Chapter 14A

Did he go away and leave you all alone,
I've got a bad desire
I'm On Fire, Bruce Springsteen

Elsewhere, Somewhen

Pushing through the slightly elastic feel of the billowing mist in the doorway, Gabriel expected to find himself enveloped by the fog, and stumbled a little when beyond it was a broad, almost flat, expanse of grey, featureless terrain. The sky overhead was an equally uniform grey, stretching without change to the horizon in all directions, with only the doorway behind him, still billowing with mist, to show any apparent source for the dim light that seemed to stretch around him.

He slowly circled the free-standing doorway, checking to see if there were any features anywhere, but the horizon was a seemingly constant line in the far, indistinct distance and he slowed to a halt again. Stooping low to the floor he tried to examine the ground, but up close it was no different than from a distance: flat planes that didn't reflect the light all set at very slight angles from one another. No give to them, no texture that he could feel.

Standing upright, he let his senses go a little, just standing and waiting, and there was... nothing. He could see, although there wasn't really a great deal to look at, but there was no wind on his skin — no impression of atmosphere at all. He could breathe, but the air was tasteless and devoid of smells, empty of everything; no animals, no plant life, no industry, just plain, featureless air. There weren't even any sounds, he realised, as he closed his eyes and slowly turned pitching one of his ears up into the air slightly in the vain hope he'd find something. He stamped his foot, and the sound was distant and muffled, distorted, until he realised that it wasn't coming through the air, he was reacting to the noise transmitting through him, sound travelling through his bones to his ear.

"Alright..." he muttered, and the sound was a whisper in the distance accompanied, again, by the internal transfer of sound through his skull. Devoid of any other options, he turned his head over his shoulder to watch the door, and slowly began to walk away from it. Within ten paces it had disappeared from view.

There was no intervening terrain to block his sight, no heat haze or apparent atmospheric condition to explain it: one moment it was in view, and the next it was gone. Two steps backward and it returned to view, appearing from nowhere as though it were just beyond reach.

"I wonder what else is out there, just out of sight, just out of reach?" he muttered to himself, but there was no response.

He'd not expected one, and he nestled down into a crouch to relax a little and think.

A quick check of his pockets, looking for the compass that was inset into the hilt of his combat knife, drew the unfortunate realisation that neither his knife, his gun, nor the pockets in which they'd resided had come with him.

"OK, naked and lost?" Despite the lack of clothing there was still no sensation of wind or weather, no hint that there was anything there except him and the doorway. With no other recourse, he stood, put his back to the doorway once more, and set off towards the grey horizon.

Hours passed comfortably by as he walked and, later, gently ran. At first he thought the training of years gone by had come back to him as his pace didn't dim. He moved on to thinking that, perhaps, the changes that had been wrought upon him leant him his energy, but when he realised there was still no sign of hunger, that he had no real sensation of time having passed, he decided something was awry with wherever he found himself.

Slowing to a halt, not out of breath in the slightest, he looked quietly around at the surroundings, unable to find a difference in what he could see between what he'd left at the doorway and what he found now. Frowning, he turned and took two steps back to find himself stood before the fog-filled doorway once more.

Settling down on his haunches once more, he tried to figure out what was happening. The surroundings appeared to defy all his understanding of physics, which either meant that he was wrong, or the physics were. With a wry smile at his hubris he decided that a new reality meant new rules, and realised that trying to interact physically with whatever this place was was not going to work.

Talking hadn't achieved a great deal, running hadn't gotten him anywhere, and the surroundings seemed more an impression of land and sky than actual sky. The only thing that had demonstrated any sort of reality — apart from him — had been the doorway that brought him here. A construct of magic.

Turning away from the doorway he narrowed his eyes, looking for any obvious shortfalls in the plan he was forming. There were more than he cared to think of, but there were no other options and the doorway remained close by, a viable escape route. Focussing his thoughts, he raised his hands to the air and called forth the power that had been awoken in him by Camael's strange knife, hurling two divergent pillars of fire into the grey sky. The flames writhed and curled like snakes, winding around him and the door, circling and turning to quickly to follow before lancing up into the sky above him.

Wind howled, suddenly, into his face, streaming tears away from his eyes and raising the short hairs across his flesh in a wasted attempt to keep warm. The wind grew stronger, bringing with it the stench of rotting flesh and things long dead, and a keening, pained howl that raised the hackles on the back of his neck.

The flames returned, hurtling towards him like twin meteor's, flashing over his head to immolate the doorway, obliterating it in a hail of chippings as the billowing fog set instantly into a pumice-like stone.

The wind stopped, the stench disappeared, and behind him, the last of the stone chips fell to the grey, unmarred surface with a quiet chink. The fire dimmed and died, leaving just the strange, distributed light source and the grey surroundings for a moment until, in the far distance ahead of him, something immense and dark hauled itself into the air; a writhing, shadowy mass, broad and thin like a blanket. It hung, ponderously, unmoving for a moment, then began to get noticeably larger as it moved towards him.

"Well, at least something's happening..." he muttered. A last, forlorn look around for some terrain to take advantage of, and then he braced himself for whatever it was coming to look for him.

Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 9^th

Sophie rose from the bed, gently, and padded across the floor to stare at the fog-filled doorway with a frown. She was reluctant to wake Caerys, having seen how tired the woman was after her work, and was gnawing at her cheek as she considered the situation when a sleepy, American voice called to her.

"You'll have to use Christophe's bathroom, if you need to go," Caerys offered, and there was a noticeable smile in her voice.

"It's not that," Sophie explained, deciding to go with truth now that the other woman was awake. "This has changed." She turned as Caerys rose and padded across the room towards her. The pale light that was given off looked blue-white on the reflections from Caerys' skin, pooling in the normally shadowed area at the hollow of her throat.

With her injured arm held gently across her chest, out of the way, Caerys eased past her to stare at the door surround, ignoring the bursts of changing light. Sophie couldn't help but be drawn to the flickering clouds, realising after a moment that it wasn't bursts of light that had changed the appearance, but rather bursts of darkness; pulses and shadows cut through the effect, sliding across whatever power created and contained the boundary, and interrupted the gentle glow.

"The wards are holding, easily," Caerys muttered, almost to herself, rising up on tip-toe to peer at the lintel where Gabriel had pressed the blood-wetted knife hours before. Despite herself, Sophie looked not up, but down, to where Caerys' short nightshirt rose up to the very limit of her long, slim legs.

The image did nothing for her. Caerys was undoubtedly attractive, even beautiful when she let herself relax and smile, the warmth lighting up her eyes and the cascading red hair framing her delicate, pale face. Sophie had known many attractive women and none of them had made her feel anything, either.

"Enjoying the view?" Caerys' question, and the amused look on her face, drew Sophie from her reverie with a start, and a deep flush that spread from her cheeks and down her neck.

"I'm sorry..."

"That's OK, Soph," Caerys assured her. "Looking I can live with, it's unwanted hands that start to be a problem." Her tone was light, and her lips were smiling, but Sophie could clearly see the hard, dark, painful memories in her eyes as she said it.

"That's not why I'm sorry..." Sophie whispered, and took Caerys' hand gently in hers. "I'm... I look, Caerys, and I don't feel anything."

"So?"

"What?"

"So looking doesn't make you feel anything. So what?"

"I... I don't think... Women..." Confused jumbled thoughts spilled over as Sophie tried to put her feelings into words.

"Sophie, don't rush it."

"I'm not rushing, Caerys, there's nothing to rush. I think of you, and I... I admire you, I like you, I feel for you, we have a bond, but..."

"You look at me, and you don't think 'sex'."

"Oui, " she whispered, her head lowering, but Caerys put a finger under her chin, gently, and lifted her head to look into her eyes.

"I see what you feel, Sophie, and I recognise it, even if you don't, and I've never seen it before." Sophie began to reply, but Caerys' finger moved to her lips to quieten her, and she continued. "I'm going back to bed, I still need to sleep. Don't worry about the portal, I can feel anything approaching it from the other side. Before I go, though, I want to ask you something.

"You were married. Whatever happened after that, later, forget that for the minute. Go back to the beginning, go back to how to you felt with Henry... when you looked at Henry... what did you feel?"

"But Henry was a man," Sophie pointed out, and Caerys looked genuinely confused.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"You don't look for that physical attraction with a man, you look for... for strength and dependability, and..."

"Bullshit," Caerys burst out, shaking her head at the idea. "I... Attractive men are attractive, it's as simple as that. Most women, perhaps, aren't as influenced by that as most men, but we all fall on the scale somewhere. If you don't look for physical attractiveness in people, then stop looking for it in me. Look for what you looked for in Henry."

Sophie stood, wide-eyed, as Caerys and her long, slim legs and pale, freckled skin settled back into bed, and tried to rationalise what she'd been told.

Elsewhere, Somewhen

The black cloud billowed closer and closer over the next few minutes, and Gabriel could just about pick out individual figures amongst the flock, though not a particular shape. Even if he chose to trust his perception of the time and distance involved, the terrain gave him no references to gauge how far the creatures were, or what size they might be.

Slow minutes felt as though they were ticking by, and the cloud drew closer, the frenetic activity of the participants becoming more apparent as the space between cleared. Figures began dropping away from the crowd, spiralling downward to the unseen floor, disappearing from view before they hit. The few turned into a storm, a rain of fighting, falling, twisted figures, a mass of wings and claws and tails until barely a half-dozen remained, and then they were upon him.

A dark, shadowy surface seemed to cover them entirely, soaking up and absorbing the dim light that surrounded them, making the area suddenly gloomy and half-lit. They blurred as they moved, as though the image were trailing behind them, shifting a forgotten moment behind its source, and he was disoriented enough by the effect that a claw raked painfully across his forearm as he shifted stance to put his weight behind the block.

He threw out a hand, letting lightning loose from his fingers as he pointed them at his attacker, but the electricity twisted and accelerated away from him, absorbed by the dark skin of his attacker. Two more of them came at his side, but interfered with each others progress and turned upon each-other. The other four surrounded him, and he took a deep, calming breath as he waited for the attack.

Just as the first leapt, he pivoted away from it and towards the one at his right, half-glimpsing an open jaw full of serrated teeth for a moment until the darkness shifted as it moved. The flame that billowed around it, briefly, didn't reveal the image, nor did they appear to do any damage as they rapidly flickered and were sucked into the darkened shell as well.

Instinct brought his foot back out of line as a lashing claw raked towards his shin, and he continued the spin, lashing out with his heel at head height into the third figure as it launched itself at his apparently unprotected back.

The impact wasn't as powerful as he'd hoped for, the textureless floor beneath his bare feet didn't accord him much grip, but the effect was devastating. His foot crushed through a frail, feeble body to leave it limp and twitching on the floor.

The other three backed up a step, and the two fighting each other seemed to come to a mutual demolition as they pitched to the floor as well.

Almost immediately, the three bodies crumpled in upon themselves, dissolving into a thin trail of smoke or steam that dissipated into the ether, leaving him surrounded — with a healthy distance — by the last three of the pack. His magic had proven useless, had seemed to be absorbed, and yet a relatively feeble physical strike had carried a weight far beyond his expectations.

Although he'd discarded his understanding of physics long before, and decided that the realm was a magical construct of some sort, reality seemed to impinge here. Turning amongst the three opponents he spied a crippled, twisted claw and assumed it was the one he'd blocked a moment before. The magical creatures in the magical realm were impervious to magic, it seemed, in much the same way as he'd be immune to air, or a spray of water.

Reality, though, was an anathema to them. He was the weapon, and he used it. A feint, a leap, three swift strikes, and three shadowy bodies slipped into the beyond with a trail of smoke and a slight crackle of dissipating energy, leaving him free of interference.

Turning slowly to scan the horizon for other signs of trouble he spied nothing, turning full circle. Unfortunately, in the melee, he'd lost sense of his original position, and there was no sign of the doorway to use as a reference.

He turned again, looking closer, seeking signs of the portal, and leapt back when he realised a silent, white figure had crept up behind him. He landed ready to fight, arms up and fists clenched, feet grounded as best he could, but crumpled immediately to his knees, arms limp.

"Giselle?"

~yes~ It wasn't a voice, exactly, so much as it felt like the memory of a voice, the sort of whisper he wasn't sure he'd heard at all. It seemed not to come from the figure before him, but from an inch or so behind his head. The broad, bright eyes he remembered were as pale as the rest of her, but the gentle curve of her nose, the curves of her flanks, and the slightly lop-sided, warm smile were exactly as he remembered.

"Giselle... I..."

~you must hurry~ He turned, slightly, to be sure there wasn't someone behind him, that it wasn't a deception, but his heart told him she was with him, and he hesitantly reached out a hand to her. Her smile disappeared, a look of longing on her face as she reached out too, and her hand passed through his as though it weren't there. For half a breath he almost thought he felt something, but it was as much a half-forgotten memory as the almost-voice he heard.

~you must hurry~

"Hurry where?" He looked around for some evidence of scenery. "Is there something else coming?"

~I don't know~ she admitted, with a shrug and glimpse of the familiar broad smile.

"Then why hurry? There's..." He turned back towards where the suspected the door might have been. "I'm not sure there's a way back."

~it's there, just hidden~ she assured him, turning away, staring at her hand for a moment, wistfully. ~it strains Caerys. You must hurry~

"Wait, Giselle!" He reached for her, grasping at an ephemeral shoulder with no success. Turning to face him, still moving smoothly across the strange ground, she smiled at his efforts, poked her tongue out at him, and sped up.

Breaking into a jog to keep up he watched her as she hitched up the front of her flowing dress to reveal bare feet hovering inches above the ground.

"That's got to be cheating," he complained, speeding up as she began to ease away from him, and from behind him he heard her laugh catch up to him. He turned, looking for the source of the noise, and when he looked back at her, she shrugged, laughed again, and twisted out of sight.

He drew up short, reaching a hand through the point where she'd disappeared. He'd expected something to shimmer or distort, some sort of evidence of whatever hid the place she'd gone to, but there was nothing. It wasn't as though she'd disappeared, there'd been a sense of turning, but not changing direction, at least not in any sense he could rationalise.

~hurry~ He felt the urging emanate from where she'd disappeared and stepped forward hesitantly arms outstretched a little, seeking signs of what was happening. He paused, brow narrowing slightly as he realised the voice had seemed to be in front of him, this time, and spun around.

As he'd expected, Giselle hung gently in the air before him, a broad smile on her face.

"I've missed you." He couldn't help but smile back at her despite the lump in his throat, and her eyes twinkled gently as she turned away.

~hurry~ And he did.

Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 9 ^th

Sophie woke slowly, Christophe's arm draped over her stomach and his face burrowed in against her side, a comfortable familiar warmth. She lay for a long moment, eyes closed against the encroaching light, recalling the events of the previous day. "Sophie?" Caerys' muffled voice carried through the door, and she turned, realising what had awoken her. By the time she'd eased Christophe's arm out of the way and lifted herself off the bed, Caerys had already tripped the lock and eased her way into the room.

"Bon matin, " Sophie managed quietly, raising a finger to her lips as she indicated Christophe's slumbering form, and padded across the room to the door.

"You didn't come back to bed last night," Caerys noted, gnawing gently on the inside of her lip as she waited, obviously nervous.

"I... I didn't want Christophe to wake alone," Sophie replied, not quite meeting her gaze, and feeling slightly guilty about the deception.

"You could have invited me," Caerys muttered, and when their eyes met they both turned away. "I'm sorry, I'll see you later."

"Wait, Caerys..."

"For what?" Caerys managed a smile. "I said I wouldn't rush you, and here I am."

"I just need..." Sophie began, but looked up and saw Caerys' look of dejection. "I just need some courage," she admitted, finally.

"What?"

"Come in, sit down." Sophie gestured towards the unused bed. "I don't want to talk about this in the corridor."

"Do you want to talk about it in front of Christophe?"

"He's asleep, but... I do want to be here for him when he wakes up."

"He's taken things well." Caerys settled herself cross-legged on the bed, leaning back against the headboard with her splinted arm cradled across her chest.

"He's been amazing," Sophie agreed, kneeling down between the beds, staring at the boy as he slept.

"So..." Caerys said, when the silence had drawn out a little too far. "Courage?"

"Yes..." Turning away from Christophe, Sophie folded her hands into her lap and looked up at Caerys for a moment. "You know that I don't really understand what it must have been like for you, growing up with a life like you've had?"

"Right," Caerys acknowledged. "Is that what you're afraid of, my past?"

"No, that's not what I meant," Sophie cut her off, laying a placatory hand on her knee. "It's just... because of... that... you don't really know what it's like to have my history, either."

"What... Soph, you never said anything."

"It's nothing like that," Sophie assured Caerys, as the red-head began to lean forward looking worried. "I'm not doing this very well. I was... my whole life has been built around the idea that a relationship is a man and a woman... a family."

"It doesn't have to be."

"I know that. Logically I know that, but it... I don't feel it. It's like..."

"Conditioning?" Caerys managed to crack a slight smile. "I know what that's like..."

"Perhaps." Sophie didn't feel as amused as Caerys apparently felt, and her head hung a little as she gave up trying to explain it.

"Look, Soph, I'm not going to get you to do anything you don't want," Caerys assured her, rising from the bed. "I'll be next door when you realise that the only way you're going to get past this is to just try it."

"Try it?" Sophie whispered, eyes wide, but Caerys slipped out of the door and back to her — their — room.

Elsewhere, Somewhen

For almost an hour that they moved in silence across the strange landscape, until finally Gabriel felt they either must be approaching their destination, or they were never going to get there. Every time he tried to talk to her, she sped up, or changed direction, did something to avoid talking until eventually he gave up trying, content to follow her until she changed her mind. Catching him by surprise, she suddenly halted in mid-flight, hovering a foot or so out of his reach as he slowed alongside her.

As he'd become accustomed to in this strange place, he felt no tiredness and wasn't even slightly out of breath.

"I could run forever here..." he observed, slowly examining the scenery for some sign that it was different to where he'd been before.

~no~ Giselle's whisper came to him. ~this place drains you~

"I feel fine," he assured her, reaching out as she began to drift slowly off to one side of the path they'd been taking.

~you must hurry~ This time the twinkle in her eye was gone, and the look she gave him instead was worried.

"I..." he began to argue, until he recognised the look for what it was. "Hurry where?" he asked. Raising a hand, Giselle traced an outline in the air before him, a large arching doorway, and then pushed through the slightly shimmering area it demarcated. She disappeared from sight, leaving only a beckoning hand to summon him behind her.

Through the doorway, despite the lack of any evidence of a structure outside, a broad, sprawling temple lay before him. Metre thick stone pillars held aloft a baroque, ornately sculpted ceiling of solid bosses and bulky arches thirty feet or so above his head, barely lit by the infrequently spaced guttering torches he could see. Seemingly more relaxed, Giselle darted off between the massive pillars, forcing him to chase her.

"Giselle!" he called, and drew up short when the sound carried normally, echoing back at him faintly from the stonework. Slowing, he listened again and heard the distant whisper of wind, somewhere. His nose twitched as he recognised the herbs burning in the torches, and felt the stonework beneath his shoes — shoes, he realised, he was once more wearing.

"GISELLE!" She drifted back into sight, noticeably less enthused as she slowed to a halt beside him. "How... God, Giselle..."

She smiled, gently, and raised a finger to her lips, her other hand trembling in the air between them. He reached for it, but her ephemeral nature hadn't changed, and they passed through each other with no resistance.

~hurry~ At least, he rationalised, they could still talk, and as she started to drift away, he took a few quick steps to walk alongside her.

"I've missed you." It seemed so weak, but she smiled at him, her head still barely level with his shoulder, despite the space beneath her feet.

~I know~ she acknowledged, turning to lead him into another broad chamber of similar construction to the first. ~I watched you~

"I..." he started to explain that he'd avenged her, but seeing her there before him it seemed so trivial. She seemed to understand, nodding once as he stopped. "What did you bring me here for?"

She pointed, speeding up a little and he accelerated to join her, feeling his muscles work this time in the more structured reality of the temple. Within a minute or so, two chambers later, Giselle slowed to a halt, and gestured towards a lower, smaller archway.

"Are you coming?" he asked, but she shook her head gently, pressing her hand into the arch. It hit something unseen, pressing as though against a sheet of glass, and she pointed to the floor.

~I'll be here~

"Is it dangerous?" The twinkle-eyed smile returned as she pretended to consider the question a moment, but shook her head, and he ducked slightly below the heavy, stone arch and pressed gently forward. Whatever had prevented Giselle entering proved no boundary to him, and he straightened in a dark, musty smelling space, barely aware of the door behind him and nothing else.

Raising a hand he conjured a flicker of fire with more concentration than he'd expected to need, having to force the power more than he had before. The room was square, perhaps twenty feet across, and in the centre of it lay a delicately sculpted marble table, perhaps more like an altar given the wealth of delicate inlay set into it.

As he tried to approach the table, the effort of maintaining the fire became harder and harder, and he was forced to back away before the flame guttered and died, leaving him in the dark. Spying an unlit torch in a sconce near the door, he grabbed for it and transferred the flame, letting his power leak away. Despite himself, he felt a strange sense of relief when it was gone, and the light from the torch spread in a warm glow around him.

Reaching the torch closer to the altar there was no change in its light, so he figured the effect had been suppressing his magic, not the flame or the light, and approached the altar. Up close, the decoration was even more spectacular; incredibly fine filigree work in gold and copper depicted vines and branches spreading over the surface, with a number of enamelled images picked out wherever a leaf sprouted. The images weren't distributed evenly, and yet there was a balance to the effect, even though it lacked symmetry.

Stepping closer, raising the torch above the table, he looked down at the bulky, solid weapon that he'd come to find. Four and a half feet long and bone white from the tip of the blade to the delicately shaped skull of the pommel it managed to convey grace and brute strength without doing anything. Gabriel let go a breath he didn't realise he'd been holding, and bent a little closer.

Half the length was the blade, a thick, heavy, cleaver-like blade held in place with two solid rivets the size of his thumb, each shaped into a white rose where it stood proud of the surface. The shaft, for it was too long to be a mere hilt, had been worked to look like a bone, and inlaid with weaving, interlocking traces of gold and silver, highlighted with tiny sigils and signs in crimson red and a deep, azure blue.

His first impression was that the symbols looked like the ones Caerys had inscribed on the portal he'd used to come here, but these seemed to move and shift whenever he wasn't looking straight at them, almost as though they were alive. Gently, slowly, he reached out a hand, expecting to feel some sort of resistance, or at least a sensation of power, but there was nothing, until his hand clasped around the shaft.

His vision went white, and ice-cold fire seemed to flow up his arm, burning through his blood and his bones in an instant. His pulse pounded in his ears, and a roar filled his ears for a moment, and when the sensation passed he found himself on his knees, both hands clasped around the weapon, the butt planted firmly on the floor and holding him up.

~hurry~ Giselle's ghostly voice called, suddenly, more urgently than before, and he forced himself to stand. Weary beyond his understanding he felt off-balance and clumsy as he turned, and leant on the weapon like a staff. Something brushed the back of his neck and he spun, still unsure of his footing, but there was nothing there.

~hurry~ Giselle's urging came again, and he took a last look for what was behind him and moved quickly towards the doorway.