"I wish he'd stop going off on his own like that!" Amelia's quiet tone

echoed off the inn walls behind him as he strode out into the woods.

There was an electrical storm that night--no rain, just wind and

thunder--and it suited his mood perfectly. Perhaps he'd spend the night

in the forest.

None of them understood the need to be alone. The need to /not/ be

constantly reminded of what he wasn't. Friendship and acceptance served

to ease the rift from time to time, but they were no cure. He had to

escape the bright, soft, smooth faces of those who could still easily

laugh.

He didn't see a pair of hungry violet eyes turning to observe his path

to the dark, distant thicket where he paused to admire the lightning and

start himself a small fire.

When Xellos caught up to him, he was in the process of heating--what

else?--a coffee pot.

"Good evening, Zelgadis," he chirped, emerging from the bushes behind

him.

"What do /you/ want?" Zelgadis grumbled over his shoulder, having barely

managed to conceal his startlement.

"What do /I/ want?" Xellos echoed, approaching to stand rather

uncomfortably close. "Why, I want the exact sort of thing you want."

"Eh?"

Xellos dropped down to look the chimera in the eye.

"--Something I just can't have," he explained. "Except . . . by

resorting to extremes. . . ."

Zelgadis was about to make a response when Xellos took his face in both

hands and passed a great deal of electricity through his head. He

dropped, to the mazoku's amusement, like a rock. Xellos took a moment to

extinguish the small fire, then lifted the unconscious shaman to his

shoulders and carried him deeper into the forest.

His shoulders ached . . . a tightness around his throat. . . .

Zelgadis awoke to find himself shirtless and chained to an immense tree.

Heavy iron fetters held his arms nearly taut, and the thick chain

running behind him wrapped twice around his neck. Xellos was there, and

he was--

Xellos had . . . just finished stripping him entirely.

It wasn't what Zelgadis had expected.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded reflexively, and

Xellos popped up before him with a bright smile.

"Actually, Zelgadis, I'm about to scare you very badly," he admitted.

"I doubt it," Zelgadis growled. Very quickly, he curled his legs up to

his chest and lashed out a kick straight at the priest's head. Xellos

caught his leg and twisted it until the knee was well wrenched. His

victim gave a short cry and jerked at the chains; lightning flickered.

"Don't underestimate me," Xellos warned, no longer smiling, and suddenly

he pressed Zelgadis bodily against the tree.

"Wh--what's gotten into you," his captive gasped. "Why are you doing

this?"

"You brought it on yourself, you know," Xellos lectured; thunder rolled.

"All the others are completely open to me, all the time--I know their

hate, their terror, their glorious blistering rage--but /you/! You don't

feel /anything/!"

Xellos struck him in the face.

"You see? Even that--it's nothing!" he continued. "It's not fair--it's

not /right/ that the best and finest hate, the purest and most intense

anger should be shut away from me!!" he finished, almost shouting, and

took Zelgadis' face in his hands again. "All that blind rage--you should

have given it to /me/! --Instead of putting it away, so deep inside your

mind. . . . You brought this on yourself."

At the inn, Gourry did something so shocking and unexpected as to leave

Lina and Amelia gaping at him in amazement.

He put down his fork.

"Mr. Gourry, are you feeling all right?" Amelia asked.

"I think," he asserted with a slight frown "we should go look for

Zelgadis."

Xellos pulled off his gloves and stowed them in his haversack.

"You're still not making much sense," Zelgadis told him, still

surprisingly unruffled for a man in his position. Xellos ran his

fingertips down the corrugated muscle of his belly, stroked a scale of

stone on his thigh.

"You don't think I can take what I want?" he asked.

And Xellos . . . changed.

It was difficult to tell by sight, even by lightning flashes, but

Zelgadis felt the hand on his flank quickly grow as hard and dense--as

/stony/ as his own skin.

And Zelgadis knew fear.

It rang through him like the peal of a perfectly tuned church bell,

echoed off the back of his mind and reverberated down his spine. His

eyes popped wide and his pupils dwindled to obscurity. Xellos caught the

scent and smiled, sweet and dark; thunder rumbled.

"Now, you deny me /nothing/," he murmured, took Zelgadis' leg by the

injured knee and hooked it over his hip. His left hand snaked around his

captive's neck, and the right slid up and firmly cupped the curve of a

hard blue buttock, stone gritting against stone. Xellos felt the fear

surge and spike, exactly the quality he'd hoped for--total and intense,

with creeping overtones of terror.

"I can take you physically, or spiritually; either way gets results,"

Xellos explained as his right hand . . . explored . . and the chimera

began to shudder in his grasp. "I know you're too proud to cry for

help--but physical gratification is so distressingly /fleeting/, don't

you think?"

And he kissed Zelgadis.

"Mmfgh!" he exclaimed, straining at the shackles again in a vain effort

to squirm away; Xellos' right hand had also tightened its grip on . . .

its handful. Lightning flickered and blinked.

Xellos changed again.

Still engaged with the prisoner, his shape blurred and shifted,

diffusing into a thick plume of perfectly opaque black smoke. It

engulfed the shivering victim and crawled along his skin in a maddeningly

intimate caress. And the kiss had not stopped yet.

Zelgadis whimpered; the dense Xellos-smoke drifted up and exploratory

black wisps curled themselves into his mouth--

And the whole malevolent cloud funneled itself steadily down his throat.

Thunder rolled and crashed.

<Hello, there! Are you scared yet?>

The body chained to the tree /screamed/.

The small blue ball of light indicating the spell Lina was using to

trace Zelgadis' astral trail had led the search party to a dark, distant

thicket and a cold campfire.

"This is /so/ wrong," Lina mused, examining the abandoned coffee.

"I found his sword," Amelia said. It was still attached to the sword

belt.

"Lina--what does that mean?" Gourry pointed at the trace spell, which

had drifted over the bushes, glimmering strangely. She looked up.

"It looks like . . he traveled in that direction, but he wasn't awake,"

Lina translated. She put down the coffee pot and stood up. "And he was

/carried/."

Amelia held the sword close. "Mr. Zelgadis was kidnapped?" she

whimpered.

"It sure looks that way," Lina confirmed, forging on after the faint

light spell. Lightning flickered and blinked. Gourry and Amelia

followed with mute concern.

Thunder rolled and crashed overhead with a terrible tearing sound; but

behind that sound, barely inside her earshot, Lina heard--

"Shh! Did you hear that?" She froze in her tracks, gesturing for a

full stop. The faint tail-end of the noise (a cry?) subsided.

Amelia opened her mouth to ask an obvious question, but Gourry

interrupted with a useful one.

"Which way?"

"/There/!" Lina corrected her course and charged ahead of the

meandering blue sphere, with Gourry close behind. She ran unerringly

straight in the direction she'd heard the sound; and when they had run

quite far enough to require a breather, she heard something else.

"H-hush," she gasped. "I hear something--"

Everyone held their breath for a moment.

"I hear it, too" Amelia panted as quietly as she could. "Someone's

singing. . . ." She turned toward the sound: a small, cracked voice

distantly chanting a child's rhyme. They followed it to a vast old tree,

not far from the ancient heart of the forest.

". . . out came the sun, and . . . . . dried up all the rain. . . ."

And around the front of the tree they found him, hanging chained,

mindless and naked.

"Oh! He's--" Lina blushed terribly and immediately turned her back.

"What is it?" Amelia inquired, and found out for herself. "Oh! He's--"

and she turned her back just as quickly, blushing worse than Lina. "I

/didn't/ see that!"

". . . and the itsy bitsy spider . . . . . climbed up the spout again. .

. ." Zelgadis sang, like a beaten three-year-old. Glistening threads of

spittle trailed from his lips and chin. "The . . itsy bitsy spider . . .

. . climbed up the water spout. . . ."

"I'm a good, pure, /innocent/ shrine maiden, and I /didn't see that/!!"

Amelia insisted, still blushing.

"Gourry, you'll have to . . uh, get him decent," Lina directed,

unfastened her cloak and held it out behind her.

"Okay--" He drew his sword, made short work of the heavy iron chain,

and caught Zelgadis in the cloak as he fell. "It's safe now," Gourry

announced.

". . . down came the rain, and . . . . . washed the spider . . out. . .

."

The girls rushed to him.

"//Poor Mr. Zelgadis//!" Amelia bawled, hugging his shoulder. Lina had

his other shoulder, more reservedly.

"Zel? Are you in there?"

". . . out came the sun, and . . . . . dried up all the rain. . . ."

His eyes were unfocused and absolutely vacant, his pupils shrunk to

invisibility. ". . . and the itsy bitsy spider. . . ."

"What could have /done/ this to him??"

". . . climbed up the spout again. . . ."