Three feet was enough to bump the edge of her wards, scarlet and ozone flaring to life before they contracted back to invisibility. "Really? Oh, now that does surprise me." Finger twisting gestures paused. She skimmed his appearance, head to toe, and suddenly smiled with appreciation. "Well, I suppose she must enjoy the perks."

That hint of goodness kept teasing at him, an irritant under his skin. Maybe he'd pull an oyster and turn it into a pearl. He weighed his options again, his focus no less sharp for being without the framing of his glasses. Her bringing up Annie was a warning, a threat, an unsubtle reminder. It set his teeth on edge, made him want to bite, chew, suck--"I'm not here for you." He took a step to the side, putting himself just out of arm's reach, and glanced past her toward the end of the alley. "You're just gravy."

?Mmm. You've spent quite a bit of effort on a condiment, then." When he stepped out of the edge of her wards, she lowered her right hand, dropping the half-completed spell. "Why is that, darling?" Amber eyes were thoughtful, seemed honestly puzzled.

"You're tempting." The admission came easy. Though the cap's brim shadowed his eyes, it was just as easy to see that he was still looking past her.

It could be a bluff. But it cost her nothing to take a half-step sideways - back against the opposite alley wall and with a view of the alley entrance as well as the Hound of God. Her smile flashed to life, delighted. "Oh, how flattering! Darling, you say the sweetest things." As suddenly as it appeared, the smile fell away. "But I think I would appreciate it if you didn't follow me any longer."

"I'm sure you would." His eyes darted back toward her at the movement. He mirrored it at once, unwilling to leave himself exposed any longer.

"But I've learned so many interesting things about you today." He left the timeframe deliberately vague. "Maybe I'll be able to talk you into another hot date soon. Or at least get your autograph." His fingers moved at his sides. Not anything as precise and planned as a cast spell...just a tiny flexing.

Her laughter was as fully delighted as her smile had been. "If you wanted to see me socially, John, you should have just asked. And I'm always happy to provide an autograph for a fan." A pout followed, utterly appealing. "Of course, it seems so few appreciate my work." She hadn't missed the tiny gesture of his hand - her own twitched in response, a quirk of one finger.

"I'm asking. I'm hungry." He twitched his head toward the mouth of the alley. "Let's go get dinner." The risen brow was just barely visible.

Well. That had caught her off-guard. She paused for a heartbeat, covered it by tossing sable hair over her shoulder. Finally she answered with a warm smile. "Of course. There's a little Greek place on the other side of the square...?" The calculation that flickered across her face was so brief it might have been imagined.

"I know it." He held a hand out to her.

This time her eyes widened. Scarlet flamed at the back of her eyes for just a breath. The skin-to-skin contact last time had been a shock - for both of them. Why would he repeat that? What did he want? She steeled herself against a repeat of the experience, took the step forward to rest her hand on his.

And as before, gooseflesh visibly rippled up his exposed arm. The wolf smiled at her behind his eyes, even badly concealed as they were behind the contacts. In the next instant, his grip tightened. That was all the warning she had before he turned and yanked them both through a portal and into the Hypokeimenon.

A single step through the glorious golden light of the farthest outreaches of the Presence set them at the back of a tiny grove of olive trees planted mostly for effect, behind the Greek place. Oye.

She didn't shriek. But that single step had burnt and frozen, all at once. Blue ozone sparked against scarlet sulfur, vanished as soon as they re-emerged. Her features had... rippled, that was the word... through a series of changes that underlined her essentially unfixed appearance, until they landed back in "reality". She staggered as she solidified, dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin - she was classically Persian in appearance by default, apparently. Her breath came in wild gasps until she managed to catch it back. "God damn you, Benandanti!"

Huh. "You're hot when you're pissed," he said casually, and braced himself for either a blow or a spell. He still held her left hand in his right.

Middle Eastern and evil, magical, et cetera. Shapechanger.

Full lips pulled back into a snarl. Her right hand lashed out with a sharp twist - cutting slivers through the fabric of reality. The brain ached, trying to fill in the gaps, the void - hair-thin cracks that surrounded them for a split-second before vanishing. Warning. She didn't bother to re-don the more delicate form of before. "Lamb sounds delightful. After that, you are paying."

He squeezed her hand, smiling through the screaming tension riding along every nerve, and dragged her off toward the front of the building. "Lamb it is."

He didn't bother to shorten his stride for her. Let her make her legs longer. He was clearly nuts. Even he was marveling at it.

The meal was delicious, but the company, this company, set her teeth on edge. And that little stunt, Stepping through the Presence, oh, it burnt, it seethed in her mind. She smiled charmingly at John when they parted, and one thought rose to the top.

He would pay.


**taken from live play, with thanks to John Benandanti's player!

December 21, 2010

There was so much going on, but the business of the Throne couldn't simply be put on hold either. She had returned from Vrashne, from Maine, from Lashkar, Enkid, and Telluride for a few days. Now she sat in the office in the penthouse, the corner one with all the windows that had once belonged to Him and now was hers. She had kicked off her sky-high heels under the desk, sat with one leg crossed over the other with painted toenails bouncing as she read over one of the far too many reports on her desk. She was even wearing a delicate pair of reading glasses perched on her nose against the eyestrain of small print.

A portal opened into the penthouse of the Throne of Saturn. "Knock knock." It was no surprise to hear John's voice, not when the sense of Presence actually crackled over her spine with a wash of blue sparks, crawled up and grabbed her by the throat. The carpet was thick enough that there was no echo despite the cavernous size of the room. She used the time between Presence and speech to regain her bearings, put down her pen carefully across the piece of paper she had been reading.

Only once she was sure she could speak without audible pain did she turn her chair to face the intruder. Her purr of a voice was cool and carefully modulated. "John, darling. It's delightful to see you, as always - but you could have made an appointment through my secretary."

"You have the most beautiful eyes, sometimes." The compliment came unexpectedly, took her by surprise. He lapsed back into the chair after a moment of fighting her carpet. The fingerless gloves creeeaked as he flexed his hands over the arms. His expression was flat, hard, cold. At some point he'd pulled the knot loose in his tie, popped the top button of his robin's-egg blue shirt, and his pulse was beating fast and furious in the hollow of his throat. His presence burned.

One eyebrow arched slightly, her lips curved up into a smile while her mind raced over the meaning behind his presence, the reason for the compliment. "Thank you." She bounced the crossed knee thoughtfully while she studied his stony expression, the bird's-wing beat of the pulse in his throat. She was caught off-guard, knew it. "Well, compliments aside, how may I help you today, John?"

"Do I get a kiss?" He wasn't blinking, either.

"If you want one, darling. You do look simply delicious this afternoon." She glanced at the window and her smile touched full humor when she realized the time. "Evening. My, you do work late." He had asked. She stood and paced toward his sunken wheelchair. The carpet was lush beneath her feet, warm and soft, and her hips had a distinct and deliberate sway as she crossed the distance between them. When she reached the chair, she leaned over, braced her hands next to his, and leaned forward. Just an inch from his face, she paused. "Hard work does deserve its rewards."

"Yeah, the way I see it, if you're gonna **** me I might as well get a kiss while you're at it." He sounded furious. Tiny flecks of gold and copper were spun out through his irises, clearly visible at this very close remove.

"Darling, when I **** you, you'll know it." The crude words were another deliberate choice. It was like standing in a blast furnace, this close to the air of Being that clung to the Benandanti. She smiled at the grate of his voice, answered on a quick exhale. "Speaking of beautiful eyes -" Then the reckless move, and she knew it was a gamble when she played it. She closed the last bit of distance, caught his lips with hers.

He tasted very faintly of eggs, syrup, cheese. It lasted just long enough for the taste, the feel. Then she pulled back - staggered back, eyes wide, heart pounding. There was something ? he?d done something to her in that kiss. She could feel it twisting up and around through the core of her. It hurt, fiercely.

When she staggered back, it pulled his hand free from her hair. He?d actually reached for her, in the middle of that kiss, and calculation ticked over another data point. He threw himself back into his chair hard enough that it rocked on its wheels. "Are you incapable of being honest about anything? Can you go two seconds without ****ing lying?" His voice was shaking, too.

She had to step back, and again, to get away from the surge of burn and pain, until she reached the edge of her desk and realized what she was doing. Then she gave him honesty, in a voice raw and simple. "I am lies, John." It was as true as the Word, for a paradox enough to make a head ache with it. "Honesty is a tool I use when I need to." Just now, honesty would serve her purposes far better than any lie.

He was still staring at her, breathing hard. Seconds passed. He shook his head once, a snap of motion as if he were trying to shake off a high-proof shot of alcohol's aftereffects. Then he pulled a manila folder out from between the arm of his chair and his thigh, and tossed it onto the desk beside him. "We had a deal. You reneged on it. Tell me why I shouldn't cut your own personal nightmare in the basement loose and split for a different Nexus point."

"Refresh my memory, darling. We have more than one deal." Her lips curved back up into a smile, faint but present. She hid dismay, disturbance, and the unsettling, bone-jarring ache of his nearness. She leaned back against the desk six inches from the nearest wheel of his chair. "As for sweet Sarah - she isn't only my nightmare."

"No human subjects." His voice was curt and still furious, tight with rage and control.

Her eyebrows arched as she reached over to pick up the manila folder. She opened it, skimmed the lab reports, his neatly documented test results. Her lips pursed while she considered how much to tell him, what he might accept. And again she decided on honesty against the Hound. "Hmm. Serenity - that's right, we've moved to limited human trials for this one. Strictly volunteers, and we have full disclosure statements and release forms on each. The side effects are still proving too... difficult, though, especially for those with weak hearts." Her face was a serene mask when she looked across at him, the expression chosen because it had nothing to hide. "I didn't realize that your codicil applied to volunteers."

She watched him lean into his trembling hand; push his glasses up to rub at the bridge of his nose. "Okay," he told his hand. "Okay. Why don't we just forego the slippery slope bullshit, cut out the six months in between and you tell me what you want and what you're trying to do. Can you do that? Or is the tool too heavy for you?"

Her lips quirked a bit, turned up at the corners with amusement. "Darling, if you've realized nothing else you should know that I hate coming straight to the point." Her gaze ran over his chest, the spread of his shoulders and the muscle of his arms, down to his lap and back to his face. A visual caress she was preventing her hands from following with the grip on the manila folder. The twist of new was screaming for release. She used that, and more honesty, as weapons. "I told you the truth, when I asked you to work for me. I want you, John. I want someone on my side, when..." She paused, moistened her lips with a flick of pink tongue, and decided to leave the condition hanging, "I want someone on my side."

That razor-sharp stare of his narrowed down to a laser's focus behind the reflective gleam of his glasses. "You might as well go for a run," he said, calling up their earlier conversation about sex and desire. Her face remained that same serene mask while inside she laughed for the lies he had already believed. He added, "We can't be anything other than what we are."

She looked away from the sharp gaze, out at the glimmer of lights over the city. When she looked back at him, she was not smiling any longer. "What are we, darling?"

"Trapped. At least Sarah's cage is visible."

There was an involuntary flicker of pain; she could feel it, a flinch that she smoothed away with her next breath. The man was too perceptive, sometimes. "Yes." She inhaled, let out the breath, smiled. And used his perception and more honesty as weights on a scale. "More than you realize. More than you know."

She studied the line of his jaw, held back the urge to kiss it, the fall of hair across his forehead, and suppressed the desire to brush it back. She looked at the shadow of his beard, and screamed at the waking source of this unexpected lust at the core of her. Then she looked back at his eyes with her features still set in that carefully serene mask. "Are you going to stay with me, John? We do need your expertise." She held out the manila folder to him as an offering.

He leaned over, took the folder, and tucked it back in between his leg and the chair's arm. She didn?t let out the sigh of relief and satisfaction that her calculations had succeeded. The shirt had a ridiculously high thread count. Every last one of those threads pulled tight over the suddenly taut and bunching muscles in his shoulders and arms as he forced the wheels of the chair into an about-face.

"John." She called it before he split open reality and flooded the room with Being. "You do have beautiful eyes." Her lips tingled with sense memory; she pulled them into a smile.

Those big shoulders actually hunched a little. "I am not," he told the bank of windows, "going to stay up all night wondering whether that was the truth or a lie. Just so you know."

"I never expected it." Softly. She knew the cost of her lies. "Merry Christmas, darling." The next wrenching thrust of his hands filled the room with a glory, glory, hallelujah. When the portal snapped shut, she doubled over with the pain held in check for so long. On the desk, her phone rang with her Chief of Security?s number flashing on the screen, and she never picked it up.

He nodded at that with a noncommittal noise tacked on; set her foot down with care. Sitting back in the chair for a moment, he rolled his big shoulders in a tension-easing gesture. He rocked his head side-to-side, twisting his neck with a crackle of tendons and vertebrae. Then he patted his knee again.

She replaced her left foot with the right, in a similar position against his knee. The nail painting was surreal and weirdly comfortable apart from the way that every touch felt like it was searing through skin and flesh to bone. Her eyes were falling half-closed as she let weariness and lazy contemplation of his features take the lead. Since he was here, she indulged a piece of her curiosity, taking a measure of the man. "Did you ask for the gift, John? Or was it thrust upon you, formed into your nature?"

"The ability comes down patrilineally, but it has to be woken." He paused. The cotton ball swiped back and forth across her toe. "I wasn't given a choice." He worked with his own nail and a pinch of the cotton at one corner where an obstinate bit of color hung on. "Can you tell when I'm lying and when I'm telling the truth?" The bracing scent of the solvent warred with the fainter, more seductive perfume of the coffee that sat waiting for them.

"Mmm. When you know you're lying, yes." It didn?t give him much to know that. She flexed her painted toes, examined the neat job on that foot while he started on the other. "You've skilled hands, darling. I'll get the coffee when you're done." Then she looked up at him, faintly amused. "Is this twenty questions, or are you just curious?"

"Pathologist, remember? And I used to do this for Phoebe." He gave the bottle a shake. The brush stroked over her nail. "I told you, I missed you." Whoops, he slipped there. He rubbed the color off her skin with the tip of his thumb.

Her foot twitched a little ? he wasn?t lying, or didn?t believe that he was. She turned the involuntary twitch into something that looked like a ticklish response. "Sorry." She gave a rueful smile to reinforce the impression of the tickle. "I didn't mean to move." The twitch, the apology, they gave her a moment of study and thought as well. "Nightmares or insomnia, darling?"

"Insomnia." Next nail. She couldn?t make out his expression, with his head bent as it was, the glasses in the way, the baseball cap tugged low on his brow. It was frustrating, so very frustrating, to try to read him without those visual cues.

"That's a shame, though I'm not sure I wouldn't take the trade with you. At least then I could feel productive instead of waking myself up with nightmares every hour or so." Her voice was wry with self-deprecating humor while she calculated.

"Ugh. That sounds...unpleasant. I'm sorry." He painted up the next two nails. "What about?"

"You." Plain. She rather thought he would find the simple answer more disconcerting.

He tilted his head to one side again, and the twist of his mouth was just as plain. "Be easier to just kill me and put me out of your misery, wouldn't it?" The question came as he finished the last stroke on her little toe.

She flexed her toes, examined the paint job on this foot before she retrieved it from his lap with a little smile. Then she looked up at him with that same little smile. "But I told you, darling, I want to keep you." It was so very true. The Hound would be a valuable ally; the man was constantly intriguing. She pushed to her feet and slid past him with a stirring of nail polish, solvent, and very faintly, lavender. "Light and sweet?"

"Life's a bitch, I guess. Yeah, please." He sat back again, set his heels on the bottom railing of his chair; she caught the flex of his ankles, the little motions that he surely indulged himself in when he had the use of his legs. He wasn't looking down at his feet, though. He was watching her.

"And then you die - isn't that how the saying goes?" The mugs she kept in the office were clear glass. She poured two, both with cream, only one with sugar. The spoon clinked gently against glass while she stirred, against the tray when she put it back down. When she re-crossed the room and offered his mug, she remained standing and leaned against edge of the desk. It was a deliberate pose, the casual rest, as if she weren?t burning alive to stand so close to him. "Why did you break into my office at one o'clock in the morning, John? What were you looking for?"

"You, mostly." He reached for the mug with both hands.

She passed over the mug and let her hand linger against his for a moment. The spark, the flash, the scorching heat; she craved the sensation when she normally felt so little. "Mmm. So you said. Did you find anything interesting while you were waiting for me?" She sounded a little amused, almost enough to hide the undesired shaking of her voice.

"Couple of names in an address book. You're building a new casino. That's about it." His fingers tightened on the mug's handle. He leaned back, blew across the surface.

"I hope it was worth the effort." She lifted her mug for a sip, added before she tasted the liquid, "I missed you too." She kept her expression neutral while she watched him, judging his reaction. Do you see the truth, John, or will you think it a lie?

"I'm sure you did." He gave her back a lie and the answer to her question, delivered as smoothly as he'd given her all those truths. He tilted his head back, showing the evidence of his exhaustion as he looked into her face.

"Liar." Amused and affectionately before another sip of coffee. She could feel his lie in her bones, echoing up through her body with a little surge of energy. "Was there something else you wanted, John? Or shall I return to bed and try to get something like sleep?"

"Just you." John bent his head, curling subtly into himself. The rim of the mug dug into his temple. His mouth tightened, and she watched the little tells of his reaction while she tried to puzzle out their source. "I'm sorry I woke you."

Truth always put her off-balance; he wasn?t lying in either statement just then. Morana covered the shake of her hand by lifting the mug for a last sip of her coffee. The mug ticked onto the desk still half-full; her secretary would attend to the mess in the morning. "I'm not." She straightened from her lean against the desk, smiled faintly. Then she reached out with a palm still warmed by hot glass, rested her hand along his cheek for an instant. "They weren't all nightmares." Until she said it, she hadn?t realized it was another truth.

He'd barely touched his coffee. He lifted his head and focused on her face again, and words came tumbling out. "I am so scared of you," he told her. Pitched just above a whisper, it was as raw as if he had burned his throat. "I can't fucking sleep, and I can't stop thinking about you." His throat worked visibly. "It hurts to be around you, you know that?" His knuckles were white, locked around the handle of the mug, the arm of his chair.

Her hand hung in the air a few inches from his face, until she pulled back and wrapped her arms around herself. "Yes. It burns and freezes, just as you do me." Beat, breath, and a lick of her lips. "You said it yourself, John. We are what we are, and trapped in it." Her voice was husky, over-controlled, soft. It was the only way she could keep from screaming her rage for the limits of her creation.

"Yes. You're just like me. You didn't have a choice, did you?" He?d set aside his mug onto the desk as well.

"I was constructed for a purpose." She said it very simply, eyes drifting to the windows where the dark glass reflected back a distorted mirror. It was true, and another moment of calculation; she appealed to his sympathy. "My creator wrought more than he knew and summoned more than he thought." Her arms tightened around her ribcage. "I would kill him, if I could."

"I'm falling in love with you." His words pierced the distance between them, sharp as knives. Her head jerked to face him, as abruptly as if she'd been slapped. She couldn?t control the reaction, and her fingers tightened into the gaps between her ribs.

"I'm not under any illusions, here. Fight, flight or f*ck. That's what I feel. And you can't possibly be capable--" his voice broke "--of any kind of reciprocation, anymore than sex is interesting to you. You're gonna use me up, and when you're done, I'm done."

Black was crackling at the edge of vision again, black and blood red threads that splintered reality and tore away Being. When she managed to speak, her voice was tight. "You should leave, John. Now." If he didn?t leave, she would splinter him on the edges of his own words. Her fingers were white-knuckled, digging into the spaces between her ribs hard enough to bruise her own skin and she could feel herself unraveling with the truth of his words and the emotions that came with them.

His reaction was commendably fast. He pushed the coffee away and rose, circled around to the far side of the desk to scoop up the duffel bag.

Metallic things rattled in it. He dumped the bag into the seat of the chair. He'd kept his eyes on her for the whole thing, the broken edges of his expression pulled into composed wariness while he moved.

She stood in place, and watched him walk and bend and grab the bag. Her fingernails were digging through the fabric of her dress and cutting slices out of her own skin. Void surged and grabbed her by the throat, staking its claim on her being. She could feel that the skin around her eyes was tight with control held by a thread. "You should have stayed a nightmare, John. Go." Go, before I destroy you. Taut, every line and curve held to snapping.

He didn't take his eyes off her even to see his way through the portal that irised open behind him. One step backward. That was all it took for it to snap shut before him.

Being met Void when John's portal opened. By the time it closed she was splintering through the threads of absence and dropping back to her knees in convulsions. Good thing that the important records weren't stored in the room; the furniture was all going to need to be replaced. So were the plate glass windows.

Poor secretary.

The body that cleared the portal's edge wasn't a man's. As if his deity felt the need to force a reconnection, he shifted the second he was fully in the room. A ruddy wolf the size of a small pony tumbled through the hole, somersaulted over his own shoulder and came to an abrupt stop when its back slapped against the chest at the foot of the bed. The wheelchair glided smoothly in after them, came to a halt and immediately began to steam gently in the warmer air of the room.

Morana brushed the flecks of melting ice from her fingers, looked at the monstrously-sized wolf resting on the floor. He wasn't breathing. Persian features flickered concern, irritation, anger, worry, and back to irritation. "You asked, Benandanti." What will I do if this killed him? Damn. Bitter as she stalked toward the ruddy wolf, boot-heels click-clicking on the wood. She sat on the chest and reached out her hand to the beast, a hand sparkling and cracking with sparks of electric white.

He was a wolf. She touched him. He was a man. Frost limned every hair, every eyelash, every strand of the rough-knit sweater he'd worn to Mass. The glasses slumping down his nose were decorated in pretty patterns of ice across the lenses. One cracked in the instant after transition, with a tiny pop. His skin was gray. He went right on not breathing.

Damn. She'd never learned CPR; after all, she normally spent more time stopping hearts than trying to restart them. "So much for God's protection." She went from the chest to the floor and hauled the man onto his back with a heave of effort. Then she bent to press her lips to his, try to blow air into his lungs. There?s supposed to be something about chest compressions, too, isn't there?

Thankfully she didn't have to dredge up whatever she had left in terms of lifesaving skills. As soon as her lips touched his, he jerked. His eyes flew open, pupils blown wide as a cat's. He sucked in a huge whooping gasp of air. Then he doubled over and started to cough.

And cough.

And cough.

She jerked back when his body convulsed up, sank back onto her heels while John coughed up the death and remembered how to breathe. Her eyebrows lifted, lips twisted into a mockery of a smile. "You did ask." And it didn?t kill you. Good. Narrowed, her eyes rested on the Benandanti who'd just dared her source.

Two minutes later he croaked out a single word. "Ow."

"Mmm." Agreement. After all - as the saying goes - what's good for the goose... Learn what your God does to me in the space between, Benandanti.

Once she was fairly sure he wasn't permanently damaged, she unfolded from the kneel and stood, turned in the center of the plain room. "How very pedestrian. You really should find a place with some character, darling." The conversation of the church was on hold, apparently, suspended back somewhere in the Void.

"I think we're even now." He pulled the glasses off--there went the broken lens, pattering onto the floor--and swiped a hand over his face, peering at her over it as he rubbed it back and forth across his mouth. He'd developed a crop of red freckles around his eyes. Draping an arm over his bent knee, he looked around the room, squinted back up at her. "I'm not rich like you, sorry. I don't have a backup castle in my pocket," he croaked and cleared his throat a few times.

"I don't really see the point in 'even', darling." She prowled the edges of the room, hips swaying with the snap of each boot-heel to the floor. Blistered fingertips skimmed the dresser, the small table, caught at the tie dangling from the doorknob and left it swaying in her wake. Assessing the man by the detritus of his life ? and what an interesting picture it is. Especially those books. "And if you need an advance or a raise, you should ask for one. After all, your work is quite good."

"No? Doesn't make you feel good at all?" His grin was a bent and crooked thing.

"Not particularly. Generally, 'even' is a compromise. And tell me, darling, how would you define a compromise?" It was a small room. It didn't take long before she reached her starting point, opted to take a seat on the bed with its rumpled covers. A little bounce tested the mattress. Comfortable bed. I?d pray for sleep right now, if faith were part of my being.

"Taking on the headache of the f*cking century so I don't hurt you again," he rasped. "That's my compromise. So thanks." He passed his hand over his face again, slid it through his hair, which stood up in streaks and clumps from melting ice. Twisting, she watched him visually measuring the space between himself and the bathroom.

"Compromise, darling, is the point where neither side is wholly satisfied and neither side can say no anymore. I recommend a prayer and two aspirin. Call me in the morning." Especially the prayer ? it might actually help you. She used the biting humor to conceal the truth of her suggestion ? another kind of lie. She bounced again and inhaled the wash of disturbed air from the sheets, air that smelled of sleep, musk, skin and the faint hint of citrus and spice that was uniquely John.

"You're bitchy all of a sudden." He leaned back against the chest. "What aren't you satisfied about?"

"I've a list. I keep it in my diary and cross off each entry when I finally get my way." She went from sitting to leaning on the mattress, reclining back as if it were her own bed with the lavender-scented pillows. His shivering had finally eased, there at the foot of the bed. Time to tweak your tail, Hound. "Do tell me if I broke you, John."

"I'd kill to read that diary," he said, and climbed to his feet. He turned to look at her, and stared. There was a nightlight on in the bathroom, supplying the only light post-portal entry. It skimmed one side of his face, delineating the sharp cut of cheekbone and jaw, the tightness around his capillary-blown eyes. "You're worse than Viagra," he muttered finally. "Do me a favor and go hang out in the bathroom for a few minutes?"

His mutter triggered a throaty, amused laugh. Such a man. She swung to her feet ? made sure that he could see the edge of her garter belt catching the thigh-high nylons ? and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. "If you insist, John." She made his name a caress. "I'll rummage through your medicine cabinet." Tick-tap-tick-tap carried her toward the bathroom.

"Check your eyes." He sounded a little constricted again. It was amusing. She could hear the dresser drawer sliding open, feel his presence moving away until it vanished outside the edge of sensation. "Any different?"

The question was odd enough that she did actually look in the mirror, leaning toward it with the little pop-top bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet held in one hand and the other braced on the sink. "No, of course not. I told you, this is my 'true' form." She let a little bit of her irritation leak into her voice.

"Okay. Listen. They already know, but I don't know whether they've made any kind of formal report to you, yet, so I figured I'd give you a heads-up." There were more sounds of cloth and rustling from the bedroom. "Your lab is going to have to do something to change the synthesis process for Serenity. It's a twelve-step process, right?"

He was leaping between topics with bewildering speed again. She pushed away from the sink to pop the cap on the bottle of aspirin. "I believe so, yes. I'm not familiar with the technical details, obviously." There was a small glass on the counter; she turned the water on to cold, filled the glass.

"Step seven is producing a toxic racemate. The LD-50 on it's way, way too low for every animal you've tested it on. Mice, rats, rabbits. Liver damage. Heart damage in the mice. And they're not doing a good enough job of separating the mixture. Check your eyes again for me."

When she let herself laugh this time, it was with true amusement. "Darling, I understood less than half of what you just said." When he asked about her eyes again, her eyebrows went up. She glanced into the mirror. "I do still have them. What exactly are you expecting?"

"Do you know what thalidomide is?"

With the water in the glass on the counter, she looked away from the mirror to shake free a couple of pills from the bottle. Ah, and there he was. Right there, beyond the open door. The burn of him started, faintly. She looked up with an arch of dark brows over dark eyes, snapped closed the container of aspirin. "No. Why, should I?"

"Do you know I came twice this morning, thinking about you?"

Another change of subject. What are you trying to prove, John? "Why, darling! I'm flattered." Flattered and amused, and she admitted to herself a bit of regret. Shame that it had to be alone. She tick-tapped two steps from the sink to the counter to reclaim the glass of water. "What did you dream about while you did, John?"

"Dream? That I could actually touch you. This morning I was still under the impression that you couldn't be bothered." He reached the doorway and blocked it: one forearm across the frame, his head held up by the back of that hand. "And then you go and tell me that you lied. Not that it matters. I can't figure out how to get around the burn."

"I lie about everything, darling. I did tell you that." She lifted one eyebrow and the hand with the aspirin, while her other hand curled around the glass of water. Her mouth curved up into a twist of a smile at the contradictory truth. "We've just seen what happens when you get too close, haven't we?"

He reached for the aspirin. "You really don't. And...that's not you." He frowned at her. "Not all of you. There's more to you than that. I can feel it."

This time? This time the laugh she set free was rich, deep and unaccountably bitter. "There's more to me. You can feel it. Will you preach to me of your God now, John? Or tell me how you can save me? Redeem me from my evil ways?" It?s been tried before. It means you believe the lie. She offered him the glass of water after the aspirin, with another step closer that spoke seduction in every line. That you want the body and the dream. Here, then.

"No," he said, quiet, quiet. His fingers closed around the pills. "Look in the mirror."

Exasperated, irritated, she turned again for another glance in the mirror. The glass of water slipped from her hand, shattered on the bathroom floor with a crash and splash. Her step backwards was involuntary, startled and alarmed. "What - "

"I'm not in a position to redeem anybody. I have too many flaws of my own."

She was staring at her own reflection, disturbed and - it showed - frightened. She couldn?t make herself care. Then a shift, a blurring, and she was slimmer, younger - Emmy of the wide hazel eyes that still sparked blue and black and red. Slightly older, shorter and curvy with masses of curling black hair - she'd mimicked Illiastri more than once, and those eyes should have been yellow-green and fox-like, not flaring with Void and Presence.

Taller, shorter, thinner, older, younger, purple hair, yellow eyes - she slid through forms as fast as she could imagine them, and it never changed. Her eyes - they were wrong. Blue the color of summer skies, the taste of sunlight and green growing things, shimmering over the iris below. Void and blood red deceit fighting against the blue. What IS this? She stepped back again and again, smack into the bathroom wall. When her shifting stopped she was Persian again and looking at him with a twisted mix of fear-induced rage. "What did you do? What have you done?" What did you DO to me, Benandanti?

He straightened up, dropping his arm, facing her squarely in the doorway. The aspirin rattled in his hand. "I don't know that it was me," he said. "If it was..." He shifted so she could push past him without touching him if she wanted to. "...if it was...I don't know. I've been honest with you. I told you how I felt."

Her upper lip curled up into a sneer as she lied, and lied, and lied. "You're right. It couldn't have been you, pathetic as that little declaration of sentiment was. What Hound of God would whimper about love to something like me and still have power?" The Void swam up and swallowed blue, morphed back to dark chocolate brown. They were too close, in the tight confines of the bathroom. Little sparks of blue survived and danced on the surface. She could see it in the mirror. It was terrifying.

His mouth tightened, and after a few seconds, relaxed. "Here's the thing," he said, and rolled away from the door. Look, that was his back, squarely presented to her. "I've been here for over a year now."

She had an urgent need to get farther from the Benandanti and the disturbing sight of her own reflection. She had a large part of her being that lusted, desperately, for a naked blade to peel shirt and skin from his exposed back while he screamed in hopeless pain. Another part of her wanted, just as desperately, to press against his naked back and immolate herself in the fire of touch. She pushed away from the wall and out of the bathroom, crossing the bedroom in long strides that clacked heels against wood. "There's a medal for that." Sarcasm again, with as much distance as she could manage in the room. "And a prescription for lithium."

She was getting her room. He stayed where he was, leaning back against the frame as she passed him and kept right on going. "I've had plenty of opportunities. I f*cking work for you. And I can feel all that coming off you. But He's never called me to kill you."

Which was, come to think of it, more than a little surprising. She looked at him with a sudden twist of interest, enough to override the rest of the turmoil. At least, enough that she could push it to one side and let the calculation become consuming. Dropping onto the mattress again, she tilted her head, studying him. "Perhaps He doesn't want to lose one of His Hounds." She leaned back slightly, braced herself with back-reached hands, and crossed her legs at the knee.

"Maybe. You don't think I could take you?" He dry-swallowed the aspirin, then folded his arms across his chest, surveying her head to toe. He leaned a little harder against the frame, digging in between his shoulder blades.

"Perhaps. But I know that I can 'take' you, darling. At best it would be a kamikaze effort. Maybe your God values you more highly than He fears me." Her lips twisted up in a wry smile as she acknowledged ? to herself at least ? that the statement was likely the case. Without the others, she was an irritation at best.

"Maybe," he repeated. "But I think there's some other reason why. And I want to know what it is."

"Curiosity killed the cat, John." And she never looked so feline, lounging boneless backward. Because that blue, those sparks of Presence, those didn't belong to her. Where did they come from, why? "Do you have any pet theories?"

"I don't have jack right now." He looked around at the disaster they'd made of the place. "I just barely have an inn room." He gave her another look that was heat, longing, and merciful brevity. Then he disappeared into the bathroom. "I didn't put it there," he said from within. "Whatever it is."

This really is a comfortable mattress. She shifted from sprawling on the side of the bed to lying on it lengthwise. Flat on her stomach with her arms folded under her chin, she tilted her head to watch the bathroom door with narrowed eyes. Sheer willpower turned her mind away from that memory of pure blue and warring Void to thought and calculation. I can?t assess this adequately without sleep ? but I can bind him to me more closely now. It?s the honesty he responds to best, so I?ll give him a taste of that. "I don't know what it is. I don't like that, Benandanti. Whatever it is, I don't know what it is and I can't control it."

"Do you always go through this much glass in a week?" His voice echoed faintly in the small space of the bathroom.

"Only since I met you, darling." It was a lazy drawl. "Usually the bills lean more toward cleaning and resupply, the occasional contractor." She put her head down and rested her cheek against her folded arms. "Do you always ask so many questions?"

"Yeah." He brought a fresh towel out, his boot crunching once on a stray piece of glass. He asked another. "You spending the night?"

"Is that an invitation, darling?" She purred it, voice thick with amusement and yes, fatigue. "Or are you trying to kick me out of your bed?"

He shrugged, bent to pick up the half-melted pieces of pitcher ice and mop up the water. And studiously avoided looking at her. "That's up to you."

There was a broom and dustpan in the back of the closet. He bundled up the glass-laden towels and started sweeping with the slow, careful strokes of someone who didn't actually do that much work with a broom on a regular basis.

"I really don't want to move." She said it as a statement of fact, watching him sweep with the sort of abstract fascination of a scientist observing the rituals of a foreign culture. Do you mean that invitation, John?

"You're gonna have to move to get those boots off." The glasses were a loss. He added them to the clinking heap of glass now piled up in the trash and sat down to pull his boots off. "I'm a forensic scientist. Asking questions is kind of my job," he told the toes of those boots.

"It's the one downfall of these boots. They're fabulous, but terribly inconvenient sometimes." She twisted to look down at the shoes in question, finally rolled and curled up to sitting. Sable hair fell forward and shielded a hell of a yawn. His presence was a furnace; she'd wake with a sunburn, blistered skin and soul. She was too tired to care, and craved too much to resist. Give me this. Stumbling fingers started unlacing her boots, one after the other.

"Here." Rising, he crossed to the dresser and did more rummaging. Flannel pajama pants in an impressively ugly plaid of orange, blue and purple. A more sedate pair of black ones. A plain white shirt. He dropped them all on the foot of the bed, rolled the wheelchair over to park it next to his side. He and the hideously ugly pants went to the bathroom.

She could hear him brushing his teeth, and muffled, the comment that had to have been directed to himself. ?This is weird.?

Morana made quick work of changing. By the time he returned from the bathroom, she had on the black pajama pants and the white top - both far too large. They draped and hung and clung to curves where she lounged on the bed, with the little pile of dress and nylons and lingerie discarded on the chest. Of course she knew what she looked like. Sin and seduction wrapped in the half-asleep package of innocence. Lies and lies and lies.

"Listen," he said from the doorway. "I just want you to know that I didn't intend for you to--" He broke off midsentence and just stood there for several long breaths. She laughed inside, half-sleeping already though she was.

"Nevermind," he muttered and padded, feet still in socks, to the bed.

"Didn't expect me to what?" It was a barely audible mumble, thick-voiced on the edge of sleep. About to let the broken statement go, curiosity had won after all.

"No, really, nevermind," he said and face planted into his pillow with a whump and a bounce of everything else on the bed. "Was going," he muffled the words into it, "to say something nice that would be hysterically f*cking funny to you."

He whumped, she bounced. The eye cracked open again, "Mmm." She closed her eye again and twisted over, curling into her side, away from him. Her sleepy voice was barely a breath. "Thank you." It had been nearly six days since she'd had a full night's rest. Her body gave up the fight for consciousness.

December 31, 2010

It was a busy day in the Throne of Saturn. People wanted to celebrate, some of them at the expense of others. They caught two pickpockets and an impressively good card-counter by noon. Then things really got busy.

The back of the house was just keeping abreast of the demand for champagne. Gabby kept an eye on the slots floor, clutching her giant purse and adjusting her thick cats-eye glasses. Tomas was watching the bar area. Hilde prowled through the high-stakes room. Chief Malloy kept the more obvious men, the one with the fitted suits and the dark glasses and earpieces, circulating through the casino so that the less-observant believed they knew where the eyes were.

Workers were still repairing and redecorating Morana?s penthouse office. In the meantime, she was using her old office, the one she'd kept on the ground floor while Marius ran the Throne and she was little more than a puppet acting under his direction.

She had received the reports of the security incidents and authorized the supply manager to pay double for the last stock of high-end champagne in the City. Between reading further lab reports she'd taken a turn out to the high-rollers room and casino floor to socialize and schmooze the wealth from those who could afford it and those who couldn't.

New Year's Eve called for glitz and glamour, and she was dressed to the nines. She had twisted up her hair, apart from a few tendrils that had escaped to trail over neck and shoulder, and she was tapping a gold pen against her lips while she read the latest paper on Serenity. John had nailed the problem, it seemed, and that meant the last few stages of testing should progress smoothly.

The secretary of the evening was actually one of the ubiquitous Mr. Greys, plain, average and absolutely forgettable. Morana had given Kaylan, her usual secretary, the day off so that he could celebrate. Morana looked up when Mr. Grey opened the door. "Mr. Malloy is here to see you." His voice was as perfectly bland as the rest of him ? exactly as she had created him.

"Show him in, please." She had to give specific directions to the construct. It was another of those flaws in her creations, and she hid the faint irritation with a warm smile of greeting for her Head of Security. Mr. Grey nodded and came back to usher Daniel Malloy into the small office room.

Her Head of Security?s piercing blue eyes found her as soon as he stepped through the door. Morana?s mouth quirked up with a bit of a smile at one corner while she watched Malloy check the rest of the sparsely furnished room for threats. He and she both knew that she was the most dangerous thing currently in the room.

"Ma'am." His voice was a little gruff ? hardly surprising as this had to be the end of his shift and later. He paused in front of her desk, a manila folder clasped in both hands in front of him while the rest of his stance was parade rest.

Her smile curved up further while she put down the report she?d been reading and waved to the second chair. She paid the man a fortune, but it was worth it for his absolute loyalty and his very sharp judgment. If he was bringing her something, it was probably worth hearing about. "Do have a seat, Chief. I know you've been busy on shift today."

"Thank you." He crossed to the chair and sat, moving with a grace that belied his years. "I find myself facing a dilemma," he told her. "Following Dr. Benandanti's intrusion into your office you gave me no specific instructions concerning him. However, the safety of this casino, and your safety, is my business." He paused as if to invite comment.

One dark arch of eyebrow had lifted higher and higher while he spoke. This was unexpected and entirely fascinating. "It is, Mr. Malloy, and you do an excellent job with both. If this is a prelude to asking for a raise, I'm amenable to discussion."

"No." His mouth crooked under the mustache. "No, but thank you. I had him followed," he said bluntly.

"Did you." The curve of her lips didn't change, the second eyebrow lifted to match the arc of the first, and she pitched her voice cool. Having one of her personal employees followed without her knowledge was bold to say the least. "And did you find out anything interesting about Dr. Benandanti, Mr. Malloy?"

"He left the address we had listed as his home address and hasn't been back since, and has gone nowhere but work and the inn until this evening." He smoothed his mustache, tapped a finger against the folder.

"He left work early rather than staying late as he has been, and went directly to city hall. While he was there he searched the city's records for information on Baron DeMuer." Malloy knew well Morana?s ? ah ? relationship with Alain DeMuer. He paused to draw breath and finished with, "My tail just sent an update. He is sitting across the street from the main entrance to the Zeppa plant right now."

The pen that she had been flipping over and over between her fingers froze in place when she heard the Baron?s name. Memories cascaded through her head with almost physical force, first among them the constant, horrifically painful burn of his wards. After a moment, she tapped the gold pen against the silver of her dress on her upper thigh. Her eyes narrowed and her voice went from cool to absolute ice. The Benandanti was seeking out DeMuer. "Really. You're quite sure of this information, Chief?"

He offered her the folder; she leaned across the desk and claimed the report. Manila slapped down to the wood before she flipped the cover open and started skimming the contents. The more she skimmed, the less pleased she looked. She had pulled her lips into a thin line and there was a muscle twitching along the line of her jaw. The pen tapped faster against her leg. "My, my, John, you have been a busy man..." She said it as if she had forgotten the Chief were present, and the malice in her voice could have etched glass. I spent two months in DeMuer?s captivity, every second of it an agony, and the first thing you do after you get close to me is seek him out.

Malloy?s agents had accounted for every minute of John?s time for the past four days, meticulously noted and organized. Most of it was utterly uninteresting, save for the last three hours. Photographs accompanied the itinerary, blurred and hastily up-linked, but each was undeniably of him. Someone had gone along after him and recorded the information he'd gathered at city hall.

In that respect, John had indeed been a busy man. He had looked up all the criminal charges brought against the baron. He had examined the campaign contributions to Sheridan Driscoll's and Sinjin Fai's gubernatorial campaigns. He had collected the official property listings of businesses and residences: The new and old SPI buildings; several warehouses in the WestEnd, as well as a townhouse there; the Zeppa manufacturing plant in the Market district, a brewery in the Temple district; a home in New Haven... the lists went on and on.

He'd left the records hall, gotten into a taxi, and gone to Zeppa. There was a clean shot of him in his fleece-lined bomber jacket, scarf, gloves and Yankees hat on the sidewalk across the street from the plant, the lamp-lit river flowing behind him.

Morana tapped her pen beside the address of that home in New Haven, thoughtfully. Careless, DeMuer, to allow that record. A very unpleasant smile turned up the corners of her mouth for a moment, and she pulled free one of the less important reports from her stack of them to jot down the building number and street name. Then she turned to the next page of the report and picked up the photograph, left the pen resting across papers on her desk.

She leaned back again and looked at the picture, and then across the desk to the man patiently waiting there. "Your initiative is most commendable, Chief. I think you may have kept me from making a very... serious... error in judgment."

He answered quietly. "Yes, ma'am."

She kept the lamp-lit photograph out from the folder, flipped the manila closed again. Oh yes. She had needed to see this report. "I do understand that I am not the easiest employer to maintain security for, Mr. Malloy, especially on a personal level. That is not going to change in the near future. If you feel measures such as this need to be taken again, however, I would appreciate it if you informed me before you did so."

"Of course," he said smoothly. "I recognize that I was out of bounds. But as I said, I had your safety to consider."

"Yes. Thank you for bringing this to my attention." She offered him the folder with another curve of her mouth that never reached her eyes. "And enjoy the rest of your New Year's Eve."

He recognized a dismissal when he heard it. Rising, he nodded respectfully to her and left ? not hastily, but promptly. As soon as the door closed behind Malloy, Morana spat out a vile curse in Abyssal. It had only been a matter of time before the Benandanti made his true purposes known, but ? I dreamed last night, in your arms. Did you have to kill that so quickly, John?

John was tired.

Wait. Wait, no, scratch that. He was freaking wiped. Didn't sleep for shit, lay there and ached and shivered and didn't want to get up because it meant going away from her. Fell asleep. Bam, nightmare. And then another, near dawn, and when he finally woke up she was gone again and the bed smelled like her and Jesus Christ, she was so right. He really was a masochist. It wasn't about understanding her or himself. He just had a thing for pain.

Dumbass. He wanted out of the inn, though, wanted something that wasn't as sad and impermanent as the inn room, so the next day they were open he went to the realtor's ? in Riley's building, ironically ? and explained what he wanted, still juggling his coffee and doughnuts. They taxied around town, and the second place caught his eye. The private beach, the ?secret? room access, the two living spaces ? one for each half of his life? Yes, please. He signed, paid, got the key and her assurances that power would be up and running by six.

Then it was phone calls. He informed the office of his change of address. He contacted the movers, as he sat in the condo that was still empty and still felt like Harper. He called Simon, Dino out in LA, his parents, Eva. That was painful...and surprising. He sat in silence for several minutes after the last phone call, staring at the buttons like they were going to explain to him why she'd done it. It cast the night before last in a different light. It changed things.

Not that he wasn't still going to be wary, because Jesus that was fucked up. He'd let himself forget what she was, even with the stinging reminder that he had every second he was with her. Bewitched by a pair of sometime-blue eyes. Something. But he thought about it all day, as he packed what he could and let the movers handle the rest.

By nine he was done, and sitting out on the deck at his new place. It was cold, but they'd had firewood already stocked. The wind that came in off the sea was almost as biting as her presence. He got a fire lit. He talked himself up, and told himself that the shot of whiskey from the bottle he'd brought out with him was celebratory.

Then he called her.

John had fortunate timing. Morana had just stepped out of a scalding-hot shower, was toweling dry the thick mass of her hair, when the phone rang. I wasn?t expecting a call. Her eyebrows lifted and she twisted up the towel out of the way so she could flip open her phone and answer. "Morana."

"You sure about that?" She heard the rustle of the phone shifting and then, very faintly down the line, a clink and gurgle of liquid. "Because I've read about half the Vendidad and there's no Morana in there."

Benandanti. What do you want tonight, darling? "Mmm. It's a name that serves me well enough. Hello, John. What can I do for you tonight?" She purred the last question over half a laugh, tucked the second bath towel between her breasts with a twist to hold it in place. Bare feet padded over tile to carpet, and she slid open the top drawer of her dresser.

"You busy?" There was a pause before his sigh bled down the line.

Well, the question was interesting, but the sigh was more so. "Not particularly anymore, though today was. I'd planned to curl up with a book and a blanket after I eat something." Her hand hovered over the drawer, settled on a slightly different choice than her original intent. Yoga pants, comfortable and loose, hinting instead of screaming. "What did you want?"

"Dinner. There's nothing in the fridge here."

"In the fridge there? Darling, I wasn't aware there was a fridge in your room." And I thought I looked over that room quite thoroughly the other day.

"I'm not in the inn anymore. Come over and I'll give you the tour."

She felt her lips pop open with the ?oh? of surprise she felt, and then she smiled slowly. "Mmm. I think I will. Just give me a chance to get dressed and pick up something to eat." She shut the first drawer, pulled open the second. A long-sleeved shirt and a Yankees hoodie. "My choice, as beggars can't be choosers."

"As long as it's not still moving, I'm good."

"I think I can promise that." She let the laughter she was feeling bleed into her voice. "I'll need your address, John, for the cab driver. Unless you prefer frozen food, that is." Selected clothes tossed onto the bed, she pulled the towel from her hair and smiled at the mirror with satisfaction. Do let me further into your life, John.

He gave it, and it was going to be a twenty-minute trip even if the traffic up the riverside was agreeable. The distance meant that between getting dressed and combing her still-damp hair into a slick ponytail, calling a cab and calling ahead for Chinese, the stop on the way to pick up her order... well, it was nearly an hour later that she finally paid the driver his fee and his generous tip and made her way to the door of the rented home.

There were indoor and outdoor lights on awaiting her, and a nice view of an empty entry hall through long beveled panes of glass. The landscaping had been scaled back for the winter, with the ferns gone and the Japanese maples mantled with fat clumps of the snow that was drifting lazily down out of the night sky.

She had one large paper bag in one hand, a plastic bag in the other, and the food smelled delicious. An unpolished nail pressed the doorbell. She waited in that cedar-bound breathless hush for a minute, two minutes...then came the steady rrr of John's wheels across the hardwood floor inside. His splintered image, seen through refracting angles of glass, paused at the sight of her...he actually leaned forward, squinted out. Then he set his hands to the wheels again, crossed the hall, and opened the door.

And stared. He might have blinked once. Then there was more staring. Laughter pressed silent into her mind. See something you didn?t expect, darling? While not nearly so chill as the previous night, it was more than cold enough outside. "The food is getting cold, John." She let the laughter she was feeling sound just a little bit in her voice, gently mocking.

He shook his head, then, and grinned up at her, and it was a little disbelieving. Hard to say whether the chuckle was at himself or her, as he backed up and swung both himself and the door out of the way. "Yeah. What'd you bring?"

"Chinese, and at least a bit of everything on the menu, I think." She looked down into the paper bag and then back up with a warm smile. "I'm starving. You?" She crossed the threshold, kicked off her sneakers so as not track snow all over the hardwood floors. She looked ? rested. Refreshed. Even happy. She knew that she did, as she?d taken care to appear so.

"I had coffee and doughnuts this morning at about eight and nothing since. So yeah, I probably would have been okay if you'd just brought the cook." He closed the door behind her, gave her another look, another headshake. Then he turned and led her down a long slate-tiled hall into a cheerful ? and obviously previously furnished, from the slightly cheap quality of the table and chairs ? kitchen and dining room.

?Oh, I did." She said it cheerfully while she followed him down the hall to the combination kitchen/dining room, and hefted the paper bag on her hip before it slipped too far. Another laugh slipped silently through her head. How much are you willing to believe of me, darling?

There was another pause in the conversation for one of those thoughtful frowns he had on tap. Then ? on entering the kitchen, he paused, turned and looked back at her. "We could eat outside, if you want. I've got a fire going."

"Outside sounds lovely, darling."

He hit the button to open the automatic doors out onto the deck and led her out. A Jacuzzi sat covered off to the left, and the fire burning in the fireplace ahead and to the right mitigated the brisk chill of the night. There were a couple of lounge chairs handy, with a table between. One of them had a blanket waiting. Maybe he'd thought he was going to spend the night out. A bottle of whiskey and a shot glass sat on the little table, with a telling drop or two left in the bottom of the glass. The bottle was two-thirds full.

The sight of the whiskey pursed her lips thoughtfully while she crossed to the table in stocking feet that whispered on the stone. "I forgot to pick up drinks. Do you have any real glasses about, darling?" Nudging the bottle and the shot glass a little to one side, she slid the paper bag and the plastic one onto the table and dropped into the non-blanket-filled chair. She made herself at home, creating the illusion of possibility ? imagine me here every night, Benandanti.

Sitting on the cushion sideways, she started to pull take-out containers from the bags. They were all neatly labeled in script that wasn't Morana's elegant Gothic hand, and contrary to her words, none of them were named ? well, apart from the General Tso chicken.

"There might be something in the kitchen. I didn't bring anything over." There was another odd pause, a break in his sentence that didn?t belong. Morana glanced up and then back into the bag when he continued. "I've got water, whiskey and coffee."

"I think I'll take whiskey tonight, if you don't mind sharing." Her smile was a crooked curve while she pulled out a couple of those little sets of cheap wooden chopsticks. They usually gave her splinters, but that was part of the experience. "A plate or two would also be wonderful." Once the bags were unloaded, she indulged in a bone-popping long stretch. Emmy had spent a good part of the day packing things and moving them in more hard physical labor than Morana usually indulged in.

"Yeah." He watched her stretch, gave a headshake, and whirred off to the kitchen ? presumably to fill those requests of hers. When he returned, he had one real glass and one coffee mug (empty) along with one plate that he handed over to her. Morana watched out of the corner of her eye while he set his brake, hopped out of the wheelchair and onto the deck chair, and got his cargo pants-covered legs arranged.

While he settled in, she piled her plate with fried rice, lo mein, and a good portion of that General Tso chicken. Balancing the plate on her knees, she reached over to pour a liberal amount of whiskey into the actual glass, over ice. "You have been busy ? and I applaud your choice of a residence, darling, this one is amazing." She shook free one of the sets of chopsticks and proved she knew how to use them with a bite of noodles.

"Longer commute, but I figured it was worth it." He eyed her for a minute, watching her eat. Then he shook out and snapped apart a pair of chopsticks for himself, reached for the nearest carton, and dug in. She hadn't been exaggerating her hunger and was perfectly content with silence for a few minutes while she worked on making a dent in her portion. Once a little space was clear on the plate she reached for a random container and added some orange beef to the mix.

"You pulled my teeth on one threat already," he commented with another sidelong glance. "I guess it's the credit cards."

When he said that, she laughed, hard enough that she had to make a quick grab to catch the plate before it fell from her knees. Good, you did notice ? clever man! "John, what on this world makes you think I use credit cards?"

"Why the hell would I think you'd wear a Yankees rig?" He countered. He started with the lo mein, and he had a deft hand with the chopsticks, probably from cutting up all those bodies. Or from living in Manhattan, which was just as likely.

"Oh, this?" She used her free hand to tug at the hoodie casually, this old thing? sort of gesture. "Eva gave it to Emmy. It's warm and I wanted something comfortable tonight." Then she gave a rich chuckle before she scooped up another few bites of fried rice and beef. "I've only ever watched two or three baseball games." All of them with Harper while Morana pretended to be a Red Sox fan.

"Mm." A beat, flavored with a mouthful of noodles. He chewed, he swallowed, he spoke. She watched it all without appearing to do anything of the kind. "I talked to her today." He was at least a sheet and a half to the wind, she could see it by the slight glaze to his eyes and their puffy lids.

Her eyebrows lifted but she waited until she swallowed before she answered. ?Her? almost had to be Eva, though there was an outside chance he meant Harper. She gambled with a toss of the mental dice. "Really? It must have been while she was out getting more packing tape." Her brows drew together into a slightly puzzled frown. "I didn't actually have that much there ? it shouldn't have taken so many boxes."

"Yeah, she was at some office supply place. Emmy's moving to Iowa, she said. She sounded kinda broken up about it." He slid another glance her way between bites.

"Emmy was offered a full-time position in Iowa about two hours from her parent's home. She couldn't turn down the chance." She shrugged and reached for her whiskey, took a long swallow. It was probably the burn of the scotch that had her blinking rapidly a few times. Right? Right. "Eva is a nice woman."

"Thanks." He focused on his food for another minute or two. They were out of lo mein. He hit Tso like the fist of an angry god.

Sesame chicken and moo shoo pork for her after the Tso and the beef were gone and the lo mein a fading memory. Silence had to hold out for another few minutes while she devoured the last of her meal and finally set aside the empty plate. The lounge chair was made, sure enough, for lounging. She did so while he worked on his food, cheek balancing on one palm and her elbow as a brace on the cushion. "Why did you call me tonight, darling?"

"To apologize." He'd worked his way around to the sesame chicken. A log popped in the fireplace, spattered sparks across the slate. Snow continued to fall, blanketing the realm in an ever-deepening silence.

The man could certainly surprise her. It showed in the startled widening of her eyes ? uncontrolled ? before she looked at him narrowly. "Apologize to me. For what?"

?For scaring you so badly yesterday." He rolled the whiskey in his glass ? and she finally noticed that his coffee mug read PATHOLOGIST: will work for beer. The ice in it rattled. He tipped his head back and drank.

This time her expression didn't change while she looked at him, and she was very, very careful to keep that watchful mask in place while she considered the angles he might be trying, the advantages he might be reaching for. Eventually she answered, "I do think this is one of the more surreal conversations I've ever had. You may be the first person to apologize to me, for scaring me ? " She broke off and considered before she went on, "I was going to say after something like what I did to you, but I think it's more accurate to say ever."

She did not apologize for what she had done to him.

He shrugged, fired off another glance, and drank up. Make it about two sheets to the wind. "You already knew I wasn't like everybody else." He emptied out the carton and added it to the stack of empties.

Two sheets to the wind abruptly seemed like an excellent place to be. She matched his swallow and drained her glass, reached for the bottle of whiskey for a refill. "No, that's true." It was. After all, how many Hounds of God had she met before? How many beings that could casually reach out and walk across the face of God, and leave with His blessing? The math came up to zero and Void surged up in reaction, filling her bones with deceit.

She took another swallow of whiskey while her shoulders knotted, in a futile attempt to ward off the inherent conflict. "I'm not sure that your apology is accepted, John. But I think it is appreciated."

It took him a long time to answer. Finally he did. "That's okay," he said, and smiled crookedly out at the dark. Faint and faraway a tugboat's foghorn sounded, a mournful lowing that went unanswered. "I don't expect you to be anything other than what you are."

There he went, maliciously telling the truth at her again. He truly didn't expect her to be anything than what she was, or do other than what she did. On the plus side, he wasn't tossing around live emotional grenades this time; she was able to wrap up the flinch of pain his words provoked in a lift of her glass. She drained her scotch a second time, looked across at him with lifted eyebrows. "All things considered, I'm a little surprised you're not asking for an apology of your own." One fingertip reached while she leaned, and she touched the scar just there, under the curve of his lip. Her mouth turned up with a curve of smile while her skin scorched and crisped and burned with no visible sign.

"You thought I was betraying you. You reacted according to your nature." He flinched, a tiny subtle movement, when her finger touched his skin. Then he rolled his head against the cushion to look at her directly. "And I have to say the biting was kind of hot." One corner of his mouth ? the one closest to the scar ? twitched at her.

There was her laugh, the real one, surprised out of her by his sideways approach. She brushed her thumb along his lower lip, pulled back her hand to claim her glass. "I enjoyed it. And you taste delicious." His blood and his mouth, both.

"Good. Keep that in mind." Then he reached for a refill from the rapidly emptying bottle.

Between them they had taken the bottle from two-thirds full to one-third full, just since her arrival. Most of the scotch had found its way to her glass rather than his. She didn't look much drunk, but she was moving with a little more care, a touch more precision, as she felt the alcohol blurring her responses. "Mmm. I could hardly forget, darling." Dark circles ringed his eyes, and she focused on them for a moment.

"Good," he said again, and, "For the record, I accept your apology." The accent was stronger in his voice. Every blink took longer. He rubbed at his lower lip with a thumb, had another sip.

Her lips twitched into a bit of a smile. Her eyes cut over to the fireplace, and beyond that the falling snow. It was isolated, out here, and strangely peaceful. "Tell me something, darling." It was an echo of the previous night, without the malice and rage and fear mixed into the honey of her voice.

"What?"

Her smile turned up again while her eyes slanted back to the man, though she kept her face half-turned toward the snow. "Surprise me." Play with fire, Benandanti.

"You surprised me," he responded after a breath, another swallow. "I didn't think you'd let her go. I'm yours. For as long as you'll have me, until you're done or until I'm used up. Leave my family alone. Leave Harper alone." His words were flat, and she felt a sudden spark of rage at the tone of his demand, rage that barreled right over the surprise. "I'll do whatever it takes within the dictates of my nature to support you."

Her back straightened with the shock and she could feel her mouth thinning to a hard line. There was anger, tight fury, mixed into the reasonable tone of her voice when she answered him. "Emmy is almost done moving back to Iowa already. What more do you want of me as an answer, John? Or shall I have to leave it in writing for you, waiting on your chair?"

"That was what I was waiting for, and honestly didn't expect to hear. You surprised me," he repeated. "I'm just letting you know."

"And what shall I do with my own personal Hound of God, darling? Use you up and waste you?" From anger to carelessness in one easy step, a sham to hide the still-burning rage and the calculations layered beneath that. She picked up her glass again, emptied it with a quick swallow. "Wait on the dictates of your nature, unless your God decides to have me killed after all? Or did you have something... specific... in mind?" With specific her eyes dropped to his groin, her voice to a throaty purr.

"You can stop now." One blanket on top of the other concealed any kind of reaction he might have had to the blatancy of her response. He sounded tired.

"Stop what, darling?" Bitter the tone she used to slice him with, bitter as the suspicions he?d just raised in the back of her mind. "Stop teasing you, or stop pretending that I don't understand what a Sword of Damocles you've just suspended over my head?" Her glass was empty, and she reached for the bottle of scotch.

He played the next card, then, and she almost dropped her glass onto the porch. "I won't." He'd just finished filling his own mug, and nudged the bottle over to her. "This is...complicated. The shortest answer is that I found out this last year that I'm allowed to say no to an assignment, that I don?t have to kill if I don?t want to. I'm just saying, you don't have to seduce me anymore." He looked up from the bottle, stared at her face as he leaned on the arm of the chair. "I'm seduced. Congratulations. You can stop now."

More scotch than she?d really intended to pour sloshed into her glass, and she was suddenly grateful for that, when the alcohol cushioned the tearing pain of ? what? Why did that hurt so much to hear, why did she feel like she was splitting into pieces? She took a large swallow of the whiskey, stood and looked down at him with all the emotions she felt naked on her face. "Fuck you, Benandanti." She rarely indulged in crudity, but it felt appropriate.

Snow melted under her stocking feet as she stalked across the deck toward the fireplace in the corner. Snow hushed against the wood and onto the ground past the threshold of this torture house. Behind her, Morana could hear John shifting, the rustle of fabric on fabric and the faint grunt when he levered himself from lounge chair to wheelchair. Then the wheels whirred closer. Her shoulders stiffened, one arm wrapped around her ribcage, the other hand holding tight to her glass. "What." The flat delivery he'd given her more than once before. Void wrapped around her and held her close in protective deception when she finally looked over for his face.

"You keep surprising me." He doled out one of those slow blinks up at her from his spot a couple of feet away. Beneath the dark plaid flannel shirt, unbuttoned, was a plain white t-shirt. It blazed in the firelight. "C'mere." A beat. "Please."

"I shouldn't." The man hurt her every time she put herself into his reach. But still, she did as he asked, pulled the few steps that bridged the gap between them. The last of the whiskey met its death in her throat and the burn of that was nothing next to the scorch of his close presence.

He reached out when she came near, one arm bracing him against the chair. His other arm reached and caught her at the waist, pulled her down. After just a moment of resistance, she complied and landed in his lap. "I don't understand you at all." Most people were so easy to understand, to deceive, to manipulate. Not John, never the Benandanti.

He was too busy nuzzling into the back of her neck to answer immediately, burn or no burn. It felt incredible ? and it burnt the skin right away from her bones. She could feel her body relaxing despite herself. "Where's Marius?" He wanted to know eventually, asking the question with his lips moving over the fine hairs at the nape of her neck. His breath sent shivers down her spine until the words processed and suddenly she felt her shoulders knotting. "I feel like I need to go shake his hand or something."

When he made his addendum with the brush of breath over skin, some of her tension subsided into a brief laugh. "I don't know. DeMuer did... something... and drove him off. Or else he just left, and abandoned me, everything else he'd built here, and started somewhere new." Deepest fear, that one day the Architect would return.

"Morana." He used her street name so rarely that it sounded like an endearment. It should have felt like a lie. "You tell me you're lies and then you get pissed off at me for doubting you. He couldn't have made a better woman if he'd tried." She could feel the quirk of his smile move against her skin.

Well, hell. The man had a point. She laughed, and leaned back against him with a smile still glowing on her face. "Maybe you should reconsider your 'better woman' theory, John, if you're using me as a measure." One hand still held her glass with its melting ice, the other reached up to trace the scars running in vertical lines beneath his shirt. Her own little presents to herself, marks that claimed her territory.

"Yeah," he muttered into her hair. "About that. I asked nicely the other night and you blew me off." His arms were heavy around her waist, and his nose had snuffled a slow path through the still-slightly-damp underside of her hair toward her ear.

"I love you. And like I said, I'm sorry I scared you." Every time he said those words, those three evil words, Something uncoiled and lashed out within her. It twisted her spine more than the brush of his voice into her ear and the searing pain of his lips on her neck. The tip of his nose was warm against the curve of her ear. It must have been because of the scotch. "But you try that again and I'm taking your fucking hands off at the wrist."

"Don't put me in that position again and it won't be an issue, darling. You still want to know about the Baron." She paused, inhaled to quell the pain that ravaged her being and then continued, "Don't you."

He lifted his head, finally. "The Vendidad," he said, "and the Greater Bundadishn. They say that the dēws are mortal because they were flawed in their creation. Are you mortal?"

"You ask the oddest questions, darling." She sounded slightly amused. "I believe so." Morana let the answer carry the related implication, that she was one of the dēws he mentioned. Not all lies had to be obvious. "I am most certainly flawed in my creation." If she hadn?t been flawed, there was much that might have turned out differently.

John's head worked in surprisingly twisty ways, sometimes. She never could figure out the mazes he walked. He kissed the side of her neck again and another shiver caught her spine. Her eyes fell closed. "And DeMuer had you locked up in a warded room for two months, and sufficient evidence to prove that you killed someone he cared about."

"Yes." She said it simply. "He did have that." She had spent the months of her captivity expecting to die. It would have been a moment's work for John to shift, to tear out her throat ? he could do it faster than she could react, if he chose to. She was serene in the knowledge that he wouldn't. Her free hand ran back down his chest, over the path of the scars she?d given him.

"Why aren't you dead?"

"I don't know." Another hint of a smile touched her lips, not at all amused. It was a very pertinent question, and one for which she had no good answer. "I think DeMuer may have underestimated me. And then ? while I was held. Marius could have reclaimed my existence at any time ? I was a vulnerability, a channel directly to him. I don't know why he didn't end me, either."

His fingers laced through hers on his chest, squeezed, let go. "If it was me ? in his position ? and he'd killed you, he'd be dead." More of that strange twisting lash whipped her at the sincerity, the honesty of his words. He unwound his other arm, turned them in place and headed them back for the table and the last of the whiskey. There was no sense of strain at having to deal with the extra weight ? his muscles bunched and flowed smoothly under her. "If your enemy spared you, don't you think it would be a good idea to find out why? You get me?"

"Yes. But the Baron and I aren't precisely on speaking terms, darling." Which wasn't completely true, given the encounter in the coffee shop. "And I am quite certain that after our latest... engagement in Vrashne, he will feel no such compunction in the future." Once they reached the table, she reached for the bottle to refill her glass, his mug if he wanted it.

Apparently he did. There was some pointing at the mug, and some levitate toward me, please hand-waving involved. "He doesn't know me from Adam."

The remainder of the scotch found its home split evenly between his mug and her glass. She slid the empty bottle very carefully back onto the table. Only once the bottle was safe did she look back at him with eyebrows lifted up in finely crafted surprise and calculation. "Are you offering to spy for me, John?"

"Yes. And no." He leaned heavily back into the chair, met her eyes for a moment over a sip of the whiskey.

"I love a man who can be decisive." Dry as ice, though very slightly blurry with alcohol. Bodies were terribly inconvenient, but she had decided when she trapped Sarva that she wanted to keep the one she had. Inconveniences and all. One brow slid up into a dark arch. "What do you mean?" Mmmm, scotch, just one more sip. Burning her throat felt soothing compared to the rest of what she was feeling in such prolonged contact.

He watched her face and bit his lip. "He comes at you, I'm going to do whatever I need to do to protect you, help you protect yourself. I don't know if he rolls that way, but he doesn't have the moral high ground here." Another sip of whiskey later, he continued. "But I'm not going to go infiltrate his supersecret organization and disrupt his plans for you. I will tell you straight up that I am no good at the cloak-and-dagger bullshit." Which she had long since realized about the man.

"Then what did you have in mind, darling?" Her lips pursed, thoughtfully, while she considered the options.

He gestured with his glass at her. "Everything you've told me, tells me that this is all tied up together. That...whatever in you. Marius. This guy. Your creation. The fact that Marius set you at odds with him almost as soon as you were created, it sounds like. I mean...don't you want to understand it? This has to do with you."

The thought was startling, and her eyes widened, narrowed. She did something rare, then. She corrected a misconception. "I existed for years before I was sent here. But I wasn't sent here until Alain DeMuer was." Another misconception clarified, thoughtfully, "And you were the one that started this change in me."

He rubbed his chin against her shoulder and thought about that for a minute or so. "I'm just a man," he said, not for the first time. He even believed it, though it was so far from the truth as to be laughable. "I might have triggered it or something, but I didn't create anything that wasn't already there." Then he leaped past that whole line of discussion for something completely unexpected. "How old are you?"

"Trick question." Her lips quirked with a little bit of humor, amusement she actually felt. "I was created in this form, at this apparent age, just over seven years ago. How much do you know about constructs, John?"

"Zip. There was a guy who kept turning up in the city morgue, but every body was genetically absolutely human, so." He shrugged a shoulder, his gaze fixated on her mouth. "Why?"

"They're ? we're ? difficult to build well. The more personality one invests in a construct, the longer and more difficult it is to do; the cost in energy is higher and there is always a tie between the creator and the creation." She wouldn?t give him technical details, but enough that he might be able to understand. "Most are created for one specific purpose, used and dissolved ? reabsorbed ? within days or weeks." Her mobile lips curled down into a frown. "When Alain held me, his wards were isolation from Marius along with the rest. I learned from what he used on me, in containing Sarah below. Marius couldn't dissolve me, then ? but I shouldn't have been able to maintain myself." She was testing the edges of quicksand. Self-inspection could be and usually was fatal in her world.

The arm around her tightened. Was he trying to comfort, to reassure her? Or to hold her for some other purpose? After a moment, ?I'm a cradle-robber," he muttered.

His mutter surprised another laugh, tore her from terrifying contemplation. Why wasn?t she dead? "Pedophile and masochist. It's a good look on you, John." The furnace swallowed her when she leaned in against him, rested her head on his shoulder. For tonight ? just for tonight ? she would burn and smile for the pain.

(Scene adapted from live play with Benandanti's player, with many thanks!)