Somewhere In Between

Title: Somewhere In Between
Author: MakaiKitty
Rating (this chapter): PG-13
Category: Original Fantasy, "Fate" storyline
Pairing: Victor/Blaine, Victor/Caspian, North/Victor, Victor/Tamara, Sorrel/Tamara, Telen/Caspian
Warnings: Slash, Het, and Yuri, M/M, M/F, F/F, Violence, Language, Catbois, Vampire Sex, Werewolf Sex, Daemon Sex, Anal, Rimming, Death, Angst
Distribution: My website, My LJ and any LJs I choose to post at, AFF.net, FicWad, and DeviantArt. All of my accounts are under the user name MakaiKitty. If you'd like to use it just let me know.
Disclaimer: The characters, daemon realms, and situations in this story are all original and belong solely to MakaiKitty. Please don't steal, borrow, take, or otherwise use anything from my fics.
Updates: Just join my YahooGroup to be informed of any updates to this or any of my other fics - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/makaikittyfics
Status: Complete
Story Notes: This story contains characters that were first introduced in "Fate". However, it is not really necessary to have read "Fate" to understand this story. In fact, you may like Victor better if you haven't read "Fate". As for those of you who have read "Fate"? No, Shayne and Lexi will not be showing up in this fic. Maybe in later stories (Victor has a long back story), but not this one. Also, I have a general outline for this story, but everything isn't set in stone yet. Just like with "Perceived Perceptions", I'm sure that some things will not go as planned. So, the warning lable above is just a general guide, I really don't know for sure where this fic will go. Just a warning, if you're squicky about some stuff (don't worry, there won't be beastiality or scat or anything too extreme) then read the warnings at the start of each chapter. However, I know from experiance, that most of my regular readers can handle anything that I throw at them, so I'm not too worried about any of you. Either way, I hope you enjoy the fic...

Somewhere In Between

Chapter Twenty: Ruined

Was she finishing her seventh glass, or her eighth? Lennora couldn't quite remember. Every time that she emptied her goblet Sorrel would refill it, unerringly. It occurred to Lennora that the bottle ought to be empty by now, especially if Sorrel was sharing the drink with her, but there was a seemingly endless supply of the heady wine being presented to her. Each glass sweeter than the last.

She found that she couldn't concentrate clearly on what Sorrel was saying. Lennora thought that they might have been talking about the upcoming spring festival, a right held in honor of one of the goddesses of the hunt, an event that she had been forbidden to attend up until that point. Only females who had come of age were usually allowed to be present at the event. Lennora thought that she ought to be excited about the prospect of finally attending the secretive celebration, but every time that she thought to ask more detailed questions she would find her mind wandering, and she would soon be lulled by the familiar sounds of Sorrel's voice and forget what she had been going to ask her.

"More wine, my dear?" Sorrel asked, not waiting for an answer before refilling the glass. "I brought plenty."

Even in her befuddled state of mind Lennora didn't think that it would be a good idea to take the sorceress up on her offer, so the young vampire-wolf mix forced her legs down onto the floor and tried to rise.

"What are you doing, dearheart?"

"I think I need some air."

Sorrel just hummed noncommittally, watching as Lennora tottered awkwardly towards the window set into the far wall. She was unsteady on her feet, stumbling a few times as she made her way across the room, but Sorrel only watched. With Lennora's back to Sorrel the girl was unable to see the calculating expression that filled the gray eyes watching her drunken progress.

The room was swaying around her by the time that Lennora reached the windowsill, and she leaned against it heavily as she fought to find her equilibrium. She felt sick to her stomach and her head swam, the room moving in unpredictable patterns before her black and gold eyes. Lennora flung open the heavy frosted glass and took deep lungfulls of the rich night air, the coolness of the breeze a salvation as it cleared her head, but only just a little. Her hands gripped the old stone of the windowsill tightly, afraid that she might fall down if she didn't keep a tight hold on something solid, something real.

"Is something wrong, Lennora?"

Lennora wanted to say no, that she only needed to catch her breath and refrain from drinking any more wine, but her throat felt suddenly parched and she couldn't force the words from her mouth.

She swallowed hard, then again, trying to find her voice, when out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of the full twin moons that hung heavy and full in the darkness of the night sky. Lennora's eyes grew wide, fixed on the moons and nothing else, as though she were seeing them for the very first time. The wolf blood that ran within her veins had always held more sway over her than it did with her twin, and as a result the moons inevitably spoke more clearly to her than to him, but now the brightly glowing celestial orb was all but singing to her and it was suddenly all that Lennora could hear.

"See something interesting?"

She didn't even register Sorrel's voice. The wordless tune of the moons was all that she heard. It sang in her blood and every fiber of her body. In her heart and in her soul. It filled her mind until the world around her grayed at the edges and only the moons were clear. The room around her, the sorceress and her questions, it all disappeared. The moons were all that mattered. They were everything. And they were perfect. Absolutely perfect. The song had never been so clear, and Lennora reveled in her newfound closeness with a part of her that had always been there but had remained unreachable until that very moment.

She didn't know how long she stood staring at the moons, but it took a cool touch on her shoulder to finally bring her back down to Earth. She returned reluctantly. She whined, wanting to complain that she was listening to the moons, but before she could voice her displeasure a thought spiked in her befuddled mind.

Lennora turned to smile up at Sorrel, wanting nothing more in that instant than to share with her the newly discovered joy of the Moon's voices. Sorrel had given her the heart of a wolf, and the beast's being was enabling the connection that she now felt, so she knew that Sorrel would understand in a way that no other would.

"You hear it, don't you, my little lost wolf?" Lennora had been right, Sorrel knew without her having to say anything. "The Moon, she calls to you. At last she speaks to her daughter."

Lennora nodded enthusiastically. She wanted to cry. She wanted to dance. She wanted to run in the moonlight and sing the song that had been denied to her for so long.

She grinned and shook her head, not even sure how to put into words what she was feeling. Her drunken state and a limited vocabulary made it all the more difficult. She thought of so many words, discarding them all as inadequate, until finally she thought that she could begin to come close to describing the feelings that were running rampant in her young body.

Laughter bubbled up inside of her, her words interspersed with ecstatic giggles, "Sorrel, it's wonderful. It's like I'm... like I'm..."

Sorrel looked expectantly at the younger woman, waiting for her answer, watching with critical gray eyes as Lennora's smile turned into a grimace. The sorceress' expression, however, never changed.

"Sorrel." Her knees fell out from under her unexpectedly, and Lennora was left gasping on the cold stone tiles of her bedroom floor, looking up at Sorrel with fear and uncertainty in her mismatched eyes. Begging for salvation from the only source left to her, she grabbed at the hand that held steadfastly to her frail shoulder, "What's happening? It feels... it feels like I'm burning inside. My blood is on fire!"

Sorrel looked down at the girl writhing on the floor, watched the tears fall from pain filled eyes, and still her expression did not change. She did not look away. She did not move her hand. She watched and waited, and nothing more.

"Sorrel!" Lennora begged. "Help me!"

"Lennora, darling," her tone was even, measured, reasonable. Empty. "I am helping you."

***
A desperate scream filled the still night air, echoing from somewhere far away but still far too close to be ignored, and Victor was instantly awake. His black eyes were wide, all traces of sleep erased from his being, and a hand that shook only slightly was throwing off the bed clothes before the last tremors of sound had left the night once again to silence. His mind was slower to react than his body, his consciousness perhaps not wanting to know what had awakened him, but he pushed such thoughts to the back of his mind the moment that they surfaced and focused on the task at hand. Namely, getting out of bed and down the hall before there was the chance of another scream.

"Vic?" The groggy voice told Victor that no matter how slow his mind was to react, his bedmate was even slower. "What are you doing."

"Something is very wrong." Victor pulled on his pants, sparing a moment to locate his shoes, not wanting to waste the time but also not wanting to step into an unknown situation in a vulnerable position.

"Damn right, something's wrong, you bastard." Caspian groused, while muffling a yawn. His crimson locks were nothing more than a mass of firey tangles hanging about his face, and his normally bright midnight eyes were clouded with the remnants of fading dreams. He looked decidedly unhappy as he tried to glare at his companion, but the effort was lost when another yawn forced him to break eye contact. "We were both naked and peacefully sleeping only moments ago, and now one of us is wearing pants and your side of the bed is getting colder by the second. I expect you to remedy that situation straight away, or else I'll have to do something very unpleasant to you... just as soon as I've taken a little nap."

"It's Lass."

That was all that Victor had to say to get Caspian fully awake, and he graced his friend with a fond smile before bending down to tug on his shoe. He'd known without question that he could count on Caspian.

"Go and get North, then meet me in my sister's rooms. I am not sure what might be going on, but I know that she needs me."

"North?" He might be awake, but he was still confused. "I thought that stupid wolf was supposed to be keeping watch at Lass' door all night."

"He came to see me just after you fell asleep. He said that he had suddenly gotten a lead about the Kokkonor, but that his source would not be around for very long, so he left one of his guards with Lennora and went to meet with his source. I told him to go." At the time it had seemed like a good idea, but now that he could feel his sister screaming at him through the link afforded them as twins, he was cursing both himself and North for leaving her unguarded. "I just hope that he's made it back, because I have a bad feeling that I will be needing his help very soon."

"Shit!"

It seemed like an adequate description of their current situation, so Victor didn't add anything to the conversation, instead standing up and making his way towards the door without another word. The flash of red and silver coming from the far side of the room caught him by surprise, but he didn't stop walking towards the exit even as his hand flew out in a blur of speed to catch the knife that Caspian had thrown at him.

"It's enchanted." Was all that Caspian needed to say. "It'll keep you safe until we get there."

Victor spared Caspian one last backward glance as he disappeared into the outer chambers of his rooms, moving towards the torch lit hallway beyond. Midnight and obsidian met and held, a world of words unspoken between them, and Victor couldn't help but stop before he crossed the threshold. He suddenly felt as though there was something very important that he needed to say to the man kneeling on the bed before him, and a bone-deep dread told him that if he didn't speak now then he would lose the chance forever. He had always held such fears in the back of his heart, reluctant to leave someone that he loved without one last glance or one final word, but this was different. This wasn't an unwanted child's fear of loss or abandonment. Something felt... final. A sense from deep within his soul spoke to him of fate, and destiny, and of time. Of loss, and distance, and of things that forever were and never could be again.

Victor opened his mouth, closed it, paused and then opened his mouth once again. But nothing came out. In the end he said nothing. And Caspian let him. His heart ached with the weight of this knowledge. He wanted to weep for what they had lost. For what they would lose yet.

He tried to tell himself that he was being stupid and childish. A superstitious fool who listened to voices that weren't real and meant nothing. It was a comforting lie.

Caspian smiled, silently understanding, and he did the only thing that he could do to help Victor. He mouthed, "Go.", his ruby lips set into a sad smile as he forced himself to be the first to break eye contact.

He climbed out of bed and began the search for his own clothes, discarded so carelessly the night before. He followed Victor's retreating figure towards the outer door from the corner of his eye, distracted by the hope that his pants might be somewhere near the fireplace. At least that was where he last remembered seeing them. He almost made some teasing comments to Victor about his desire to keep him in the nude, as they normally would have joked, but the memory of the combined darkness and fear in his friend's eyes silenced him.

At the sound of the outer door opening Caspian glanced up, struck by a sudden need to see Victor clearly, reassuring himself that the immortal was holding strong, but instead he saw Victor falling to the ground just outside of the doorway. Victor was anything but clumsy, so Caspian was more than a little shocked, until he took in the scene and saw for the first time what had caused Victor to fall.

What little color the vampire's face held was lost as he looked down at the ground where Victor lay sprawled. His was not the only figure on the ground.

Victor stayed where he was, as still as stone, looking into pale blue eyes that had once seemed like the brilliant cerulean of far off seas and were now the frozen emptiness of icefields. As cold as the body that held them. His eyes, however, were anything but cold as he looked up at Caspian from his place on the unforgiving stone ground. The fires of every hell ever known to daemon or man burned in the depths of Victor's black eyes.

Caspian drew back at the fierceness of Victor's gaze, horrified beyond words by the tableau at his feet. He couldn't even find the breath to speak.

His face was streaked with hot tears, but the lines of Victor's face were firmly set as he picked up Tamara's frail body in his arms, moving past Caspian to lay her gently on the dark surface of his sofa. His movements were stiff and jerky, every ounce of control needed to keep himself from falling to the ground and screaming out his pain and frustration, cursing the gods and demanding vengeance. Only the memory of his sister's screams, still heavy in his mind, kept him from giving in to that desire.

As he looked down at Tamara's lifeless body Victor realized that a part of him had died when her soul had been forced to flee from its mortal vessel, something vital that he hadn't even known that he'd had until it was lost to him forever more, and he hadn't even been aware of it until it was too late. He knew with certainty that he'd been safe and warm, and blissfully ignorant, for the last time. But that was over now. He was struck by the sudden awareness that some things, once lost, could never be retrieved.

This is my fault, Victor condemned himself. He knew it with every fiber of his being. It may not have been his and that had struck the fatal blow, but that did not make him any less responsible. If not for his involvement with Tamara then his precious little lamb would not be lying cold and empty before him. But he will pay for her life in blood. There was no doubt within him of who had taken Tamara from him, and the promise of vengeance was the only thing more certain in his mind than the blame that he lay at his own feet. Guilty he may name himself, but executioner he would appoint himself. Immortal blood would flow this night.

One gentle brush of a hand closed Tamara's eyes for the last time.

"Get North." Was all that he said as Victor strode from the room, a dagger in his hand and the bitterness of hatred heavy in his heart. "Tell him to follow the blood."

TBC ...