* * * *
“Found you,” I say, pleased that the Sidhe are pleased. At the sound of my voice, the Were, the wolf, the Gabriel cocks his head to one side. Horror suffuses his face.
“Phaedra?” His voice cracks around the name as if it made from broken glass. He looks like he is bleeding on the inside from the utterance of it.
“Found YOU!” I crow instead. I don’t know how to answer the question in this pain. It makes me think of my dead wife from long before. I don’t like the feeling, so I ignore it. He clears his throat.
“Yes. You found me.” He holds up his hands and I see that there are chains encircling his wrists. There is even a collar. A collar. Weres are not dogs. The sight confounds me. “Now you just have to get me loose.”
“More work,” I growl. Fingers growing like claws as my frustration builds. “It’s always more, more, more.” I slash at the bars and they melt beneath my violence like sand. How can they restrain anything at all?
“I FOUND YOU! I found the wolf.” I scream at him, at the Sidhe, from beside the door’s remains. I hate this world. Hate being trapped in skin. Hate breathing air. Hate having a beating heart. Death is simpler. If everything was dead, the world would be a better place. My fingers dig into the human woman’s scalp and I began ripping at her hair, so frustrated I could eat her down with that I had eaten….
What had been his name again?
I was so hungry.
My wail is echoing, sad, and the lights finally stop fighting me and die.
The darkness makes me feel a little better.
But only a little.
I snarl at the amber eyes still watching me, and the Were’s expression is both stern and understanding.
“I know you’re tired,” he tells me, and rage begins to boil in the darkest recesses of my thoughts. “I know you’re hungry. You must have worked very hard.”
My mouth twists bitterly, but I nod anyway.
“Yes,” I say. It doesn’t matter what I’m agreeing to. All of it’s true.
“You just have to do this one thing,” he continues, his voice hypnotic. I step into the cell. “One little thing, and your done and we can go home. Back to the Sithin.”
Home.
A curious notion. Home.
I don’t ever remember having a home, but the word is a familiar one. A strangely comforting one. I make my way to the Were’s side and I am reaching, grabbing a hold of the shackles that bind his wrists. But before I can tear them away, his fingers are entangling in my own. He is pulling me forward, off balance so that I collapse into his lap. The power in me sprouts, builds, roars, but before I can lash out at him his mouth is pressing against my own.
Huh.
He pulls back only long enough to say, “This is going to hurt.” Then he is ripping me apart and all of the world goes dark.