LIANNDRA

Once upon a time, Lianndra and Felicienne and certain others were all in on a secret deal that could have won them hundreds of millions of dollars, an incredible amount back then. Instead of making the money though, they were each forced to give up something important to them, mostly because the deal was on the wrong side of the law.

Lianndra lost all of the money he had spent his years earning, and Felicienne lost her house and her adopted daughter.

When Annie found out what her mother had been doing behind her back, she had gotten very angry and had decided to run away with a young man by the name of Marcus Frank. Then, instead of marrying her, Marcus raped and beat her then left her for dead. Somehow she managed to drag herself home to her mother, but she was never the same again. The beating she received had left her with the mind of a child, a child of only about nine or ten.

When Felicienne found out about what he had done to her daughter, she had tracked Marcus down and tore him limb from limb. While he was still alive, she skinned him and hung him up in a tree where he bled to death, the whole time screaming in an agony of pain.

Because of Annie, she was forced to take her and move to another state and a new house, one that had specially built safety features. Unfortunately, Annie had never been exactly a genius and now she had become undeniably worse. The situation only deteriorated more with each passing day until finally she had all of the mental capacity of a child of about three months.

One day while she was playing, Annie, who was then twenty-three, chased a flock of birds to the edge of the pond behind the big manor house. Before anyone could reach her, she had fallen in and cracked her head on the decorative stones that surrounded it. By the time she was pulled out, she had already drowned and was quickly turning blue.

Since there was no such thing as CPR back then, there was no way to save her. She was dead and it was too late, and Felicienne swore that she would never forgive Lianndra, her once friend that had talked her into entering in on the deal that had gone so wrong so fast.

It wasn’t as if he’d had any idea that things would turn out as they had, but she still blamed him. For some reason, she had the strange idea that he had planned everything to happen that way. A hundred year old grudge was not the kind of thing that could be wiped away very easily, and adding to the blockage was the fact that she didn’t want to forgive him. Their thirty-year friendship was wiped away in a day to be replaced by a hundred year long enmity.

This was the first time that he’d seen her in person in over thirty-nine years. The last time had not been the best occasion in his memory; it had been terrible in fact. It was what had begun that whole incident of 1958 that had cost the lives of thousands and led to the disappearance and subsequent deaths of several world leaders. Even after all of that, neither one of them had won. They were too equally balanced, so nothing had come of it other than the deaths of a few measly mortals. It was rather sad really.

Facing her again, Lianndra couldn’t help but to remember Annie, the beautiful, laughing child that Felicienne had adopted and loved as her own cub. It was sad that she had been unable to have any children of her own, but Annie had taken the place of all of those others.

Being a werepanther had some good sides, but there were also some bad. Living forever made procreation needless, so for most immortals it was something that never happened--no children for those that don’t need them. As they say, children are man’s immortality.

The mark of sadness was barely visible, but it was there, deep inside her eyes where even she most likely didn’t know it existed. A burning desire to have something she never would.

"How have you been, Felicienne?" he asked, his voice suddenly gentle, even though he didn’t really want it to be. There was something about Felicienne that brought out the sympathetic side of him.

She frowned at him. "You know exactly how I’ve been doing. You probably know more about my financial and social state than I do." She glared. "I know that you have your hooks into everything and that you receive information from your spies, the spies that are everywhere. Everyone knows about ‘Lianndra’s Little Men,’ men that are both to be feared and admired for the way they can dig their way into everyone’s business. I bet there’s a few of them in my organization, no matter the fact that I’ve already caught and killed twenty of them in the past six years.

"Who do you think you are, Lianndra? You are not our lord and master. You are just a little vampire boy, barely two hundred and twenty, while I am six hundred and forty-three years old. I was born in the Year of Our Lord thirteen fifty-four. I am over four hundred and twenty years older than you, yet still you persist in the idea that you have control over me. You do not."

He looked at her for a silent moment, her British accent bringing back the memories of days gone by. He remembered a time when she had smiled when she saw him and had liked to share her secrets with him; a time when they had been as one person. Now they were like strangers, two people that had been as close as two people can ever be, but who were now unable to even say the simplest of things to each other without hurt feelings.

Even though the things that had happened in the past hadn’t really been his fault, not totally so, there was no way that she would ever forgive him for them. She blamed him, and that was the way it was going to be. Life was like that.

Still, he couldn’t help but to remember a time when they had hunted the streets of London together, searching for the perfect victims. They had been partners in both business and entertainment, both of them having the same criteria for their victims to fit into. She ate her mortals in a different way, it was true, but still, that had never stood in the way of the things that they did and needed to do.

On one level he missed the friendship that they had had, but on another level he had to wonder how he could have ever had an emotional attachment to someone like this. She was the stereotypical definition of the word bitch, in both forms at that.

His mouth tightened into a straight line. "Sometimes I worry about you Felicienne. I thought people were supposed to change and grow wiser with the years, but I swear that you are exactly like you must have been when your father was a feudal lord and was trying to find some poor sap for you to marry. Too bad none of those men took him up on the offer, even with all of the money to back the deal up. Too bad, huh? Maybe then you wouldn’t have been bitten, you wouldn’t be a werepanther and you wouldn’t act like a bitch in heat all the time. Right?"

Her eyebrows drew together dangerously and her mouth formed a snarl. If she had been mad before, she was on the point of exploding now. Still, there had always been the remnants of the gentle maiden that she had once been in her, buried deep beneath the layers of her panther self. Somehow she managed to control herself and get back on track.

She knew that she wouldn’t have been able to take him--not even a werepanther is strong enough to take down a vampire. Only Blood Trackers have the ability and ferociousness to take down the world’s strongest and meanest inhabitants. There was no chance that she would be able to best him, not in a fair fight and not with him at full power.

That didn’t mean that she wouldn’t come back later and get him with some devious plan or other. He would have to be on the lookout for such traps and tricks for the next couple of years, decades, or centuries. He would just have to pay attention to what was going on.

Felicienne was not like a normal enemy. She was extremely dangerous and thought at least twenty moves ahead of her opponent. He was thinking about the things that had to happen this year, she was thinking about the things that would have to be done before and during the next twenty. It was kind of scary, but he would have to be prepared for anything that she might do. She was not an enemy that should be overlooked and underestimated. When she was around, it was better to be over-prepared for any occurrence than not. One loophole and she would worm her way in to victory.

That had been one of the reasons they had made such a good team. He supplied the muscle, people person skills and main goal, and she supplied the strategies of attack that invariably led to victory. She was a genius at what she did, and when they worked together there was no way to stop them. And when they worked against each other, they were so equally matched that it always ended with people dying for nothing.

INTERLUDE

Every time old feelings for Lianndra try to resurface, I drown them in thoughts of Annie, then I wash them away with fountains of blood arching high over my head. That was what I had been doing only to be surprised by the coming of the real Lianndra, the one that I had only thought about, but hadn’t seen in a long time. I had forgotten how strong he was, something that was easy to do when you only think of him in the context of his little boy body and his innocent act.

Oh well, that’s life. The forgetting and remembering of the things that were done in the past.

I wish that I could forget everything so easily, but I can’t. Most especially, I can’t forget the life I once had and the way that life had ended so abruptly.

Long ago I was once Felicienne St. James, half-French daughter to a powerful and rich English lord. A man that had ruled his people and his family with an iron fist gloved in fair rule and dignity. He had been an upright man that I had loved dearly, even at the times when he was being his most selfish and proud. Even at the times when he wouldn’t let me do the things I wanted.

Maybe it’s a romantic viewpoint that has come about from the fading of old memories and the passage of time, but the castle that we lived in was a place that I loved dearly and never wanted to leave. Sure, it was drafty in winter, humid in summer and always had a layer of mold that had to be scrubbed off along with the amassed grime that came from people wearing boots all the time, people that rode and lived closely with horses and other animals. But no matter how horrible it had been, it was home. The place where I was born and spent my childhood. And in memory it will always be a place of glorious summer, sparkling bright as paradise.

The horrible stench that had once filled my nightmares has been wiped away by time, and the greasy and undercooked meat is nothing but a faint memory. When I think with my logical mind, I have to admit that it was a horrible life with dirty itchy clothes that were never comfortable and primitive living arrangements that make my modern self want to weep with relief not to be there. But I don’t always think with my logical mind, especially when I’m reliving memories. To me that life will always be the golden age of innocence when I was an unblooded maiden that knew nothing about the wide world, but everything about her castle and her beloved valley.

When I think about that life, I wish that things had never changed, that I had never come to the point where I’m at now. I wish that I could have lived and died in the life that I was supposed to have; that I could have stayed that innocent maid and married the prince of a man that I yearned for--and not the man that I ended up with.

Instead, things changed in ways that I would never have been able to imagine back then. I’m a killer now, a cold-blooded killer that is worth twenty-three billion dollars and doesn’t really need to work, even though I do anyway.

Of course, no one knows I have that much money. That would be just plain crazy. It would put me in the publics’ eye, the one place that I definitely don’t want to be. That’s why I keep my money spread around in hundreds of different banks under hundreds of different names. The name Felicienne Chronos is only worth forty million dollars, which isn’t really all that much when you think about how much I’m worth altogether.

Never again will I have to grub around searching for some way to make two pence so I can buy a loaf of bread. There is no way that I will ever have to beg on the street for the money to use a public bathhouse. I have insurance now, backup money in case I have to vacate the Chronos persona once and for all.

I have learned my lessons well from my father’s quick fall. One day he had been on top of the world, and the next he was nothing but a memory of sadness and regret.

In 1367, when I was thirteen years old and preparing myself for my upcoming wedding to the man that I had been betrothed to since I was four, disaster struck my family.

Richard St. James, my father, was revealed to have been doing things that no baron in his position should ever do. He had been found to have been sleeping with an earl’s daughter, a woman that was not to even be approached in public. He had been cheating on my mother with a real bitch, a woman that ran to her father calling "rape" when they were discovered.

My father’s lands, titles and life were all forfeit. My brother’s inheritance went to a far-off cousin instead, an insufferable man that I remember as being both fat and repulsive. He had once tried to fondle my breast when I was only eleven and they were almost invisible mounds on my chest. Still, the man got everything and my father was hung. All in one day.

My mother was forced to take my younger sister and brother and escape to France, the only way they could get away from the shame. My elder brother set out to beg the King for the return of the titles of St. James, and I was sent to my future husband. A man that I had only met once, a man that was already forty-one; to me, a man that was in his later years and close to death. He was only four years younger than my father had been, and they had in fact once been comrades during the war.

My husband’s name was William Thornton, Lord of Watterton, a strong and robust man with a son three years older than me. He’d never meant to wed me, but when I was only a year old his wife died, leaving him a widower with a young son. So the agreement was struck up about our wedding, and my future was sealed. I was to wed William, a man twenty-eight years my senior.

Someone probably should have told Thomas that his father’s bride was younger than him. Someone probably should also have told him about how I look. Maybe then he would have been more prepared about my appearance. As it was, it only took until three months after my marriage to William, before Thomas was coming on to me.

My wedding took place two months after my fourteenth birthday, an idea that would have appalled the modern world. A fourteen-year old getting married? Disgusting!

What few people know is that some girls got married younger, to men way older than them. My sister got married when she was twelve, something that I found a little troubling since she was five years younger than me, and so I always thought of her as the baby.

Anyway, I blew off Thomas, only to have him come back with some of his friends. He figured that since his father had had me, then it was his turn. And if I wouldn’t give it to him freely, then he would simply have to force me.

I doubt that he would have done what he did next if he had known that I was four months pregnant with his younger brother.

He attacked me and had his friends hold me down as he tried to rape me. I say "tried" because I managed to kick him in the crotch and get away while his friends were trying to help him up. While I was running down the stairs toward safety, the hem of my gown, which I had meant to raise, somehow got caught under the toe of my slipper and sent me cartwheeling down the stone stairs.

I fell down thirty stairs, and even now I still have the scar on my head where I hit the edge of the sharp stone. When everyone ran to help me, they found that I had lost the baby and that I had been attacked. They could tell by the finger marks that showed on my pale skin.

William had Thomas whipped for what he had done, ten lashings for him and fifteen for each of his friends. It was after that, that Thomas ran away from home, leaving William lost and heartbroken. He had loved his son and couldn’t understand why his own flesh and blood would do such a thing. That was most likely why he came to resent me and turn his affections to other women.

When I was sixteen and a half, Thomas returned. With him he brought his two friends as well as seventy other men, murderers and thieves all. They commenced to rape all of the women, kill all the men and burn everything. Thomas himself killed his father and came after me.

I can still remember the heat of the flames on my back as the castle burned and I ran for the nearby woods and safety. I can still remember the hard pounding of my heart as I ran and ran, knowing that Thomas was close behind me.

Lucky for me that Naspith was passing through England and happened to be on the road that night. He killed Thomas and took me to safety, but it was too late for me to return to a regular mortal life.

A panther is not like a human. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish a good human from a bad one, especially when both are covered in blood. Naspith bit me on the shoulder before he could stop himself, infecting me with his saliva, and Changing me irrevocably.

I am now and forever a werepanther and I thank Naspith for his inadvertent gift. I thank him, while at the same time I curse him deep in my heart. My life would have been different if he hadn’t bitten me. Thomas might have raped and killed me, or I might have escaped and had my own life, but now I will never know. For I am now a merciless killer, my soul is that of the panther I become whenever I hunger, and when I hunger I crave the flesh of man.

INTERLUDE

I enjoy the gentle crunch as my panther jaws bite down on human bone and the tasty marrow seeps out into my mouth. I like the way the flesh is chewy, yet at the same time tough. I like tearing bits and pieces off and eating them separately, or the way the heart spurts dark blood as it is bitten through.

I also like the way my sleek panther body feels as I run, the way all of the muscles bunch as I jump, the way everything goes together so perfectly. I like the way my glossy black fur feels as I lick it with my harsh, yet pleasurable tongue. I like being able to run around nude without anyone saying anything, or the way I can go to the bathroom anywhere I want and no one would dare say anything to me because I am not human but an animal.

I enjoy being a panther as much as I enjoy being human. And even though I feel twinges of regret for the life I might have had, I have to admit that the one I have now is good too.

Sometimes though, I wish that I were a mortal person; that I could age and die like the people around me. To have everyone you know and love taken away from you by time is a terrible thing. They grow older and they die, yet here I am, always the same.

My body is seventeen years old; my mind is six hundred and forty-three. I do not age and I do not die, I am immortal and I am almost entirely impervious to harm. I am what might be called a demigoddess, yet sometimes I wish that I were not.

I wish that I could close my eyes and sleep the sleep of eternity. I wish that I could rest once and for all.

My child, my Annie, was taken away from me before I was ready to let her to go. I can still remember her as a baby, an infant cradled closely in my arms. I remember her as a child toddling up to me on her short and stubby legs, her wet kisses and her tears whenever she fell and hurt herself. I remember her as a teenager, prepared to take the world by storm. But mostly, I remember her as I last saw her, twenty-three years old, beautiful and with her whole life ahead of her, standing before me a young woman, a young woman with the mind of a child once again.

I know that most people that saw us together might have thought that I was her younger sister or something like that, but in reality I was her mother. I was the woman that took her in when she was only two days old, abandoned and alone, needing someone to love and cherish her. I was the one that took her in when no one else wanted her and gave her all of the love that I had in me.

Annie was my daughter. I was her mother. And no matter how many years go by, I will always hold her in my heart.

She never should have died like that. She should have lived out her entire life to die an old woman safe in her bed. But that day in 1897 when that beast hurt my baby was the beginning of the end for her. 1901 was the year that I lost my child forever, the year that I lost my dream, the year that I lost the last little bit of who I was.

The day after Annie’s death was the first time that I had ever gone as crazy as I sometimes do. I fell on the nearest mortal and tore him apart. A man hurt my baby, so I would hurt all men, I would entice them to their own deaths.

I am not human and perhaps I never really was. I might have been born as a regular girl, but that was long ago and faraway, not to mention that that was then and this is now.

In this life I am an implacable monster that is terrible in her power and cannot be stopped by any manner known to man. I will have my vengeance for what was done, and there is no way that anyone or anything can stop me.

I am immortal, and I am angry.

DEZI

Dezi remembered the way Felicienne had once been, and she also knew the way she was now. The changes were terrible, more so to someone that had known the compassionate and caring Felicienne from before.

Once upon a time, Felicienne had been the most emotional and caring member of an otherwise cruel and thoughtless race. Werepanthers and wereleopards were not well-known for their empathy, mostly because their predatory natures detracted from their otherwise human sides. They became what they were; they became hunters and predators, creatures that could kill dispassionately the food that they lived on.

What did it matter to them if their food walked on four legs or two? What did an animal really care about a thing like that? The only thing that raises humans above the beasts is the ability to think and question, the ability to empathize with the world around them. Some people are closer to the animals than they are to the humans, but still, every human has the ability to empathize, whether they use that ability or not.

People that can change themselves into animals and other creatures are still human to a degree, but not entirely. When they are human they bring some of that animal with them, and when they are animals they bring some of their humanity with them. And sometimes that animal can get out of control or their humanity is just too weak to handle all of the strange thoughts and emotions flooding their senses.

What happens when a person decides that they don’t belong with humans anymore? What happens when a person lets their other side take control of everything?

Felicienne was still human, in a sense, but she was still mostly a panther. She no longer felt a relationship with the human species--they had lost their appeal to her.

With the death of Annie the world lost a great person. Felicienne turned her back on all of the goodness that was herself and became the monster that people like to think lycanthropes are.

The world didn’t give her what she most wanted out of life, so she wouldn’t take any of the bullshit anymore. Annie hadn’t really been anything special, she was a regular person, but she meant a great deal to her mother, more than she had ever known in life. Her death was a tragedy because it deprived the world not only of herself, but of her mother as well. From the ashes of that other life, Felicienne Chronos was born.

Dezi felt sadness when she looked at her onetime friend. The changes were startling when she thought about who Felicienne had been.

Felicienne had once been the most human of the lycanthropes, and now she had become the most inhuman. She had become a true monster of the night.

Vampires were expected not to be human. As though they were a completely other species when compared to mortals, mostly because they spent their days unconscious and their nights hunting their prey. But shapechangers could still walk and live among any group of humans normally. They were almost exactly like mortals, except for the fact that they never aged and never died of natural causes and they could change shape at will. So in their own way, shapechangers were seen as being better than vampires--more human at least.

When Dezi thought about lycanthropes, she sometimes had to wonder what it must be like to be able to change into other creatures and stalk the world as such. She might even have traded her vampireness for the ability to turn into an animal--a wolf, a lion, or like Felicienne, a werepanther.

There were some things that she wouldn’t have liked about it, though. Werepanthers tended to be less human than other shapechangers, which meant that they were more likely to go on a killing rampage and get themselves shot with silver bullets. And even though silver bullets don’t automatically kill shapechangers, they can hurt a real lot, which meant that most shapeshifters avoid silver. The only thing that might kill a shapechanger is to have their head and heart removed and have both buried in two different places, then to have their bodies chopped up and buried in different places too.

There were horror stories of decapitated shapechangers regenerating a head and coming back to life, though with a loss of short-term memories. She didn’t know how much credence she should give such tales, but they were certainly chilling. Horrible creatures clawing their way up out of the grave in search of revenge against their killers.

Felicienne was like that. On one level she blamed Lianndra for the death of her daughter, but on another, she knew that mortals had done it. And so she punished them both. She hunted and killed mortals with the same tenacity of a person reaping a field; no matter how long it would take, she was going to get the job done. At the same time, she hunted Lianndra, planning her revenge against him for what he had, or hadn’t, done.

In time she would cause both to be extinct and would finally have the peace of mind that she had so long been denied for the events that had transpired that long ago year. As some said, there is nothing so frightening as a werepanther scorned, or something like that.

Anyway that the situation was examined, Dezi knew that she wouldn’t have been eager to get into a one-on-one fight with Felicienne. A vampire might have the added advantage of strength, but that didn’t really encompass the total deviousness of the panther mind, not to mention the inhuman rage that controlled Felicienne.

It was as if Felicienne fed on her anger. She lived, breathed and slept rage. Her pores exuded the fragrance of death and revenge. Her victims could sense that all-controlling hunger and knew that there was no escaping from it. Eventually Felicienne would succeed in her venture and all her enemies would be vanquished.

It was that very presence around her that had ended her and Dezi’s friendship. It was the kind of rage that would twist those around her, would make her friends serve her bidding and search out those that had caused her pain. Dezi didn’t really want to kill Lianndra, not even for Felicienne.

Looking at the other woman, she shivered and moved closer to Chris. The vampire boy was looking at Felicienne with wide and wondering eyes. It might have been the blood that covered her from head to toe, or it might have been her phenomenal beauty. She had the kind of looks that make other women pull their men in close. Still, Dezi wasn’t worried that Chris would throw her over for Felicienne. She knew that she looked better than the other woman, and she knew that Chris genuinely loved her, two things that would have kept her man close even without the fact that he knew she would tear him in half if he strayed.

Her arm snaked out to twine with Chris’. He looked at her and smiled, his attention completely diverted from Felicienne. His glowingly brown eyes flared for a second and she could hear what he was thinking toward her.

~i think that you are the prettiest girl that i have ever seen,~ he said. ~i don’t know what i would have done if i had never met you. you’re gorgeous with a wonderful personality, dezi. i love you. i really, really do.~

She smiled. ~i know. that’s why i’m not freaking out about you being so close to someone like felicienne. i know that you would never go to her with me anywhere on the world. i love you as well. i just worry that lianndra will do something that he shouldn’t.~

They both looked at the vampire boy, to see him looking at Felicienne with a funny smile twisting his lips. Dezi had to wonder what he was thinking. It was times like these that she wished that she could read his mind, but without his permission, she couldn’t even breach his outermost shields. It was too bad really.

She was curious about what he thought of Felicienne. She really doubted that he hated her. They had been friends for a long time and he wasn’t the kind of person to twist that love into hate so very quickly, especially when he understood the pain that drove Felicienne to be what she was. In fact, part of him blamed himself for what Felicienne had become. So he could never hate her. He could only be sad.

LIANNDRA

He wished that he could go back in time and take all of her pain away, that he could renew the friendship that they had shared so long ago. But that was impossible.

Even though he liked to think of himself as an evil monster, he was not really. Sure, he might have been termed a monster for all of the lives that he had taken, but he could not really have been classified as evil. He understood the pain of others, but most of all, he was willing to help them be free of that pain. He felt love and remorse. He felt guilt and hope. And most powerful of all, he felt a need to fix the things that went wrong around him. Those were not the aspects of the monster that he liked to think he was.

Felicienne was like a shadow of herself; looking at her showed him the changes that time had wrought, in both her and himself. He was no longer the idealistic young vampire that he had once been, and she wasn’t the sweet girl-woman with a mission to save the world. Time and experience had changed them both. They could never go back to the way they had been once upon a time, and that was sad.

He felt regret for what he had done, all of the bad decisions he had ever made. Yet at the same time he knew that he had made a lot of good decisions and that a lot of the things he had done had been the right things, even if he would never receive thanks for them.

Felicienne killed so mercilessly because she mourned the death of her daughter. What she didn’t really think of was that Annie would have died anyway; it was just a matter of time. Felicienne had known from the first that she was not going to Change Annie into a monster like herself, which meant that Annie was mortal and would die in time.

Mortals were like mayflies. They lived short lives that ended in the blink of an immortal eye. Some were more like fireflies than others. Some burned brightly in the darkness, while others were barely a flickering flame in the peripheral vision of the mind. Annie was one such.

Felicienne would never admit it, but her daughter had not been the kind of adventurous person she might have been. Annie had been a quiet girl that had had a normal, or maybe even a slightly-below normal, intellect and a need to stay in the safety and confines of her own little shell. When she ran away it might have been the best thing that had ever happened to her. She might have found what she had been searching for. She might have become a real person with her own likes and dislikes, not just a mirror of the ideas her mother had placed on her. Instead, she had died a slow and tragic death.

Lianndra felt sadness for that, not because Annie had been anything special, but because Felicienne had been. It was something that never should have happened; Felicienne should have had the time to come to terms with the fleeting lives of mortals. She should have had the time to rationalize about her daughter’s aging and the death that was soon to follow. Instead, she had been forced to look at her daughter’s death in a moment when she was not entirely in her right mind. She was forced to see, and what she saw was not something that any mother would want to see, and it warped her mind.

Instead of thinking that her daughter would have died anyway, her mind saw her daughter as immortal. She began to think it was the fault of the mortals and Lianndra that had ended her daughter’s life. On some subconscious level, she thought that maybe her daughter never would have died, that perhaps her daughter would have always been there, that she just hadn’t been given the chance to find her own unmonstrous secrets of immortality.

It was sad that Felicienne had become this thing. She was intelligent, beautiful and had always been full of ideas that could lead the world toward the brightest of futures. And it was all wasted by her grief.

He examined her as she stood in front of him. She was covered from head to toe in fresh blood. Her glorious wealth of blue-black hair was tangled and blood-matted. Her green eyes glowed menacingly, her fair skin startling against the backdrop of her hair and eyes. She was beautiful and dangerous, a wild animal ready to break out at any time.

There was no compassion in her face or in her voice when she spoke. "What are you doing here Lianndra?"

He smiled as if what she had said had been a kind greeting and not a frightening snarl. "Oh, I’m fine, how have you been, darling? Remember all of the good times we had?"

She showed her teeth with their lengthened canines. They were not quite as long and sharp as his, but when she Changed they would become the tearing fangs of a hunting cat. "You are not very funny," she said. "What are you doing here?"

He let the smile slip off his face. "Tell me where they are."

"Who?"

"You know who, you always do. Where are Magnus and the Queen?" Lianndra asked.

She wrinkled her pert nose at him. "You think I know where they are? Why would I care where the head of your stupid vampire monarchy is?" She waved her hand. "It has nothing to do with me."

He glided forward and she stumbled backward, trying to get away from him, but he was too fast. His hand shot out and caught her chin between iron fingers. He twisted her face down until her eyes were locked on his. His eyes glowed blue fire; what were almost flames glinted in their depths. She shuddered, but couldn’t get away. Her eyes widened and contracted into two tiny points, the eyes of a terrified cat in the dark.

"Where are they?" he demanded in a rock hard voice.

She whined. "I don’t know, really. Ask Gregor, he probably knows. You know how he likes to know those sorts of things."

Gregor Steinbridge was a werewolf and was also incredibly intelligent, if not particularly brave. He had books filled with his observations of the things that went on in the world. Where there were exciting events transpiring, that was where he likely was, or soon would be.

Lianndra gave an evil laugh. "Yes, he most likely does know. Thank you, darling."

She grimaced at him, revealing sharp-pointed teeth. He laughed again and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. She barely kept herself from backing away from him; he could tell by the way her body trembled with the strain of holding back her automatic reaction. She didn’t want him to touch her. Was threatened by how close he was. There might have been something almost funny about that, if it wasn’t so sad.

"I hope that you will be well and that you will live for a very long time," he said. "We will meet again, you and I, but until then, be careful." He turned on his heel and gestured for Dezi and Chris to follow him.

Behind him, he could practically feel the laser burn as she glared at the back of his head. Hate radiated from her, hate and futility. There was no way she could beat him in a fair fight. He would have to be careful for a while. She would not forget his treatment of her and she had no qualms about cheating.

Still, it had been a pleasure to see her again. He truly enjoyed visiting with old friends.