Chapter 14B

Elsewhere, Somewhen

Outside, the grey plain stretched away once more, and Gabriel loped easily at Giselle's side through the well-lit angles. The scenery disappeared within yards, and they were quickly hurrying through the featureless waste with no real sense of pursuit that Gabriel could sense, or any perception of their destination.

"How far?" he asked, turning to look over his shoulder. Again he felt the strange sensation of feathers on his cheek, but there was nothing to interrupt his view of the nothing that stretched away behind them.

~not far~ Giselle replied, without looking at him, and promptly turned sharply to the right. Gabriel followed, and found himself weaving between high, narrow spires of the grey angular material.

"What's this?" he asked, and Giselle spun in the air to look at him as she continued to drift.

~what you see is not here~ she tried to explain. ~to the things that live here, this is a place where it is hard to see from outside~

With no reason to doubt her, Gabriel shrugged his acceptance and followed, finding himself quickly moving uphill to a small plateau. In the middle of the round area stood the glimmering doorway through which he'd entered, showing no evidence of the destruction that had been wreaked on it before.

"This isn't where I came in," he pointed out, looking at the small surroundings.

~what you see is not what is~ Giselle reminded him. ~the space around the witch's gate created has shrunk — there is not much time left~

"Let me guess - hurry." He smiled, hefting the white glaive gently as he looked back down the gully for signs of the approaching pursuit.

~Gabriel~ Something in her tone caught his attention, and he turned to look at her, unable to make anything out from the expression on her face. ~It has been good to see you again~

"Well, now that I know it's you..." he began, but she cut him off.

~Charisma is not me. I can influence it, but it is not me~

"We can work on that," he assured her, and she smiled.

~you must tell the witch about this~ she told him, quietly, and held out her arms. Looped over them in a loose coil was a thin, grey rope of some sort, cut off cleanly at one end. The other end disappeared behind her back, and he could not see where it emerged.

"Tell her what? About the rope, or the cut, or... what?"

~both~ Down in the gully, a low, rumbling growl sounded, distracting him from the sad expression on her face.

Holiday Inn, Edinburgh, December 9^th

The sky was clear and crisp over Edinburgh, the ancient city lurking low and dark in all its twisted narrow thoroughfares and lurking mediaeval behemoths. Arthur's seat lurched into the sky at the horizon, and the pale moonlight cut neatly into the room from above it, falling on Caerys' pale skinned features as she lay asleep in the bed. Even the dim glow from the glassy portal paled into insignificance in that light.

Seated in the soft armchair, her feet coiled beneath her and her hands clasped around a nearly cold cup of coffee, Sophie stared unblinkingly at that restful face, trying to sort through her emotions. The long night of divining seemed to have wearied Caerys, and after checking the portal with only a slight hint of concern she'd dropped off to sleep almost immediately once her head had hit the pillow.

Sophie had watched her lithe form walking quietly around the room, draped in just an old, oversized shirt, and had dispassionately acknowledged that the younger woman was beautiful. The red hair that hung so easily in tumbling ringlets down her back now fanned out across the pillow behind her like a copper-coloured halo, glistening gently where it was still ever so slightly damp from the shower.

Henry, she admitted to herself, had been an attractive man; she'd acknowledged it to herself then, and did so again now, but had to concede that Caerys' observation had been right. It hadn't mattered to her then, and despite her ability to appreciate the woman sleeping before her, it didn't matter to her now, either.

She half-remembered her first experience, mildly drunk in a student flat on the outskirts of Lyon, and the guilt and discomfort she'd felt the following day. She remembered the lack of enthusiasm with which she'd approached such things with her husband; it wasn't that she hadn't wanted to be with him, it was that she'd not felt any strong desire to share that with him.

And yet, something still held her back. It wasn't, she realised, that the idea repulsed her, so much as she expected it to. She wasn't a puritan, was well aware that such things happened, but hadn't had any experience of it. She didn't know anyone like that, or at least she wasn't aware that anyone she knew was like that.

Caerys had many of the qualities that she'd looked for before; intelligent, funny, caring, protective at times, but also mindful of her own strengths. Unlike Henry she wasn't overbearing or dismissive — wasn't, when it came to it, a twisted doctor acting out a strange fantasy by proxy, either.

Given her past, she realised, she wasn't really in a place to be considering herself a good judge, but that wasn't what made her stand and hesitantly begin to remove clothing. Looking in the mirror, being as honest as she could with herself, she realised it was the expectation that she should be repulsed that had stopped her, and that was simply pandering to her upbringing once again. She'd already sacrificed too many possibilities on that particular altar in her life; it was time to break out of the mold.

Slipping naked into the bed behind Caerys, she felt her nipples harden against the younger woman's bare back as she settled.

"Soph?" Caerys mumbled, coming slowly awake.

"Je m'excuse." Sophie whispered back, stroking her hair, gently. "Go to sleep, Caerys."

Caerys, instead, turned slowly in her arms to face her, eyes twinkling gently in the reflected moonlight.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked, obvious concern mixed in her expression. Sophie couldn't help but notice the long, sleek leg that wrapped round hers, holding her in place even as the question was asked.

"Yes," she admitted. "I... I care for you, Caerys, and you were right. That's always been enough before."

Caerys leant forward and kissed her, gently, her lips surprisingly warm and soft. Sophie started a little, when a colder hand slid gently across her belly.

"Caerys, I've — I've never..."

"That's OK," Caerys assured her, gently, with a smile.

"No, Caerys, that's not what I meant. Sex has never been that much to me."

"Then," Caerys assured her, raising up onto one elbow with a broad grin, "you've not been doing it right."

"Oh!" Sophie felt a slightly nervous smile edge across her face a little faster than Caerys' hand edged across her skin.

Despite herself, and the admirable heating, she felt goosebumps rising in the wake of Caerys long-nailed fingers as they trailed lower.

"Relax, Sophie," Caerys whispered in her ear, trailing her tongue gently over the stud ear-rings and sending a shiver down her spine. "Relax and enjoy."

Elsewhere, Somewhen

"Come on, we have to go. We'll sort something out, I promise you." Gabriel said, not turning away from the gully from where the growling was emanating.

~I love you~ she whispered, and it seemed to carry well despite the approaching noise. Down in the gully, the air began to shimmer and ripple, and Gabriel backed up towards the doorway.

"I love you, too," he told her, grinning inanely, and pointed towards the portal, which was now starting to billow with the grey mist he remembered from his first journey. "Let's get going."

She was a half-step ahead of him as the Guardian burst onto the scene in a hail of barbed, lashing tentacles. Three of them reached past him, latching onto Giselle's form and dragging her backward away from the portal. Amidst the bundle of writhing tentacles Gabriel could just make out a solid, bulky mass of flesh and teeth, though the details weren't clear, and he was too busy dodging flailing arms to study it closely.

Lashing out with two broad, over-hand strokes he spun the white glaive easily through air, slicing through the tentacles that had latched on to Giselle. She burst free, and turned, gliding carefully to hide behind him.

~you cannot defeat it here~ she called, louder to overcome the rustling, grinding sound of the barbed tentacles rubbing over each other. The three tentacles he'd sliced through retracted into the mass, but there didn't seem to be any fewer lashing out at him. The white glaive bit comfortably into the tentacles when they strayed too close, but it didn't seem to have any significant impact overall. He tried to back up a step towards the portal, but the Guardian shifted its bulk to put a writhing mass of tentacles in the way.

Splitting his attention slightly, Gabriel turned the glaive on the blockage, and used the shorter, black blade to deflect the incoming attacks. The katar bit heavily into the oncoming tentacles, trailing a green ichor from the wounds it opened and raising an inhuman scream of pain each time it hit. Switching targets, Gabriel deflected with the glaive and slashed furiously at the blocking tentacles with the katar, quickly opening up a pathway.