or are you going to sit there and wallow in some pointless jealousy?"

Anastasia allowed herself to be embraced, smiling at the fading sounds of cursing and screaming coming from down the stairs.

Lysander knew something was wrong as soon as he pulled up to the bar. The harleys had all been tipped over, and the 'gang', as it were, were clustered on the side of the building, surrounding something on the ground.

Lysander brought the truck to a stop and jumped out, Buddy leaping out behind him. Several of the bikers drew weapons as the saw him, then visibly relaxed when they actually recognized him. "What the hell's going on here?" Lysander growled as he pushed his way through the circle.

"Fuckers jumped us," one of them said, "Got Ray and Andrew really bad."

Lysander kneeled next to the figure on the ground, Andrew. He gently yet forcefully uncurled the guys arms from his abdomen and felt around the area. The metis frowned, several broken ribs, rather nasty too. He checked Andrews face. The man was wheezing in pain, and each time he did, blood bubbled out of his nose, popping and spattering the gravel beneath. Lysander leaned in closer, the nose didn't look broken. In fact, it didn't look like this one got hit in the face at all.

"Shit," that meant the bleeding was internal, a punctured lung. Without hospital attention the guy would be dead within a few minutes, "Didn't anyone call an ambulance?"

"Joe's doing that right now, it all happened just a few minutes ago," one of the women replied, Heather, Lysander remembered her name.

"Crap and rusted shit on a shingle," Lysander muttered, there's no way Andrew could survive that long. He looked about worriedly, everyone was watching, he'd have to make this subtle.

Concentrating, Lysander pressed his hands against Andrews abdomen. There was a brief moment of physical duality as he felt himself in both bodies at once. He felt the pain of the shards of bone digging into his own lungs. Doing his best to ignore the pain, Lysander focused on drawing energy from his own body and using it to mend the wounds of the other.

Lysander snapped his eyes open, breaking off the connection before the healing could go too far. He looked about, no looks of fright or panic, good. He had succeeded, healing the worst of the damage without revealing the blatantly supernatural nature of what he was doing. Andrew's ribs were still broken, but the bones were still more or less in the proper location, and the lungs were healed, all that was left was for Andrew to cough up what blood remained within.

"Wait, didn't you say Ray was hurt too?" Lysander asked, looking about.

The group parted, showing a figure leaning against the wall, head in between his legs. Carefully, Lysander lifted the man's chin. Dilated eyes took a few seconds to focus on his own. Beads of sweat glistened on the guys unnaturally pale looking skin. Lysander checked his pulse, very weak. Ray's wrist shook uncontrollably in the palm of Lysander's hand. Buddy sniffed the man's ear and let out a low growl.

"What happened to you?" Lysander asked, confused. As far as he could tell, Ray had all the signs of dehydration and little more.

"Flaming faggot didn't fight fair," came the shaky reply, "He fucking bit me."

Lysander blinked, "Bit you? Where?"

Ray leaned his head back. For once Lysander was completely at a loss. For a few seconds he had no idea of what to make of the two small puncture-wounds on the man's neck. The the realization hit him. Blood-loss would explain those symptoms just as well as dehydration. Lysander didn't want to believe it. Oh, he knew the truth of the matter well enough: Vampires existed. But here? They were city-creatures, what the hell would they be doing in a small town like this?

It was all connected, it had to be. The attack on the sept, now this. Something was happening that apparently had more to it than just seizing territory. Lysander stood up, "Alright, I've done what I can for them, don't move Andrew until the paramedics arrive, he's got a couple of broken ribs."

"Hey, Lysander, be careful if you run into them, those two chinks fought like motherfuckers."

"Chinks?"

"Yeah, they kinda looked like those mafia types...fuckers were hitting on Rebecca..."

Andrew tried to get up, "...Reb..." and fell back over in pain.

"Don't let him move!"

Lysander didn't wait for a reply, he was heading for his truck, Buddy hot on his heels. Once in the cab, the Blackberry was whipped out of his pocket and the auto-dial running. One ring, two rings, "Hello?"

"Hikaru, we've got trouble."

"Yeah, what else is new?"

"No, something different this time...I..." Lysander hesitated, it almost sounded stupid now that he was actually saying it...yet the facts seemed incontrovertible, "...I think there are vampires in town."

The silence on the other end lasted long enough that Lysander began wondering if the call had been dropped, "...What happened?"

"I don't know, I only saw the aftermath. They hit the Blue Diamond, got into a fight with the bikers and apparently wiped the floor with them...the guys said they looked like Chinese mafia types," then, almost as an afterthought, "Where is everyone?"

"Cole's here with me, Shani was...shit!"

"What?"

"She's taking the car for a test-drive...and Cole says she's not picking up."

Who the fuck were these people?

Why were they after her?

What did they want?

Why were they driving rice-burners?

Shani slammed the brakes, intentionally throwing the car into a skid. She let the wheel go loose in her hands before releasing the brakes. As soon as the tires caught, she slammed the gas and spun around the corner, grinning as the gamble paid off. Looking behind her, Shani let loose with a string of Russian epiphets. The two crotch-rocket riding psychos took the corner a little wider, but still managed to keep control and continued pursuing her.

'At least I did a good fix-up job on the car' she thought to herself as she spun around the next corner. Once more, muddled voices echoed in the back of her head. The others, probably trying to figure out what the hell she was doing. She tried to call to them again, give them a general location...no good. Too much happening at once and she simply couldn't focus enough to reach them. God damnit. One of the bikes pulled up beside her, the helmeted figure was clad in a rather nice suit. With a growl Shani swung the car over, forcing the biker back.

Go figure, she dimly remembered placing the phone on the garage counter before heading out...stupid stupid girl, Blue would never let her live that down. Of course she could have simply told him where she was going...but no, she was just going to take the car around the block for a drive, right?

Then, at the first stop-sign, the two bikes pulled up. Shani was already suspicious, when they split, one going on each side of the car, she acted on instinct, gunning away before they could even get to the drivers' windows. Seemed she was right, as they were now dogging her all over town. Probably Spirals, which meant she couldn't just go back home or the all the Spirals in town would know where they were hiding out tonight. The fact that since these two seemed to know who she was probably meant they already knew where the rest were hiding out simply didn't occur to her in the panic.

Another turn, then speeding through a red-light, nearly slamming into an RV and still the two fuckers kept on her tail. Shani pounded the wheel in frustration, "God damnit Jess, Lysander and Kitty! Wherever you fuckers are I need you now!"

The rusty pickup screeched to a halt, jumping over the curb. Hikaru and Blue wasted no time, both quickly jumping in the back. "Where are we going?!" Lysander bellowed.

"No fucking clue, just head out and start a search," Hikaru shot back through the rear window, "Jess is staying with Cole, who's trolling the net, trying to get access to the traffic-light cams."

Lysander blinked, "You can do that?!"

"With her I don't know what she can't do," Hikaru said, "Now step on it."

"I still don't know where the fuck I'm...

Follow

...going!" Lysander paused. Hikaru had frozen as well.

Aeolus had chosen this moment to speak up. The spirit that kept the pack together, bound as one, and enabled the communication between all of them. Lysander looked outside. A thin line of mist came off the road ahead, glowing in the truck's headlights. The line went up the street. "I've got a lead," Lysander said and stepped on the gas.

The line of fog was rather easy to follow, leading a strange, haphazard pattern through town. Occasionally during the trip Hikaru could hear the faint echoes of Shani's voice in his head. Each time he tried to shout back to her, no success. Each time her voice sounded more panicked, desperate. He looked at the phone in his hands. He had found it on the garage-counter when he went to see if she were there, right before hearing the sudden squeal of tires a block down the road. Go figure, the one time she leaves it behind. "Pick up the pace Lysander!"

There was no reply, Lysander was completely focused on following the grey trail. Everyone was focused on the trail, to the point that both Lysander and Hikaru jumped when Shani's voice echoed through their heads, "God damnit Jess, Lysander and Kitty! Wherever you fuckers are I need you now!"

Lysander fought to regain control of the truck and nearly missed the fog-trail make a left turn onto the highway leading out of town. If she's still on the highway, it should be a straight shot from here. Lysander hit the gas. One mile...two...there! Up ahead he saw a pair of headlights careen wildly, as if the car were about to tip, then settle down, replaced now with a pair of tail-lights, picking up speed, heading away from him. Right behind it came two more headlights...wait, motorcycle headlights. They pulled onto the highway as well, heading away from him.

Lysander realized now how lucky they were to have Aeolus on their side. The truck had no chance of keeping up with the Jag on an open stretch like this...but Lysander was already up to speed, and the Jag still had to accelerate, he was coming up on Shani and her pursuers awfully quickly. Lysander heard movement behind him. A quick glance back confirmed it, Hikaru was actually standing in the truck-bed, one foot on the edge, ready to jump. "Fucking insane cat," Lysander shouted as he tried to pull up alongside one of the bikes.

Shani gasped in relief as she heard the rapidly approaching gutteral roar of Lysander's pickup. She eased off the gas ever so slightly to let the metis catch up to them. She noticed something in her peripheral vision...something glinting. The nature of the glint made her suddenly very worried, she turned her head to look.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion after that. She saw that the well-dressed biker had pulled out a sword...it looked like a wakizashi, that was glinting in Lysander's headlights. She saw the bike pull up easily next to the jag. She saw the sword describe an efficient, deadly jab through the air, right at her rear tire. She heard the tire blow out, felt the steering wheel go mushy in her hands as the car began to twist in the road. There was no way in hell she was pulling out of this one.

Shani's stomach leapt as the tires caught the road sideways as the car began a long, sixty mile-an-hour flip. As the world turned upside down, Shani knew she was dreaming. She knew it because she actually saw Hikaru, in the back of the pickup, leaping off into empty air at sixty miles an hour...and actually landing on the bike ridden by the well-dressed man. Then Shani saw the pavement, she looked up at it coming down towards her at a high speed. It was then everything went black.

Hikaru groggily pushed himself up on one arm. The other didn't seem to be working correctly. Confused, Hikaru looked at it. He wasn't entirely sure, but he didn't think it was supposed to bend that way. The white shard of bone sticking out of it...that wasn't at all right. Hikaru mentioned this. Actually, he tried to mention it, but succeeded more in vomiting up some blood. Sloshing sounds, was he by the sea? Back in Japan?

No, wait, that sloshing noise was actually inside his ears...more blood. And man did it stink here, like motor oil and burning tires.

Movement. Someone walking towards him. Staggering was a more accurate term for it. Hikaru concentrated on the figure's ankles. One was bare flesh, it looked like the skin was rubbed off one side with an industrial sander. The other was bloodied, but still had a few tatters of what was obviously once a pair of very nice dress pants. The legs also had the wickedest pair of spats Hikaru had seen in a long time...though they were admittedly a little scuffed now.

Now that Hikaru thought about it, it all looked rather like the suit that guy on the bike was wearing...

...Hikaru stopped thinking once he heard the intimately familiar noise of a sword being drawn. One arm still worked, he flipped on his back, reaching behind and unsheathing his own katana. A sharp clang echoed up and down the empty highway. Hikaru jumped to his feet, feeling bone grind very unhealthily in his left hip. Cradling his arm, he faced the figure that had attacked him. Most of the suit had been torn away in the crash, and he was looking about as good as Hikaru felt. The helmet, though, had stayed on, 'safety first' Hikaru thought to himself.

The figure staggered forward, but the wakizashi it held darted forward skillfully. Hikaru gritted his teeth in pain as he intercepted the strokes, falling into the form.

Wait a minute, he knew that form! He waited, two more strokes, then a strong upthrust. Anticipating it, Hikaru countered with a strong blow near the base of the blade, knocking the figure back. Hikaru got a brief glance at the wakizashi as he did. He'd seen that sword before. It was one of Shibara family weapons.

The other figure had stopped his assault. Lowering the sword for a second, it used its one functioning arm to remove the motorcycle helmet. "Ah, it is you, the other son."

"Takahashi Muroshi," Hikaru said, spitting more blood out. A second later a pile of bricks hit him on the back.

Hikaru rolled over, seeing an overlarge foot pin his katana to the ground. He looked up, "Onigumo?"

"Wait!" Takahashi shouted, "We're not to kill him!"

Onigumo merely grunted. This was echoed by a snarl some small distance away, and running footsteps. Lysander was coming. Takahashi painfully pulled himself onto the back of Onigumo's bike, "There are plans for you, Hikaru-kun."

Lysander was by Hikaru now, tonfas held at the ready, "Who the fuck are you two?"

Onigumo's bike started. Takahashi ignored the huge Fianna, "Oh, Hikaru-kun...Kaoru-sama apologizes for not seeing you in person yet, but promises that he shall in the near future."

The engine whined as the bike pulled away, heading back towards Cedarburg. Hikaru sagged in Lysander's arms, "Make...sure...Shani's....okay..." before darkness overtook him.

Ruth hissed curses as the men forced her down on the cold cement floor. Her body told her to transform, that she was in danger and needed to get out of here as quickly as possible...and disembowel a few of the wankers on the way out if she could. Her mind was in total agreement with this. But every time she tried, every time her muscles began to swell, her flesh met the burning touch of the silver manacles, and self preservation kept her in human form to stop her from decapitating herself on her restraints.

So she could only struggle as she was shackled spread-eagled onto the floor. She screamed obscenities at everyone around her, promising a long and uncomfortable death to everyone in the room and quite a few outside as well. The people, most clad in goth and industrial clothing, and with the exception of the ones who brought her in, were rather thin-framed and pale. As a whole they ignored her.

And they had just cause to. Ruth was terrified, and the constant threats were the only thing stopping that from coming to the surface. It was the dream all over again. Held down, naked, unable to move. The claustrophobia and blind terror as her vulnerability was completely exposed. Even as she screamed in rage, a cold sweat began to break out over her skin.

Malinko and Anastasia entered the room, smiling down at her. "Comfortable, my delightfully beautiful darling?"

"I swear I will use your intestines to lubricate my wrists so I can get out of these cuffs," Ruth spat back.

"I told you hon, she's vicious, but obsessed with me," Malinko smirked, "Or at least she'll grow to be."

Anastasia smiled back. Each one had its own flavour. Malinkos was hearty, full, exulting in the feelings he inspired in others. Anastasia's, on the other hand was cold and thin, regarding all she viewed as lesser beings, suitable only for study, to poke in various places to see which areas made them twitch the most.

It was this exact smile she wore as she went to the fireplace on one side of the basement-room and pulled a long metal shaft from the flames. Ruth had to crane her neck to see, and all she could get was a brief glimpse of something glowing orange on the end of the metal stick. "Of course, as she soon will be obsessed with you, it is only proper that she be treated in the fashion of one who is."

Malinko nodded sagely, picking up some sort of ornately carved wooden box from a counter. Checking briefly on the four people chanting around the circle of white chalk drawn around the area Ruth was bolted down to, Malinko stepped into the circle and set the box down by her head. The chanting increased as he stepped back out of the circle. Something about the chant grated on Ruth's ears, digging into her brain. Her head nodded slowly back and forth as the invectives spewing from her mouth slowly stumbled to a stop.

"Good, the ritual's working perfectly so far," Ruth turned her face slowly, looking through the shimmering air at Anastasia, who was speaking, "Of course, the bane would likely choose you anyways, being the most appealing target here, but I summoned this one specially for you, and I don't want to take any chances. So a small circle of binding will make sure you're the only one it sees when it's released."

Ruth opened her mouth to reply, but found her vocal chords unwilling to function in the strange drugged air. "Now," Anastasia muttered, "A helpless, pretty target such as yourself isn't enough by itself, the bane needs a point of entry. Now, most find this unbearably painful, but from what I've heard, the sensation should be quite...unique."

Ruth saw what was happening a moment too late to react to it. Anastasia gracefully stepped into the circle, wielding the iron brand. On the end of the shaft, still glowing an angry red, was a twisted metal sigil...the symbol of the Black Spiral Dancers. Without hesitation, Anastasia firmly pressed the red-hot brand into the flesh just below Ruth's breasts. Ruth's back arched, and the vocal chords jumped back into action as a helpless orgasmic scream was ripped from her throat.

Eventually the scream died away, replaced by gasping as Ruth lie limply on the cold floor, sweating profusely, her face flushed. The sigil still smoked angrily on her abdomen, forcing the occasional sigh of pleasure from Ruth. Anastasia smiled, pleased at her own handiwork, admiring the now permanently warped and discoloured flesh. She stepped outside the circle once more. "This portion of the ritual you shall find...far less enjoyable."

With no break in her movement, Anastasia dropped the branding-iron and replaced it with a long wooden pole with a hook on the end. Reaching deftly into the circle, yet never actually putting any of her body inside, she place the hook into a ring on the box beside Ruth's head. With a quick flick, she opened the box and then quickly withdrew the pole.

Ruth half-consciously observed all this, her mind still swimming from the humiliating forced orgasm. Something about the wave of cold air coming from the open box snapped her back into full consciousness though. The air still shimmered, but something told her there was something else sharing space inside the circle with her, something that set all her hair on end. The nameless thing swirled around her body, caressing her with its ice-cold presence. It was searching, she felt it, like cold spider limbs tapping over her body, trying to find a way in.

It found one.

This shocked gasp wasn't entirely pleasurable as Ruth felt the thing forcing itself inside her, crawling in through the broken and charred skin that had been branded. She twitched, the gasps turning into choked gurgles as she felt the essence of the bane fill her body. Her eyes rolled back and her mind tried to shut down, unwilling to cope with this sort of invasion, this rape of her entire being.

The bane wouldn't let her, though. It coiled around her mind, prodding the surface, looking for weak points to further integrate itself with her. Ruth went into seizures as the thing relentlessly combed the surface of her brain, seeking a way to get further in. It found a weakness.

All activity came to a stop as an agonized scream resounded throughout the entire house. The bane manifested itself on the surface of Ruth's body. Countless small tentacles shot out from microscopic holes in her flesh, turned inward, and began to glide back and forth over her skin, tickling her entire body at once. Ruth's reversed nervous-system read this as the most unbearable pain she had suffered in her life. She was able to withstand this for nearly six seconds before her brain forced itself to shut down, rendering her unconscious. This blunt, forceful maneuver resulted in more damage, though, tearing her mind open.

The bane settled further into her head.

Hikaru stared at Shani. Shani stared back at Hikaru. Then both looked at the floor.

A late afternoon sunshine shone through the windows of the hospital. It warmed the gurneys the two patients lay upon. Shani spoke up first, "...thanks."

They had woken up a few minutes ago, each only able to look at the other's injuries. Shani had a patch over her right eye, though angry scars showed that a good deal of skin had been removed by the asphalt. There was no longer an eye beneath the gauze pads. Her left hand only had three fingers left, while a long, deep scar ran up her right arm, slashing jaggedly through the dark spirals tattooed there. Her right leg was heavily bandaged.

"It was nothing," Hikaru replied, intently studying the floor.

His hair covered up the worst of the scaring his forehead received from the brief kiss the road had given it. His left arm was still bound in a sling though, and his bare chest sported a new series of scars.

"What you did was stupid, Kitty. It was suicidal, I saw it."

"I knew what I was doing."

Shani gave him a deadpan stare, then decided not to argue that point, "Yeah...but you did it to save me. I can't repay my debt if you keep on saving my life like this."

"I didn't save your life, I came too late anyways."

"And if you weren't there, who would have stopped those two from finishing what they started?"

Hikaru stared at the floor, lost in his own thoughts.

"At the very least, those Spirals will think twice before messing with us again."

Hikaru glanced up, "They weren't Spirals."

"I agree," Lysander said, coming into the room with Jess, "I see the patients are awake. So, decided some suicidal stunts and a trip to the trauma ward were in order?"

Hikaru didn't reply and returned to glaring sullenly at the floor.

"It took a hell of a lot of work to get you two back into this good a shape," Jess admonished, "You both should have been dead, considering the injuries you suffered. You both shouldn't be able to ever walk again, yet you will be. You're both fucking lucky."

"Thanks Jess," Hikaru said, sounding sincere.

"But still, if they weren't Black Spirals, who were they? Lysander says they're vampires, and according to him, they acted like they knew you, Hikaru."

Hikaru sighed, there was no getting out of this one. And maybe they had him drugged up, or maybe it just the exhaustion from what happened the night before, but for the moment he felt like his personal shields were pretty much nonexistent. "They do know me, and I know them."

"Who were they?" Shani asked.

"Vermin...worse than vermin, lapdogs and toadies to a vermin," Hikaru muttered.

"Well, that certainly clears things up," Lysander said sarcastically.

Hikaru glared at him, Lysander shut up.

"Shani?" Hikaru said.

"Yeah?"

"I never told you why I travel the way I do."

"I know, and that pisses me off, because I can tell it's behind almost everything you do."

"What happened last night," Hikaru explained, "That is the reason I haven't told you. The reason I haven't told anyone."

"What do you mean?" Jess asked.

"I don't want to see anyone else die by my hands," Hikaru said, "It's why I did what I did last night, and it's why I haven't told anyone what I'm about to tell you."

"Those two are fairly high ranking members of a Japanese crime-syndicate. I know because my father has had many business dealings with them in the past. The thing is, when I met them...they were human. I'm not certain, but I think the reason they are vampires now is because the one they work for made them that way."

"One of them said something about someone named 'Kaoru'," Lysander said.

Hikaru's fist clenched. "Yes, Kaoru," he said, mostly to himself.

"Up until now, I figured the less any of you knew about this, the less your lives were at risk. But...last night was an assassination attempt," Hikaru said, working it out in his own head as he went along, "It only failed because you happened to be at the bar and found out there were leeches in town."

"So...if you knew about them, why the fuck didn't you tell me before?" Shani said, her voice raising in anger, "They tried to kill me and you couldn't even tell me why?"

"I thought your life would be less at risk if I didn't!" Hikaru shouted back, "The less you knew, the less you could interfere, and the less of a target you would be for...him."

"Why?"

"The same reason I travel the way I do. The same reason I want to get out of here. I'm being stalked."

"By this Kaoru girl?" Lysander asked.

"Guy," Hikaru corrected, "And there's only one reason I'm telling you this. He's made an attempt on your life out in the open. You're just fucking lucky he sent a couple of lackies to do it instead of going himself. Either way, it means I've got nothing else to lose if I tell you."

"Shani, I've never told you this...and you'll probably hate me for it because it's...well, it is my life, and I've brought you into it. I never wanted to get close to any of you. The last person I ever trusted..." Hikaru's voice hitched slightly as the memory surfaced, "...he killed. He did it for no other reason than to torture me. If I get close to anyone, he'll do it again, and I won't be able to do anything about it. So instead I run, and I don't get close to anyone. That way no one has to die, and the only person I have to worry about keeping alive is myself."

"I can't stand to have someone else die because of me."

"What?!" Shani exploded, "I don't care who this fucking psycho is, if he kills anyone, it's on his hands, not yours you stupid Kitty!"

"She's right," Jess said, "You can't blame yourself for it."

"You wouldn't know," Hikaru replied, "It is my fault and my responsibility because of who I am. Because I'm the elder brother."

"Elder...what?" Shani stuttered, "You told me you were an only child."

"I lied," Hikaru said, "But I wish it were true."

"So this psycho Kaoru guy who offed someone you loved...is your little brother?" Lysander verified.

Hikaru gritted his teeth. Years of keeping his personal life secret told him this was the wrong thing to do. On the other hand another part of him, one that was completely exhausted with this life, told him to fuck it and just plunge ahead. For the first time in many years, he listened to the latter voice.

"We're technically twins, but I was...out...first, thus I was considered the elder brother in our family. As such, I was entitled represent the family name and inherit its fortune and responsibility. When I...changed, the family saw this as further proof that I was destined to carry on the family name with honour.

"Kaoru could not stand this. He felt abandoned by fate, cursed to be nothing more than an observer in the background of my...glory. That is, until someone came to him and made him an offer, to trade one curse for another.

"Kaoru took the offer. He...he became a leech, and he swore to destroy my life and my future as I had done to him. Ever since he has stalked me around the world. He killed the woman I loved, and he'll do the same to anyone I allow myself to get close to. That is my life, trying to stay one step ahead of him, and never getting close to anyone so that he has nothing to use against me. And I even failed at that."

"Wait a minute...why don't you just kill him?" Lysander asked.

Hikaru returned to staring at the floor, "I can't."

"Can't?"

"It's part of the family responsibility that has now turned into a curse. I don't consider him a part of the family anymore, he threw that away when he voluntarily became a leech. But our blood still calls to each other, and no matter how much I may wish to...I cannot slay one of my own blood. Unfortunately, that curse doesn't apply to him...since he's taken on another curse, he's free to do what he wishes to me."

"So then we'll kill him," Jess said, "Seems like an easy enough workaround to that pesky curse."

Hikaru laughed, a dead, hopeless laugh, "Oh be my guest. Don't think you're the first that's tried. Onigumo and Takahashi were pretty high on the ladder as far as the Japanese crime syndicates were concerned. Yet they're nothing more than lapdogs to Kaoru," he favoured Jess with a grin that made the earlier laugh seem uplifting in comparison, "You thought Roland was bad? Kaoru would chew him up and spit him out without a second thought. You don't have a clue what you are fucking with."

"Wait...are you guys talking about this Kaoru guy?" Cole's voice came in from the opened door.

"When the hell did you get here?" Lysander asked.

"Actually I was going to stop by just to see how you guys were doing...but now that you mentioned Kaoru...I've got something that may be of interest," Cole said cheerfully.

Shani stared and Hikaru. Hikaru stared at Cole. Buddy wandered over, tail wagging, and sniffed Cole's legs.

"What do you know about Kaoru?" Hikaru asked slowly and carefully.

"Umm...nothing really," Cole said, "But I just got finished chatting with Eats-Mice, she's been in Madison for a while. Apparently she was visited by someone and they had a little chat, and the name 'Kaoru' came up, apparently this visitor has had dealings with him in the past."

Hikaru blinked. There wasn't much else he could do at this point, the world had completely ceased to make sense. Finally Jess spoke up, "Who was this person Eats-Mice was talking to?"

"Oh, she never gave a name," Cole replied, "But apparently she knows someone else in town, and she told Eats-Mice that if she really wanted to, she could call her by the same thing this other person calls her."

Lysander was the first to bite this time, "...and that would be...?"

"Mum."

"So did you enjoy the evening my raven-haired darling?"

Ruth looked up from where she lay, staring at Malinko with red-rimmed eyes. Malinko favoured her with a smile, "Now don't give me that look. You should have known what you were getting yourself into, didn't that Jess girl tell you anything?"

He sat down on the bed next to Ruth, running a hand up her leg. Quite a lot of leg lay bare. Ruth's attire was little more than a couple scraps of cloth that left very little to the imagination. Even so, the trail Malinko's hand followed was hardly a smooth one. A network of new scars extended up and down Ruth's body. Various unclean glyphs, eye-watering designs, and blasphemous markings swirled across her legs, arms, chest, and neck, all extending from the spiral marking branded just below her chest.

"I see your new friend has made itself right at home. Did it make you do these marks yourself?"

Ruth looked down, "Yes."

"Very nice, it does certainly make you look better, as do the shackles, I quite like the added touch there."

Ruth turned her head away, trying not to think about the silver anklets, bracelets and collar she now wore. A small patch of cloth attached to the inside of each one was all that stopped them from burning her flesh...yet if she made any attempt to change shape, they would quickly bite into her flesh and bring her to a quick and rather messy end. As much as she was tempted to at this point, she realized in desperation that she wasn't quite brave enough to make that last step. As of yet, she was still unwilling to tell herself why she didn't disappoint Malinko with a sudden, messy suicide.

Malinko gently grabbed Ruth's cheek and rotated her to face him again, "You should know, I didn't want to hurt you..." he leaned in and gave a forceful kiss. Ruth tried to resist, then stopped as she felt the thing inside her head twitch threateningly.

Malinko parted lips with her, a larger smile decorating his face. Wiping the single tear off her cheek he continued, "...but you're pretty when you cry."

Ruth bit her lip, promising herself that her voice wouldn't hitch, "Why did you have to do it this way? We could have simply fucked...did each other a few favours, and left, both the better for it. Now...as soon as I find a way out of this, I will hunt you down and kill you, and I'll make sure you have plenty of time to regret what you did."

"Oh darling!" Malinko said joyfully, "That's what I've always loved about you, you are beautifully vicious. I wouldn't ever want to change that about you. But..." he got off the bed, walking to the window where the last shreds of daylight feebly attempted to enter, "...I will have to redirect that fury to more productive ends, my ends."

"You see darling, that's the beauty of this ritual. I have no intention of trying to brainwash you, or fuck with your head, or anything like that. If I wanted a robotic fucktoy I'd turn to any one of the pasty-faced sluts in town lined up to please me. But I still want you to be mine, and now you're dead-set against that. So, how do I rectify that without directly scrambling with your brain and possibly destroying what I love about you so much?"

A dramatic circuit of the room was made and Malinko entered the closet, returning a moment later, tying a ridiculous cape around his neck, "The answer is simple: You will make the choice to become mine yourself. Anastasia explained exactly what happened to you, yes?"

Ruth nodded, a second tear had come out now.

"Good, I want you to repeat it, so I know you understand."

Ruth glared at Malinko, wishing him dead. The glare was returned with a smug, victorious smile, she hung her head and began reciting in a dead monotone, "She told me that I've been infested with a spirit called a 'gorger', it feeds off of pain. Every day, Anastasia must perform a ritual to keep the spirit's hunger sated. If Anastasia dies, or decides not to perform the ritual, the spirit will begin feeding out of control on my pain, creating as much agony as possible until I'm driven completely insane and the spirit is released."

"So then you know your position now?"

Ruth nodded again, clenching the blankets in her scarred hands. If she killed Anastasia. If she disobeyed Malinko. If she stepped out of line, the daily ritual wouldn't be performed, and by the next morning, she would be back in the agony she was feeling the night before.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Malinko said with exhaltion, "You can't leave, you can't kill us. In fact, you have to do everything we say, and the best part is you have to consciously decide to do so."

Malinko jumped on the bed, pushing Ruth on her back. Straddling her, he leaned forward, "Now don't worry darling, it seems bad now, but it won't always be this way. Soon your mind will connect following my orders and making me happy with pleasure, and you'll start doing so not because you want to avoid pain, but rather because you truly want to do this," Malinko ran a hand up her side, "...and what a happy day that will be for both of us, yes?"

There was a knock on the door. Malinko looked up, "Yes?"

Anastasia stood in the open doorway, "A word?"

"Private?" Malinko asked.

"Yes."

"Alright," Malinko said, getting up, "You stay here, my pet," He told Ruth.

"No need for that," Anastasia said, the cold smile playing on her lips, "Ruth!"

Ruth looked up and found her attention drawn to the small clay tablet Anastasia was holding up. She stared at it, uncomprehending, for a few more seconds. A sudden twitch went down Ruth's frame. She let out a pained gasp, grabbed her skull and fell to the bed, violently rolled back and forth, struggling for breath.

"What the hell was that?" Malinko said.

"A little safeguard," Anastasia said, "The rune on here sends the bane inside her on a brief feeding binge. She won't hear a single word we're saying, she's stuck in her own world of pain right now, and even better, we can keep an eye on the effects of it at the same time."

"I like it," Malinko said, "We won't have to worry about her going psychotic for a moment and trying to kill us regardless of the consequences."

"That's what I wanted to talk about," Anastasia said, "There's been a few complications."

"Yeah?" Malinko asked.

"Well, you know how the spirit will feed uncontrollably if I don't keep it calm with the daily rituals?"

"Yeah?"

"It wasn't supposed to work out that way. The spirit was supposed to just sit inside her mind, only occasionally feeding off her pain to keep sated. This glyph was supposed to be the only thing that sent it on an unstoppable binge. But instead...if we don't constantly feed it, it will go out of control. Now I've managed to turn that to our advantage, using that as an extra line of insurance against her," Anastasia waved a hand at the figure thrashing on the bed, "rebelling against us. But this shouldn't have happened in the first place."

"So do you know why it happened?"

"I've got an idea. The spirit wants to meld completely with her mind, but something's stopping it from completing the process. I think there's some portion of her mind that's completely locked off from outside interference. The spirit wants to infest that portion just as much as every other part, but it can't, and so this is sending it into a feeding frenzy, which only the rituals are holding off."

"...I see," Malinko said thoughtfully, "Well...keep working on it, unfortunately, I've got to prepare myself, I'm expecting guests this evening."

"Alright, I'll stay here and see what I can do with her," Anastasia said.

"Don't damage her too much," Malinko said, "I might have use for her tonight."

Anastasia nodded as Malinko left the room. She turned to Ruth and muttered a few words, caressing a sweat-beaded arm. Ruth's struggles slowed and eventually she lay panting on her back. Anastasia waited, idly studying her black-painted nails. "About done?" she asked after a while.

Ruth's claws had grown. Extended canines formed an overlarge scowl below two slitted pupils that stared balefully at Anastasia. The girl in the Victorian-style outfit ignored her. Slowly, painfully, Ruth's breathing returned to something approaching normal. "Good," Anastasia said, "There is something I wanted to talk to you about."

"I'd rather listen to you scream while I ripped your teeth out, one at a time," Ruth spat.

"Oh lose the posturing, toy," Anastasia said, "You want to kill us, I already know that, and I don't care. Hearing that fact repeated every three seconds is just annoying, and I don't react well to annoyance."

Anastasia got up and sauntered over the dresser, "And lately, I've been inclined to view you as an annoyance," she fished around in the top drawer and came back with a large black feather which Ruth stared at.

Ruth backed away on the bed as Anastasia returned. "If you move," Anastasia hissed, "I will bring out the symbol again, you don't want that now, do you?"

Ruth's eyes darted back and forth in a panic. Somehow she forced herself to stay still as Anastasia took her hand, carefully avoiding the silver shackle. "As I was saying, you're an annoyance, one I rather want to remove..."

The tip of the feather brushed softly over the back of Ruth's hands. She winced, a growl of pain escaping from her throat. Anastasia continued, "Unfortunately, Malinko has taken an interest in you, an unhealthy one by my judgment, but telling him that would only encourage him. I can't have this, there's far too much at stake here, so much that could be lost if he doesn't stay focused."

The feather was removed, the torture stopped for the moment. Ruth looked up at Anastasia, "You mean the Cedarburg sept?"

"Oh please," Anastasia replied, "Do you honestly believe our ambitions are that small? This is a dead-end town in the middle of nowhere, having control of it is no better than having control of a pile of shit. You look like a city girl yourself, I'm surprised you've stayed here as long as you have. Sit still."

The feather scraped against Ruth's body. Over the agonized whines came Anastasia's voice, "You should have left when you had the chance. Because now you're stuck with him. And you're stuck with me, and that makes me rather angry. So I'm going to be taking that out on you."

"So what...what's the big prize you're going for?" Ruth asked through gritted teeth.

"We're going to corrupt this country from the inside out," came Malinko's voice from the doorway, "By the way, you two look incredibly hot together, I very much approve."

Ruth took the opportunity to back further away from Anastasia on the bed, eyes never leaving the feather she wielded. "You're the type to enjoy manipulating others, aren't you my soon-to-be-tamed pet? I've been dying to share this with someone, and you're in more of a position to appreciate it than anyone else."

Malinko sat down in one of the renaissance-style chairs, "You should ask your cat friend about his past."

"I have," Ruth replied warily, "What's this got to do with it?"

"Everything," Malinko laughed, "Everything in the world. You should thank him because it's opened up this grand opportunity for me, and thus one for you too. You know that your dear lover has had some associations with the kindred, right?"

"He's not my lover," Ruth corrected. She didn't like where this was heading and didn't want to volunteer too much information.

"Whatever. I should be thanking you and your...former allies," Malinko said happily, "Your little vendetta with Roland helped open this opportunity for me as well."

"To take out Cedarburg?" Ruth asked.

"That's just the smallest part of it," Malinko sneered, "There's so much more to it than that."

"So you two keep telling me," Ruth said, "Were you actually going to get around to explaining what's going on, or should I stop listening now?"

Ruth gave out a yelp of pain as Anastasia darted in with the feather, poking and brushing various body-parts. "One way or the other, you'll eventually learn not to talk back," Malinko purred.

"I'm giving you a chance like no other," Malinko continued, "One way or the other, you will be at my side when it happens. Either as an unwilling prisoner in constant agony, or a willing slave, proud of her new position in life. Cedarburg was just the first step in this. The next is St. Paul. I've made allies and bargains, you see. While you were busy with Roland, I was helping them out with taking out the stupid warriors of Gaia in that town. In return, they helped me take out your precious little sept. But even that was nothing more than a small part of the equation."

"There is something in St. Paul, an ancient weapon of incredible power said to have been forged by the Wyrm itself. Anastasia found out about it in her studies," Malinko nodded in genuine respect to her, "I intend to make that weapon mine. With it, I could reshape everything from the great lakes to the rockies in the image of the Wyrm. An unimaginable cataclysm which would form a suitable start to the Apocalypse."

Malinko looked dejected for a moment, "Unfortunately I cannot seize that weapon yet because we do not know its exact location. All we know is that it is in the hands of a vampire in St. Paul. The amusing thing is that before he was turned into the undead, he used to be a human sorcerer, a mage. The weapon was supposedly a family heirloom to him, yet the blind idiot still isn't aware of the true power it holds. He used the weapon to do nothing more than place petty curses on individuals, and now that he's lost his connection to the spark of life, he cannot even do that any more. He treats it like nothing more than common sword."

Malinko lowered his face into his cloak, a long-practiced move that dramatically covered his face in shadows. Countless hours in front of the mirror had gone into perfecting this, "That weapon deserves far better treatment, and I'm just the one to unlock its full potential. Unfortunately, the kindred of St. Paul are an insular, xenophobic bunch. The stupid followers of Gaia there were...less than kind to them, and so most are deep in hiding and quite unwilling to even reveal their presence to our kind. So I've been looking for a way to breach that barrier, a common ground I can meet them on so I can find the location of the weapon and take it for myself. That's where that adorably ignorant cat of yours comes in."

Ruth was speechless. Despite the venomous hatred she felt towards Malinko, she had to admire the beauty of his plan. "You've been working with the one who's hunting him...the vampire," She breathed.

"I make bargains," Malinko explained, "I do certain favours for him, and in return he shall use his own influence to get me access to the undead of St. Paul."

"So, like everything else I've offered you, my sweet, you are free to make the choice on your own. You can join me, turn fully to the Wyrm, and share in the power that I will soon have...or you can decide not to, and live out your days as an agonized slave, serving my whims and suffering her wrath," he indicated Anastasia, who smiled sweetly, caressing the feather she held.

"But you won't have to make that decision tonight, I understand you'll want to think about it. You'll get a chance to do so during the ride."

"Ride?" Ruth was once again confused, taken off guard by the sudden change in tempo.

"I have uses for you tonight, part of a bargain I made. You should be happy, tonight you'll get to help influence the fate of your lover, Hikaru."

Ruth sat in the backseat of the Lincoln, her insides a mixture of fear and excitement. She didn't exactly know what was going to happen, which constituted part of the fear...on the other hand, Malinko had told her that the meeting she was going to had a lot to do with Hikaru. That was cause for excitement...and more fear. After how she had left him...

...fuck it, she didn't care. She wanted to see him again, badly. She didn't care if the meeting was just to show him she was being held hostage, she'd ask him to kill her. If he didn't, then she'd do it herself< after seeing him. Ruth realized now why she didn't have the courage to throw that wrench into Malinko's ambitions: She wanted to see the cat one more time before she died, she had to see him.

'God damnit,' she thought to herself, 'what is it about these stupid life-and-death situations that inspire this stupid sort of love.' In the end she didn't really care, it made her happy and she was now more desperate than ever for that feeling. She'd take it any way she could get it.

...Which wasn't to say that she was going into this blind. She knew damn well Malinko wouldn't let her off to see Hikaru unless it served his own ends. Was it a trap for him? Did it involve the rest of the pack?

'Fuck it,' she thought again. There wasn't anything she could do to change any of that at the moment.
When she saw him, she would tell him all she could about Malinko's plans, demand that one of the pack kill her. Hikaru...probably wouldn't be willing to do it himself, she admitted. But Shani and Lysander would probably be more than willing, seeing her as a traitor. And Jess...she knew better than anyone else what Ruth was going through, she'd probably be happy to spare her that misery.

Opaque glass separated the back seat of the car from the front. She still had no idea who was driving or where they were going. It didn't really matter, she quietly accepted the reality that there wasn't really anything she could do about it at this point. Disobey? Jump out? Then Anastasia would simply decide to stop running the rituals and Ruth would go insane from the pain. As much as Malinko wanted to delude himself otherwise, Ruth wasn't here by her own choice. At the moment, she was literally just along for the ride.

She allowed her mind to wander for a while, considering her situation a little more in depth. The possibility of seeing Hikaru...alright, and the rest of the pack, seemed to have cleared her thoughts a little. She began thinking of ways she could possibly get out of this situation. The fact that she was also hoping the rest of the pack would slaughter her at the same time was conveniently compartmentalized by her already fractured mind.

As powerful as Malinko was, and as powerful as he would be if he got control of that artifact he was after, he still had weaknesses. Best of all, they were weaknesses Ruth could easily exploit. He indulged in his perceived power over her. He enjoyed demonstrating his sexual control over her and displays of bending her to his will. Ironically, that was what Ruth had planned to use against him before this whole debacle. It still applied, just some of the small details had changed...like that thing lurking inside her head now.

Anastasia, that cold bitch would be slightly more problematic. Still, she could be taken care of as well. One thing that was immediately obvious, even if she didn't want to admit it: She was jealous of Ruth. Of course, she had every right to be, Malinko said it himself, she wasn't like all the pasty-faced sluts out there. Anastasia felt Ruth was a distraction. She wanted Malinko to grow more powerful just as much as he did. She was the ideal Beta, she supported the Alpha because she knew she would reap the rewards of his success as well, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts and all.

Of course, that jealousy would translate to Anastasia making Ruth's life a living hell as much as possible, that was a constant. But constants made someone predictable, and predictability leads to one's downfall. That left the only real issue: Getting rid of the thing in her head, once that was out of the way, those two Spirals would quickly regret trying to fuck with the mind of someone far better at it than they were.

The car came to a stop, Ruth had arrived at wherever she was being taken to. There was a barely audible 'click' as her door unlocked itself. Hesitantly Ruth let herself out of the vehicle. The driver didn't seem interested in joining her, and the front windows were just as opaque as the rest, so she still couldn't form any idea of who actually drove her here.

'Here' appeared to be a relatively clean and spacious garage. It looked private, yet rented, no personal touches to it. The garage door was closed, the only other way out was a single set of elevator doors. Ruth pressed the button and they opened. She offered one last look around the garage before entering. The doors had closed before Ruth realized there were no buttons on the inside. The elevator moved by itself, the doors opening a second later. Ruth stared out into a rather posh looking hotel lobby.

Confused, Ruth walked uncertainly to the receptionist's counter. A smartly dressed blonde put down the phone and gave Ruth a disapproving once-over. Ruth realized with some embarrassment that she was still wearing the...minimal outfit Malinko had put her in. The new network of scars on her body just added to the image. The woman remained admirably business-like as she checked her computer, "Ruth Featherby?"

"Waetherby," Ruth corrected, feeling as if she were in a waking dream.

The prim woman handed her a plastic card, "Room 332," came the curt voice, "Keep the card, it will only work for tonight."

Ruth nodded dumbly before walking away. She thought she heard the woman mutter "Third one this week," as she walked towards the larger lobby elevator, but she couldn't be certain.

With only one wrong turn, Ruth found her way to the room. This wasn't exactly what she was expecting. She didn't know what exactly she was expecting, but this definitely wasn't it. The keycard reader flashed green and the door unlocked. Ruth walked into the deluxe penthouse suite. A strange scent greeted her in the doorway. She realized it was similar to the scent she had smelled in the car. It was a familiar scent, picking at her memory, but she couldn't quite place it.

There was something very final about the way the door clicked shut behind her, a nebulously disturbing sound, amplified by the silence that rushed in to fill the void it left behind. Ruth was left with the indelible impression that she was the only one alive in this hotel room. Ruth took a deep breath and ventured inward...was that blood she smelled?

Ruth entered the spacious living room. There was someone on the couch, leaned forward, his forehead propped on one hand. Ruth was unable to see the face from this angle. All she could see was that he was clad in a leather jacket, and a shock of white hair cascaded over the hand holding his head up.

"Hikaru!"

Ruth stopped two steps further into the room. The figure on the couch had only twitched slightly at her outburst, yet the atmosphere of the room had completely changed. Ruth could feel it, and somehow knew that her joyful outburst was responsible for it.

She also knew that her assumption about the figure's identity was wrong. The hair was a deep ebony, as opposed to Hikaru's rich red. The skin was too pale, and slightly more taut than Hikaru's ever was. As the face lifted slowly from the hand, Ruth realized the white hair fell to the wrong side.

It was Hikaru, yet it wasn't. It was Hikaru with everything good removed: the stubbornly hidden care, the humour, the fact that despite all outward appearances, he was a good person on the inside...all removed from the dead eyes that now pierced through Ruth's soul. It wasn't Hikaru's shadow, it was what lay on the far side of it. The frustration, rage and murderous impulses made manifest. Ruth not only stopped her eager, childish run across the living-room floor to meet the figure, she was actually forced to take a few steps back, reeling from the icy impact of those eyes.

It was as if this person were a blasphemous, twisted reflection of Hikaru. The sight of him was like a physical slap on the face for Ruth, everything she thought she knew about the cat cried out against this cruel mockery and perversion of him.

The figure showed no reaction to this. Somehow it would have been better if he had shown something, anything in reply. Cold amusement. Anger. Anything. But there was nothing, only those cold voids which now encompassed Ruth's soul. The figure spoke. The voice matched the figure's looks and eyes: A dead, hollow echo of all that was beautiful in Hikaru, bereft of life.

"No, not Hikaru. Kaoru."

Ruth opened her mouth, trying to form words. She failed and shut her mouth again, staring at the floor and trying to figure out just what the hell happened to her reality. The smell, the pale skin, how did she not recognize it before? For a moment she was convinced that Hikaru had been embraced, turned into a vampire. Only for a moment though, because that was a rather stupid thought. Becoming a vampire simply froze you at whatever point in life you were at when it happened. It didn't turn you into a cold and soul-less reflection of yourself.

...And it wasn't a perfect reflection either. Ruth could pick out minute yet definite differences between this Kaoru and that damn cat. She didn't want to meet his eyes again. She had the feeling that he had merely let her crawl out of those empty pits, if she fell in again, he might not release her a second time. But it was no good, her eyes moved back to his on their own accord. He was so much like Hikaru...yet still so different in the most horrible ways.

Kaoru stood up, "Sit."

Ruth looked up. Then she looked down, surprised to find that she was sitting in a recliner. Did she even move, or had Kaoru's command simply rearranged reality so that she was already sitting? As stupid as the latter idea sounded, the sheer inevitability in his voice still made it seem possible.

"You are Ruth Waetherby," again, a command, not a question. Ruth nodded, not certain whether it was a nod affirming that he was correct, or a nod indicating she would follow his order to be Ruth Waetherby to the letter.

"You're...Hikaru's brother?" Ruth ventured, finding her voice again. She noticed that Kaoru wore an ornate ring on his left hand, it was topped with some sort of sigil.

Kaoru briefly sucked on his tooth, "He is my sibling...the lesser one."

Ruth made the connection, "...You're the one...the one he's running from..."

"He can't run, for I will always be there to remind him of his crimes against me."

"C...crimes?"

"He took my future from me, so in the interest of karma, I've taken his future away from him."

"Future? What do you..."

"Shut up, you have no place in it, no understanding, and it would be a waste to explain it to you. Even May wasn't deserving...and she was far more worthy than you."

That name...the one on the bracelet...Ruth felt on firmer ground for a moment, there had to be a way to use this to her advantage. "He's earned my hatred too," she purred, "perhaps there's a way we can help each other out..."

Kaoru's hand shot out, too fast for her eyes to follow. When it returned to his side, Ruth realized she could no longer breathe. He had struck her in the throat with outstretched fingers. Ruth bent over, gagging for breath. A moment later Kaoru's fist struck her jaw from the left, easily flipping her over the back of the recliner. Ruth curled into herself on the floor, retching and coughing.

"Worthless, honorless slut..."

Ruth looked up, trying hard to blink away the stars and blackness crawling in from the sides of her vision. For the first and only time that night, she saw emotion in Kaoru's eyes. It was a cold and burning fury. It lasted for a full fraction of a second before being replaced by the same dead gaze as before, "...My life is defined by my pursuit of vengeance for his crimes. You are nothing more than a childish little tramp, nursing a stupid, petty jealousy over a woman who died years ago. To try and compare your frivolous schoolgirl drama to my driving force is an insult worthy of a long and painful death."

Ruth slipped one hand behind her, finally catching her breath. Her fingers wrapped around the handle of her klaive. There was nothing in that hideous shell, that mockery of Hikaru. In a second she was on her feet, the point of the dagger swinging down towards Kaoru's back.

Her hand stopped in mid-air. Kaoru's own hand had apparently gone from laying easily by his side to wrapped around Ruth's wrist without passing through the intervening space. His hand twitched, tightening. There was a sickening crunch as Ruth's radius and ulna shattered under the the force. Ruth gasped at the sudden wave of pleasure, fingers going rigid and dropping the klaive to the ground.

"...And if you make one more comical attempt to seduce me," Kaoru said without even a hint of a smile on his lips, "I will use that little toy of yours to carve the skin off your face, and I'll leave that mask of flesh hanging in Hikaru's hotel window so that he can plainly see what a superficial little slut you are."

Ruth still weakly struggled in Kaoru's grip, feebly reaching up with her other hand. Kaoru knocked it away with his other hand. Then, still holding on to Ruth's broken forearm, he delicately took her twitching fingers into his other hand. He watched Ruth's face with a detached interest as he viciously pushed all four fingers back, breaking them all at once. He continued pushing until, with a wet crack, Ruth's wrist also gave way under the pressure.

Kaoru let go. Ruth stared in wonder for a moment, at her forearm, wrist, and fingers all bent backwards at impossible angles, before collapsing in a heap on the floor. A jackboot was placed on her shoulder and she was roughly pushed down onto her back. A slight metal scraping sound, Kaoru had picked up her klaive. He placed his full weight on the foot on her shoulder, pinning her down. Looking down into her eyes, "And yet, despite being the waste of a being you are, for some reason my lesser brother loves you. Strange he would do such, he knows the consequences of giving his heart to another."

Kaoru lowered the knife towards Ruth's chest, "The last one died for it," the knife stopped, "...but I have something a little more interesting in mind."

Kaoru looked over Ruth's body. It was not a lustful stare. It was nothing more than a cold analysis of every inch of exposed flesh on her. Even through the distracting pleasure of the broken bones, and the dizziness of her body telling her that, despite the pleasure, Ruth was seriously injured, she felt a cold shiver and sense of violation as Kaoru scrutinized her barely clad body.

"Hmm, you're already fairly scarred up, and most of it looks recent. No matter, this area looks relatively clear," the knife dipped further down and made a sudden horizontal motion. A shock of cold air alerted Ruth that her chest had been exposed.

Ruth didn't move, not even breathing. She had moved into a realm of fear she had never thought she was capable of. This thing above her...it was not human in any way. It was a monster masquerading as a human and doing a poor job at it. Ruth feared for her life and her soul in a way she never thought possible. A burning terror that nonetheless froze her in place, paralyzing her muscles and rendering her incapable of anything more than an inaudible squeak of resistance.

Kaoru went to work with the deftness and poise of an expert calligrapher. Thin red lines opened up between Ruth's breasts as the silver klaive went by. Soon the lines formed a pair of kanji, placed directly above the Black Spiral sigil. Kaoru paused, admiring his work, "The Shibara family sign," he explained, "written upside down, so that if Hikaru ever undresses his little slut again, he'll see that she's been marked as mine."

Kaoru paused, "But it's still not enough, I think he needs a little more of a reminder, his life belongs to me."

Kaoru grabbed Ruth's raven hair and walked briskly over to the fireplace, dragging the stumbling girl behind him. A few embers flared up into half-hearted flames with a few prods from the poker. Kaoru carefully, almost reverentially removed the ring he wore. The seal on it bore the same kanji that had been marked on Ruth's bared chest. He placed the ring in a set of tongs and thrust it into the hottest part of the fire, holding it there for a few seconds.

Judging it to be a good heat, Kaoru removed the ring from the fire. Taking out a scrap of leather, he carefully held on to the now burning-hot piece of jewelry. With his other hand he delicately lifted Ruth's chin, carefully observing her broken, tear-streaked face. Kaoru smiled, a grim, humourless smile, "Take this back to your precious kitty."

Ruth moaned in helpless pleasure as Kaoru firmly pressed the ring into her forehead. A few whisps of smoke came out of the sides, mutely testifying to the burning flesh below. When Kaoru removed the ring, the Shibara family seal remained forever embedded in Ruth's forehead. Kaoru let go her chin, allowing her to collapse nervelessly to the floor. He stood up and said in a louder voice, "Takahashi, Onigumo."

Two figures came in and immediately dropped to their knees, bowing humbly and gracefully. "Kaoru-sama," Takahashi said.

"Take...this away from me. Give her back that stupid little toy," indicating the klaive, "when you've returned her from where you took her. And tell that fool Malinko that he failed to keep his end of the bargain, as I had to do the dirty work myself, he can consider the deal off."

Ruth did not remember the ride home. She didn't even remember what Kaoru had done to her. She sat in the back seat of the car, staring uncomprehending at her fingers as they snapped back into place, healing at a supernatural rate. All she saw were the eyes. The dead, piercing eyes that were so much like the eyes of someone she loved.

"Get up you stupid Kitty! Right fucking now!"

"Hrrrr...wuzza...OW!" Hikaru sat up violently as his broken arm was jostled.

"We're getting out of here now!" Shani pretty much shouted in his ear.

"Wait...what? Wait a minute!" Hikaru said, carefully attempting to get dressed over his sling, "What about Cole...and the rest of the pack? What the hell's going on?"

"Cole went on ahead to see if she could do some damage control, Blue's being her guardian for the second. She told us to get the fuck out of here right now and she'll try and set up a meeting place in Madison! We have to go!"

"Why? What's going on?"

"Spirals, Cole says they're moving all over town, several of our safe houses have already been hit, and they're heading this way, Lysander and Jess are in the truck now come ON!"

Shani and Hikaru stumbled out the front door of the apartment, the latter still clumsily trying to get his shirt on. Lysander's pickup stood out like a chariot to sanctuary in the glow of the setting sun. The two scrambled in, barely fitting with the two Garou and one rather excited dog already in there. As soon as no one was attached to the ground, Lysander hit the gas, peeling out of the parking lot.

Jess grabbed Hikaru's arm, closed her eyes and focused. Hikaru gritted his teeth at the feeling of shattered bones forcing themselves into place and physically re-knitting. It was only a moment, then Jess collapsed against the seat, pale and sweating. Shani looked concernedly at her from the front seat. Hikaru couldn't help but notice she had actually gotten a leather eye patch, complete with a skull and crossbones, to cover the missing eye.

"Damnit Jess, don't kill yourself trying to fix me!" Hikaru said, catching his breath.

Jess waved a hand with feeble dismissiveness, "You're in charge...if we run...into trouble...you're the better...fighter."

"Then ask permission next time," Hikaru growled, "I don't want any stupid self-sacrifices on my conscience." He turned towards the front, "Okay, details, what's happening?"

Lysander replied rather tersely, "Cole called us a few minutes ago, said that traffic-cams and police bands were on fire with activity. The Spirals, the locals and the..." a growl crept into his voice, "...traitors. Making a complete sweep of the town, hitting all our safe-spots."

"So we're bugging out now," Shani continued, "and getting the fuck out of here before the sun sets and they get...reinforcements.

"Good plan," Hikaru said, "What about Ruth?"

"What about her?" Jess asked, "If she's caught by them, there's shit we can do right now in the condition we're in, and if she's working for them now...it explains how they knew where to hit."

Hikaru hissed, but had no reply. It did explain that. Still, he felt it was wrong to leave the psychotic bitch behind, very wrong. Hikaru felt that if he actually opened his mouth to say anything...it would turn into a demand to stay behind and find her, one way or the other. He kept his mouth shut out of sheer willpower.

"Umm...Lysander, this isn't the right direction," Shani said hesitantly.

"I know," Lysander replied, the same terseness in his voice, "I'm checking the clinic."

"Are you sure that's a good..." Shani stopped, the clinic had pulled into view.

The general din of sirens and horns was still fairly distant, rushing haphazardly to meet an unknown and unguessed threat stalking the city this evening. None had come to the clinic yet, or possibly had been and gone, called to presumably more urgent matters. Whatever the case, the lot was eerily silent in spite of the plainly obvious violence that had taken place around the building. The glass doors lay in the lot, bent and shattered. Two mangled figures lay in the lot in puddles of their own blood, both unrecognizable.

Hikaru felt a change in movement and realized the truck had come to a stop. "Lysand...god damnit Lysander, get back here, we need to go!" Shani's commands fell on deaf ears as the metis ran wordlessly inside the building.

Hikaru grabbed Shani's shoulder, "Don't, we go in together and get him out, he's after his uncle."

"Got it," Shani replied.

"Can you shoot straight with just one eye?" Hikaru asked.

Shani moved her hair out of the way, revealing the one remaining eye. The tattoos that spiraled all over her body and face, mute testament to a curse passed down to her through her father's side of the family, didn't end at the edge of her eyelid. A deep black line spiraled around the iris, disappearing into the depths of her pupil, "Who do you think you're talking to, Kitty? I am Shani, I always shoot straight."

Hikaru smiled despite himself, "Good, you've got my back then. Jess?"

The blonde opened her own door, "I'm not going down quietly, if that's what you're asking."

"Good enough for me," Hikaru said, "Let's go before that idiot gets himself killed."

The oppressive silence inside the clinic doors was broken by the crunch of glass underfoot as three figures cautiously made their way in. Hikaru, Shani and Jess looked around in shock, voices temporarily subdued by the sight that had greeted them. The lights had gone out here, so most was mercifully cloaked in the shadows of the now nearly-omnipresent night. What was revealed by the muted purple twilight was more than enough. The violence and death promised by the exterior of the clinic was fully delivered by the interior.

Patches of black formed a chaotic pattern across the floor, connected in an intricate fashion by splatters and smears, as if things had been ripped apart, thrown over, or dragged back and forth across the floor. The walls were no less decorated. Bodies and parts of bodies lay crumpled beneath bloodstained dents in the walls, where they had been thrown with enough force to crack the wooden struts beneath the plaster. No piece of furniture, no desk, chair, or computer, had been left in one piece. Most had been inserted into body parts by brute force. Where no hole was, one was made, where skin wouldn't stretch to accommodate, it was ripped in half. Crude trophies and macabre models adorned the room.

It was as if a psychotic spectre of death had come through the room, converting all to its preferred view of things, arranging the formerly living to match the chaotic and indecipherable equations and patterns that made up its own universe. Hikaru, Shani and Jess waded through the aftermath of what seemed like a sheer manifestation of the concept of violent, unmerciful death itself.

The silence was broken by an angry roar somewhere deeper within the building. It was answered by a second, slightly higher pitched, from the same direction. The sounds of fierce destruction came shortly afterward. Hikaru gave an order, but whatever it was supposed to be was lost to the loud, echoing punctuations of Shani's pistols. Hikaru jerked back in time to see something large and furred fall to the floor, large holes in its head and chest. He turned back to see movement in the shadows ahead.

Hikaru counted four before steel met steel. "Jess, keep'em off of Shani," Hikaru shouted, taking on two for himself.

They pulled together and stuck together despite the attacks of the Spirals. Within a couple seconds Hikaru had managed to drop one of his. Shani and Jess held their own admirably. Jess moving seamlessly to interrupt any attack on the Strider, who constantly repositioned, trying to get a clear shot to an otherwise distracted Spiral Dancer.

One loud report and one more assailant went down. Hikaru hissed as the momentary distraction allowed his own combatant to dart in and leave a burning red line across his forearm. He ducked beneath an over-eager finishing blow and brought the katana up in a graceful and terminal arc. The third out of four Spirals fell to the ground in two pieces. Hikaru turned to see how the others were doing and was rather surprised to see both running away from him in opposite directions. Then he looked down and noticed the round, knobbly object sitting between his feet.

Shani beat fruitlessly at the pile of rubble. "Kitty, god damnit, you better fucking answer me or I'll give you a reason to stay quiet and scared you sonofabitch I swear I'll come in there and rip you a new..."

And so the curses continued for a short while longer before trickling away in uncertainty. Shani didn't want to admit to herself what had likely happened. She had seen the near-dead Black Spiral pull the grenade out of its pocket...had been too slow to stop it...had not been loud enough to draw Kitty's attention from his own fight and warn him about it...and been too scared for her own life to stay and help him...and now she was stuck on the other side of a broken wall.

Shani slumped against the wall dejectedly, she should have stayed with him, and now she was cut off from everyone. "Stupid Lysander and his stupid uncle," she said, feeling all of the concern but none of the venom her words carried, "I should find them at least."

With that she picked herself up and journeyed further into the building. Things didn't seem quite as bad in this hall. Only shattered windows, no bodies or anything of that sort. She could be thankful for that at least.

A low growl interrupted her thoughts. Apparently she hadn't been quite thankful enough. Turning and aiming in one smooth motion, Shani caught the sickly yellow reflection of lupine eyes in the moonlight streaming through a shattered section of outer wall. The wolf leapt at her, revealing bald and deformed patches of fur as moonlight uncovered more of its body. A Black Spiral Dancer, Shani fired.

The bundle of stinking fur hit her slight frame hard enough to knock her over. But there was no muscle behind it, the wolf was dead before it even completed its leap. Shani grunted, shoving what felt like well over one hundred pounds of fuzzy corpse off from on top of her. A grunt of pain was forced from her lips as a steel-toed boot came down on her wrist. Her gun was ripped out of her hand before she could protest, and a pair of rough hands yanked her to her feet. Shani growled and lashed out with a foot, catching one of the two in the shin. She began snaking her restrained arm around to get ahold of her second pistol.

Stars filled Shani's vision as she was kicked firmly in the gut. A second later more pain and bolts exploded as she was punched across the face. Thank Gaia she completely lacked a glass jaw. A hand lifted her chin up and she was face to face with someone who wore way too much black make-up and not nearly enough deodorant, soap, or toothpaste, "Little bitch, you're gonna regret that, I'll make sure of AAAGGRAAGGGHH!"

Shani had lunged forward and sunk her teeth into the hideously greasy nose. She now jerked back, ripping away a large amount of skin and a fair deal of cartilage as well. The back of her head connected with the chin of the one holding her and she found herself released. Not missing a beat she drew her remaining pistol while spitting out the Black Spiral's nose and trying not to vomit at the taste. She looked up just in time to see a shiny silver dagger go to her throat, "Ooo BIDTH! Glook what ooo nid!"

She was dead, the knife was already moving, about to slice open her carotid. Then came the shriek. It was a hideous sound of compressed hate, pain and venom. Yet it hadn't come from Shani, nor the two attacking her. For a few brief seconds, though, it formed the complete center of all her sensation. She heard it. She felt it reverberate through her entire body, she tasted its venom, she smelled its fear and pain, she even saw the entire hallway vibrate at the sheer power of the scream.

It ended sharply, over as quickly as it had started. Shani waited for the pain and flood of warmth down her front as the knife slid through her neck. It didn't come. The Spiral remained rigid in front of her, knife millimeters from her flesh. Confused, Shani tried to back away. She couldn't. Her muscles seemed completely paralyzed, as if her body still resonated with the fear that had come from that ungodly cry. Shani felt a hand encircle her wrist. She couldn't turn her head to see who it was.

Whoever it was dragged her roughly through the hole in the wall, to the deepening night outside. Shani was dropped unceremoniously on the ground outside. A voice from behind her said, "As soon as you can, get the fuck out of here, take Hikaru and the others and go."

Shani recognized that voice, just barely. Even though it sounded like the talker had just completely shredded her vocal chords to pieces, Shani caught the British accent clearly enough. With effort, she slowly began to force herself up. Her entire body felt like one large cramp as every muscle slowly forced itself to stop tightening up in response to that supernatural shriek. "R...R...Ru..."

"Shut up and go you bloody arse," came the voice, "Or I'll kill you myself...no, that's not what I'll do I like you...I'll, you need to go...it talks to me...he talked to me, but he doesn't now he seeks...but I can't abide an imperfect reflection of...go now before they come back!"

Shani stood up painfully and stared at the figure now gripping its head in apparent pain. By Gaia...was that Ruth?! This crazed, broken figure in front of her? Wearing...well, not wearing a lot. Shani gaped at the figure's body. The skin had grown taut, as if the muscles beneath fought each other in nervous tension. Her pale frame was decimated with bruises and scars, her hair ragged. She couldn't have been Ruth, she was a hideous, thin ghoul of the woman who had once fought alongside Shani, covered in infected black scars, dug into her skin in grotesque patterns that made the eyes water when one tried to follow them.

Shivering in fear, Shani raised her pistol, "You deserve a quick death, Ruth."

The figure froze and looked at Shani. Shani's finger stopped, poised on the trigger. The eyes were still Ruth's, and now they pierced Shani with an intense desperation and need, "No! No you cannot! I have not seen him again yet...then there's peace...you cannot break that desire it is not allowed!"

"I have to hon, you'll find peace," Shani persisted, trying to will herself to pull the trigger.

"Peace," Ruth repeated, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the barrel. Suddenly her eyes shot open, "No...he's come...go please...I'll come no I can't! Please let me see him..."

"Oh darling, you've done quite well in finding what we're looking for," Came a voice from behind Shani.

She whirled and pointed the gun. She knew that voice well enough, even if she had heard it only once before. That vampire-wannabe freak, Malinko. He was there, along with the goth-bitch who always seemed to hang around him. There were two more goths with them, each aiming a rifle directly at Shani.

"I'm sorry...I'm sorry...that wasn't meant to be...I wasn't meant to be like this...you weren't meant to be like this...and you'll soon not be..." Ruth tittered behind her, almost childlike laughter combined with the dire words she said.

"What the fuck did you do to her?" Shani asked.

"Oh don't worry sunshine, it won't happen to you," Malinko said, "You'll get a quicker end, and next on the list is that pretty-boy you associate with. Lights."

Shani covered her eye as several bright spotlights were turned on her. Reactively she fired, hearing one scream of pain before the gun was ripped from her hands. She felt her own hands yanked behind her again, this time with no spare weapon to grab. Eventually her vision came back. Malinko stood over her, practically embracing her. Anastasia was behind her, holding her arms back. Shani leaned forward trying to get another chunk of nose, then was cruelly yanked back by her hair. She felt the sting of silver pressed against her neck.

Malinko leaned in closer, grinning and revealing a pair of fangs, "And now you die my sweet..."

A pause as Malinko continued to look into Shani's remaining eye. Shani didn't dare move, fixed in place by the slight hiss of her own flesh recoiling from the silver dagger. Malinko leaned back slowly, releasing Shani's hair. He gripped her scalp with one hand and twisted her sideways, "Anastasia hon...look at her face."

Shani was terrified, not knowing what awaited her, if it was similar to anything the hopelessly insane Ruth had gone through. The goth-girl holding her arms examined her face dispassionately. Shani felt a brief cold shiver as their eyes met. There was absolutely no love in that bitch's eyes, only a cold lust for power. "Well I'll be," she said eventually.

"Do you think...?" Malinko asked.

"There's no mistaking that pattern," came the reply.

"What are you ta..." Shani started.

"Shut up," and a line of pain up her arm as Anastasia cruelly yanked Shani's wrist upward.

Malinko leaned in close again, he gave Anastasia a grin then looked Shani in the eye, "Just so you know, you'll never find what you seek in St. Paul, it's far too well hidden."

And Shani's world collapsed into darkness as the hilt of the knife connected bluntly with her temple.

Anastasia watched the four figures get back into the pickup and drive away. She turned to Malinko, "You realize they'll never actually think they got away by luck, they'll know that you plan to use them, right?"

"It can't be helped," Malinko replied with a sigh, "If I kill one of them, the rest will stay and try to hunt me down. They don't stand a chance, but it would be an annoying distraction. Since that bastard Kaoru backed out of the deal, I thought I was going to have to eventually go house to house in St. Paul to find what I was looking for. The whole assault tonight was just an attempt to kill that cat so that Kaoru wouldn't have the pleasure of torturing him anymore, a clear signal that if he fucks with my interests, I'll fuck with his."

"And the Russian bitch?"

"A beautiful stroke of luck," Malinko said happily, "Who would have guessed that of all people, she'd have something to do with the weapon and the power it holds. She's indeed one of the cursed...that's probably why she was in the area in the first place. Either way, she probably knows about the curse, and will turn St. Paul upside-down searching for the cause and cure of it. That provides me with the in that Kaoru so unreasonably took away."

"I presume you have some way of making sure this all happens as you've planned?" Anastasia asked.

"Of course, I call it Anastasia."

The girl smiled, "Will I get a proper goodbye before I go?"

Malinko smiled even more broadly, "I wouldn't dream of doing otherwise," he yanked the chain in his hands, causing Ruth, who had been looking forlornly at the disappearing set of tail-lights to come stumbling over, "And it isn't right for you to be unreasonably stressed during your trip, so you can bring this along and treat it however you wish, just so long as you keep the ritual refreshed."

"You know I view that thing as an annoyance and a hindrance, right?" Anastasia glowered, "I shant be kind to it."

"Then put her to good use," Malinko replied, "The more broken she is, the more receptive she'll be to my suggestions when you return with her."

Lysander sat in the hotel room with his head in his hands. This couldn't be happening. His town, his land. His fucking land! His uncle was alive, he refused to believe otherwise. The tangled scents of the shed blood of countless innocents still burned his nostrils, even after a long shower. But there had been one scent absent. The scent of the only relative he still had contact with, and that was the most important. If that scent wasn't at the clinic, then he wasn't at the clinic, which meant he was alive, he had to be.

And that meant he had been run off the territory as well. That rankled almost as much as the thought of him being dead. The others simply couldn't understand. The cat and the Russian were never in one place long enough to actually form a connection to the land. Jess? True, she had been here longer than Lysander, but she had problems of her own, what with being Roland's slave for most of it, that kind of interfered. The turncoat British bitch? Lysander preferred not to think about her.

He had seen her, by the side of that Malinko character. Goddamn traitor. Hell, Shani had verified it. Lysander didn't care if she had been forced into that position or mentally scarred or whatever. She made the choice to voluntarily walk away from the pack, in essence betraying them. This was a consequence of her actions...and thus a quick death was the best thing he could give her. It was the best.

He would have done it then too, were it not for the three lackeys who jumped him at that point. Given that he was searching the trashed remains of what used to be his uncle's clinic, looking for the body of his uncle who might have been killed by these same vermin...that was a really bad choice on their part. He had taken his time killing them.

Jess had found him panting, covered in their blood, and a little of his own. He remembered her trying to tell him something, individual scraps of words finding their way through the red haze that seemed to surround him. Eventually he comprehended that Hikaru was injured and Shani was missing.

Eventually both were resolved, Lysander still wasn't sure how, it was all a blur. Jess had ended up taking the wheel, while after a lot of patient and calming talk from Shani, who looked like she had just been through a bit of her own hell, Lysander had calmed down to the point that he could go about mending Hikaru, who had suffered a nasty concussion from apparently hiding under a desk a mere ten feet from an exploding grenade. The preening bastard was lucky he wasn't ripped to shreds by shrapnel.

The trip to Madison was likewise a blur. Shani had said something about Ruth, and how she was apparently even more psychotic than before. Lysander had took that in stride, it would make it easier to...well...to give her a proper end to her suffering. But Hikaru hadn't taken the news too well at all. As for Jess, she had just sort of nodded knowingly.

Lysander ripped the blankets off the hotel bed. He had to credit Hikaru one thing: The cat knew how to provide a comfortable place to sleep when it was needed.

His land. His fucking land.

The eight foot tall furred monstrosity slowly drifted to sleep, the small dog trustingly curled up in his flank.

Lysander sat down heavily at the table and looked up just in time to catch the small-framed girl flying at him. Sheer surprise prevented him from catching his balance in time to stop the chair from falling backwards. "Lysander! You're alive, that's so awesome!"

Lysander grunted in reply, rubbing the back of his head where it had impacted the floor. Eats-Mice happily jumped off of him. "Okay goody, we're all here...or at least all of us are here who are coming here...which is all of us, so we're all here!"

IHOP, of all places to decide to meet it had to be IHOP. Go figure. Lysander looked and noticed that Eats Mice's spot had two plates. One had a stack of eight large pancakes on it. The other was empty except for a few spots of syrup. Apparently she was already half-done with lunch...or breakfast, or whatever the hell it was for her.

Hikaru seemed rather intently focused, "You said that you had information for us, right?"

Eats-Mice looked blank for a second, "...Um...oh yeah! The visitor! She was very nice, she gave me a gift!"

"Gift?" said Lysander, interested despite himself.

"Oh yes, it was very nice, very pretty. Not pink or green, but still very pretty," Eats-Mice affirmed.

"Eats-Mice," Jess said slowly and carefully,"We need to know who this person you met was, and what she knows about Hikaru's...er...Kaoru. Do you think you can tell us that?"

The young looking Garou gave Jess a long smug look. Leaning forward confidentially, she poked Jess in the nose, "Beep!"

With that she jumped back in her own chair and began to wolf down the pancakes. Everyone watched her eat, some in awe, some in frustration. Finally Hikaru leaned forward, "So have you heard anything from Cole or Blue?"

"Those two? Oh yeah, they've gone hiding, they have some bad people after them, kind of like you do," Eats-Mice burbled.

"How come you're out and about then?" Hikaru asked.

"I like to play!" Eats-Mice said happily, "And while some of them don't play nice, they haven't won against me yet."

"But what about this person you met?" Jess persisted.

"Knock Knock," Eats-Mice countered.

"Knock-Knock?"

"Knock-Knock."

A hesitation, "Who's there?"

"Notyou."

Jess looked confused, "Notyou who?"

Eats-Mice smiled, "Oh, if it's not me there, then who could be knocking?" and promptly went back to eating.

There was relative silence for thirty seconds as Eats-Mice continued eating, Hikaru, Shani, and Lysander stared in awe, and Jess sat fuming.

Eventually Eats-Mice fixed Shani with a stare, "You don't want to be here, do you?"

"What makes you say that?" Diffident.

"There's someplace else you want to be, quite important to you, that's all."

Hikaru looked at Shani. Lysander shrugged and gulped down some water, grimacing at the taste.

"You should go there with her," Eats-Mice said to Lysander suddenly, "You might just find something interesting there."

"As for you," turning to Hikaru, "The happy flower points to its nurturer, kind of a silly saying, but that's okay."

Eats-Mice turned to Jess, "And finally you..."

The young one leaned in close, looking deadly serious for the first time that day. Jess leaned in to hear. Eats-Mice whispered in her ear, "Don't be such a sourpuss", kissed her on the cheek and giggled.

Without a pause Eats-Mice had jumped off her chair and skipped over to the door, "Cover my bill you guys...oh, and I'm leaving you some gifts in your truck, hope you like them."

"Eats...!" Hikaru started, then jumped up and ran to the door himself. There was no sign of the short Garou anywhere.

A few minutes later, all four were gathered around the bed of the pickup. There were a few items sitting in back. Next to a scrap of bright pink paper with the name 'Lysander' written on it was what looked like a dried tree-branch. Confused the metis picked it up. The branch felt...weighty in his hands, and there was a definite tingling sensation, as if there was a slight electrical current running through it. As Lysander stared at it, the branch began to suddenly grow and become heavier. Lysander grabbed it with both hands to avoid dropping it on the pavement.

The branch appeared to adjust its shape to conform perfectly to Lysander's hands and continued to grow until it reached nearly nine feet in length. At that point the tip continued to grow outward and become shiny, until the end formed into a two foot long curved blade. Lysander now stood in the IHOP parking lot, holding a nine-foot halberd with what looked like a crystalline axe-head. Realizing something like that would draw comment, Lysander stopped concentrating on the flow of energy coursing through the weapon. Within a few seconds it had changed back into a small stick.

Lysander smiled broadly and stuck the branch into his belt.

Hikaru saw his name on a piece of eye-watering neon-yellow paper. Next to it sat...a rose.

A glass rose.

Hikaru picked it up carefully, feeling a little jilted after seeing what Lysander had received. Upon closer examination Hikaru noticed the rose wasn't entirely homogeneous in nature. Through the center of the stem ran a thin line of a different material, this line was a deep blood red. He shook the rose experimentally. Nothing happened.

Grunting in disappointment Hikaru examined the piece of paper. On the back was written, "This was given to me by my really nice and fun guest. When you get to St. Paul, it will lead you to her, as she's really hard to find, otherwise. Sorry if it doesn't seem as super-cool as everyone else's gifts, but my guest tells me this is the best one of all, because it will let you save the life of the one you love...or something like that. I don't know, that's what she told me. Anyways I should stop because I'm running out of room on this paper and I don't think I can fit any mo-"

Shani's gift appeared to be a simple box. On top was a piece of orange paper with her name scrawled on it. Below it were a series of pictures. The first showed a gun pointing at a smiley-face. The second showed the gun shooting a bullet into the smiley-face, which had now become a frowney-face. The third showed the frowney-face disappearing in a rather dramatic and disturbing explosion for a marker-drawing.

Inside the box was a pistol. Shani smiled.

Jess' gift seemed to be no more than an envelope. A blue sheet of paper with her name written on it informed her, "My guest told me to give this to you specifically. Shrug."

Jess opened the envelope. Inside was a small piece of paper. Upon it were a few sentences, written in a small, yet impeccably neat hand. "You do not know me, and I have never met you. Yet examination of the tapestry of fate and probability has shown that your threads have formed strong intersections with those of my own charge, and will do so again in the future. So I offer you nothing more than a prophecy: When you return from whence you came, take what was given to another but meant for a third. This will give you a chance to give back the gift that was given to you earlier: A second chance at life, a chance for redemption."

All four looked at each other.

Lysander broke the silence first, "St. Paul?"

Shani nodded. Hikaru and Jess grunted in unison.

"Then let's do this," the Metis said, jumping in and starting the truck, for some strange reason feeling almost as if he drove with the hand of fate pushing him along.

The sun was setting. This time it was what was waited for, rather than what was dreaded. Hikaru sat on the edge of the bed, staring with distaste at the glass rose. "You sure you want to do this alone?"

Shani nodded, "It's what I've waited my whole life for. I have to do this, and I have to do it alone to make sure it's done right...to make sure the curse is lifted."

"I don't like it, the whole splitting up thing," Hikaru said.

"It was your plan," Shani replied.

"Yeah, I still don't like it. Just happens to be the lesser evil at the moment. We're out of time, we need to find out what we can so...well...so I can do something about Kaoru...so we can get rid of Malinko...so we can end your curse...get Lysander his city back..."

"...So we can do something about Ruth," Shani finished.

Hikaru didn't reply to that. Growling in annoyance he dropped the rose on the bed, "How the hell am I supposed to find this person?"

"No idea," Shani said, distracted, "Anyways, I'm headed out. If Cole's right, the majority of the St. Paul Black Spirals are still in Cedarburg with Malinko, which should make things safer here."

"Safer," Hikaru spat, "My whole life has been spent trying to find someplace 'safer'."

Lysander crept through the house. There was something horribly familiar here that had made him stop in the first place. The clinic had looked the same when he had gone through there. This place had been hit, and hit recently.

Lysander didn't know why, but an insatiable restlessness had made him get up and head around town, seemingly at random. In the twilight, the city seemed almost dead. Few cars went about, any scent of wolves seemed, at best, several days old. Then he passed by this house. There was a scent here, among the shattered doors and broken tables. A very familiar scent.

Breathing, behind that door there...it looked like it headed into the basement. Lysander cautiously approached, "Hello?"

The breathing stopped with a nervous gulp.

"Look, I'm not the one who did this to your place, I'm hunting them."

Hurried, whispered conversation from behind the door.

"Hey, if you really want, I can just break down the door."

Silence, then a click and the door opened two inches, "Who are you?"

Lysander thought about it for a second, "Help."

Buddy had immediately run up to the opened door and stuck his nose in the crack, investigating. Slowly the door opened further, Buddy's tail wagged furiously, the voice again, "You're not one of...them?"

"Who did this?" Lysander asked, for the moment ignoring the question.

Someone started crying softly inside, the voice comforted it for a few seconds. Finally, "The sept elders...the ones that were left, said we'd be safe here. C...Casey just opened the door when they knocked...and they stabbed her! They...she stabbed me too. I ran...I didn't want to, but I was so scared, I thought I was going to die, I grabbed Michelle here and we hid...

"We could hear them out there...both of them...killing everyone else in the house..."

"Who?" Lysander asked again, his voice somewhat more sympathetic than before. By now the door had opened fully and a thin, gaunt kid, couldn't have been older than fourteen, stepped out. He was horribly pale, clutching a cloth soaked through with a dark-red substance to his side.

"They...I think they left an hour ago...she was dressed like a vampire...and the one who kept talking like she was insane or something...some English girl, she had some metal bracelets on."

"Ruth," Lysander muttered, then spoke up, "Here, let me see how bad you were stuck."

Carefully, wincing in pain, the kid lifted up his shirt, "She...I think it was made of silver...they told me that silver hurts worse than anything else...they were right."

"Mmm hmm," Lysander said, devoting his energy towards mending the wound, the worse of the bleeding stopped and a mortal gash soon turned into nothing more than an ugly scar. Lysander wiped his brow, what he wouldn't give for a properly run clinic right now, "What about the girl, Michelle? Is she hurt?"

Two pale eyes stared at Lysander in fright from deeper within the closet, the boy said, "I...I don't think so."

"What's your name?" Lysander asked.

"Oh...um...Thomas, Thomas Manning."

"Alright Thomas. I'll tell you what, there's a few of us who just got to town. We're trying to clean up this mess. I'll take you two back with me so we can finish getting you fixed up. Then if you want, you can help us."

The boy squared what little jaw he had, "Er...I can't do that sir."

Lysander raised an eyebrow.

"I have to warn the others, sir."

"Others?"

"When...when the sept was hit, there were a few other survivors that got away, we've all been hiding since then...but now...I have to warn them about those two women."

Lysander paused. He was about to just grab the kid and haul him off to relative safety...but now an idea slowly began to take shape in his head.

"Oooookay, here, I'll come with, my name's Lysander by the way."

Hikaru fumed in the second-rate biker-bar, rapidly losing patience with the looks he was getting. He continued twirling the rose between his fingers, carefully avoiding the needle-sharp glass thorns.

"Hey buttercup, date leave you in the cold?" came a taunt.

Hikaru closed his eyes, someone had damn well better be having better luck tonight.

"Hey, fairy-boy, I'm talking to you," came the voice again, attached to a grotesquely obese man in a leather jacket that lacked both the proper size and proper taste, "Your woman stand you up...or was it your man who stood you up?"

Laughter echoed back and forth across the bar. That was it, Hikaru had had enough. This stupid little rose somehow was supposed to lead him to his contact, nice of no one to drop the fucking hint to him how exactly it was supposed to do that. He had Kaoru breathing down his neck, he had Ruth...no, he didn't want to think about that. He had Shani, someone he considered a true friend fighting for her life here. He had, in short, quite a bit of stress built up. And this fat, disgusting hick was going to continue adding to that?

Hikaru looked up, "Funny how the fat fuck having a drink with all his leather-bound butt-buddies is calling me gay. What's the matter? Asshole hurt a little because you forgot the safeword tonight?"

That got his attention. The bar had suddenly dropped to a dead silence, "You wanna take that back right now faggot," lardball said with a belch, "We don't take that kind of talk to kindly around here."

"I know exactly how you take it," Hikaru interrupted, "Bent over, pants around your ankles, waiting for Daddy to fill you up."

"That's it," Tubbs howled, "You gon' get raped by this pool stick!"

Hikaru smiled as the bikers charged him.

Another part of the city, this time a nightclub. Jess nursed the drink, having no real urge to drink it. Her thoughts were centered upon the letter she had gotten, and the prophecy contained within. Jess fucking hated ambiguously worded statements, and this was no exception. There was any number of ways she could have taken that message, none of them good.

The music was lackluster. The drinks sucked here, and now there was someone hitting on her, fuck. Jess turned to tell the bastard to kindly fuck off before she ripped his genitalia off, and stopped. She was frozen in place by those eyes. There was a brief moment of unbalance as Jess felt like she was leaving her own body. She felt like she was now nothing more than a captive passenger in her own flesh, held securely in place by those eyes.

"Good," said the Asian-looking guy behind the eyes, "Now that we're seeing eye to eye, why don't we...wait...I recognize you."

Jess tried to reply, tried to say anything, tried to move. Nothing was happening.

"You're the one who associates with Hikaru-chan, aren't you?" The figure laughed gently, "Well, I was only coming here to feed tonight...but I suppose I can do that and do Kaoru-sama a favour. Onigumo!"

A second Asian joined him, this one grotesquely muscled, "Onigumo, make sure the back alley's clear, we've got a delicious looking dinner, and a chance to further Kaoru-sama's own plans."

Jess screamed within the confines of her own mind, trying desperately to do anything. But instead, she sat helplessly, staring into those eyes. Onigumo? That must mean he was...Taka-something? Those two, Hikaru said they were lackeys of Kaoru's. Shit.

The smaller, better looking one leaned forward, Taka-something, "You really want to take a walk out the back way and wait there for me. Oh, and make yourself a bit prettier when you do."

Jess felt horribly confused for a few seconds. She looked down, was it something she drank? No, the cup was still full. Still, what was she doing just waiting around? There were things she had to do. Not even bothering to pay for the drink, Jess got up and walked towards the exit.

...No, that didn't seem right. Without even thinking about it, she switched directions and headed for the back door. For some reason her overshirt itched horribly. She undid two buttons, revealing some more cleavage. That was better. Some small part of her wondered why she was now standing in the back alley of the club, sharing space with filth, vermin, and some more filth, trying carefully not to step in the more disgusting clots of garbage.

"I'm waiting for someone," she said, wondering who she was trying to reassure.

"Good job woman," Takahashi said, closing the door behind him, "Now, be a good girl and lean your head back."

That small part of her brain was now yelling at Jess, telling her this was the wrong thing to do. She ignored it, of course this was the right thing to do. She leaned back, hearing a slight hiss of anticipation as Takahashi leaned forward, fangs extending.

A growl and a surprised grunt, followed by the sounds of something large and meaty hitting the alley floor. Takahashi looked up in surprise. Jess saw Onigumo fighting with some sort of dog. ...no, that was a wolf. Though it was stained with debris from the alley, the harsh, flickering yellow light showed the slight azure hue of the things fur.

Jess' lips moved, "Blue?"

She recognized that wolf...wait, that was Blue, fighting with...that big creepy guy, the one Hikaru had warned her about. And the other Asian, now right above her throat...and she was leaning her head back waiting for him?!

Jess pushed back from the vampire, reaching back and drawing a knife. The few moments of her not being in control of her own body faded from her memory. She dug her feet in and leapt forward, aiming a blow at the creep's heart. It was deflected as Takahashi drew his katana. Jess didn't wait, pressing forward again. She was deflected again. Before she could make a third assault, Takahashi brought the sword back up, knocking the dagger from her hands.

Piercing pain in her gut. Takahashi easily ran the sword through her body. Jess gasped in surprise...it wasn't supposed to end like this! She looked over and saw that Onigumo had managed to pin Blue to the ground and now was slowly throttling him to death. More pain, this time mixed with a hideous sort of pleasure, originating from her neck. He was biting her!

Jess' hands reached down, fumbling clumsily with the blade of the sword. Her legs threatened to collapse beneath her as she felt a wave of dizziness from the blood-loss. No...wait, her hands weren't burning, and neither was the ragged wound in her gut...that wasn't silver. Jess managed to push the unnatural pleasure of the vampire's bite aside, this wasn't right, she was not going to die like this. She was Garou, and there was one thing all Garou had that this undead creep didn't.

She had rage.

Takahashi had just enough time to realize he had made a grave miscalculation as his intended victim began to grow, and her claws wrapped around her throat. Onigumo expressed the same surprise as Blue did something similar from beneath him.

The music in the club, while rather lame by Jess' standards, was still loud enough to drown out the screams, roars, howls, and sound of flesh tearing and body-parts flying into the brick walls of the alley out back.

Shani walked back into the hotel room, dejected. Nothing, absolutely nothing worthwhile had happened tonight. It had been a waste, an utter waste, and now...

...Why were Kitty and Jess sitting on the bed with such big smiles on their faces?

"Well I hope you two had better luck than me tonight," Shani said tiredly.

"I don't think we did," Jess said, "But maybe you should ask him."

"Who?" Shani muttered looking up, just in time to see the blue-hued wolf step out of the bathroom, still wet from the shower, and shake himself off.

"BlueyoustupidpuppywherethehellhaveyoubeenyoumademesoworriedyoulittlebastardI'llnever..."

"How did you two run into each other?" Hikaru asked.

"Blue says he was actually looking around town for us, caught my scent, and followed to the back-alley," Jess said, "Fucking awesome timing on his part. But apparently Cole's still in hiding, quite a few Spirals are after her, something fierce."

Hikaru shrugged, looking at the rose in his hands. The few bruises he had sustained during the brawl were already fading, and he felt worlds better for it...though a little...unclean for indulging in such a base urge to solve his issues through some mindless violence. Oh well, it had ended fairly well.

It was something else that had caught his interest though. During the fight, he had held on to the rose. Then, near the end when he had theatrically tossed it up into the air, delivered a wickedly beautiful spinning kick to the fattest bastard of the bunch, adding his form to the pile of unconscious forms on the bar floor, and caught the rose afterward...he had pierced his thumb on one of the glass thorns.

In that instant he had a flash of insight. Right then, and for that moment, he was certain he knew the creator of the rose, knew what she looked like, who she was, and what her relations were. And he was certain that in that instant, she had known him as well. Now, hell, even a moment afterward, that knowledge and surety had faded, until Hikaru wasn't certain what the hell happened.

He looked down at the rose in his hands.

Anastasia sat beside the bed, phone in one hand, feather in the other. Occasionally a muffled grunt and scream came out of the pale figure next to her.

"Yes hon, I'm keeping an eye on them..."

"That noise? Oh, it's just Ruth, I figured taping her mouth shut would be a good idea so that she didn't wake up the rest of the hotel with her screams..."

"No, we've been keeping an eye on her. Remaining unseen is rather difficult, so we've had to maintain some distance. Ruth's mental state being what it is, her performance is questionable at best..."

"No, no worries, I've got her skin nailed to the bed-frame. Just as you suggested, mixed-stimuli seems most effective. I plan to proceed with a few more of my own experiments tonight..."

"Well if you wanted to watch, you should have come along, honestly. Really, you should see her, stretched out, pale, sweating, screams of pain masked by the duct-tape, feather running up and down her naked form, nails pounded through her flesh, keeping her securely pinned, she even..."

"Alright alright, but before you go running off to the...shower, if that's what you insist on calling that, I just thought you should know Ruth has spotted a few possible leads. It seems they are still out and about in this city, they just keep their identities damn well hidden..."

"Okay, I understand. I miss you. Torturing this little annoyance here isn't nearly as satisfying as you are..."

"I have to go hon, I need to run the ritual before she goes completely insane, I'll keep you updated."

Fear and hatred. Two of the strongest motivational forces in this world. Many would often misconstrue their scope and effect though, happily ascribing the negative consequences that each may carry, while overlooking the positive and productive ends that each can be put towards. Fear, after all, has always been one of the greatest survival traits any sentient creature can have. Allowing one to avoid threats and dangers to one's life, to live and fight another day. While hatred, properly directed, gives one the strength to overcome adversity and secure a better position in life for himself.

The cat fears his brother, with good reason. The one known as 'Kaoru' is not one to be trifled with, even if one weren't hampered by an annoying family curse. Even without his knack for indirect manipulation and subtle mental torture, his physical skills are such that few could ever hope to stand against him in open combat. The combined sum of his skills makes him a threat to any that draw his attention. He is the shadowy figure behind a web of manipulation and fear. He is the unknown that causes people to cross themselves at night, not knowing what they fear, yet knowing that whatever it is deserves that fear.

Until now, I have been content to stay as invisible and unknown to him as I have to so many other possible threats. But the fickle whim of fate and chance has conspired to force my hand, and thus I must directly intervene in matters to protect my own interests. And thus favours are called in, information is rooted out, and now a chance has presented itself, to take down the thing of nightmare, this Kaoru, using the hand of that which he believes incapable of striking him down.

If my own capabilities were generally known, many would liken me to a god. Who, then, is there for me to pray to?

"And what would a metis have to offer us?" Came the arrogant voice.

Lysander stared evenly at the Garou standing before him. One of nearly a dozen gathered here, and if the kid was to be believed, nearly a dozen more spread in the surrounding countryside. The only survivors in the St. Paul area. "A chance to take back the city," Lysander replied, deciding to take a civil approach to things.

The de-facto leader of the survivors, a stately Silver Fang by the name of Gregor looked down his nose at Lysander, "You have nothing of value to offer us. Get back to Cedarburg, metis, and we'll look after our own here."

Lysander had to hide his hands behind his back as his fists involuntarily clenched. Through gritted teeth he replied, "You mean as well as you did when the Spirals struck?"

"You forget your place, halfbreed," came the snarling reply, "Mutants like you are only half a step away from the Wyrm already, keep testing my patience and you'll never get the chance to return to Cedarburg."

"And why shouldn't I?" Lysander snapped back, "All you've done is hide like rats in a sinking ship."

"Stupid whelp!" Gregor shot, raising a hand to strike, "What do you know of the Wyrm?"

"More than you could imagine," Lysander said, "I know that turning down aid when it's offered will get you and all who follow you killed."

"Big words," Gregor sneered, "But coming from something as worthless as your kind, I feel no need to continue listening."

Lysander let loose a growl from deep within his throat, civility obviously wasn't going to work here, "Then you're obviously unfit to lead, I challenge you for leadership of the remaining Garou of St. Paul."

The Silver Fang stopped, "A nice attempt, but the Litany doesn't allow challenges in a time of war."

"Take a look around," Lysander goaded, "Apparently you're blind as well as incompetent, I don't see any plans of attack being drawn up. I just see a frightened wolf hiding out in the countryside. You're not leading these survivors into war, fighting for their homes and the vengeance of their fallen comrades, so this obviously isn't a time of war for you," the claws came out now, "...so are you going to accept the challenge, or prove yourself a coward?"

There was a delicious moment of silence. After that was dropped, everyone wanted to see what happened next. Gregor turned very slowly, "Accepted."

The Garou in the clearing now numbered over twenty. This was the holiest place still uncorrupted, just outside city limits. Gregor entered the circle, Lysander was already waiting within the perimeter. Gregor turned to the rest of the Garou present, "A challenge has been issued and accepted. As the Litany dictates, the challenged gets to choose the nature of the combat," he turned to face Lysander, radiating both confidence and disdain, "It will be purely physical, to the first blood, no supernatural gifts, only our bodies, and weapons made in the image of Gaia's glory."

Gregor's voice lowered to the point that only Lysander heard the next part, "...understandably, a Wyrmkin such as yourself might have trouble with that."

Standing up tall, assuming full crinos form, Gregor bellowed, "I, Gregor Stenoyvich the second, son of Gregor Stenoyvich the first, recognized head of all warriors of Gaia in the greater St. Paul area, wielder of the Earthenwrath Blade, passed down through six generations of Silver Fangs, and orchestrator of peace between St. Paul and the surrounding territories, lawfully accept this challenge, from..." he waited expectantly.

Lysander stood up, also assuming his most comfortable form. With slightly less gusto he said, "I, Lysander Riley, redeemer of the Riley family line, defender of the Cedarburg territory, slayer of Roland, the...um...Corruptor, destroyer of the Cedarburg branch of Tellus, and member of the Roulette Pack, survivors of the Cedarburg massacre, also accept the terms of the challenge."

Gregor smirked, "That's all you have to your name?" and attacked.

As he leapt through the air, Gregor unsheathed a four-foot runed klaive, seemingly carved from stone. Lysander barely rolled out of the way as the sword bit deeply into the ground he stood upon a moment before. "You're a fool," Gregor roared, "Gaia favours her pure-born."

Lysander flipped himself back on his feet, withdrawing the innocent looking branch that was still attached to his side, "Gaia favours those who are willing to fight tor her," Gregor's eyes widened in shock as his second blow was deflected by the halberd Lysander had seemingly pulled out of nowhere, "Which puts me far above you," a quick jab with the blunt end sent Gregor reeling, "...and I intend to win back what you lack the courage to seize!" four thin red lines opened in Gregor's chest as Lysander lunged forward, slashing with his claws.

The two combatants were immediately set upon and dragged apart by the Garou assigned to mediate the combat. Another elder, Rory, Lysander remembered, stepped forward, "The challenged has been completed. The interloper is victorious, and thus..." a slight hesitance before plunging on, "...is given the authority to lead the remaining Garou of St. Paul against the enemies of Gaia."

Lysander shook off the Garou holding him down, relishing the look of pure venom Gregor was giving him. He noticed that the other elders had stepped back, apparently expecting something from him. Now was as good a time as ever, Lysander thought. He only wished his uncle could see this. "I'm not...um...exactly one for inspirational speeches," he said nervously, realizing all attention was on him.

"You've been attacked from within, most of you have seen loved ones and family fall to the Black Spiral Dancers, you've been run off the land you called home, and you've had to watch it fall to the corruption of the Wyrm. I know the feeling because I've gone through the same thing. We're all here because of the depredations of the Wyrm..."

He paused, uncertain. Exactly where was he supposed to go from here? Ah hell, might as well just wing it, "I can't promise you'll all make it through this alive. But god damnit, Gaia made us the way we are for a reason: To protect her against those who act against her. And if you die, you'll die fighting for your mother, your creator, and your land, rather than die hiding in terror from those that would rip it from you. If you want to run, fine, I can't stop you, but if you want the sacrifices of your brothers and sisters, your packmates, your elders and your pups to mean anything at all, you'll join me!"

The twilight echoed with howls.

Hikaru sat on a bench downtown, staring at the rose. "This is a really stupid idea," he said to himself.

Carefully he tapped the tip of one of the thorns with his index finger. A small bead of red formed on the tip. Hikaru leaned back and closed his eyes.

He remained this way for nearly a minute. Finally the eyes came back open, "Well I'll be damned, it actually worked."

Hikaru got up and walked purposefully to the East.

"Are you sure this is the one?" Anastasia asked.

Ruth nodded, "Just like you said...the one who talked to her, Shani, part of my pa," she winced involuntarily, "...I mean, one of the ones we're hunting...stalking...following...follow with...follow to..."

"Shut up," Anastasia said.

"What's your name?"

"E...Evan..."

"Evan? Good Evan, now, you were spotted talking to, and handing a note to someone. A girl with a Russian accent and tattoos, yes?"

"I don't know what you're talking...AAAAGGG!" there was a short, wet cracking sound.

"Now, you still have nine fingers left, how many more would you like to lose to keep your little secrets?"

"Okay! Okay!!," the brief sound of sobbing, "I did, but only because I was told to!"

"Told to? By who?"

"I can't say, I...NOOOOO-AAAAAHHH!" another noise, rather similar to the first.

"No! No!! I mean I don't know his name. I only run messages for him, he doesn't like to go out in public too much."

"Where can we find him? No no, write it down here...well then use your other hand, it still has all its fingers."

"Alright," a sob, "Alright, there you go...but you can't get in...he's not human...he has several chambers full of cyanide gas to keep out intruders."

"I assure you that's not a problem for us, nor is it any concern of yours. Ruth?"

"The night calls, and I am compelled to answer...is that right?"

"Yes Ruth, kill this man."

"Fine, if you insist."

"What?!"

"Well, we can't have you going and warning him,"

"Wait! No! I'll keep quiet! I'll...no, stay away from me, NOOOOO!!!"

Another wet tearing noise.

"That was easier than I thought it would be. Ruth, come on back to the hotel room, it's time to relieve a little stress."

"Please...no...I don't like it, it hurts so much..."

"Yes, it will."

Night, why did these things always have to take place at night?

Why was she even worrying about that?

The concern continued to aggravate her before sinking back under, quickly replaced by another. It had been like this for a while now. Ever since she had received that note last night, actually. A sea of nervous tension, possibilities and doubts boiling to the surface and releasing distracting vapours, successfully preventing her from creating any sort of coherent plan of attack.

"Should I feel any different?" she said to herself, "It's what I've waited for my whole life."

"You've looked forward to this meeting that much?" said a voice from the shadows, "You do me a great honour."

Shani whirled around. A slight breeze disturbed the half-soaked debris of the alley, shuffling it about in a lethargic, noncomittal fashion. St. Paul wasn't the biggest city out there by any stretch of the imagination. This was probably the only place in the city that actually had a tangle of alleys, something that was ubiquitous in most any other large city in the country. It was the likely reason the note had told her to come here tonight, it was the most out of the way location. Trap? Likely...but what choice did she have?

This is likely her only chance at living.

She had searched for so long, and yet considered herself a failure for most of her life. And why not? Even now she still didn't have even a name to go on. Nothing. Just a curse and a shattered childhood. Each and every waking moment, she remembered the look of blind terror in her mother's eyes as the Delirium took over. The unthinking, animalistic panic that erased rationality, blurred out memory. That which helped protect the identity of her kind by actually erasing the memory of seeing a werewolf in full war-form from those who saw.

She remembered the calm finality in her stepfather's place as he completed the curse and cast her out of the house. She was a monster, and the spawn of another monster. And until she slew the one responsible for creating her, her existence would hold nothing but shame to her mother and stepfather.

Shani remembered each time the tattoos grew, the violent, spasming pains that served as a physical reminder of her curse. Should they cover her entire body before she had devoured the heart of her father, the one who had raped her mother and brought her into this world, that pain would be the last thing she felt before she died.

So she wandered the world, constantly praying and hoping that the demon who created her was still alive, so that she could kill him herself. The one who had planted the seed in unwilling ground, responsible for her very existence, she was destined to remove from this world.

Shani's breath quickened...was this really happening? The voice was dry, yet had a syrupy sweetness to it. "Come out of the shadows," Shani said, "I want to see you."

Footsteps, just a single pair. He walked out from behind a dumpster. He was...her. The eyes, the face. Older, slightly more gaunt. Had Shani remained a male, and gained another decade or so....there would be no difference. A strange tingling sensation in her hands, black tentacles crept in from the edge of her vision.

This couldn't be happening, this was a longed-for dream and a dreaded nightmare, never meant to be reality. She would wake up screaming, probably in pain as the marks on her body grew once again. Kitty would comfort her, as has happened dozens of times before.

No, this was real. Unlike the nightmares, this one had a face.

The realization had a slight calming effect on Shani. Even more than her First Change, this was the end and the beginning of her life. Everything before this, the thoughts, possibilities and conjectures of everything after this, none of it meant a thing. This moment was the entirety of her existence.

"This moment means a lot to me," said her unnamed parent, the stranger who had created her.

"More than you could imagine," Shani replied.

"You probably have a lot of questions," he continued.

"No, none at all," Shani said.

"Nevertheless, I am truly overjoyed to finally meet you," Persistent, "I can give you all I never had the chance to give you. Show you the world I come from, the truth, and bring you to the life you were meant to live."

And just like that, everything, the fear, the doubt, the uncertainty collapsed in Shani. The blind, ignorant presumption. The idiotic self-assurance that she was here to join him. There was no mysterious being here, no horrifying spectre from her past. This was a sad, deluded old man, feeding off the echoes in his own mind, convinced that Shani would conform to the same rules all the voices inside him followed.

Shani closed her eyes, her entire body briefly sagged under the weight of disillusionment. This was what she was so afraid of this whole time? Death was too good for him.

"Father," she said.

"Yes...my daughter," he replied.

"I want you out of my life."

And she attacked.

Malinko looked up as the door opened. A smile grew across his face as he saw Anastasia come in, dragging Ruth behind her on a leash. "Ruth, sit."

"Yes...mistress."

There was no more confusion in those dark eyes. There was no life either. Nothing but a subdued resignation.

"Is that...?" Malinko indicated the long, thin package under Anastasia's arm, wrapped in black silk.

"The sword, yes," Anastasia said, "It was even easier to get than we hoped."

Malinko raised an eyebrow while eagerly unfolding the package. Anastasia elaborated, "The Russian one, Shani, apparently attracted his attention right away. By the second night he had sent an intermediary to arrange a meeting with her. We...intercepted him and persuaded him to share what he knew with us.

"After that, we visited his haven during the daytime, while he was asleep. Admittedly it was well protected. It would have been physically impossible to get inside without his permission. Thankfully it seems that ever since he was changed, he had forgotten that not everyone is restricted to the physical world.

"We traveled to his inner sanctum through the Umbra. He never so much as stirred when we took the sword and left."

Malinko had finally unwrapped the package. He withdrew an ornate broadsword. It was made of some sort of black metal that appeared to absorb all light that struck it. A single lapis lazuli was embedded in the handle. "I've waited so long for this."

"That's not the only good news," Anastasia said with a smile.

"Oh?"

"Another goal of yours has been achieved."

"Do tell my dark beauty."

Anastasia turned towards Ruth, looking at her the way one would look at a disfavoured pet, "She's been broken."

Malinko's eyes widened, "Completely?"

"Try her out for yourself," Invitation in the voice.

Malinko mulled it over for a few seconds before coming to a decision. He took out a cell phone, hitting quick-dial. Brief muttering, ending with, "Bring him in."

A couple seconds later the door opened again. Two burly men in industrial gear walked in, dragging a figure between them, the figure was covered in scars and bruises. The figure raised his head, obviously with great difficulty and pain, and looked around the room.

"You," Malinko said, "You recognize that girl on the floor, do you not?"

Though the man's eyes widened in obvious recognition, he turned back to Malinko, "I don't know who she is, you Wyrm infested scum," he spat blood on the floor, nearly hitting Malinko on the feet. One of the rivetheads struck the side of his face, knocking him to the floor.

"No more," Malinko cautioned the guards. He turned towards Ruth, who sat kneeling on the floor, head down, eyes showing nothing, "Ruth, do you recognize this man?"

Ruth looked up. In a soft, complaint monotone she replied, "Yes, he is the uncle of Lysander Riley, he runs the clinic we visited before Anastasia and I left for St. Paul, he..."

"That's enough Ruth," Malinko said, "I want you to do something for me, do you understand?"

"Yes...master," Ruth replied.

"Good," Malinko looked at the beaten prisoner and smiled, bearing a pair of obviously fake fangs, "I want you to cut this man's fingers off, one at a time. And then his toes, and finally, I want you to slit his throat."

"Yes master," without any hesitation Ruth stood up, unsheathing her klaive. One of the guards held Lysander's uncle down while the other held out his hand.

Screams echoed throughout the house as Ruth grabbed his pinky finger and sawed through it.

"Look as though you're enjoying it," Malinko suggested.

Ruth smiled wickedly. She cruelly grabbed the ring finger and delicately licked off some of the blood that had sprayed there. Then she quickly and remorselessly cut that finger off as well. She went for the middle finger.

"That's enough Ruth," Malinko said, "I'll need him for when the rest of your pack comes back."

Ruth nodded and wordlessly returned to where she was sitting before, licking the blood from her own fingers.

"Take him away," Malinko said.

"Ruth, come over here, sit at my feet, I want to tell you a story. A story about the one who used to own this sword..."

"But...why? We could have been so much together..." The man said before his windpipe was choked off by Shani's claws.

"You are nothing to me," Shani growled back, fangs bared, "You are less than nothing, you are a black hole in my life, you cursed me before I was even born."

"B...But..."

"Shut up!" The low growl had turned into a roar of fury, "My entire life was destined for ruin because of you! I was born from rape and violence! I was cursed because of your crimes! I never knew what it was like to be innocent because of you, you worthless piece of shit!"

One crinos figure picked up the other effortlessly with one arm, "And now you come to me, knowing nothing of my life, and expect me to fawn over you?"

Shani slammed her father against the alley wall. With a grunt she wrenched off his left arm before throwing him against the other wall, howling with pleasure at the sound of multiple ribs breaking with the impact, "You stupid, disturbed little fuck! You put me through hell and then expected me to be grateful?! I don't even know your name!"

The older garou tried feebly to crawl away, "It's...it's..."

"No!" Shani brought one clawed foot down hard upon his back, feeling several vertebrae crunch to powder beneath her toes, "You are nothing! You will not disgrace my life by giving a name to that which I've both sought and reviled my whole life!"

Reaching down, Shani flipped over the now twitching creature, "You are nameless, you are nothing," she placed one claw under his muzzle and braced the other against his sternum, "I...have...no...father!"

His head was wrenched free of his neck and tossed aside. Shani dropped to her knees, panting with exhilaration. Her attention was briefly diverted by the sound of skittering paws further up the alley. Shani looked up to see Blue skid to a stop, followed rapidly by Kitty. "No! Shani, don't!"

Shani howled in rage before plunging her claws through her father's ribcage, "It's over!" she yanked out a collection of glistening red flesh and plunged it into her fanged maw without hesitation, devouring her father's heart.

The Russian leaned back against the alley wall, slowly morphing back into a human shape. She closed her eyes, wondering what the lifting of the curse would feel like. Was it supposed to tingle? Or maybe there was no physical sensation, and the tattoos would just fade on their own?

There was definitely some sort of strange feeling going on inside her. It was sort of like...indigestion?

Shani rocked violently forward, vomiting in the alleyway. Her body spasmed as her stomach forcefully ejected all it's contents. Shani remained in this position for a few more seconds, continuing to dry-heave. When she could finally focus her eyes again, she looked at what she had done. Drool, blood, some of her dinner, and...ash?

A dry rustling noise caught her attention. Trying to swallow the burning fluids back down, Shani looked over. Her father's corpse was no more, undergoing some sort of rapid dessication. The skin paled and shriveled before her eyes, soon flaking off in quickly dissipating clouds of ash. Shani's brow knotted in confusion.

Blue and Hikaru ran up to her, "Shani...we were trying to warn you..."

"What?"

Hikaru stopped, spending a few seconds to catch his breath, "Your father...he...it...he's not alive..."

Shani tilted her head, "Um...I know that Kitty, I just killed him."

"No...no, he wasn't even before you killed him," Hikaru replied.

"Kitty...what are you talking about?"

More footsteps. These ones were slow, measured, dignified. Shani looked up to see a woman enter the alley. The most obvious thing about her was the immediate impression one got that this woman did not belong in this alley, this city...country...hell, even this time period. There was a blatant anachronicity about the corset strung impossibly tightly around her, the elegantly ruffled black dress, the impeccably done hair.

She carried herself with grace and poise, following the customs and movement of a long-forgotten etiquette. Looking down at Shani with pale eyes, she said in a maternal, yet darkly sensual voice, wrapped in an aristocratic British accent, "Your friend is partially correct. Your father was no longer alive, yet he wasn't truly dead either. He was part of the undead, a vampire."

"W...who are you?" Shani asked, slowly forcing herself to her feet.

"My apologies," The woman replied, graciously extending a hand, "Given the... informal... circumstances, you may simply refer to me as 'Mum'."

Malinko hoisted the dark blade. It reflected light, but only dimly, indistinct. It was forged from some slightly rough base metal, slightly lighter than steel, yet at the same time slightly cumbersome, as if its center of balance was determined by something more than the density and alignment of its component parts.

"It's fantastically beautiful, isn't it?" he said, half to himself.

"Master?" Ruth said, from her position on the floor.

The ridiculously dressed Black Spiral ignored her, staring at the unwinking lapis lazuli in the handle. The only part of the sword that sent its view of the surrounding world back upon the viewer. Malinko saw a dim blue reflection of himself, too small to be made out clearly. Yet possibly because of this ambiguity the image was heavy with possibilities. As if in defiance of its own position in the crafted blade, the gem's reflection boldly claimed that nothing was set in stone.

"This blade didn't always belong to my father," Malinko said.

Ruth tilted her head, looking up at the sword, "Father?"

"My family history is not the most illustrious, and though my father acted in a manner quite befitting of our tribe, his most important contributions to our cause were of a muted, subtle, and completely unintentional manner."

"I don't understand," Ruth said, leaning her head against Malinko's leg.

"No, of course not, because I deliberately speak in an indirect fashion, with overly flowery language," Malinko said, "And despite what must be an incredibly comic spectacle to others, no one has yet asked me directly why I do this.

"I was born of rape and terror, a little south of here, in Chicago. I never really knew my father...neither did my mother. She had a rare honour: To be selected as suitable kinfolk for breeding purposes. Of course this 'honour' meant that she was kept prisoner in the hive-complex that ran beneath the Chicago streets and...used...for breeding purposes. This was how I was born. Apparently my father was a 'convert' of sorts from the Silent Striders, already in rather hot water with his tribe for the molestation of several of their kinfolk, and a suspected sexual assault of another Garou. Not the best track-record for a warrior of Gaia, but exactly the sort of thing the Black Spirals look for.

"Old habits die hard, and daddy had hit the road again, several months before I was born. In the interest of giving potential Garou a well-rounded knowledge of people, my mother was placed in a collapsing tenement so I could be sent through school. Of course, she was told that if she so much as whispered any hint of her true situation to others, she would meet a quick and messy end.

"Compared to some of my peers, I had a relatively normal childhood. Aside from occasional attempts from my now insane mother to take my life, sometimes for my own good, sometimes because she was convinced I was nothing more than a monster, I was fairly well off. Definitely at the top, socially, at school. Though that was a position gained more through fear than anything. As it turn out, the latter of my mother's fears turned out to be correct.

"Ironically, my First Change happened at 'home', away from prying eyes, and the only casualty of it was my dear mother, who was hanging in little bits from my claws when I finally woke up. Of course I was being watched quite closely this entire time, and my watchers quickly spirited me back underground to the hive to give me a proper welcome and initiation into the tribe. I always had known that there were things that weren't quite human watching over me and my mother. What I found out on that night, what I witnessed when I walked along the Spiral...no, you'll probably find out soon enough yourself.

"One of the things I learned was the name of my father. Being the curious sort that I am, I immediately went about trying to find out more on him. Apparently at the time he had just journeyed to St. Paul. Shortly before I was born, he had taken a bit of a world trip, stopped at a few places, made connections, and did...things. Shortly after my own First Change, he had done so again, retracing his steps as exactly as possible. Apparently there was another spawn of his unholy unions somewhere in the world that had also undergone a first change, and he was determined to find him, claiming that such an offspring would have proper blood to pass on the family line.

"Do you have any idea how much that hurt to find that out? I was the firstborn, I was born within the family blood. Yet, because apparently I came from the 'common breeding stock', I was completely ignored, passed over for some whelp across the ocean. My father didn't even know or care about my existence. Me, the firstborn, the rightful heir."

A sudden cracking sound as the armrest was ripped off the chair Malinko was sitting on. He looked at it in confusion. "Master?" Ruth said in concern, running a hand along his thigh.

In an almost distracted fashion, Malinko viciously kicked Ruth away from him, sending her sprawling on the floor, "My own father..."

Malinko idly bit his lip until it bled. He wiped it away and looked at his reddened hand with amusement, "My own blood..."

"...It was to no avail, of course. My father eventually found the mother of his other son. Apparently the...adoptive stepfather, as it were, had cast him out. In retaliation, my father killed them both. That's when he found the sword. He came back to St. Paul after that, having no idea about the power the blade held. He found out that, with proper use, he could place curses on others, quite nasty curses. He used that to his advantage quite often.

"Of course, like all things in life, karma came back and bit him on the ass. In an experiment with the sword that both succeeded beyond his wildest expectations, and failed rather spectacularly, he managed to use the sword on himself. He wanted to make himself immortal using the sword. In the end, he was successful in doing so, though not quite the way he had hoped. He ended up turning himself into something that is a mistake, even in our worldview. An abomination, an undead Garou, combining the strengths and weaknesses of both werewolf and vampire. No longer able to connect to the spiritual world, he was completely unable to tap the power of the sword he wielded. It became little more than a pretty, glorified dagger to him.

"It was around then that I decided my father was as dead to me as I was to him. It was later, when I found out the power he had so ignorantly and clumsily wielded, that I turned my own appearance into a mockery of his own. Have you ever wondered why I act the way I do? This ridiculous outfit? The fake fangs? The horrible accent? It's all an honest reflection of daddy's own ignorance and stupidity, of the opportunity that blind asshole passed up...the opportunity that his own, disregarded son shall surpass him by seizing.

"This is where Anastasia enters the story. She's always been something special. Even before she was...coerced into joining us, she had always been quite the historian. Afterwards, her studies just had a bit more focused. It was when we met, and when the community in general learned about what happened to daddy that a neat little factoid was stirred in her memory. Apparently she had read something a while ago about a rather powerful cursed blade which rather closely resembled my father's own sword in both visual description, and some of its lesser powers.

"Fate...that was what the blade was named, and that was its function: To alter the forces of probability and chance. In the hands of the ignoramus, it was possible to use it to undo, alter, or reverse curses placed upon one's self. To the adept, it could be use alter fate and chance, to place curses upon others so that unless certain conditions were met, fate would ensure a chance meeting of coincidences, visiting untold harm on the victim. To the master, it could be used to dictate fate itself, placing the user above the forces of Chance, and enabling him to achieve his wildest dreams.

"My father never mastered the blade, yet attempted to use it as a master would. Fate, being as fickle and recursive as it is, demonstrates the weakness of those who attempt to inappropriately use it by granting their wishes in such a fashion as to utterly destroy them. I don't plan on doing the same thing. The sword is mine, and I now have all the time in the world to master it, and in doing so, master the world. I shall start by ending the lives of your former friends."

Hikaru rolled over again, trying to jam his pillow even further into his ears. "Damn it, she said she would do something for Shani's pain!" he growled to himself.

The trip back to Cedarburg had been hell. Shani had started off the trip as a complete wreck. By the end she was in too much agony to really be concerned about that. Hikaru didn't quite understand the specifics, and having it explained to him by Blue, a lupus, to whom English wasn't so much a second language as it was a secondary lifetime of learned body-movement and mouth-movements, didn't help an awful lot. From what he did gather though, Shani's dad had apparently become a vampire sometime during the past couple of years. And because becoming a vampire involves a cessation of life, yet not a full transition into death, somehow the cure for Shani's curse had died along with him.

That bastard.

And if that weren't bad enough, it seemed like the curse had decided to punish Shani for her presumption and let her know that time was up.

Time had run out. The marks had spread again, and this time the pain hadn't left, only intensified. What had been an uncertain future now turned into a seemingly inevitable reality. Something which made Hikaru wince worse than the screaming and crying the next room over did:

Shani was dying.

A day or two? A couple hours? Minutes? Seconds? Hikaru couldn't admit it to himself, but one of the reasons he was so determined to block out the sound of Shani's cries was because he was afraid that at some point, those cries would cease, and the voice that had produced them would never speak again. Never call him a stupid kitty again. Never come to him, asking him for advice. Never be there just to talk to. Silenced.

Just like May. Possibly just like...Ruth.

A solitary tear dampened the desperately clutched pillow. Hikaru was so thoroughly distracted that he failed to notice the glass rose, given to him by the other occupant of the next room over, was no longer on the end-table he had placed it upon.

Jess silently let herself out of the hotel, carefully cradling the glass rose in her hands. She knew enough of the situation to make a decent guess at some of the importance of what she carried with her. Three whole days...Gaia that seemed like years ago now, yet it was only a few weeks ago. The psychotic bitch that Jess was absolutely certain was going to kill her. Hell, she nearly had killed her, all but gutted her.

...then that stubborn bitch had refused to let her die. Ruth had openly defied the sept. She had even dared the rest of the pack to kill her if they wanted to get at Jess that much. She had locked herself in a bathroom with Jess for three days, refusing to sleep the entire time, not only to make sure that the rest of the pack didn't remove the problem of Jess themselves, but also to make sure Jess hadn't...taken matters into her own hands.

She wasn't nearly under as much scrutiny now. It would be the easiest thing in the world for her to do what was right, hell, what the Litany said she should do: End her own life for her crimes. There were any number, friends, family, packmates, tribemates of those she had slain and corrupted during the time she was Roland's pet, all of them would applaud that act, only disappointed that she hadn't taken a more painful way out.

So why hadn't she offed herself yet? She could never be properly accepted into Garou society again. The things she had done, there was a stain on her soul that no simple cleansing-ceremony could hope to remove. The Black Spirals who knew of her would attempt to ruthlessly track her down to either eliminate her to preserve their secrets, or to forcibly bring her back into the fold. There was no place for her in this world, so why didn't she just voluntarily leave it, hoping she would perform better in her next life?

Because Ruth, and after a fashion, the rest of the pack had forcibly made a place for her, voluntarily accepting an ex-Spiral into their pack, at untold personal risk. They put their own lives on the line for her, doing everything in their power just to give Jess a chance at redemption.

And now was a chance to repay that.

The vampire, Mum as she liked to be called. How the hell she had gotten to Hikaru's hotel and was waiting for them, somehow beating them there even though they had started first, Jess would never know. Jess knew well enough who she was though. Those three days with Ruth in the bathroom, surreal as they were, were forever burned into her mind. Ruth had told her of her own past. Born in London, finding out the hard way about the undead that stalked the city at night. Being taken under the care of one who, for whatever reason, had shown a great interest in her. Going through her first change, and then coming to the US, always wondering when she would once again be re-united with the one she was most obsessed with. Re-united with the one she called 'Mum'.

And now Mum had shown up, telling them that the one that Shani had hunted for all her life had become a vampire. Telling of how this unseen threat, Kaoru, also posed a threat to her. And give Jess a single set of instructions, telling her that the life of a packmate hung in the balance, should she wish to give everything she had for it.

Jess left the hotel with the glass rose, heading north.

She had been told, quite simply, to give the rose to Ruth.

As she left, she didn't notice that the front desk no longer had an attendant.

Shani lay in bed, carefully checking her pulse to make sure she was still alive.

The pain was gone, yet the spirals were still there, that wasn't right at all. They now nearly covered her whole body, mere inches away from completely masking her skin...inches away from killing her. She should be in unbearable agony now...and yet she wasn't. She wasn't asleep, she wasn't dreaming, for the pain often entered her dreams as well. As far as she could tell, she wasn't dead.

She didn't trust the vampire, the one who had done this to her. The creature seemed only interested in Ruth...and Ruth, as far as Shani knew, was far beyond redemption. She was pretty far gone the last time Shani had seen her, and any more time spent with those bastards Malinko and Anastasia wouldn't help her mental stability any. Though Shani could empathize a little more with Ruth now, seeing where some of her madness came from.

Still, Ruth would either be dead, or far more likely, completely corrupted by Malinko. And despite Mum's rosy predictions, Shani didn't feel very optimistic. Malinko effectively ran the town now. Apparently he had his hands on an insanely powerful fetish as well. Lysander was missing. Cole was missing. Ruth was...well, whatever the hell she was, it certainly wasn't good. Kitty, simply by being here, was putting himself at risk from Kaoru. There was an army of Black Spirals between them and their target.

...and Shani was dying. She knew it, even if the pain wasn't there anymore. She could feel the last few seconds of her life slowly ticking away as the black tendrils slowly enveloped her heart. The cure, the thing she had fought most of her life for...hadn't worked. A part of her had died with that realization, the sheer hopelessness of it all.

And now...well...now she simply didn't believe Mum. Even if the vampire had somehow stopped her pain, she still didn't believe her. That creature's only interest was Ruth, and her promises of seeing the future, and seeing another possible cure for her curse...a lie. A convenient falsehood to get Shani eager to be her little pawn, the same way Ruth was. Gain the sword and use it to transfer the curse to her only living sibling? She had hours to live...even if she somehow got ahold of that sword, how was she supposed to find a sibling she hadn't even known existed until a few hours ago? How did she know Mum wasn't lying about that too? It was all far too convenient, a pile of bullshit.

Still, if it was true that Malinko had gotten his hands on whatever that sword was...they had an obligation. And there was Ruth...she was a packmate, the least they could do was give her a quick ending. And the vampire had stopped the agony, even if temporarily. Who cares if it was a complete suicide mission? Who cares if Shani was probably going to die anonymously for an unachievable cause tonight? It's not as if she was capable of living for longer anyways.

Besides, Blue seemed to want to go along with the idea. And if Kitty did as well...then at least she would be along with the ones she loved...one last time.

Shani sat up, beginning to clean her glocks. "Perhaps today is a good day to die," she laughed.

"She's no longer in pain," Mum said to the curled up cat.

Hikaru sat up, suddenly panicked. Mum waved a hand dismissively, "No, I don't mean that she's dead...or undead. She's quite alive, I've just alleviated her pain for a while...hopefully long enough."

"What's your interest in all this?" Hikaru said with a hiss.

"The same as yours," Mum replied evenly, soothingly, "Ruth."

"Bullshit," Hikaru spat, "She's pack, and I'll fight for her, but..."

"Please don't embarrass yourself," Mum interjected, "I've been watching Ruth and her movements for years now. I've seen the effect you have on her, and she's had on you. You're in love, accept it."

"Bullshit," Hikaru said again.

"Suit yourself, you'll have to deal with it when the time comes, which is what I wished to address to you.

"You should know better than almost anyone else, you don't talk to me unless I wish for you to. The fact that I have...deigned to address, even be physically witnessed by all of you, should show the importance I place on this matter. Ruth is rather important to me, and making sure she is not only physically okay, but relatively mentally stable is integral to that. I've been watching her actions, and have decided that you, and the others here, have had a decidedly positive influence on her.

"For the moment, our objectives are the same, even if the reasoning behind them aren't. This Malinko character is a threat to both of us, and you must eliminate him. The same is true with Kaoru, though I'm not as certain you have the power to do the same with him."

Hikaru spat...though carefully enough to not hit anything valuable, "Powerful enough? Oh yes. Free of a certain restriction rendering me unable to lay a finger on him? Not so much."

"I wonder how true that is," Mum smiled.

Hikaru's eyes shot up, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm not at all certain I should tell you," Mum replied, "You've already proven yourself a victim of temptation with Ruth, this might prove to be too much with you."

Hikaru had had enough. In the space of a quarter second, he had drawn his sword, leapt the intervening space, and given a slash that would cut Mum in half.

Mum was no longer there.

Her voice echoed through the apartment, "Your fate rests in your own hands now."

Hikaru and Shani pulled to a stop in the intersection, driving the temporarily commandeered pickup of Lysander's. "Might has well," Shani had said earlier, "Seeing as how he decided to run off without a word."

Now seeing what was waiting for them, Hikaru decided that instead of being a suicidal yet dramatically audacious plan...this is just plain suicidal. The streetlights were fairly dim, yet at least two dozen forms, some human, some wolf, some somewhere in between, were easily visible in the lighted areas alone. Hikaru didn't want to think about what waited in the darkness.

"Wait a minute," Shani said, "What the hell were we thinking?"

"Umm...that Mum is a rather persuasive speaker. I'm wondering what the hell she expects to gain from us dying in a suicidally stupid rush?" Hikaru replied.

"Y'know, Kitty, it seems it's back down to the two of us again. Jess is gone, Ruth is...well, gone, and Lysander is..."

"...wondering what the hell you think you're doing driving his truck," came a voice behind them.

Shani and Hikaru turned in shock, seeing a rather smug looking metis standing behind them. "You fucking bastard whatthehellwereyouthinkingsneakinguplike..." Shani started, clobbering him with a hug.

"Nice of you to show up," Hikaru said, showing a remarkable restraint not grinning at the sight of a packmate, "So did you..."

"...fuckingretardedbastardmakingmeworrythencomingbackscaringtheshitoutof..."

Hikaru coughed and raised his voice a little to be heard over the steady stream of Russian-accented profanities, "Anyways, did you come to help us commit suicide in novel fashion?"

Lysander's eyebrow rose, "I swear I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. I came to skin me some Spirals."

"Gotta love that pointlessly optimistic spirit," Hikaru nodded, "But you did take into account the fact that we're currently facing a twenty to one ratio of bodies here, right?"

The Black Spirals were advancing. Those with hands unsheathed various weapons. Those without bared fangs, drooling in anticipation of bloodshed.

"My, no faith at all in the strength of Gaia?" Lysander said, shifting easily into crinos, "We'll show them why you don't run someone off their own territory and leave survivors."

Lysander cut loose with an ear-splitting howl and charged between Hikaru and Shani. The howl echoed throughout the night, returning in a variety of different tones and volumes. A sudden fog began rolling in and shadowy figures raced past the cat and the Russian, towards the now confused Black Spirals.

"Remind me to give him a good beating for going and raising an army behind my back," Hikaru deadpanned as he brought out his flail.

"If I'm still alive by then, I'll do it myself," Shani replied, drawing pistols and joining the fray.

What met Jess' eyes stopped her cold. A flood of memories was triggered by the sight. She remembered her complete physical and mental defeat at the hands of Roland. The pain and agony, so great her mind had finally just shut itself away from reality, leaving behind nothing but a broken husk of a body, viewing the world through dead eyes. Slowly and mindlessly going through whatever abuse or humiliation that was demanded of it. Knowing nothing but a desperate tiredness, waiting for any sort of release, be it death, or something uncomprehended, a life that used to be, but now existed only as half-remembered dreams.

She saw it all when she saw Ruth. The girl was...dead. There was nothing behind those eyes as they stared lifelessly into space. The skin covered in a new network of scars, not gained through the cleansing heat of battle, but rather through delicate and deliberate flaying of the skin while the body was forced to remain still. Symbols, many of which Jess recognized, and loathed herself for doing so, were permanently branded over the girl's flesh. Jess winced and grabbed her stomach as the sight broke through the scant barriers she had erected to repress her own memories. For a few seconds she did nothing but double over and dry heave. This wasn't Ruth, this was an empty puppet that used to house the spirit of someone she had once called a packmate.

Death would be a release from this.

Jess was still amazed she had gotten this far, actually into the house. It had been easy enough slipping past most of the guards outside, even though there was a veritable army patrolling the streets outside. A single guard at the door had said he didn't recognize her, but seemed placated when she presented the proper scars, spiral patterns, and muttered a few reverences to a couple Urge Wyrms.

Once inside, she nearly ran into that hideous Anastasia girl, but managed to duck out of the way in time. Since then, she had managed to avoid contact with anyone as she crept through the rooms, trying to find her former packmate. All at the request of that creature she called 'Mum'.

Jess paused halfway through the act of drawing her klaive. She was doing this because she had agreed to. There was a reason she was here. Jess went forward in her memories, to the end of her time with Roland. She remembered fondly wishing for death, and nearly having that wish fulfilled...then having it taken away. She wasn't allowed to leave the pain of existence behind yet. And the one who had ripped that dream away from her was now sitting, broken, in front of her.

And because this psychotic, raven-haired bitch Ruth had stubbornly refused to kill this suicidal, burdensome, walking violation of the Litany named Jess, she was in the position she was in now. Jess was in a position where she felt like she had worth in the eyes of Gaia once again, where she felt like she could do something of value to undo some of the hurt she had caused. A position where she could repay Ruth for what that girl had done for Jess.

"Ruth!" A voice, soft, yet coldly efficient, behind Jess. She whirled around as Ruth's own sagging head snapped upward.

Anastasia stood in the open doorway, smiling, "Ruth, kill her."

"Yes Mistress Anastasia, I'm sorry Jess."

"Wha...?" Jess turned and suddenly felt cold.

She looked down and realized the reason she seemed to have trouble breathing was because there was a klaive sticking out of her chest, right about where her lung should be. Jess gasped as the dagger was yanked out, she fell to her knees and watched the world slow down around her. This time the dagger seemed to take an eternity as it moved through the air towards her. Yet Jess found that her arms would no longer respond when she tried to fend the relentlessly approaching tip. Another cold stab of non-pain, and suddenly Jess found her entire left side going numb...she could not even feel the glass rose clutched in her hand.

...The rose, the reason she was here in the first place. "...Ruth..." barely more than a whisper, accompanied by a small dribble of blood.

Ruth paused, looking her in the eyes for the first time, "I'm sorry."

Jess fought to keep her head up, she couldn't look into Ruth's face otherwise. Somehow, she managed to retrieve the rose from her uselessly dangling left hand with her right, realizing that the strange sloshing sound in her ears was the sound of her now viciously pierced heart giving its last failed attempts at pumping blood through her body. Sound grew tinny as Jess reached up with her right hand. With the last bit of strength she had, she pressed the rose into Ruth's hand.

There was a distant crunching noise. Jess suddenly realized she was tipping backwards and forced herself back up. Crunching...the rose, it had broken between hers and Ruth's tightly clenched palms. Dimly, she realized that the thorns and shards of glass had thoroughly lacerated both their hands. Jess leaned forward slightly, feeling her eyes slip shut.

No! She had to see before she went! Not knowing how she had done it, she opened her eyes, looking into Ruth's one more time. This time she saw it, comprehension, life. She had succeeded then. "Thanks..." Jess muttered, falling forward onto Ruth, "...for saving me..."

And that was how Jess died.

Ruth stood numbly, staring ahead blankly as the body of Jess sagged against her. The weight, minimal though it was, eventually dragged Ruth down to her knees. Still she stared, feeling the shards of glass dig into her own hand. It felt as if she were waking up, for the first time in days, weeks. She remembered everything that had happened, as if through a nightmarish drugged sleep.

Several weeks ago, Anastasia had said, "I've got an idea. The spirit wants to meld completely with her mind, but something's stopping it from completing the process. I think there's some portion of her mind that's completely locked off from outside interference."

It was that section of Ruth's mind that had woken up now. The section that had, years ago, been touched, altered, and then locked off from further intrusion, capable of dragging the rest of the mind from the brink of madness if necessary. That was what was intended of it, so that a loving mother would never have to see her only daughter become a stranger, the one she loved being replaced by a spectre of madness.

Ruth heard a voice in her head. Clear and direct, a voice she knew. A voice she hadn't heard in far too long. The voice of the one she called Mum.

'Do you wish to return to me?'

Fighting back tears Ruth thought, 'Yes! Anything!'

'In doing so, you will once again be bound to me, to my will. Through the blood, my own blood, I placed in that rose, it is possible to reaffirm the connection between us. Is this truly what you wish?'

'I wish it more than anything in the...' Ruth thought, and then hesitated.

There was someone else she wanted to see as well.

'I understand,' said Mum, 'There is a way to get the best of both worlds.'

'But...what about, the stuff I did, what I let happen to me?' Ruth thought, a wave of indescribable guilt washing over her.

'There is nothing that cannot be forgiven with the proper amount of penance and contrition,' Mum said, 'And with time, even if your comrades do not, it is possible for you to forgive yourself.'

'Besides,' the voice continued, 'A good mother loves her child unconditionally. Just as a good lover loves his partner unconditionally. No matter what, it is possible to find love and work towards forgiveness for your sins.'

Ruth's head nodded forward, 'T...Tell me what to do.'

'Use what you've learned,' Mum said, 'Put it to good use so you may visit vengeance, even if indirectly, upon those that did this to you.'

Anastasia watched Ruth stab the meddling little girl. Once. Twice. And then sag down with the corpse. The pathetic bitch hadn't even put up a fight, which saddened Anastasia. After everything she had heard about this Jess character, she was hoping for something more. Now Ruth sat on the ground, almost appearing to cradle the corpse. Anastasia knew better, though. That empty mind of hers was merely waiting for further orders.

"Ruth."

The head snapped up, Anastasia smiled, a little more overt betrayal and humiliation was in order here, "Ruth, rip the teeth from that body's mouth, add them to that silly little trinket you have around your neck," Anastasia indicated not the silver collar, but rather the necklace worn below it. One made by Ruth herself, from the canines and tailbone of Roland after her and the rest of the pack had killed him.

Ruth turned her head slowly, until she was looking Anastasia directly in the eye. Wait, that wasn't right at all. Ever since she had been broken, Ruth had never looked anyone in the eye, only stared blankly ahead, awaiting further orders. What she said next cinched it, "No, I don't think I shall."

Damn it, Anastasia had made a slight mistake, apparently her work wasn't quite complete. After this shred of rebellion was taken care of, she was going to have to rake that little bitch's mind to see if she had done anything else while faking, rather effectively, a broken state. It would require a lot of pain and agony, on Ruth's part. Anastasia sighed, as a long-suffering parent would with a defiant child, "Very well, you know what happens when you don't follow orders," she said, taking out the etched glyph.

True unease began to gnaw at Anastasia as Ruth stared unflinching at the rune. A small flicker of fear was sparked inside her as Ruth failed to collapse on the floor in agony, instead looking directly at her again and stating, "Yes, I remember that. It sent the thing that used to be inside my head into such a horrid frenzy..."

Ruth got up, pulling her klaive smoothly from Jess' body, yet carefully laying the corpse down on the floor in a reverential fashion, instead of simply dumping it on the ground. She continued, "...That worthless bane has been...evicted from my mind. Run off by the much more welcome thoughts of the one who I voluntarily gave myself to years ago."

"Is that so?" Anastasia said, taking a step back and raising her parasol.

"You, you insignificant, worthless little bitch, are nothing more than an interloper in my reality," Ruth said dismissively, raising her own klaive, "And the time has come to bring your trespass to an end."

The two women charged each other, their own piercing shrieks harmonizing with the howls that came from outside as chaos erupted around the house.

The two Black Spirals advanced, looking for a way through what appeared to be a constantly shifting fence of razor-thin wire. Pausing, they looked at each other, and leapt at a likely looking gap. Sudden deep gashes sprouted from their flesh as the wire cut into them. The weighed, bladed ball at the end of the wire buried itself deeply inside the left one's head. Hikaru dropped the flail and in one smooth motion decapitated the other with a katana sweep.

"Where the fuck did you find an army?!" he shouted, fending off another two encroaching spirals with an intricate series of slashes and thrusts.

"I've got ways," Lysander roared back, concentrating on his own three assailants, managing to bring one down with a well-placed tonfa-blow to the ankles.

"We're still outnumbered!" Hikaru shouted, "You honestly expect to survive this?"

"What? Outnumbered three to one?" Lysander ducked as a heavy sword cut through the air, "It gives us more to kill!"

At that moment a burning pain lanced along Hikaru's leg as a gunshot rang out. It was far from the first shot, but this time one of the bastards actually hit him! Hikaru turned, doubly glad it was only a grazing blow. He didn't get a chance to see the face of the one who shot him, the creature's head exploded as a bullet was sent through it. Hikaru, unfortunately, had his own problems. The momentary distraction allowed one of the Spiral Dancers the open to leap on top of him, driving him to the ground.

Hikaru looked up to see nothing but a drooling, deformed muzzle. And teeth, a whole lot of huge, sharp, yellow teeth. 'Oh god, it's going to drool on me before it rips my throat out!' Hikaru thought with disgust. Another gunshot rang out, and Hikaru was splattered with blood, shards of bone, and shredded brain matter. He felt the now-dead Black Spiral slumping down on top of him. With a hiss of revulsion he shoved the creature off and stood up, trying to clean his face off in a nearly panicked fashion.

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Shani giving him a wink, blowing smoke from the barrel of her glock, "You owe me for that one, Kitty!"

Hikaru opened his mouth to reply, then froze. From his position on the lawn, surrounded by battling figures, Black Spirals and...well, this small army that Lysander had somehow managed to scrape up, he could see the aging Victorian-style house, Shani standing in front of it, carefully scanning the battle, waiting for another clear shot...and the figure standing in the deep shadows by the corner of the rotting edifice.

Another shot whistled by his ear, and a pained howl distracted his attention as another Spiral Dancer fell to the floor, clutching her ankle. Hikaru finished it with a katana-thrust through the heart. "God damnit you stupid Kitty! Pay attention, I can't keep saving your life like that!" Shani shouted, spinning and dropping to the ground, trying to pull a bead on two Spirals leaning out of the balcony of the mansion, sniping combatants with their own rifles.

Hikaru ignored her, ignored everything else in the battle that wasn't an immediate threat to him and ran towards the corner of the house. His own feline eyes pierced the darkness easily, yet he could see no one here. Hikaru turned and flattened himself against the wall, a cold sweat breaking out over his skin, trying to look everywhere at once. He was here! Hikaru had seen him, he knew it! That face, a reflection of his own, yet full of a cold, cruel mockery. Hikaru gripped his sword nervously, gave one last look around the battlefield. Lysander was right, they did appear to be gaining the upper hand. Shani had just taken out the two snipers on the balcony, and the rest of Lysander's personal army, originally numbering at around twenty, but now down to about twelve, and managed to push the Black Spirals into corners and 'killing-zones'. Out of the fifty or so Hikaru had initially estimated, only a dozen or so were left standing, and that number was dropping rapidly.

They could take care of themselves, this was something Hikaru had to do. He ran around the corner of the house.

Shani called out to Lysander, "Where the hell did that stupid Kitty go? I lost him!"

Lysander looked around. He couldn't find Hikaru anywhere, "Inside?"

"That stupid fucking cat, he didn't even wait for us!"

Lysander looked around again, "You, you and...you!" he shouted, picking out three Garou that weren't directly involved with the mopping up, "You're with us, we're cleaning out the mansion."

Lysander and Shani headed inside the house.

Ruth fell back before the flurry of blows. That bitch was good. Each time she thought there was an open, the parasol was deftly maneuvered to deflect the attack. Slowly but surely Ruth's initial assault was being overcome and countered, and now she found herself on the defensive. This wasn't good at all.

It became even worse as Ruth managed to actually trip over the still-warm corpse of Jess, feeling a lancing jolt of pleasure across the left side of her face as she fell. Ruth's cheek and ear felt strangely warm as she tried to pick herself up, and came face to face with the silver tip of Anastasia's parasol.

"I always knew you were nothing more than a mistake," Anastasia said, kicking Ruth's klaive away, "Now is my chance to fix it."

Ruth had dreamily brought one hand up to her cheek, finding that it had been sliced open, along with her ear, and now soaked the left side of her face and neck with blood. Her other hand, wandering haphazardly along the ground, found a hilt. It was attached to a dagger...Jess' klaive, she had fallen on it when she died.

Ruth looked up at Anastasia looking down on her. The parasol-wielding bitch smiled, cold and empty, "You can die with your packmate..."

Ruth screamed. In that scream was the condensed essence of the pain and rage she had accumulated over the past week from this woman, released and shaped with its own spiritual power, lancing through the air, the intervening space between Ruth and Anastasia like poisoned daggers. Anastasia stopped, mid-stab. All her muscles seemed locked in place. She stared in true fear at the diminutive British girl in front of her for the first time. The British girl smiled sweetly, a bloody foam running down her chin, the product of her now viciously shredded vocal chords. She lifted her right hand, in it was a dagger.

"Alright, you three cover that wing, we'll cover this end," Lysander ordered, then turned to Shani, a little more quietly, "Why are you so insistent on this wing?"

"I heard her! I've heard that scream before, and it came from Ruth, she's down this way I know it, now come the fuck on!" came the impatient reply.

Lysander followed Shani as she proceeded down the hall, kicking open door after door and sweeping each room with her glocks. Nothing. The only door left was the basement. Unhesitantly, Shani kicked the door, and fell over as the sturdy oak didn't budge an inch.

Lysander sighed, gently but firmly pushed Shani out of the way, and proceeded to give the door a single, massive, Crinos-enhanced punch. Various splinters fell down the stairs. Lysander entered first, quickly followed by Shani.

The basement appeared split into several sections. If the size of the house itself was any indicator, they were in the largest section, three doors led off, one open, and one looking like it was made from reinforced steel. The floor was covered in some sort of brown stains, almost hiding the symbols etched beneath. Circles and glyphs, arranged around several sets of silvered manacles bolted to the floor. Several spirals were plainly visible among the myriad, nauseating markings.

From the open doorway came a sound. It was barely audible, yet unmistakable. The sound of someone trying to breathe when their body was rapidly nearing the point of never needing breath again. Lysander and Shani didn't waste any time getting to the open doorway. What they saw stopped them both. Ruth, covered in blood, scars, and in her own set of irons knelt over the corpse of Jess. Her hand was holding onto the hilt of a dagger plunged deeply into Anastasia's abdomen. Ruth had a serene, almost sweet smile on her face, only slightly marred by the loose flap of skin from her sliced cheek, dribbling blood down her side. Anastasia's eyes held a mixture of terror and disbelief.

In one motion Ruth stood up, bringing the dagger with her, sawing through Anastasia's sternum and splitting her chest open. Anastasia's gasping breath stopped with a gurgle as Ruth dragged the dagger even further, bisecting her throat. With a grunt of disdain, she kicked the now twitching corpse away from her. Lysander and Shani both found themselves at a loss for words as Ruth bent over and picked up the silver-tipped parasol, examining it curiously. She smiled at her new acquisition and calmly strode across the small room and picked up the other dagger sitting on the floor.

Placing both daggers in the waistband of her decidedly scanty outfit and setting the parasol on her shoulder, Ruth looked up and finally seemed to notice the other two for the first time. Now it was her turn to be lost for words, "Y...you came."

"Er...yeah. Um," Lysander seemed stuck for words.

"I...well, the thing is," Shani hazarded, "What should we do now?"

"If," Ruth said carefully, "...if you've come to kill me, it will have to wait. There are more important things to worry about right now, we have to find Malinko and we have to find him now."

The two Garou didn't move out of the way as Ruth advanced. Lysander finally spoke up, "You turned your back on us, you've made one hell of a list of Litany violations, you caused her death, you expect us to just let that slide?"

"I expect you to remember that the Litany says first and foremost to combat the Wyrm wherever it breeds," Ruth said, shifting quickly into manipulation mode, "and right now, the biggest agent of the Wyrm is Malinko and we need to find him and stop him now."

Lysander put a hand up, stopping Ruth's forward progress, "On the other hand, there's another agent of the Wyrm standing right in front of me, and while she might not be as big a threat as Malinko, I can be pretty damn certain that I can take her out right now. With Malinko, if he's even here, I'm not so certain."

"Goddamnit you stupid Fianna," Ruth growled, losing patience, "I'm not ready to die yet, nor am I ready to see everything we were fighting for collapse because you were being a petty fuck!"

"And you think Jess was ready to die either?" Lysander shouted back.

"Wait until we can meet up with Hikaru, he's alpha, he's the one who will make the choice."

"Oh right, your fuck buddy, there's an unbiased decision right there," Lysander snarled.

"You fucking arse," Ruth shouted, "this is bigger than your..."

"I'm not certain this is...good," Shani said in a lilting voice that cut through the argument before falling over between the two arguing packmates.

"Shit, Shani, don't you fucking die on us," Ruth said, immediately dropping to her knees.

"Hold her still, I don't know how she'll react to this," Lysander said, placing both hands over her midsection and trying to center himself.

"She, those tattoos, fuck they're all over her, she's dying..."

Lysander leaned back, sweating, "I don't know how long that gave her...but holy shit does that hurt."

"Sh...Shani? Are you with us?" Ruth asked carefully.

Shani's eyes fluttered open, "I'm supposed to be asking you that, you psychotic bitch."

Ruth looked up at Lysander, "Look, you don't trust me, I think you're a fucking ignorant sot, we both know this. But we both also know that we're Shani's pack, and we have to fight for her."

"How do you propose that?" Lysander asked, eyes closed, "Some grand plan pulled out of your Wyrm-tainted ass?"

"Shove it," Ruth said, "We need to get her to Malinko, it's her only chance. Can you walk Shani?"

"I...I think I'm good for the moment," Shani said, "Though I don't feel right at all."

"Shani, listen to me," Ruth said, "Fate is in Malinko's hands right now, you have to take that from him, just like he took it from his father, then you have a chance of..."

"Wait a fucking minute," Lysander said, following the two girls out "What the hell is so important about getting her to Malinko? Did I miss some..." he stopped, running into the frozen figures in front of him, "Who the fuck is that?"

"K...Kaoru," Ruth said.

Lysander was confused for a second, that definitely wasn't Hikaru waiting for them out in the main room, yet it sure as hell looked like him. Yet something was definitely different. The posture, that had to be it. Hikaru always stood with a calm demeanor, yet it was always an open stance, as if silently stating that he was still open to the input of others. This one...no. Something about the way he stood, completely closed off to anything but himself and his obsession. That was definitely not Hikaru out there.

"You fucker, you've hurt Kitty," Shani said, stepping forward and firing before the figure even had a chance to talk.

Even in her less-than-ideal condition, Shani was a perfect shot. The missing eye seemed, if anything, only to help her focus. The shot was dead on, right between Kaoru's eyes. Yet it didn't hit, Kaoru was simply no longer there. Shani tried to track, firing shots at the dim blur making a rapid circuit of the basement. She managed a total of three shots before the gun was kicked out of her hand, "Stupid woman," and she was lifted off her feet and tossed unceremoniously through the flimsy wooden stairs that lead to the ground floor.

Lysander reacted then, leaping in with both bladed tonfa...and again only striking empty air. Pain lanced across his left arm, matching a blur of movement there. Lysander twisted and swung. Nothing. Something knifed into his back, and Lysander felt his knees give out from beneath him. Still fighting, one arm reached back. This time the tonfa struck flesh, digging deep into the forearm. Kaoru didn't so much as grunt in pain. He simply used the now trapped weapon as a lever to grab Lysander's outstretched arm and twist it sharply behind his back. There was a crack of bone snapping. Still holding onto Lysander's broken arm, Kaoru spun, using the metis' own momentum to drive his head hard enough into the brick wall to break completely through into the other room. "Worthless fool."

Ruth had waited for this opening and leapt in, plunging both daggers into Kaoru's chest. Kaoru didn't react, other than to grab one of Ruth's arms and lift her up into the air. With his other hand, he easily removed the daggers, fixing her with a dead gaze as the wounds healed themselves. "I have a small need of you," he said before sinking a pair of fangs into her neck.

Ruth tried to struggle initially, but the hands that held her in place were iron bars, the teeth piercing her like silver needles. Her feet, suspended above the ground as the were, slowed their kicks as her head drooped and her one free arm dropped to her side. The last thing Ruth saw before dropping into unconsciousness from blood-loss were those cold, dead eyes, staring at her with nothing more than a slight disdainful curiosity.

"Shani? Shit! Shani!" Hikaru, in a near panic, ripped aside the rotting splinters of wood, "Shani, don't you dare be dead on us!"

"Why does everyone keep demanding that of me?" Shani replied hoarsely, "I'm fine, I swear. A little tipsy, but that's all."

"Son...of...a...bitch," Lysander said, "Hikaru...you've got one real bastard for a brother."

Hikaru turned on Lysander, completely serious, "So he was here? Where did he go?"

"Hell if I know, fucker put me through a brick wall, looks like that bitch Ruth went with him, though," Lysander muttered, rubbing his head.

"Ruth was here?!" Hikaru shouted.

"Yeah," Shani muttered, forcing herself to her feet, "We were debating on when we should kill her."

"No one fucking touches her until I've gotten to see her myself," Hikaru said.

"Oh, right, sorry about that chief," Lysander drawled, "Wouldn't want to deprive you of your, whaddatheycallit...booty call?"

Hikaru whirled and decked Lysander across the jaw. The huge metis was forced a few steps back from the blow. He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

"You won't kill her because she's pack. And no packmate's getting killed unless the alpha says so," Hikaru snarled, eyes flashing violently at Lysander, "And I...am...the...fucking...alpha."

He stood up and helped Shani out of the rubble that used to be the staircase, "If you have an issue with that, now's your chance. You want to fight over who gets to be on top of this pack, I'm willing to accept the challenge right now."

Lysander growled deeply, but didn't say anything.

"Fine," Hikaru said, "Then if you've got issues, save them until after we're out of here. Until then, you back the fuck down and do not question me, understood?"

Lysander nodded, avoiding Hikaru's eyes.

"Any idea where they went?"

"Umm, boys," Shani said, "How long has that door been open?"

All three looked at the door, something that would be more fitting on a bank-vault than in a Victorian-style dungeon. It hung open, revealing stairs further down. From somewhere deep within, a greenish light flickered.

"Ah, welcome, welcome, all of you, to my personal lair," Malinko announced with a dramatic flourish of his cape.

'So this is a hive,' Shani thought distractedly, noticing that each time she moved her head, everything left aftertrails in her vision. That couldn't be good.

The cave made the basement far above look tame in comparison. The first few seconds had just been spent in shocked observation of the sheer inhumanity and madness here. Hikaru, Shani, and Lysander had thought they'd been prepared for it, yet the sheer truth of the matter had silenced them all.

The cave was grand, a vaguely circular shape with a nearly one-hundred foot diameter. The ceiling was mere two or three feet from the ground near the edges, yet toward to what looked like thirty feet or so in the center. From the ceiling dangled the remains of those who had fallen defending the sept. Dark shapes crawled over the bodies, ripping away chunks of flesh before disappearing into holes in the ceiling. Congealed blood fell from the corpses in sickly globs, falling and impacting the symbols chiseled out of the ground beneath them with a sound best left undescribed.

Malinko stood in the middle of the room, at the center of a massive spiral-pattern carved into the floor which glowed with a throbbing black light. The Black Spiral, or a small representation of it. Sickly green balefire glowed at five points on the outer perimeter of the spiral. Next to Malinko stood a small group of Black Spiral Dancers. Two of them stood guard over a bundle of blankets on the ground. Four others stood, weapons at the ready. Something about their calm stances implied that these were fighters of a different calibre than those they had clashed with above.

Lysander realized one of them was the redhead former-Fianna he had nearly made friends with. She winked at him, licking her lips in blatant lust. Lysander growled, stepping forward and unsheathing his tonfa.

"Whoa whoa whoa, not so fast my dear guests," Malinko purred, "There's something you should see before you go rushing to your deaths."

The two Black Spirals guarding the bundled blankets stepped back and flung the blankets away, revealing the four figures beneath, all bound in iron shackles. Three were the Garou Lysander had sent to explore the other wing of the mansion. The fourth was...Lysander dropped the tonfa, "...Uncle?"

"Ah, what a delightful reunion," Malinko said cheerfully, nodding to the redheaded Fianna, who drew a dagger and immediately held it to the bound Fianna's throat, "Now don't move."

Malinko drew a deep black sword with another flourish, "It appears Fate is on my side."

Lysander's claws flexed, raged curled through his veins, fighting to take over. He took one step forward. Hikaru put a restraining hand on the metis' massive forearm, "Lysander, don't do it."

"Very well," Malinko sighed, disappointed, "Since you're going to be less than civil, I'll make this brief. You," he pointed at Lysander, "Call off your toy army now, and you and your dearest uncle get to walk out of here alive."

A cracked voice interrupted, coming from the bound figure, "T...that army was your doing, Lysander?"

Lysander nodded.

Shani took two steps forward, completely ignoring the exchange, her own eyes riveted on the sword and its wielder. By now she felt herself physically drifting in and out of consciousness as she walked. Everything seemed unreal, drifting between what she thought might have been real and personal delusions brought on by rapidly culminating curse which now seemed just as persuasively real. Yet through it all, that sword and Malinko stood out clearly in her vision, as if they were the only two real things in the universe now. "Fate," she whispered.

"What's that, my dear?" Malinko smiled, "Looking for this sword, were you? Disappointed when you didn't find it after oh so ironically killing my father and enabling it to fall back into my hands?"

Shani stopped cold, "Father? Yours?"

It all suddenly made sense. When Ruth had said that Fate was now in Malinko's hands, she wasn't speaking metaphorically. She had seen that sword, so many years ago, in the hands of her stepfather. Then it had somehow went into the hands of her biological father...and then into the hands of his son, who was standing before her now holding that same sword.

That sword, Fate, the one her stepfather had used to place the curse which was killing her at this very moment. Which meant that...the one who was holding it right now, the son of her father...was her own half-brother. Shani smiled, "The vampire was right after all, brother."

Malinko paused, "Brother?"

Shani smiled serenely.

"No, wait, I have no sister," Malinko said nervously, there were too many coincidences suddenly cropping up, something Anastasia said happened when the sword was expressing its disdain of its current wielder.

"No, but you had a brother...and he became your sister," Shani said, taking more steps forward.

"Don't you fucking come any closer or I'll kill his uncle!" Malinko screamed.

"Lysander, you've made me so proud...I will save you from making this choice."

"No!" Lysander roared as he watched his uncle transform into full crinos, easily snapping the chains that held the manacles together. Watched as the silver shackles, made for something human-size, bit remorselessly into his uncles' wrists, ankles and neck. After that, there was only red, and dim moving objects beyond the crimson curtain.

Hikaru saw that his opening had come, and he charged, quickly picking off two of the Black Spirals who had simply been trampled by the rampaging Lysander.

Shani continued walking forward, transforming herself. Her clothes disappeared into her furred body, revealing the now complete pattern of intricate spirals beneath. Malinko looked at her in complete panic. The Russian towered above him, like the wrath of Cain about to be visited upon a deceitful Abel. Without thinking he plunged the blade Fate into Shani's heart...and then tried to turn and run as he realized it had no effect on her.

He made it two steps before claws wrapped into his hair and lifted him from the ground, bringing him face to face with the crinos with a sword through its heart. It spoke to him, still serene, "You attempt to stab a heart already suffocated by the black tendrils of a curse laid years ago?"

Malinko watched in helpless horror as the spiral patterns in her body began to move, twisting and writhing as they seeped into the sword buried in her chest, eventually disappearing. Shani looked down in mild curiosity, "It seems the curse seeks a new home."

With her free hand, she withdrew the blade. It left no visible wound as it left her chest. Malinko screamed and thrashed impotently as the tip of the blade turned to face him. "Accept this curse, my brother," Shani growled, "A lifetime of agony transferred from me to you."

Hikaru remembered little of the fight. There was something decidedly unwholesome about what they had done in that network of caves beneath the town of Cedarburg. Something which appeared only as individual flashes in his memory. Lysander driving a fist completely through the chest of a crinos Black Spiral so stunted and deformed it looked more like a giant rat than a werewolf, yet still had a visible splash of curly red hair on its head. Hikaru yowling with perverse joy as he happily sliced the limbs off a downed assailant.

The one thing he did remember, though, followed all of them as they staggered out of the caves, back into the basement of Malinko's Victorian mansion. Lysander dragging his uncle, Hikaru dragging a delirious looking Shani. What he remembered was the sight of Malinko. Shani had impaled him on one of the many hooks dangling from the ceiling, yet that alone didn't justify the screams of complete and total mind-breaking agony that were torn loose from the Black Spiral's soul as he thrashed about in madness. Those screams followed them all the way back out, and still echoed dimly from beneath the earth as Lysander and Hikaru muscled the massive steel door back into place.

What he remembered the most, though, were the intricate spiraling tattoos that now covered Malinko's body.

Lysander had remained in the basement with his dead uncle. Shani was busy coming to terms with the fact that she was no longer about to die. Upon leaving the house they had been met by Blue, who told them that the small army Lysander had managed to put together was nearly finished mopping up the last of the Black Spiral Dancers in town. Blue then noticed there was something missing from the picture, and realized that it was the accursed tattoos that normally covered Shani's body.

Even though the tattoos themselves were gone, the skin was still slightly discoloured where they once were. A mute testament to the life Shani had lived up until now, and a physical reminder that she would no longer view each day quite the same way she used to. She and Blue had gone off to discuss things. Hikaru looked down at the sword in his hands, idly left there by an over-excited Shani.

Hikaru's rolex alerted him with a soft beep that the time was now three in the morning. Had they really spent that long fighting? Hikaru continued staring at the black blade in his hands. It felt rather weighty, yet not in an entirely physical sense. Still, that was a really pretty jewel in the hilt, Lapis Lazuli? Hikaru looked at its smooth, polished surface, admiring his own reflection. For a brief second the reflection shifted, and he was staring into the eyes of Kaoru.

The sword clanged as it hit the road at the same time as Hikaru fell backwards onto the grass, clutching his chest and gasping. From this vantage point, he finally noticed what was off about Lysander's pickup. There was a dagger sticking out of the passenger-side door. Wait a minute, wasn't that Ruth's? Hikaru shot back up, wrenching the dagger out of the door. A note, pinned beneath it, fell to the ground. Hikaru picked it up and read it:

"The clock-tower, now, alone. I have something that may interest you. -K"

Lysander rushed out of the basement at the sound of squealing tires, getting outside just in time to see Hikaru inexpertly driving his truck away.

Hikaru walked into the plaza. This goddamn, shitsplat town in the middle of fucking nowhere. This worthless little burg where so much had gone wrong. Why did it have to be here? Where Shani nearly died many times. Where Jess had died, someone who, despite her less than admirable life decisions, had proven to be one of the most respectable people Hikaru had ever met. And the other one he met, she of the raven hair, short stature, and psychotic personality.

Hikaru remembered their first meeting back at the sept, when Nate was still alive, when, aside from Shani, they were all strangers. Hikaru had done what he normally did, the shameless flirting which betrayed no true attraction beneath it, just a mask of promiscuity to cover the hollowness left by May's death. Ruth, unlike the others, had not only played along with the flirting, but turned it back on Hikaru, playfully fiddling with his hair when he rubbed against her, then finding an imaginary tangle and almost yanking his head off his shoulders trying to remove it.

He had learned quickly not to pretend to flirt with Ruth.

It would have ended there, but then that girl continued to meddle with things. When Jess entered the equation, she absolutely refused to let her die, even standing up to Nate, a sept elder. Hikaru found himself admitting then, even if suicidally psychotic, that girl did not back down on principle. Then came the night that both referred to as the mistake that shouldn't have happened. Hikaru's unplanned espionage-attempt on Tellus, and the series of events leading from that that ended up with the pack nearly being slaughtered at the hands of Roland, and Jess being trapped within Hikaru's apartment with a maddened Roland trying to re-assert ownership of her.

After that came the argument, a rather heated argument. At some point words had changed to physical blows, physical blows had changed to vicious grappling, grappling had turned into passionate making out...and things degraded from there.

The entire time Hikaru swore up and down that he didn't love the psychotic bitch. She stuck to the same line, it was merely something of mutual benefit to them both, that was all. Even now, he did this not because he was in love with her, but because she was a packmate, and that's what you did for packmates.

Hikaru walked into the plaza.

It was the only one in town, directly in front of the town hall, complete with its own oversized clock-tower. 'Compensating for something?' Hikaru thought. He stopped, he saw the figure waiting for him.

Kaoru got up from where he lounged on the overhang directly beneath the giant clock, which itself was covered in a large construction tarpaulin. "Again we meet, brother, and again I look down upon you. It is good to see things are as they should be."

Hikaru didn't listen, he ran forward and leapt to the left, rebounding off a windowsill and landing on the balcony opposite Kaoru. He wordlessly drew his katana.

"Oh please," Kaoru sighed, drawing his own sword, "Must you prove your own stupidity once again?"

The two blades met directly beneath the clock. Hikaru pushed forward with a growl, forcing Kaoru to give ground. Kaoru leapt back nimbly, easily falling into the multiple forms Hikaru unleashed. Finally, seemingly backed against the edge of the balcony, Kaoru ducked under the sweeping blade, twisting supernaturally fast around Hikaru and leaping to the other side of the balcony.

"You always were an idiot," Kaoru smirked, "Not only using forms and techniques made for those who can only move at the speed of a mere human, but doing so in the full knowledge that you can't touch me anyways."

Seemingly carelessly, Kaoru tossed away his own sword. Hikaru didn't wait for a second chance, he leapt forward, aiming a decapitating blow.

With the katana's blade mere centimeters from Kaoru's neck, Hikaru's muscles painfully locked up. The sword quivered to a halt. "You always were the weaker brother," Kaoru said with mock sadness.

The vampire twisted, delivering a palm-heel strike to Hikaru's sternum, sending him reeling across the balcony. With superhuman speed, he appeared behind Hikaru, delivering an open chop to Hikaru's side, "...You never could take opportunity when it was presented to you..."

Hikaru spun, but slower, hampered now by the numbing pain in his chest and side. Kaoru easily ducked under the flailing blow, delivering a four-knuckle punch to the Bastet's throat, "...just like everyone else in the family, you place yourself under the same pointless restrictions..."

Hikaru doubled over, gagging. Kaoru rolled his eyes in disappointment before delivering a vicious knee to Hikaru's nose, sending him sprawling bonelessly into the corner of the balcony, "...apparently too stupid to realize the rest of the world has moved on without you."

Kaoru made a production of carefully examining his nails for any chips or imperfections, "You're pathetic, outdated, and it's time for you to retire."

Hikaru coughed up blood, knowing his nose shouldn't be bent that way. He looked up at Kaoru, trying to find any sort of reply, then saw the figure behind him. She sat on a windowsill ten feet away from the balcony, clad in a sheer, flowing white dress which clung to her in all the right ways. Mum smiled at Hikaru, "It's time to make a choice."

Kaoru turned, tilting his head in confusion at the newcomer, "Wait...I know you..."

Hikaru saw his opening...but what could he do? His katana lay on the pavement twenty feet below, and even if he had it, the curse forbade him from laying a finger on his brother. Hikaru yowled and attacked anyways, grabbing the only weapon available.

The black blade, Fate, he had earlier put in his belt without even thinking about it.

Kaoru spun back, seamlessly picking up his own katana from the ground and deflecting Hikaru's first swipe. Hikaru spun, adding the momentum from Kaoru's block to his own speed, twisting around and getting the blade under Kaoru's guard.

The sword plunged deeply into Kaoru's side.

There was a long pause as both brothers looked at the blade buried in Kaoru's body, both working out the implications of this. They both reacted to this at the same time, Hikaru ripping the blade out of his brother's body and spinning for a decapitating blow, Kaoru re-asserting his stance and readying himself for another assault.

The two blades, one black, one bright steel, clashed and came to a stalemate, inches from Kaoru's neck. Hikaru growled deeply, fangs and claws extending, Slowly, inexorably, he began pushing forward, forcing Kaoru's katana back, bringing the razor edge of Fate ever closer to the vampire's neck. Kaoru, despite his position, smiled, "She's right, brother, it's time to make a choice. One hand shot out, grabbed a rope and pulled, then shot back.

In the intervening time, Hikaru had managed to push Fate far enough forward that it was actually begging to saw through his brother's neck. The rope Kaoru had pulled ripped the tarpaulin off the front of the clock, revealing what lay beneath. Hikaru turned his head at the strange gagging sound he heard overhead.

Ruth had been tied to the clock face. Her feet were bound to minute hand, her neck connected by a noose to the hour hand. The time was three-forty two, the second hand indicated a total of four seconds left before the time would be three-forty three. The way the hands where aligned with Ruth's bindings meant that at three-forty three, the ropes would be pulled so taut that Ruth's head would be ripped off. As it was, she had already been suffocated into unconsciousness by the noose. Down the front of the clock lay a thin dribble of blood, originating from two holes in her frighteningly pale neck.

"So what's your choice, brother?"

Hikaru cursed, spat, and leapt backwards. In a single backflip, he severed the ropes holding Ruth's feet and her neck just as the minute hand moved to three-forty three with terminal, leaden crunch. Hikaru landed back on the balcony with Ruth in his arms. He was alone there. Kaoru had moved himself to the rooftop proper of the town hall. The vampire looked down at Mum, who was still sitting on the windowsill, "I remember you, and know where you live. You will regret your interference in family matters."

And then Kaoru disappeared.

Hikaru ignored him, concentrating solely on Ruth. Trying to hold back a sob, he put his lips to hers, forcing air into her lungs. He was rewarded as the girl started coughing. He delicately sat her up, closely examining her body for the first time as she gasped for air. Hikaru saw the new network of scars and symbols etched into her flesh, his stomach turning in revulsion. He then saw a pair of symbols that stood out from the rest. A burn-scar on her forehead, and a series of deeply engraved scars just below her breasts.

One was from the Shibara family ring. The other was the Shibara family sigil, done upside down, Kaoru's own symbol.

The same one that was left on May's corpse.

"Hikaru...your claws are digging into my back," Ruth said.

Hikaru realized also that he had bitten a hole through his lip. Without even thinking about it, he reached up and viciously snapped his nose back into place, "I'm so sorry...this was my fault, I should never have gotten you involved in all this."

Ruth reached up weakly, still bobbing on the edge of consciousness from blood-loss, "That was my choice Hikaru, I did it because I realized I loved you, whatever that means. I don't deny it anymore, I don't even care what love is, I feel connected to you, and I'm more than ready to die for you. I just wanted to see you again."

"Don't say that, hon," Hikaru said, wiping tears away.

"What? That I love you?" Ruth said, "As stupid and meaningless as that word is...it's true, don't you feel the same way?"

Hikaru hung his head, fine, "Yes, right now I do feel very very stupid...stupid and happy that you're alive, so I guess I love you too, if that's what it is."

"You're not the only one who's happy to see her alive," said a voice from behind Hikaru.

Hikaru looked up, Ruth did as well, her eyes lighting up, "Mum," she squeaked weakly.

"You realize what you just did, right?" Hikaru said, "Kaoru will put you through hell for interfering, and he's more than capable of doing so."

"Maybe," Mum said, "But for her, I feel it's worth it. Ruth."

"Yes?"

"You won't have to choose between two people you love, at least not yet. For the moment there's nothing stopping you from loving both of us."

"Thank you Mum."

"And you, Hikaru."

"Yeah?"

"You made a good choice, if you truly hurt Ruth, you'd have more than just Kaoru hunting you."

"Meh, I didn't do it for you."

"Just be aware of the temptation you now carry with you."

"What temptation?"

"The sword, Fate. It saved more than one life tonight, but that sword offers easy access to a type of power that one must normally earn through discipline. That is the sort of power that is the most corruptive. Be very careful, your brother, from what little I've learned, fell into temptation, and with that sword, you risk going to the same destination, along a different route."

"Yeah, I think I'll manage."

"I truly hope so," Mum said, and like Kaoru, she disappeared.

For a few minutes Hikaru and Ruth sat together, watching the slowly brightening horizon in the east.

"Hikaru?"

"Yeah? What?"

"Can we go to London?"

"Yeah, I was sick of this town anyways."