Chapter 70

~~Eric~~

Clara transformed into a human as she forced herself to stand. With a snarl, she shook off the injuries, and wiped her lip.

It was that easy? She was hit hard, hard enough to go flying, hard enough to have bones broken. But, she was Uratha, and that meant ... fuck, he didn’t know what it meant. Strong, tough? Healing through anything? He didn’t know anything, because he was too fucking stubborn to find out.

“So you’re Jeremiah?” she said, pacing side to side. “How the fuck did you pull this off?” Snarling at the man, she pointed a finger at the colossal creature still perched upon the stone throne’s back.

“Monsters aren’t so hard to kill if you know their banes.”

Clara twitched, fingers squeezing into fists as her frown hardened. “And?”

“Discovering them can be tough.” Still on his throne, Jeremiah passed his knife from knuckle to knuckle, grin on his face subtle but persistent. Confident. “For a werewolf like yourself, silver. It’s such a common bane, and known to everyone.” With a shrug, the man reached into his trench coat, and pulled out a large pistol, knife still in his other. “You’re barely worth hunting.”

Snarling all the more, Clara continued pacing again, eyes snapping between the two trapped wolves, and the man with a god complex. “What does—”

“And vampires, sunlight and fire are so easy to turn into weapons, I’m better off wasting my time killing cockroaches,” Jeremiah said.

That earned a raised eyebrow from the werewolf. “You in this for the thrill?”

“I can’t deny there is an appeal in that thrill, but no. Werewolves are a menace, violent, stupid, short-sighted, and prone to killing random innocents every so often. Vampires? Smarter, with a far better eye for the future, but they’re just blood leeches. The amount of human deaths to them is actually manageable, and acceptable, as long as hunters get their hands dirty every so often. But monsters, monsters aren’t the same.” Chuckling, the maniac stepped down from his throne, and made a grand, sweeping gesture with his knife hand. “Monsters can destroy entire cities. Monsters can turn whole villages into food, for a single beast. Monsters can decimate ecosystems. Monsters can grow, and grow, until they’re no longer Begotten, and their true selves, confined to the nightmares they were spawned from, break free into the world of the living.” Smiling at her, he came closer, and closer. “I’m here to kill Azamel, and perhaps Athalia, if the opportunity presents itself. Tell me what I want to know, and you get to live.”

“I don’t know shit about Azamel.”

Jeremiah sighed, loudly, with some theatrical flair to his voice. He was enjoying this. “I didn’t think so. But the man here, Eric, he’s been to her lair, spoken to her, spoken to Athalia. And unlike a vampire, I have ways of removing the information from him.”

Oh shit. Eric started squirming, but his stubbornness only earned a tighter squeeze from the goliath holding him.

“Je ... remiah...” Everyone went silent, and turned to the new voice. An old voice, slow, weak, a sound Eric was getting too familiar with from his trips to the hospital. The sound of an old woman’s voice, someone old enough to warrant a deathbed. “Is ... is this the one?” An old woman in a wheelchair came out from the darkness, the subtle noise of her respirator growing louder and louder as she approached. Where the fuck had she been hiding?

A group of hunters stood behind her. Eric recognized them as the four he ran into, with Fiona. And behind them came a woman, dark skin like him, and what looked like a glass eye. Oh fucking fucking fucking shit.

“It is indeed, Elen my sweet.” The psycho in the trench coat pointed the knife back at Eric, before turning his back to Clara. Confident, and maybe a bit stupid, but Clara didn’t take advantage. How could she? Any move she made in her current circumstance would either get her killed, or him and Jessy.

The monster with wings sniffed the air, and let out a long, crocodile-like groan, complete with rumbling that shook the air. “Master ... the nightmare is being entered.”

“The other Begotten?”

“Yes, master. They will be here in minutes.”

Nodding, Jeremiah pointed to Angela. “Earlier than I expected. Take the others, prepare the ambush. Slaughter them all.”

The sound of many feet joined Angela’s. There must have been another one of those hallways nearby, on the other side of the grand chamber they were in, like the one Eric had came from. As they came out of the dark, Eric let out a canine whimper at the sight of a dozen men, each armed with a host of weapons no civilian would be able to get their hands on. Assault rifles, what looked like a fucking flamethrower, grenades, and a bunch of shit he didn’t know by sight.

The four he recognized stayed with the woman in the wheelchair.

“I guess you have friends, Eric,” Jeremiah said, walking up to him. The monster held him at a height convenient for Jeremiah to look him in the eye. “We’re ready for them this time. Either they die in a hail of gunfire and wall of flame, or they run away, and we can continue this interrogation.”

God, oh fucking god they made the wrong move. They should have waited, should have fucking waited where they were. If they had just fucking waited, maybe whoever was coming to rescue them would have run into them. It was like one of those shitty horror films where people suddenly become outrageously stupid and throw themselves into precarious situations, because they’re too stupid to realize what they’re doing. Fucking shit fuck.

Clara didn’t move. As the hunters walked past her, she stared at each of them through the corner of her eye, body still turned to Jeremiah and the monster. The hunters sneered at her, some making a show of their knives on their belts, pulling them out a little to make the glint obvious. Some of those knives were the strange ones Eric saw in Fiona’s jungle, when Jeremiah showed up. Some were silver.

Silver. The sight of it sent a jolt through his body, and he blinked. What the fuck. The beast holding him, that thing was terrifying, and overpowering. The silver knives were different, they put a cold dread through his wolf body, as if someone had stolen a kidney and threw him into an ice bath. Pain, mixed with the searing rush of adrenaline and stimulus overload.

The old woman sighed long and slow, and raised a hand. Finger pointing at Clara. “Why ... is she ... free?”

“She’s not free, Elen. Unless she wants her companions to die, she’ll stay where she is.” The man smirked, and walked over to Eric. Tears blurred Eric’s eyes, and pain muddled his thoughts, the agony blaring in his head until headache and nausea mixed. “You, pup, are going to tell me everything you know about Athalia and Azamel. Come on, Elen.”

Elen sighed, long, the struggle for her lungs to manage breathing, even with a respirator doing the work, blatant. The hunter woman behind her did the pushing, glaring at Clara and the two wolves as she did. These hunters hated them, to the point every one of them couldn’t look Clara’s way without wishing death upon her with their eyes. Christ, it was like watching a bunch of zealots. White, pointed blankets on their head with the eyes cut out would not have been out of place.

“Come here sonny,” Elen said, voice almost cracking like a weak, damaged speaker.

With a small twist of her wrist, she slid her fingers along the air, and cut through it. Each fingertip glowed a subtle black, almost purple, and traced lines through the air in front of Eric’s face. All he could do was stare, and shiver, pain and misery mixing into a horrible cocktail of nausea. The beast’s grip around him was absolute, and every breath was a panting mess, sending scorching fire through his limbs. But he could still stare, and watch the old woman weave colors in the air. Either he was dying and his brain was flooding itself with chemicals, or she was doing magic.

The colors combined into a single line, floating in the air, and the old woman reached through it, hand disappearing into the cut in reality. After rooting around in the fucking cracks of the universe, she slowly removed her hand, and exposed a scalpel. Shit, shit shit. She came closer, wrinkly face breaking into a smile, thin white hair falling flat over her skull and shoulders. Far older than Azamel.

Come to think of it, every old woman Eric had ever met was a horrible person. Azamel was horrible, this Elen woman was horrible, his grandmother was horrible and spanked him for not wanting to eat his peas. The pattern was undeniable.

She came in closer, breath ragged, fake teeth showing as she smiled. “If you could turn back into a man, my boy, that would be helpful.”

He snarled. Mistake. The beast holding him squeezed, and he let out a whimper, and gargle, as blood spilled up over his wolf tongue.

“That’s alright, deary. Whether wolf or man, the voices do not care.” She set the scalpel on his wrist, and his arm froze. Not because he wanted to freeze, but the limb came to a standstill against his will, unable to move, as the woman gently slid the insanely sharp blade down the skin above his paw. He howled, more blood coming up onto his tongue, as blood leaked out onto the fur of his wrist and paw.

“Voices?” Clara said. Her face was pained, and she fidgeted in spot. But the three hunters standing around had their pistols out, no doubt armed with silver bullets; knives out too. The hunter holding the old woman’s chair kept her eye on Clara, and so did Jeremiah.

“If only you knew what sort of forces exist in this world, stupid dog,” Jeremiah said, standing beside Elen, closer to Clara. “Nightmare worlds? The spirit world? If you only knew.” Laughing, the psychotic fucker held his knife up to Eric’s neck, where it was exposed at the top of the monster’s grip. “Cards, each of them cards, in a house of cards.”

This fucker delighted in not answering their questions, only giving them confusion and vague redirections. Much as Eric wanted to bite the man, pain drew his eyes back to the clean cut the old woman was making down his arm, through his fur. As his blood dripped down over his paw, the woman reached out with her other hand, and caught his blood in her palm.

“The ritual is very precise,” she said. “I have to find the elegance in the shapes. I have to find the beauty in the connections. I have to find the mastery. I have to find the machine.” Humming softly to herself, Elen raised the bloody hand, and again, began to draw in the air. His blood crept up her fingers, defying gravity, and becoming crimson paint for her fingertips, cutting through the air and leaving trails of hovering red. “This would be easier if you would turn back into a human, but I suppose it is better if you are restrained.” Her energy was returning, like an artist taken up with passion, all encompassing.

“Stop ... stop fucking cutting on him! The fuck are you doing?” Clara took a step forward, only to have three pistols raised and pointed at her. Jeremiah didn’t bother turning around, keeping his eyes on Eric.

“Like I said,” Jeremiah said, “you have no idea. The ways things are connected, the things that exist in the dark, in the cracks between worlds, in the beams of light that seep in from above. You’re nothing but a stupid dog, mindlessly chasing a ball.”

After drawing a circle and a pentagram in the air, the old woman shook her hand in a quick circle, and the symbol fell to the stones below. It painted itself into the stone, and as the old woman continued to cut into his arm, she began to draw more symbols against the invisible canvas.

“When we are done, you’ll tell the voices everything,” she said. “Your insides will paint for them, draw for them. Life, blood, tendons, bones, organs, sinew, ligaments, a divine merger of components. The machine of life. Vessel for the soul. I’ll find the root of memory, draw the connections, and—”

“You’ve said enough, Elen. We’re keeping the vampire and she-wolf because they’re valuable hostages, not companions to share our secrets with.”

Quite the fucking hypocrite, aren’t you? Fucking psychopath. The thought evaporated as the scalpel found bone, and Eric tried to howl his agony. The monster’s crushing grip didn’t let him.

He managed to look at Clara as a whimper escaped him. She looked worried, and angry, but she was paralyzed. Behind her, the hunters were preparing a trap for their friends. The sound of groaning wood against stone resonated through the hallway, burying the groans and whimpers Eric’s wolf form was making. They must have closed the door Eric and them came through, to prepare their ambush. Who was coming to his rescue? Or Clara’s or Jessy’s? Did they need Begotten to enter the dream?

He looked over at Jessy. Still in her wolf form, like him, and struggling with all her might. The beast squeezed her hard enough Eric could see her limbs threatening to bend and break under the pressure, but she kept squirming as if it didn’t matter.

Did it matter? She was a vampire, and he doubted a broken limb would stop her. Would it stop him? He was a werewolf, and as much as he didn’t want to, he could remember bits and pieces of his fight with Pitt and his goons. He recovered from a stab wound, completely recovered, when he transformed. How strong was a werewolf? Was it strong enough to fight this monster? Strong enough to fight a psychopath?

He had to try. Now or never.

Eric closed his eyes, and pushed away the pain. The monster had him in his grip, and didn’t seem to care that he was forcing bone to rub against his organs. It was pain he was used to at this point, enough to ignore it for a few seconds at least. Ignore it, find that new muscle, and use it.

As he began to change, the monster holding him screamed, and threw him down at Clara. Everything became a blur, pain mixing with the unpleasant sensation of his stomach pressing against his sides with sudden momentum. An explosive roller coaster, complete with the roaring machinery, except it was the creature’s roar. Attempts to transform were lost to the clenching of every muscle in his body, as his weight slammed into Clara.

She caught him. Holy shit. He managed to look up at her, legs twitching, tail wriggling, body panting.

“Jessy!” Clara said, looking over him and to the monster.

He managed to turn his snout to look to the vampire. She was human again, except, not. It was that shape she had, back in the apartment, enormous claws with spikes coming out of her knuckles, forearms, and now shoulders. More than that, spikes had erupted out of her back, out of her knees, out of her fucking head. Blood dripped from her, red, darker than red normally was, but blood nonetheless.

The monster let go of her, and held its hand up to look at the holes Jessy’s body had punctured into its fingers and palm. Jessy landed on her feet, shoulders raised and arms forward, back hunched, and eyes glaring fury at the monster as blood dripped over her body. Whatever she had done to her body, her human shape was twisted into a grotesque monster. Her teeth exposed as she snarled, massive fangs, many of them. Her back bulged with muscle, filling her blue sweater to near bursting. Her legs grew thick, torn in many parts with spikes, like her sweater. And blood dripped from everywhere.

“The hell?” Jeremiah jumped away from the vampire, brought up his pistol, and fired. Bullets shredded through Jessy’s body, ripping into her clothes and muscles, some shattering some of the bone spikes that jutted out of her skin. She regrew them in seconds. “Sándor, secure her! I want this bargaining chip.”

Eric caught sight of Jeremiah’s face, and grinned a wolf’s grinning. He new that face, recognized it, seen it in the ring far too many times. The face of someone who had a plan, and was surprised to see it not work out. He must have underestimated Jessy.

“Boss!” One of the hunters in the departing group returned, rifle at the ready.

Jeremiah waved him off. “We’re fine. Go with Angela. Kill the intruders.”

“Yes sir.” The woman ran off to rejoin her companions, and Clara glanced over her shoulder, before looking to the four with the shaman. They were stunned; Jessy’s insanity and recklessness was not something they predicted. She was just a blood leech, after all. What could she do?

She could solo a giant fucking monster, apparently.

Everyone’s jaw dropped, as Sándor the monster reached down for Jessy, and Jessy leaped onto the monster’s face. The beast’s shrieks and roars of pain echoed down the hall, and everyone jumped back as the gargoyle stood up, wings spreading, and arms snapping up to try and rip Jessy from his face. But she crawled over his shoulder, and dropped down between his wings, disappearing. Based on the new roars, and how the beast tried to reach behind him between his wings, she must have latched onto his back with her claws.

That was enough for Clara. She set Eric down, and erupted. Eric jumped back, failing, bones refusing to work, and fell over all the more, as Clara threw herself at Jeremiah. She transformed, body exploding in size, clothes disappearing, fur sprouting, tail reforming, and mouth becoming a massive snout filled with huge teeth. It only took her two seconds, two literal seconds, to complete the transformation. The titan within slammed its feet and claws into the stone floor, talons tearing into the stone, as the colossal beast threw herself toward Jeremiah.

The man dodged. He sidestepped the juggernaut of muscle, and jumped back several times while shooting at the beast. But Clara rushed past him perpendicular to his line of fire, and onto the throne, bullets whizzing past her. Eric could do nothing as the single werewolf and single vampire, fought against the group and the monster.

“The vampire and she-wolf aren’t worth this trouble. Shoot them both!” Jeremiah barked his orders at the four remaining hunters, and the one escorting the old woman pulled her back, and quickly wheeled her away. The other three drew their pistols, and aimed their pistols at Clara, but she jumped against the enormous gargoyle’s leg, and tackled the beast in its chest. Off balance as it was, the gargoyle stumbled back, and fell onto its side before rolling off to the side of the giant throne’s vast back. The hallway vibrated with the impact of the creature landing

Eric watched the old woman go, doing his best to memorize her face. The sunken cheeks, the dazed eyes with little life left to them, the shaking limbs. She didn’t have much time left, aged to a point the body wasn’t willing to hold on. With how sickly she looked, he was surprised she was holding on at all. Maybe it was because of her ability, whatever it was that let her perform rituals, whatever dark forces of fucking Hell that let her pull a scalpel out of a hole in the universe, and draw symbols into the air itself.

She disappeared behind a pillar, and then the loud groan of opening wood filled the hall again. That confirmed it. There must have been another hallway with rooms, like the one Eric had come from.

He looked past Jeremiah, to the monster on the floor. Massive as the creature was, a crazy vampire and determined werewolf were on his body, biting and clawing and tearing into him; and even with its great size, a werewolf was a hulking, massive titan of muscle. It was like watching a lion struggle to take down a bull, a full grown, healthy bull, something a lion wouldn’t normally hunt. She did anyway, taking on a monster with over three feet of height on her.

Seeing another werewolf erupt with rage and power sent a jolt into Eric’s body, called him, beckoned him. Howling rung in his ears, demanded he join the hunt, boiled his blood, sent energy and chaos pumping through his veins. Clara ripped and tore and bit into the monster’s body, but its skin was thick, leathery, hard, and she only managed to draw small amounts of blood. But there was blood, and the smell of it filled Eric’s nostrils. Blood. Alien, surreal, monster blood. Her roars called to him, invited him into the rush of the hunt, the thrill of the fight, and the glory of the kill.

Strength incarnate exploded inside him. Bulging muscles replaced frail wolf limbs. Serratus muscles wrapped his ribs as they mended. Trapezoids pushed out from his shoulders and neck. His lats rebuilt themselves in moments, realigning his spine with his rhomboids, and causing his shoulder and back width to increase to ludicrous sizes. Massive talons replaced the tiny claws of his paws, as did enormous hands. His snout grew bigger, thicker, longer, and his teeth did the same. Weight came from nowhere, forcing his new, larger rear paws into the stone beneath him. Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred pounds. He flexed his arms as the rumbling in his chest turned into a growl. Five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred pounds. More, until he was no longer a wolf at the knees of the hunters, but towering over them instead, their backs to him, his growls lost in the sounds of their yells as they tried to fix the chaos Jessy and Clara had caused.

He roared, silencing them all, and he dove into the fray.

~~Natasha~~

She was in a nightmare.

As she held up her phone to use as a flashlight, it was obvious that she was in a nightmare, and that sent a chill down her spine. The Prince would surely want as much information gathered as possible, so she snapped as many pictures as she could, while shining the light about. Paranormals had ways to keep themselves out of pictures, but the nightmare itself? Time to find out.

As she scanned the phone around, eventually her lens landed on Noah, who was looking straight at her, a frown on his face. Yeah, she was being silly. They had more important things to worry about, like—oh my god.

Tash froze, and stared at the enormous, skeletal creature before them. It was colossal, and was missing its lower body, dark bones held up by its hands on the floor. Bone wings. Small white dots inside huge, black eye sockets. A giant spinal cord, dangling from a rib cage Natasha could probably fit inside of. She’d seen this monster before, when Athalia had gotten aggressive with her and her boyfriends, in the tunnels beneath Dolareido before the spider monster attacked. Azlu, they called it.

She turned, and almost squeaked. Spider monster! No, this wasn’t the grotesque monstrosity from before, this was different. Very different. A woman’s body, sort of, a white silk dress over a curvy figure, a face with no eyes, only enormous horns, shins that came down into long, sharp points, with no feet. She had less fingers, and her fingers were long claws themselves. Dark, almost shiny skin, and eight long, long, long long long spider legs that came out of her back, their multi-sectioned lengths smooth and almost metal like, and they came to sharp pointed tips, like her feet.

Athalia was terrifying. Fiona was both terrifying and beautiful. Maybe it was the thin white dress that barely contained her enormous breasts, or how it cinched tight around her inhumanly small waist. Maybe it was the small, dark lips that pursed into a very seductive little smile. Very much not Fiona!

Jack and Damien both seemed almost blase about the whole thing, though she noticed Damien glancing Athalia’s way a little more often. Maybe he’d never seen her monster form before, her ‘horror’; or he was just scared of it, like she was. Tash looked to the others as well, and was happy to see the wolves were staring at the monsters as much as she was. They were scary! Athalia in an obvious way, Fiona in a ‘I will seduce you, tie you up in silk, and literally liquefy and drink your innards’ way.

Around the room were wooden tables, wooden chairs, all very old fashioned. The wooden ceiling above them screamed antique. If she knew her history well, and she did, they seemed like the sort of furniture you’d find in homes in the 1500s. Time travel? No, no of course not. The monster must have had a nightmare home in a place that was like the 1500s. A deep breath sold it, the smell old wood, but also manure and grass.

The group of them looked at the room’s door. Same old wood, and it was open to let in a slice of gentle fire light cut across the room.

Nodding, Arturo moved forward toward the door, and crouched low. Tash engulfed the group of them in her cloak of night, as did Damien, and she nodded to them as she followed behind Arturo.

“We should be fine t-to talk, quietly,” she said. “Smell anything? Other than ... what ... appears to be the insides of a castle, from f-f-five hundred years ago.”

“That explains why I smell shit, horses, grass, wood, and stone. I can smell Clara and Eric, and ... yeah, that’s Jessy,” Art said.

Wow, what a nose. She pat him on his back, and he stood up as she poked her head out. With a glance back, she nodded toward the hall, and everyone came out.

“W-Wait, Athalia, how—” The giant dead god corpse thing, became black mist, and flowed through the normal-sized door. “Oh.”

The skeleton beast snorted at her, and a gush of cold air hit Tash, as the odd monstrosity marched forward. With more room over their heads, Athalia drifted higher, hovering, her nigh-black skeleton wings grazing along the sides of the huge hallway. At least she was up and out of the way of them, but Tash didn’t like it. Her spinal cord swayed around underneath the strange half-body corpse monster! Gross.

Fiona walked through the door, her long spider legs following behind her. Once she was out into the hallway, she started walking on the eight spider legs, and her human half began to hover behind Athalia. Long, such long legs. Tash looked up at her, and as Fiona drifted over her head, Tash covered her eyes. The spidersilk dress she was wearing did not have underwear! And the bits between her thighs appeared to be human.

Could Begotten have sex? Or rather, could their horrors have sex? Athalia, of course not, but Fiona?

Tash looked over to Art and Matt beside her. Matt kept his eyes on the multiple doors of the hallway around them, but Art glanced up and smirked as he looked up Fiona’s skirt. Elbow attack! Tash drilled her elbow into his side, hard enough to earn a quiet groan from him, before he chuckled at her.

“Sorry.”

“R-Right.” Frowning, she continued along, and looked at the gargoyle braziers holding the fires. “These are ... b-beautiful.”

“This a reflection of a real place?” Noah said. “The Hisil operates sim—”

“It is a nightmare, fool.” Athalia turned to look down at them from above. How a skull could frown, with no lips or skin, Tash wasn’t sure, but it did indeed look like it was frowning. Maybe just a trick of the eye, to match her upset tone. “It is not a reflection of anything. It is a creation, and it stands on its own in the Primordial Dream. I do not know if this chamber is the heart of this beast’s lair, but ... I do ... sense a presence.”

Primordial Dream. Fiona had mentioned it, but neither she nor Athalia had explained it. At this point, it sounded like the dream world was an actual place. What were chambers? Lairs? How did you burrow through ... through ... what did you burrow through, to get from the dream to the physical? How did any of that work? Tash’s priority was to deal with the hunters, but Antoinette still wanted her to learn as much as she could about the Begotten, the Uratha, and the worlds they policed.

Antoinette. Tash sighed, and looked at Jack. The boy stepped ahead of them, and walked with an upright pose, Athalia and Fiona over his head. Before departing on the mission, Antoinette had asked her to protect the boy; a request as a friend, not the Prince. She’d do her best, but it was hard to do that when Jack kept putting himself at the front. Maybe she could talk to him, tell him to stay closer to Damien? No doubt Julias had already told him that, though.

He was a Ventrue, and there was no getting around that Ventrue drifted toward leadership. Mister Mire had sired the boy for his tenacity, but as Jack grew comfortable, and confident, he became more and more like his sire. And then, there was his secret about his new, overwhelming hatred for Angela that he’d shared with her. While the boy was becoming more and more like Mire, he was also becoming more and more like Viktor. And that must have been terrifying for him.

She nudged Art in the side, and he leaned down for her, bringing his ear next to her lips. “Keep an eye on J-Jack.”

“You know I will.”

“I ... I m-mean ... more than ... than you m-m-might think is necessary.”

Art raised a brow at her, but nodded, shrugged, and continued walking.

Matt opened one of the side doors, and everyone froze with the quiet sound of wood creaking on stone. Rolling his eyes, Art walked up to him, slapped him upside the shoulder, and peeked into the room.

“Same as the one we arrived in.”

“Strange,” Noah said. “This feels less like a nightmare, and more like a ... like a museum, or medieval festival.”

“Not all nightmares show the pits of torture they can put you through so easily,” Fiona said. Her accent was gone! Now she sounded almost Portuguese. “My heart of my lair is a jungle. The pain it can inflict, the terrors it holds, are deep within its center. None of you have seen it.” Guess that ruled out Damien or Jack having ever gone that deep then.