The Chronicles of Gabrielle

 The Heart of a Warrior Book 2: “Dark Night of the Soul”

Part 2

Chapter Nine

The innkeeper had been truthful, as far as the location of Doma was concerned.  They had found it, despite missing the alley twice in their attempts to locate the club.  They could see the entrance at the end, torch sconces on either side extinguished now during the day.  He’d also been right about getting in – several hours of careful searching had yielded no evidence of a way to sneak in.  Gabrielle was starting to get frustrated.  Anyone who had their place sealed up this tight had something to hide.

     That itch on the edge of her awareness returned.  How had the innkeeper known?  Then again, who knew the things he overheard in his establishment.  The itch persisted – it was making her nervous.  What was wrong with this picture?

     It was looking more and more like they would have to wait for nightfall, wait until the club was open to slip inside and have a look.  She didn’t like that at all.  After nightfall was when things were most dangerous, when the lamia came out of hiding to “hunt”, if what Ares had told Jarra as completely true.

     At the moment she was alone – Jarra and Ezra were doing one last sweep for a possible entrance on the street that ran behind the club.  She pondered what Jarra had been able to relate to her about the god of war’s motives and how they related to the present situation.  Making Jarra his latest patron warrior  was not something Jarra herself had been privy to, but there had been something else, something about how he wanted the lamia destroyed.  She had almost forgotten about the Ares cult that was a part of Sapai’s darker underworld. Made sense that Ares would be upset if his followers  (fewer and fewer that there were since the fall of the Olympian Order) were being killed.  Ares was desperate for the lamia to be destroyed.  Maybe they could use that desire to their advantage… but she wouldn’t ask for his help.  No way.  They could do this without jumping through hoops for Ares, who felt that anyone who had to ask for his help wasn’t worthy of it.

     “You can’t just walk in there, you know.”

     Gods, she wished Ares would stop doing that.  He’d nearly scared her to death, though she didn’t give him the satisfaction of letting it show.

     “Really?”

     “Yes, really.  It’s a very exclusive club, after all.”

     She didn’t need this.  The beginnings of a pounding headache were just starting to throb at her temples.

     “Only the beautiful people get in, not that that’s a problem for you,” he amended appraisingly.  “But you still need the magic word.”

     Remember the advantage, she said to herself when she would have lost her temper.  Ares wanted the lamia gone.  He was dropping her a clue.

     “Magic word?’  As hard as she tried she couldn’t keep the sneer out of her voice.

     Ares only smiled in reply.  A knowing smile, an I-know-something-you-don’t smile.

     Simmering aggravation turned to a rolling boil of anger.           

     Nine minotaurs… ten minotaurs…

     With effort her calm returned.

     Ares pointed out into the street beyond the alley.  “Someone out there can tell you.”

     She didn’t understand at first.  Then the innkeepers words about familiars came roaring back.  They could be anyone, and they were everywhere.  Walking by on the street she saw an apparently well to do man, which in itself made her take notice.  She looked closer – such lightness in his step, and no underlying fear.  No fear…

     She raced to the mouth of the alley and grabbed him as he passed, one hand covering his mouth to stifle any cry for help.  She dragged him, kicking and writhing, out of sight.  She threw him down and before he could bound back up she did it – a series of quick jabs to the vital areas of his neck.  He stiffened, unable to move.

     “You’ve got thirty seconds,” she told him flatly, grabbing him by his tunic to hide hands that were shaking with the shock of what she had just done.  “Password.”

     A trickle of blood from his nose.  “I – I don’t know-”

     “Ten seconds,” she informed him grimly.

     Just when she was beginning to think she’d made a horrible mistake, he spilled it.  “Akiavasha.”

     Of course, she couldn’t remove the pinch.  This familiar would run back to the lamia and warn them if she let him go.  This was the reason she had not used the pinch since learning it – it was horrible watching the man die, feeling a part of herself die in agony with him.

     “How merciless of you, Gabrielle,” Ares purred in her ear.

     She couldn’t take it anymore.  Spinning, she hauled back her fist and struck the god of war square on the chin.  “Shut up!”

     He flew back into the wall, amazed that she would dare to touch him, let alone hit him.  With a last murderous glare he disappeared, and she couldn’t have been happier.

     She didn’t need him reminding her of just how cold that man’s murder had been.  Familiar or no, she hated herself for having done it.

     But now they could get inside…

     “You did what you had to, Gabrielle.”

     A warm hand on her shoulder. She leaned into it, drawing strength from the simple touch.

     “I wish that I never had to,” she told Xena softly.

     “If only it were that simple.  Now you understand.”

     Xena turned her around gently, reaching up to run one hand through soft blond hair.  She let her eyes close.  She did understand, but it hurt so much.  How had Xena been able to do it, to stay so tough all those times…

     “I know how hard it is for you,” Xena said, and she could hear the anguish in her friend’s voice.  “But I’m proud that you have the courage to face it.  You told me once that true courage was simply doing what has to be done.”

     Doing what had to be done… She had learned long ago that, no matter how much she hated it, some things were worth fighting for.  This was one of them.  A lot of lives were at stake.  It would hurt her more to just walk away, but the sacrifices took their toll.

     “Do you have a plan?” Xena asked gently.

     Her mind quickly shifted to the course of action she’d been considering.  “Walk straight into the lion’s den.”

     Her friend looked at her quiziccaly.

     “The lamia own this club,” she explained, pointing to the door at the end of the alley.  “I’ll bet anything there’s a whole nest of them inside.”

    “You can’t just run in there, Gabrielle.  You don’t know how many of them there are, or-”

     “I don’t know what else to do!” Gabrielle shouted frustratedly, cutting Xena off.  She pointed to the door.  “There are answers in there.  We’ll slip in, find out what we can, and slip out.  No one will be the wiser.  There isn’t going to be an attack, not until I know more.”

     “Unless the lamia find out what you’re up to.”

     “It’s a risk I have to take.”

     “What about Jarra?”

     “She’s not stupid,” she assured.  “She won’t do anything rash.”

     “When?”

     “After nightfall, when the club opens.  I have the password.”

     “You can’t get inside now?  I think this would be a better time, when no one is around-”

     Gabrielle shook her head firmly.  “We’ve been over this place a dozen times.  No way in but the front door, which is securely barred, I assure you.”

     Xena sighed.  “There isn’t another way.”

     “No, there isn’t.  Xena, I’m not anymore pleased about walking in there than you are, but there’s no other way.  This is what has to be done.”

     Unable to sneak into the club, Gabrielle and her friends returned to the inn to go over their plan, what little there was of it.  It was simple: go in, find put what they could, and leave without anyone being aware of them or their purpose.

     Without much to discuss, the three of them anxiously passed the hours until nightfall in their room.  At one point Jarra, unable to contain her nervous energy, went for a little reconnaissance walk on the streets, taking Ezra with her.  They didn’t learn anything, but Gabrielle didn’t expect them to.  It made them feel better than just sitting around, however, which was fine by her.

     While they were away, Xena came to her.  Her soulmate must have sensed her distress, even across the ether that most of the time divided them.

     “Did you ever have nightmares?”

     Xena laughed.  “Of course I did.  You know that first hand.”

     “I mean, after we were crucified and Eli brought us back, did you have nightmares…” Her words faltered.  It was so hard to explain…  “Nightmares about failing?”

     The mirth vanished and Xena looked at her soberly, intuiting what she meant.  They were so close that Xena would have understood whether she had the words or not.  “Yeah.  I did.”

     “Did you feel like you failed me then?”

     “Yes, I did.  When I was lying there, paralyzed, I kept thinking about how I could have saved us if only I had done this or that differently.  Even though we defeated death and came back, it haunted me for a long time.”

     For an instant, she saw it: blood staining the snow, the nails being driven through her palms, Xena’s cries of agony mixed with her own ringing in her ears…  She squeezed her eyes shut against the horror of the memory.  How helpless Xena must have felt in the moment of their demise…  She knew that feeling too well.  She’d tasted it then, being nailed to that cross on Mt. Amoro, and got more than she ever bargained for that day on Mt. Fuji, helpless to save the person that meant more to her than anything in the world.  Xena knew, knew better than anyone could, and it provided her with a strange sort of comfort just to know it.

     Xena looked at her more closely.  “What’s this about, Gabrielle?”

     “I’ve been having nightmares about failing you, about failing my friends,” she admitted softly.

     Xena’s heart broke upon hearing those words.  “Oh, Gabrielle-”

     “I know that I didn’t fail you,” she went on.  The words came fast, spilling out of her uncontrollably now that she was finally able to let them out.  “At least, not in the way that really matters, but I still couldn’t save you.”

     “You did save me, Gabrielle.  Without you I would never have learned enough to know what “good” really is.  Without you I would never have been able to redeem myself.”

     Her soulmate’s heartfelt honesty moved her like nothing else.  Tears glistened in her eyes when her gaze met Xena’s.

     “I know.  But my friends – they were in trouble and I…  They could have died in that attack.  Should have.  I couldn’t help them.  I failed them.”

     “No, you didn’t,” Xena said, giving her a forceful shake.  “No you didn’t.”  Her eyes burned with irritated fury.  “You couldn’t help what happened to you.  It was completely out of your control-”

     “I won’t lose anyone else, Xena.  I have to be in control.”

     “You won’t fail, Gabrielle,” her friend assured her fiercely.  “I believe in you, and so do your friends.  Would Jarra have sworn her life to you otherwise?”

     “No,” she admitted grudgingly.  

     “Its only failure if you don’t do the best that you can and give it all you have.  I know you believe that.  You’ve never given anything less than your all.”

     “I’m afraid that I’ll let them down.”

     Xena shook her head vehemently.  “You won’t.  You don’t have it in you.”

     She was somehow able to find courage in such unwavering faith.

     Xena took her hands and held them tightly.  “Please don’t be afraid.  I’m always with you – there’s nothing to fear.”

     For nearly an hour after that visit, she was left alone with her demons and the truths she knew she could use to fight them, of only she could believe and find the will.

     When Jarra and Ezra returned, the tension increased a thousand-fold.  The nervous energy each of them felt and possessed, expected on the eve of a dangerous undertaking such as theirs, fed that of the other, raising the tension level evermore as the hour of their departure grew nearer.  Just when Gabrielle thought she couldn’t bare for another second the scrape of the sharpening stone on steel as Jarra honed her sword anxiously, it was full dark outside.  Doma was open.  It was time.

Chapter Ten

It yawned before them, the alley that was so much more forbidding than it had seemed awash in the light of day.  At its end lay the door they’d found to be so impenetrable before, twin torches burning in their sconces on either side.  As they came closer, figures became visible at the edges of the shadows the torches kept at bay.  There was a woman standing by herself off to one side, a man and a woman together across from her.

     They seemed impossibly beautiful.  It was hypnotic to look at them, pale and statuesque in the shadows, torchlight casting a soft glow on smooth alabaster skin before darkness claimed them once more.  Gabrielle felt herself being drawn to them.  Such a strange feeling – she wasn’t alone in the experiencing of it.  Jarra and Ezra both stared at them as though hypnotized, captivated by their ethereal beauty.  But for her, the instant she’d looked away, the spell had been broken, replaced by a sense of danger that made her skin erupt in gooseflesh.  Were they lamia, familiars, or just people that had come out for some fresh air and a respite from the party raging within?  She had no way to know, a fact that unsettled her greatly. 

     She glanced to the man and woman who were together; they were clearly lovers.  The woman tilted her head back, and she watched as the man lowered his lips to the woman’s neck.  A violent shudder went through her – she felt the fangs digging into her flesh, weakness overcoming her…  When the man pulled back, the woman was unharmed and rather enjoying herself.

     Gabrielle shook herself, fear ebbing.  Maybe they weren’t lamia, and she was just being overly paranoid.  Her fingers brushed the small wound at her neck, and she felt the stiffness in her side, all that remained of her injuries, and suddenly she began to think otherwise.  Perhaps her paranoia was well founded.

     They were a striking trio; Gabrielle wore her usual red skirt and halter-top, but borrowed Jarra’s long black leather coat for a more dynamic effect.  Her friends wore their usual black leathers, cutting a sleek, imposing figure as they strode forward.  Their appearance alone would have been enough to get them noticed and in the door, even if they didn’t have the password.  When they stepped into the circle of torchlight in front of the door, the eyes of the alley’s denizens were upon them and nothing else.

     Gabrielle ignored their stares and, reaching up, rapped sharply on the heavy door once.  For a tense few moments there was no response.  The pound and thrum of the music inside could be heard faintly, and she listened absently, growing anxious.  When she would have knocked again, a slot in the door opened suddenly, startling her.  Red eyes peered out, the same red eyes she’d seen in the forest…

     Without thinking, without being prompted, she spoke the password.  It rolled off her tongue easily, betraying nothing, coming out in an almost-whisper.  “Akiavasha.”

     The red eyes blinked, the slot slammed shut.

     She looked to her friends, heart hammering with sudden panic, seeing that they shared her fear.  Had they miscalculated?  Had she gotten the incorrect password?

     A loud rasp reverberated from the other side of the door as a heavy door bolt slid open.  A click from an opening door latch, the door groaning as it swung open, carefully contained sighs of relief when Gabrielle and her companions realized that the password had been the correct one.

     The music was louder, less muted, now that the door was open.  It sounded exotic, the wild, pounding rhythm intoxicating.  Gabrielle felt herself being drawn by the music, lured by its sensual flavor as it hummed through her.  Even after a violent mental shake, she was still half-entranced by it.

     The door was open wide enough for her to see the hulking, red-eyed doorman.  Easily twice the size of a normal man, the viciousness plain in his eyes, he gestured them forward with a regal sweep of his arm, stepping out of the way and holding the door open for them.

     “Welcome to Doma,” he told them, his voice rather like the sound of gravel being ground underfoot.  In spite of that, his words inspired awe and a sense of mystery about this place, exactly as they were meant to.

     Gabrielle did not miss the doorman’s appraisal of the three of them, at once calculating and appreciative, especially when his crimson gaze fell on her.  She was the last through the door.  As she passed, he said low in her ear, “The password was unnecessary, m’lady.  I would have let you in without it.”

     He flashed her a smile that should have been flattering, but instead chilled her to the bone.  Maybe it had something to do with the purely predatory glint in his unnatural eyes.

     They found themselves in a dimly lit hallway, a gallery of sorts.  The door groaned shut behind them, the bolt slamming securely back into place.  The sound was akin to a coffin lid being slammed shut, and suddenly Gabrielle felt suffocated.  Trapped.  She was nearly overwhelmed by the desire to run, to get away from this place; it took all her strength of will to fight it down and take another step forward, and another.

     Odd; she would have expected their weapons to have been taken at the door.  Her sai had been in plain view, but the doorman had said nothing, though it was almost impossible that he had not seen them. 

     She noticed Jarra flexing her hands absently for want of her own sai; Ezra was doing the same with his sword hand, which was absent its familiar weapon.  He hadn’t brought his sword along, and neither had Gabrielle. They would have brought unnecessary attention, exactly what they didn’t want.  Besides, if all went as planned, they wouldn’t need any of their weapons.  They weren’t here to fight, just to observe and go unnoticed.

     Gabrielle turned her attention to the walls of the gallery, decorated with images of all different artistic styles, all of it erotic scenes of bondage and torture.  Some were graphic enough that she felt her cheeks burn, such was the reaction they elicited from her.  Jarra merely smirked lazily in response to them.             

     The music was louder now, ringing off the walls of the torchlit gallery, becoming louder and clearer with each step they took toward the end of the hall and what sounded like the age’s greatest party.  Shouts and cries of ecstasy could be heard above the music – lamia or otherwise, the people in there were having a good time.

     The trio was unprepared for the sight that greeted them when they exited the gallery and stepped onto the massive dancefloor.

     Arrayed as the court of Tartarus, Doma’s patrons struck a deliciously sinister note.  Dressed in black silk and bronze masks, horned and beaked, they were at once beautiful and grotesque.  Similarly attired musicians played their vast array of drums, percussion, flutes and strings on a raised platform, the partygoers writhing and dancing to their entrancing music, the beat and melody almost irresistible.

     Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jarra was swaying a little with the music, eyes half-closed, and an expression of pure ecstatic abandon just beginning to spread across her face.  She took her friend’s arm, squeezed it hard.

     “Don’t forget why we’re here, Jarra,” she reminded her sharply, speaking directly into her ear just loud enough to be heard over the music and the noise of the crowd.

     Jarra blinked once, as though coming out of a trance, and nodded without looking at her.

     With that, they melted into the writhing, undulating press of bodies on the dancefloor.  What exactly transpired during the next stretch of time, Gabrielle did not exactly know.  Her wits had never failed her in such a way before.  Every moment she spent on the dancefloor passed as though in a fever dream.  She tried to mind what was happening around her and what conversations she overheard, but the music, indeed the entire feel of the place had somehow managed to sever her last connection to the far part of her mind that was ever analyzing and thinking.  Every laugh, every smile, every movement, every beat of the drums thrummed through her until she was nearly gasping with it.

     There were others, more of the impossibly beautiful people, who didn’t have masks – in fact, they weren’t wearing much at all.  She saw them, chained at the wrists, arms hauled up above their heads, feet barely reaching the raised daises beneath them.   Masked ones hovered over them, so very sinister in their disguises, cutting their exposed flesh with razor edged flechettes, blood welling and dripping onto the daises.  The agony being caused was plain – she thought it was some kind of torture until she saw how much the “victims” were enjoying it.  The realization sickened her; the visceral thrill it brought was almost equally disturbing.

     Someone was watching her.  She felt it, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck raising in response.  She turned, searching the crowd all around her.  Her gaze was drawn upward – she could make out a balcony overlooking the dancefloor, as well as the man who occupied it.  He was looking directly at her.  She could just barely make out his predatory smile.

     In that one very clear, lucid instant, she knew that he knew.  She knew what he was, and who.  Her stomach plummeted.  They were about to be in some very serious trouble.

     He raised his hand in signal, and all Tartarus broke loose.

                                                                                                *             *             *

It wasn’t long before, despite her best efforts, Jarra was completely swept away by the music and experiencing the same kind of euphoria as all those around her.  No matter how she tried to fight it, she was helpless against the power of it.  She tried to observe as had been told, but it was absolutely no use.  The music thrummed through her, pushing her further and further from her rational self. 

     She wasn’t alone.  It seemed that Ezra was not immune to it either.  He was just as lost as she was. 

     Enraptured, they danced together within the tight press of bodies surrounding them.  She moved against him, a subtle mimicry of some of their more intimate moments.  Of course, he responded to her, unable to resist, pulling her tightly to him.  His mouth fell on hers, and she sighed with pleasure, letting her tongue slide into his mouth, so hot with wanting her.

     What were they doing?  What had happened to Gabrielle?  Somehow they had gotten separated from her.  It didn’t matter.  She didn’t want to think about Gabrielle, didn’t care.  Neither one of them did.  All rationality had been lost – they no longer had a connection to the wits that normally served them so well.  All they knew, all that existed for them was each other.  If that meant completely abandoning their mission and making love right there on the dancefloor, then so be it.

     The music intensified.  Jarra turned in his arms, putting her back to him, and Ezra held her hard against his chest.  She leaned her head back, and he kissed the sensitive hollow just behind her ear.  She trembled as his hands moved over her – his touch was like fire on her skin, and burned through her leathers.  She had never wanted him so badly as she did right then.  Her better judgement, screaming for her to come to her senses and follow the plan, was completely clouded by the overwhelming need throbbing inside her – she would do anything to satisfy it.

     Just as his fingers dipped beneath the waist of her pants, caressing the sweet spot just inside the curve of her hip, chaos erupted all around them.

     At least, that’s what Jarra thought at first.  Shaking off the last effects of her fevered trance, she realized that it wasn’t chaos at all.  Though still trembling with the remnants of intense desire, she was thinking clearly now.  Seeing the masks cast to the floor, the glittering fangs, the sea of inhuman eyes fixed on them like those of the deadliest predator, Jarra knew they’d been made.  Her stomach dropped.  They were trapped in the lion’s den with no way out, and the lions were hungry.                 

     When she looked up at the balcony she saw him, the rotund, unassuming keeper of their inn, smirking triumphantly.  The damned innkeeper was a familiar.  Such a perfectly laid trap – Jarra would have admired it if she hadn’t suddenly found herself fighting for her life.

                                                                                                *             *             *

When the first lamia leapt at Gabrielle from the sea of gleaming-fanged monsters, she already had the chakram off the clip at her waist and in hand. Swinging it in a wide arc, the razor disk caught one square in the neck, severing his head.  His body disappeared in a cloud of dust before it ever reached the floor.

     Gotcha!

     In the blink of an eye, the chakram was back on its clip and she had drawn her sais.  More lamia came at her, and in a flurry of precise movements, she dusted five more, piercing their hearts with the deadly points of her weapons.  Two rushed at her from either side – she thrust out with her sai and dusted them both at the same time.

     The lamia were hanging back, wary of her now that they had seen what she could do.  She wasn’t the easy pickings they had thought her to be – too bad for them.

     She discovered then, in sweeping her gaze over the lamia still around her, that Jarra and Ezra were missing.  In her dreamlike trance she hadn’t noticed that they’d become separated.  Fear for them hit her hard.  They were out there in the roiling mass of fangs and claws – she couldn’t help them.  She had her hands full just protecting herself.  Panic gripped her and wouldn’t let go.  She was failing them…again…

     For the instant that she was distracted, a clawed hand shot out and raked across her exposed upper leg.  She clenched her jaw against the stinging pain – the wound wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding, and it drove the lamia into a frenzy.  With renewed confidence they came at her again, the circle closing in around her at an alarming rate, lured by her blood.

     The natural response would have been to panic, and she resisted it with all her might.  With supreme effort she kept her head and kept fighting back.  Her arms were starting to feel heavy, the muscles in her back and shoulders burned, her legs ached, one throbbing from the wound she had taken – she couldn’t keep this up for much longer.

     She had to get out of here, but not without Jarra and Ezra.  She wasn’t going to leave them behind.

     With a sai in one hand and the chakram firmly gripped in the other, Gabrielle plunged into the crowd, carving her way toward what she hoped was the exit, dusting lamia as she went.  She hoped she was going in the right direction – orienting herself proved difficult amid the chaos.

     She had to find her friends.  She couldn’t – wouldn’t – just abandon them.  She couldn’t exactly search for them, though.    Panic tried to take hold of her again.  How was she going to find them?  She felt truly afraid then, for them, not herself.

     Something hit her heavily from behind and knocked her off her feet.  The next instant, she found herself on the floor, dazed by the impact.  Shaking it off she looked all around, desperately trying to get her bearings.

     Gabrielle became faint, both with fatigue and intense relief, when she saw Ezra lying on the floor next to her.  It must’ve been him that collided with her.  Jarra couldn’t be far away.

     The lamia were closing in above them – they were in no position to fight as they were, and couldn’t get to their feet.  They were done for…

     A bloodcurdling Amazon warcry rent the air, and the head of the lamia that held Gabrielle in its grasp was suddenly severed from its body, right before it turned to dust. 

     Gabrielle dispatched the lamia holding Ezra with all due speed and spun around to find Jarra guarding her back.

     “I think you dropped this,” Jarra said, quickly shoving the chakram, covered in lamia blood and dusty remains, into her hands.  She must’ve dropped it when Ezra collided with her.

     “Thanks,” was all she could get out before the next wave fell upon them.

     They fought as one fluid unit, each perfectly in tune with the other’s movements.  Ezra, using a pair of large daggers, struggled a bit; he was the weakest of the three, though he was holding his own, carving through the lamia onslaught.

     With all the dust in the air from exterminated lamia, Jarra couldn’t help it – despite doing her best to stifle it, she sneezed.  In that fatal instant, her guard dropped.  Gabrielle had heard her, and on pure instinct reached up with one sai, skewering the lamia that had leapt at her friend directly in the heart.

     Jarra recovered and regained her focus before the impaled lamia could even turn to dust.  “That’s another one I owe you, Gab,” she shouted over the din of the battle, punctuated by her dusting another bloodsucker. 

     Jarra’s eyes were bright, that all-too-familiar lazy smile on her face – it was the same look Xena used to get in the middle of a fight.  She was enjoying herself despite the nightmarishness of it all.  It was also justice of a sort for her – the lamia had killed her father.  Maybe not these particular lamia, but they represented what she hated, and that was enough.  Soon, however, that smile disappeared, her mouth pressed into a thin, determined line, face tight with strain as fatigue started to take its toll. 

     Ezra was faltering now – he was the least skilled, and just as tired as his companions.  It was all Jarra and Gabrielle could do to compensate and help him when he stumbled or misaimed a blow and left himself open to attack.

     Gabrielle could see it now, the gallery hall that led to the front door.  The way out – they were almost there. 

     “I can see the exit!” she shouted, hoping to rally her friends.  It worked; they fought harder, redoubling their efforts, even Ezra, his mistakes fading now that he knew escape was in sight.

     Suddenly they were at the mouth of the gallery with no lamia blocking their way.  They backed cautiously up the hall as fast as they dared, still fighting the lamia that kept coming at them from the dancefloor.  The three of them had the advantage now that they were in the gallery.  It was no more than four persons wide, making it easy to pick off the snarling, hissing pack a few at a time as the mass of them were bottlenecked by the narrowness of the hall.

     Gabrielle looked over her shoulder, toward the door which she could now see clearly, as well as the six huge, red-eyed lamia guards that were striding toward them from that end.  One of them was the doorman who had opened the door for them.

     “I said I would let you in,” he called down to her roughly.  “I didn’t say I would let you out.”  He threw his head back, laughing at her.

     An idea struck her then.

     “Cover me,” she told her friends, confident that they could hold against the pack for the few seconds this would take.

  She turned and jogged a few steps up the hall, taking the chakram from its clip, its weight reassuring in her hand.  She looked at the guards, the walls, the torch sconces, calculating the angles – all of this in the space of a breath – and raised the weapon to throw.  Silently she prayed that this would work – she had never tried this trick before.

     She knew how to use the godsforged disk, but she had her own unique way of throwing it, different from the way Xena had; hand on top of the center grip, she launched it like a discuss.  It screamed forth from her hand and in a series of angled, sparking ricochets, all of the guards were beheaded by the deadly flying disk.  It angled off of a torch sconce and screamed back down the hall where she promptly caught it, scarcely able to believe what she’d just pulled off.

     With just the right twist of her hand on the center grip the chakram came apart, making two razor-sharp weapons that curved to deadly points where the outer ring met the grip at the bottom.  Newly armed, she rejoined her friends.

     Jarra, upon seeing the chakram split, blurted, “What did you do to it?”

     Her friend had never seen Xena split the chakram.  She had only seen it a few times herself.  “It supposed to do that,” she said lamely, not knowing what else to say.

     The way was clear.  The only guards that stood between them and the door were now nothing but dust.

     “Come on!” Gabrielle called to her friends.  She beheaded one last lamia with the razor halves of the chakram before she joined the pieces back together.  They disengaged from the mob pressing up the hall, practically falling over each other to get at the three of them, and turned to run without daring to look back.

     So the two women didn’t realize that Ezra had been snared as he turned to follow them.

     Gabrielle hurled the now whole chakram straight at the door, where it collided with the door bolt, which would’ve been too heavy for even the three of them put together to move.  Where the chakram struck, the timber exploded into splinters, the rest into manageable pieces.  The chakram sat wedged in the door itself.

     That’s when they heard Ezra’s strangled cry of terror.

     “Jarra!  Help!”

     Jarra whirled around, almost falling, at the sound of his voice.  A few strides up the hall, Gabrielle had reached the door and was pulling the chakram free.  She looked up – Ezra had fallen, and had done so in such a way that the dagger he’d been clutching in one hand had been driven into his thigh.  The lamia swarmed over him.  He tried to get away, blood smearing on the floor as he desperately dragged himself along the ground, unable to stand.

     “No!” someone screamed.  Gabrielle thought it was Jarra, until she came to the startling realization that it had been herself.  Jarra stood rooted in place with pale-faced terror at what she saw.

     Ezra’s attempts at escape were ultimately futile.  The lamia grabbed him, hauled him up, wrenched the dagger from his leg.  He screamed.

     Gabrielle watched Jarra coil tighter and tighter, tears filling her eyes.  When one lamia sank its fangs deeply into Ezra’s leg wound, she sprang.

     Gabrielle caught her, one arm securely around her waist, before she could charge at them blindly.

     “Let me go!” Jarra bellowed, kicking, punching, trying to get free.

     Gabrielle did not let go.  She couldn’t, and her heart was breaking.  Her friend would suffer the same fate as her lover if she tried to save him now.

     “Do you want to end up like that, too?” she demanded.  “Or would you rather live to come back and rescue him?”

     “We can just leave him here!” Jarra pleaded desperately.

     “There’s nothing we can do for him, Jarra.  If we don’t leave now, we’ll be killed.  Do you think Ezra would want that?”

     Something in her words reached Jarra – she stopped fighting, but her suffering brought tears to Gabrielle’s eyes.

     Without another word, they hauled the splintered remains of the door bolt out of the way and opened the door, trying all the while not to hear Ezra’s desperate screams.

     It was tearing her apart inside, having to leave him.  She had sworn that she wouldn’t…  They couldn’t just throw their lives away – they had to rid the city of the lamia first.  One life was not worth so many others.  So Ezra would be left to the wolves instead.  It was killing Jarra, so desperate to save the person she loved – Gabrielle wished she didn’t know that pain so well.  She was going to leave him to die, just like Xena…

     She dragged a barely composed Jarra unwillingly through the door.  The last she saw of Ezra was his terrified eyes and his one outstretched hand, reaching for them, before the mass of lamia enveloped him.

Chapter Eleven

She should never have let them come along.  If she’d left her friends in Amphipolis this never would have happened.

     It shamed her to fail so completely.  She couldn’t save Ezra, just like Xena, though that had really been out of her control.  But this, it had been in her control, and had rapidly gotten away from her.  Ezra had paid the price this time for her inadequacy.  She had failed him, and now he could be dead.

     She wasn’t sure which was worse, Ezra dying, or the way the possibility of his death was affecting Jarra.  The way that this had hurt her friend -–perhaps that was the worst failure of all.

     She wanted to cry, gods how she wanted to, but she didn’t dare.  She knew that once she started she wouldn’t be able to stop.

     They ran all the way back to the inn.  It was true that the innkeeper was their enemy, a familiar, the lamias’ pet, but they’d left him behind at Doma, and she seriously doubted that he could get back to the inn before they could get their gear and get out.

     Luckly they found everything in their room just as they’d left it; none of their belongings had been disturbed.  It was the work of a few seconds to gather everything and go out to the inn’s small stable where their horses waited, also unharmed.  The lamia probably hadn’t thought they would survive the ambush, so there was no reason to have sabotaged them.  If there were any lamia or familiars that had followed them, or were waiting at the inn, they made no move against the two women.  Gabrielle couldn’t decide if she was relieved or more frightened by that.

     It was of great relief to her that the horses hadn’t been hamstrung or otherwise harmed in their absence.  They needed them.  The animals were loaded up as quickly as possible, Jarra taking longer only because she had to load not only her own gear, but all of Ezra’s as well.  The horses must have sensed their distress, for they whickered and pawed skittishly at the ground, snorting and tossing their heads uneasily.  Gabrielle whispered softly in Argo’s ear to calm her.

     “We left him.”

     Gabrielle, having already mounted Argo, looked down at the sound of her friend’s almost inaudible whisper.  Jarra was still standing there next to her warhorse Demos, numbly holding the reins and staring into nothingness.  Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the true gravity of things was really hitting her.

     “I can’t believe we just left him.”  Jarra was shaking now, like a leaf in the wind.

     Neither could Gabrielle, but she didn’t say it.  After she promised she would never lose a friend again, she had allowed this to happen.  She did blame herself wholeheartedly for what happened to Ezra and the pain it was now causing Jarra.  But she wouldn’t succumb to guilt, not yet, because it wasn’t finished.

     “Jarra, listen to me,” she said in the firmest voice she could muster.  “Ezra could still be alive.”

     The reins fell from Jarra’s hand.  She stared at Gabrielle in disbelief.

     “Lamia,” she continued, “at least the ones I’ve had experience with, don’t always kill their enemies right away.”

     “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she exploded.  “Are you telling me that they’re going to torture him first?  That he’s going to die slowly, in agony-”

     “No,” Gabrielle interrupted quickly.  “That’s not what I meant.  They may be holding him somewhere in Doma, which I’m certain now is their lair, until they choose to kill him.  At their leisure.”  She put extra emphasis on the last sentence, for Jarra’s benefit.

     “You plan to rescue him?”

     “Yes.  And destroy the lamia.”

     Jarra mounted, settled herself.  Her eyes locked with Gabrielle’s.  She was still shaking, but not with shock.  She trembled with newly realized fury.  “I could have saved him back there,” she informed icily.  “You kept me from doing it.  I hope he’s alive when we find him – for your sake.”

     The chill in those words froze Gabrielle to her core.  In Jarra’s eyes she saw the fierce Amazon, the huntress.  She could become the hunted if they did not find Ezra alive.  Her friend was an angry she-wolf on the prowl for those who dared harm her mate.  She would tear apart anyone in her way.  Gabrielle had no doubt of it – that potential for pure violence scared her beyond words.

     “Let’s go get him,” Jarra declared.  She made to spur her horse.  She froze at Gabrielle’s word.

     “No.”

     The command hung in the air between them.

     Jarra’s eyes burned with defiance.  “What do you mean ‘no’?”  Her tone was dangerous.

     “We wait for sunrise,” Gabrielle stated with authority.  For her the matter was not debatable.  “You told me that the lamia are vulnerable to sunlight.  It will be safer to go in then.”

     “Ezra could be dead by then – ”

     “He could be dead now.”

     Jarra recoiled as though she had been slapped, and Gabrielle regretted having been so harsh, but it was the truth.

     The Amazon said nothing, only stared with cold fury.

     “If we go in now, we may find Ezra, but we won’t get out because they’ll be expecting us, ready and waiting.  We’ll all die, and then what will we have accomplished?  If we go in after sunrise, when they’re vulnerable, we have a chance of making it.”

     “What about Ezra’s chances?”

     To that, she had no reply.

     “That’s what I thought,” Jarra spat.  “Stay here if you want.  I’m going now.”

     Gods, Gabrielle had hoped that she wouldn’t have to do this…

     “Jarra, as your Queen, I order you not to go until I say.  Is that clear?”

     In that moment she truly thought Jarra might strike her, or worse, but she didn’t.  Seconds passed.

     “I said, is that clear?”

     “Yes, my Queen.”  Jarra said it mockingly, dripping sarcasm and seething anger, but she obeyed, if only because her oath bound her to it.

     It was a long time before any more words passed between them.  Jarra didn’t need to speak.  Her feelings were clear enough without words.  Anger, fueled by so much anguish, rolled off of her in turbulent waves, showed itself in her every breath and movement.  Jarra was close to losing composure, and when she did, Gabrielle wasn’t sure whether it would be in an explosive outburst of rage or a flood of tears.  Most likely it would be a bit of both.

     By the time they found a good hiding place, in an alley a good distance from both Doma and the inn, the tension between the two of them had eased.  Gabrielle was glad for that – she didn’t know how much more hostility she could take before it forced her to tears of her own.  Now Jarra was just despondent.  It was almost more disturbing than her rage.  Hostility Gabrielle could manage, but Jarra withdrawing into herself completely – yeah.  That would be real peachy.

     Eventually Jarra did cry, great wracking sobs the likes of which she had not seen from her since giving her the news about Xena, and Gabrielle was truly surprised that it had taken so long for them to come out.  But this was much worse than the news of what had happened to her mentor.  Jarra’s soulmate could be dead.  Gabrielle hurt very deeply for her.

     She held her friend tightly, wishing there was something more she could do and envious that Jarra had the luxury of crying.  It wasn’t long before Jarra, exhausted physically and emotionally, fell asleep in her arms.  Unfortunately in just a few short hours Gabrielle was forced to wake her for her turn on watch.

     “Promise me that you won’t go off tonight and try to rescue Ezra yourself,” she said to Jarra, getting as comfortable as she could on the cold, hard ground in current conditions.

     Jarra nodded but was otherwise silent.  The flash of guilt in her eyes told Gabrielle that she had been entertaining the idea of doing exactly that.

    Jarra’s silent acknowledgement would have to be good enough.  It was the best answer she was going to get out of Jarra right now.  She had to rest – she couldn’t babyset all night and be ready to face the lamia tomorrow.

     Feeling uneasy about everything, she reluctantly closed her eyes and drifted off…

                                                                                                *             *             *

He didn’t know where they were taking him – he didn’t much care.  Floating in a haze of pain, he was barely conscious.  He was dying.  He was vaguely aware of it.

     He only realized that they had been carrying him after they set him down, with surprising gentleness, somewhere.  Smooth softness that he barely felt – sheets, or blankets perhaps, and pillows.

     A rustle of movement at his side, then a voice – it sounded so far away – said, “You’ve been drained to the point of death, Ezra.”

     The voice was warm and rich, as smooth as silk.

     How did they know his name?  It didn’t matter.  The only thing that mattered to him, the only thing that had ever mattered, was Jarra.  If only he could see her one last time – but he would never see her again.  He longed for one last kiss, one last touch, but she would never come.  As far as she knew he was dead, killed in that hallway as she escaped.  It wasn’t too terribly far from the truth. 

     “You have a choice, Ezra,” the faraway voice told him.  “You can lie there and die, which shouldn’t take much longer now, or you can drink…”

     Warm liquid dripped onto his lips – what could he drink that would save him now?  He tried to turn his head away, but was too weak even for that.  He was so tired, sinking slowly into the eternal sleep.  Is this what Gabrielle had felt as the lamia drained the life from her?  He just wanted to see Jarra again…

     “Taste,” the voice persuaded.

     A drop slipped between his lips, warm, salty, tasting of copper.  Blood?  Surely not, but the taste…

     Breath against his ear.  “Drink and live…”

     Another drop passed his lips – that’s when the sensations hit him.  A rising warmth suffused him, spreading all the way to his fingertips, toes, the top of his head.  A shock like electric current went through his body, and suddenly he found that some of his strength had returned.  He could move.  He wanted more.

     His eyes opened, hands reaching for the source of the miraculous elixir before he even knew where to find it.  Before he knew it, a pale forearm was resting in his grasp.  The forearm of the lamia that had been speaking to him all this time.  The one he’d seen on the balcony in the club.

     That’s when he saw the gash in the lamia’s wrist and the blood flowing freely from it.  By the gods, it was blood that he had tasted.  Ezra suddenly felt ill.  He shoved the arm away, rolled over onto his side to retch.

     “Those few drops won’t sustain you for long, Ezra,” the silken voice informed him.  “Do you wish to live long enough to see your beloved again?”

     More than anything…

     His strength faltered.  He grew dizzy, felt himself falling…

     “I saw you with her on the dancefloor.  You would have had each other right there, wouldn’t you?  I saw the way you looked at her – anyone could see what she means to you.  Would you die rather than be with her?”

     With the last of his failing strength he seized the arm.  Pressing his mouth to the gaping wound, he drank deep, every gulp slamming down to the core of him.  With each swallow his strength returned, along with a hunger like he had never known and that only grew stronger the more he tried to sate it.  On some subconscious level he was aware that he was changing, becoming something more than human.  The power of it – a feeling arose in him like that of the most powerful climax imaginable, but infinitely more exquisite.

     “Enough,” the voice commanded, gently at first.

     It did not register, and he could not stop.  He had to have it all.  Every last drop and more.

     The instant before he would have reached transcendent release beyond all human experience, the arm was yanked away.

     “Enough!” the lamia roared, yanking his arm out of Ezra’s grasp.

     “I want more,” he demanded.  The voice was low, throaty.  It hardly sounded like his own.  Blood stained his lips, his chin, ran down onto his chest.

     The lamia actually looked shaken by his ardor.

     “You have had enough,” he said haltingly, his trembling voice no longer so silken.

     Ezra sat watching the lamia, the hunger clawing at him still, but no longer so demandingly.  He could resist it, for now.

     The lamia’s composure returned, falling over him like a vail, the calm, cool regalness dropping into place along with abundant pride and confidence, evident in the knowing smirk that graced his finely bred features.

     Ezra felt a very sudden chill.

     “Congratulations, Ezra,” he said, mirth bubbling in his silky voice.  “You are more human than human.”

     His stomach dropped, and the nausea returned with a vengeance.  Oh gods, what had he just done?

     Suddenly he arched and fell back onto the bed as the most excruciating agony he had ever known overtook him.  It felt like he was being torn apart from the inside out, like his skeleton was trying to claw its way free of his flesh.

     He screamed, writhing.

     “The pain will pass.  It is simply the last part of the change,” the lamia informed him easily, raising his voice to be heard over the screams.  “It is worse for some than it is for others.  When it subsides you will be one of us.”

     Oh gods, no.  No…

     “You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.  Since we took this city, hundreds have been turned.  There are some humans that want to be like us, the familiars.  They serve us, and if they do well enough to please us, we turn them like this as a reward.

     “Every so-called hero that has ever tried to ‘save’ this city has died at my hands, lured here with a trap like this one.”

     Trap?  His agony didn’t allow him to voice his thought, nor expand upon it.

     “Your lover will come for you and bring your hero friend with her.  When they come, they will be mine and I will destroy the blond one myself for daring to defy me.  Turn the girl you love, and you may keep her as your consort, but the hero dies.  This city is mine, and after you make your first kill it will be yours as well.  You will be a full blood then, changed for all eternity – you will never grow old and you will never die.”

     Ezra curled up more tightly in defense against the pain and the horrible truth of the lamia’s words.  So many had died, so many more would…

     A new agony overtook him as he lay there, writhing, the pain of knowing he was bait for a masterful trap that would kill his soulmate and one of his dearest friends.  Jarra and Gabrielle would come if they thought he might still be alive, and they would fall into the trap so many had already fallen victim to. Because of him.  And he had no way to warn them.

     How long could he resist the hunger before he killed and became a lamia forever?  If that happened before he could be rescued, the trap and successfully escaping it wouldn’t matter. 

Chapter Twelve

Gabrielle was right about waiting for sunrise.  Jarra knew that.  Gods dammit, she knew, but she was seriously thinking of going through with this anyway.

     She pulled another arrow from her quiver, sighting along its shaft to check for warping, tested the sharpness of the arrowhead, checked the fletching for damage.  Perfect.  She replaced it in the quiver and drew another.  This was her second time going through the arrows; she didn’t expect to find anything different.

     Could she really do it, betray her oath and go after Ezra now?  It was the question that had been warring inside her for the last hour.  It would be so easy – Gabrielle had drifted off into an exhausted sleep.  Gabrielle trusted her enough to allow herself deep sleep, feeling safe doing so because she was there to watch over her.  It would be more than the betrayal of an oath to leave.

     Things always got complicated when it came to Ezra.  She’d always promised that she would never leave him behind – that promise had been broken.  Because of it, he might be dead, but she refused to believe that until she knew for sure.  She’d broken her promise to him, and the consequences were unfolding in the most terrible way imaginable.  But there was nothing to say that he wasn’t alive, and that he wouldn’t be when they went in at sunrise.

     She didn’t think she could live if she knew that Ezra died because they didn’t go in to rescue him soon enough. 

     Obey her oath and the course of reason, or obey her heart – that was the choice she had to make.

     Her anger prickled again.  If Gabrielle hadn’t stopped her, Ezra might be sitting with them now.

     “Vengeance.  It would be so easy, wouldn’t it?”

     She followed Ares’ gaze, watching Gabrielle as she slept.

     “I could never hurt her.”

     Ares nodded, looking thoughtful.  “Its not Gabrielle that you’re really angry with, is it?”

     No.  It was herself that she was angriest with.  She should have been able to protect Ezra, and she had allowed herself to be dragged out of there without him.

     “I’ll say this for the lamia,” he admitted, “the old ‘divide and conquer’ sure worked.”  He grinned.  “It’s a classic move, and a favorite of mine.”

     Her eyes were all daggers when she looked at him.  He was pushing her buttons, but she didn’t care.  “We haven’t been conquered.”

     “Not yet,” he conceded,” but you are divided, and it has put you in a position to be conquered.  A favorable position for the lamia, if you ask me.”

     “I didn’t.”

     She seethed hatred for the god of war, for what he had done to her, the way he’d manipulated her, what he’d tried to make her and almost succeeded.

     “If you go, you’ll be betraying Gabrielle’s trust.  Again.”

     The reminder struck her like an arrow to the heart.  Her affair with Ares had been the first betrayal.  Would their friendship withstand another?  And what of her oath?  Such a thing was sacred to an Amazon, and she was about to break it for what?  Someone who might already be dead?  No.  For love.  Love, her love for Ezra, was worth more than any oath.

     “I know what you can do, Jarra,” he said, voice low in her ear.  You can destroy the lamia and get Ezra back, but if you wait for sunrise…”

     He let the rest hang there, unfinished.  He didn’t need to say more – she was certain of what she would find if too much time passed.  The matter was decided for her now, really had been all along.

     Ares was here because he wanted the lamia out of the way, but his urgings helped her to hear what her heart was telling her, and to make the only choice that her heart would accept.

     It hurt her more deeply than anyone could know to betray her oath to someone she so loved and respected, but it would hurt her infinitely more to lose Ezra because of her inaction.  It would destroy her.

     She was going after Ezra, tonight.  There would be no further delay.

                                                                                                *             *             *

It took the better part of an hour for Jarra to find her way back to Doma.  When she’d finally found the alley, she could see the door at the end, open a bit, shattered timber from the door bolt peeking out.  The torches had been extinguished. 

     She hung back in the shadows at the alley’s mouth, listening for any activity.  She heard nothing after several long seconds, but when she would have stepped out of the shadows’ protection, two of the massively-sized, red-eyed ‘guard’ lamia emerged from the half-open doorway carrying out what was left of the door bolt.  They unceremoniously tossed it off to one side and took up posts on either side of the door.  They weren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

     Her eyes scanned the area nervously.  What to do?  She had to get by these guards.

     Without a sound, she reached back and drew an arrow from the quiver at her back.  Silently, she nocked it, raised the bow; deep breath – drew back the arrow as she breathed in, held it.  Aimed.  With the gentle release of her breath, she loosed the arrow.

     Thwap!

     An instant later, the arrow struck the guard nearest the door directly in the heart.  He fell, dissolving into ashes as he went.

     The other guard looked around in confusion and panic over his companion’s demise.  He made for the door.

     She had drawn and nocked the next arrow almost immediately after the first left her hand.  With almost mechanical precision she drew back the bowstring, exhaled, let go.

     Thwap!

     The second guard made it through the door – as a cloud of ash.

     Not until she was sure that no other lamia would show themselves did she hang her bow back on the special clip at her back and begin to move silently down the alley.  Moving from her hiding place to the doorway, she made not one sound.  Quickly, she retrieved her black-fletched arrows from two piles of ash and slid them into her quiver before going through the door.

     The hallway looked the same as she remembered – a grand gallery of erotic art.  She found it funny that Gabrielle had blushed at the sight of it – how nieve was she when it came to the things some people did for pleasure?  Jarra herself found it rather exhilarating..

     She couldn’t see the artwork very clearly at the moment.  All of the torches along the hall had been extinguished but for two on either side about halfway down, casting the hall in dim shadow with darkness at either end.  Just as well – she wasn’t there for the art.

     That she couldn’t see what might be waiting for her at the end of the hall was more than a little disconcerting.  She forged ahead anyway.

     A brief whisper of steel rasping against leather as she drew he sais, and the darkness consumed her.

                                                                                                *             *             *            

Gabrielle stirred, coming awake slowly.  She was cold, the damp winter air chilling her to the bone despite being wrapped in furs.  A fire had been out of the question.  Doing anything to draw attention to themselves, to give away their location, was not wise – it was potentially fatal.

     Something was wrong.  She knew it before she was even totally awake.  She lay perfectly still, listening.  There was nothing but the sound of vermin scampering about and her own controlled breathing.

     Nothing...

     She opened her eyes – the space that Jarra had occupied was empty.  The blankets were cold – Jarra had been gone for some time.

     She felt herself go white-hot inside with anger.  Dammit to Tartarus!  Against her promise, against her oath, Jarra had gone off by herself to rescue Ezra.

     She picked up a waterskin, ready to hurl it in fury, but stopped herself before she actually threw it.  It wouldn’t accomplish anything, except maybe catching the attention of a passerby.

     She should have known that this would happen.  She should never have left Jarra unattended, but she’d trusted her to keep her promise.  And just what did she think she was doing, leaving like that?  Jarra was on watch and had up and left her without any protection.  She had trusted Jarra to keep her safe.  It was obvious (and really always had been) that Jarra could not be trusted where Ezra was concerned.  She knew that, and had allowed this to happen anyway.

     It wasn’t really the desertion, betrayal of trust, or even the broken oath that truly upset her.  It was the fact that Jarra was knowingly and willfully placing herself in danger, and she couldn’t be there to protect Jarra when, not if, things went wrong.

     Her anger abruptly faded when she came to the realization that, had it been Xena who was taken, she would have done exactly the same thing.  She shook her head ruefully at the irony of it all.

     There was only one course of action open to her now.  She had to go after Jarra, the exact thing that she had forbidden Jarra to pursue with Ezra because it was too dangerous.  Like a fool, she was going to go in before sunrise.  She had to – everything happening now was her fault.  She should never have brought them here, never have let them come with her; the least she could have done was protect them, keep them safe.  She’d sworn to herself from the outset that she would, sworn that she would not let anyone else she loved be lost ever again.  Everything had gone horribly wrong in spite of that promise.  She had not been able to protect Ezra, or keep Jarra safe.  It was Xena all over again, the person she loved more than anything, whom she had not been able to protect or keep safe...  She had not been able to save her soulmate – how could she hope to save her friends now?

     She had to try, or die for them.  She would not accept anything less from herself – she couldn’t live with herself if she allowed them to be lost.

     A last, quick check of her sword – the edge was sharp, perfectly honed and un-notched; ready for battle.  She secured it, firmly in its scabbard, at her back, checked the straps holding her sai to her boots, and clipped the chakram to her belt.

     “Don’t do it Gabrielle.”

     There was no mistaking the warning in Xena’s voice.

     Gabrielle knew she was right, and was unable to look her in the eye because of it.  “What else can I do?”

     “You can do nothing,” Xena said flatly.

     Gabrielle was completely shocked by that statement, until she saw the very real pain in her soulmate’s eyes. 

     “I can’t lose them, Xena,” she said determinedly.

     “Just like I can’t let you do something so blatantly foolish that will more than likely get you killed.”

     “It may be foolish, but I swore to myself after Japan that no one else I care about –” she looked pointedly, meaningfully, at Xena then- “would be lost because of something I failed to do.”

     Xena’s expression turned deeply empathetic.  She knew better than anyone what Gabrielle was feeling.  Why was she fighting her?

     “If you go in there now,” Xena said in the most reasonable voice she could, “they will be waiting for you.  They’ll expect you to come now, by yourself, and they’ll kill you.  How will that help Ezra, or Jarra for that matter?  Wait until sunrise, Gabrielle.  You’ll still be going in alone, but at least you’ll have an advantage.  Maybe Jarra will be able to get Ezra out of there safely and be back here before then.”

     Her last sentence rang hollow.  They both knew that wouldn’t happen, just as Gabrielle knew that a rescue mission now was suicide.

     She finally gave in to her frustration.  With a single inarticulate cry, she smashed her fist into the alley wall, not even feeling the pain of it.  There was nothing she could do.  Once again, someone she cared about was on the line, and once again she was totally helpless.

     It was her fault...

     Gods help them...

                                                                                *             *             *

She should never have come.  Why hadn’t she listened to Gabrielle?  She wished that she had, but it was far too late for that now.

     The lamia had her surrounded on the dancefloor.  She was barely holding them off, fighting close-quarters with her sais.

     When they’d first ambushed her out of the darkness, she had been able to pick them off with rapid-fire volleys of arrows.  The arrows, however, hadn’t lasted very long – there had only been a dozen or so of the deadly black-fletched missiles in her quiver.  The arrows had run out, and the lamia had closed in with a vengeance.

     She couldn’t fight them all, she knew that.  Despite that she fought valiantly, but she was only prolonging the inevitable.

     It was only a matter of time before she became too tired to keep them back.  Claws snagged and tore at her, inhumanly strong hands gripped her wrists with bone-crushing force.  Her sais were wrenched from her hands.  Gods, she should have listened...

     A gnarled, clawed hand entangled itself in her hair, grabbing a handful and yanking her head back to expose her vulnerable throat and the wildly pulsing artery throbbing just beneath the skin.

     She didn’t feel the fangs penetrate per se, just the white-hot needles of agony blossoming out from her neck, moving through her shoulder and all the way down her arm.

     This was it.  She was going to die.  She deserved it for being such a fool.

     But the lamia didn’t drain her to the point of death.  It only took enough to weaken her to the point that she couldn’t fight them.  Her limbs went like wet noodles as her strength left her and she collapsed, nerveless, into the lamia’s cold embrace...

Chapter Thirteen

Jarra couldn’t follow just where they were taking her, her consciousness waxing and waning.  She couldn’t think or move, let alone escape from the grasp of the two lamia dragging her.

     It seemed that they dragged her endlessly through the hallways and catacombs; she didn’t know where they were taking her.  After what seemed like an eternity, they stopped.

     Jarra, more aware now but still weak, looked around.  She found herself in a high-ceilinged chamber; before her was a raised stone slab, an altar from the looks of it.  Manacles hung from the ceiling above it, suspended there on heavy chains.

     The world tilted oddly – they were lifting her up onto the altar.

     Oh gods...

     Her arms were raised over her head, the manacles locked in place around her wrists.  She hung there in a kneeling position, knees just barely touching the altar.  She didn’t have the comfort of kneeling fully, nor was she strong enough to get to her feet.  Her head hung limp, chin touching her chest – it took too much effort to hold it up.

     She could clearly make out dark stains on the altar slab.  The kind of stains one would find on a sacrificial altar.  The kind of stains that could only be made by blood.

     Sharp tugs at her clothing – first they unfastened her armor, removed it, followed by her leathers.  Cold air hit her bare skin, stinging sharply.  She now hung naked and freezing, stripped of dignity and pride as well as clothing.

     What were they going to do?

     When she saw the lamia holding the flechettes, she knew.

     She began to tremble uncontrollably.  The lamia caressed her with the razor edge of one flechette, dragging it slowly over the skin of one breast, her belly, her tender inner thigh, but drew no blood.

     The fine edge of a flechette was designed to part skin easily but with a maximum amount of pain.  Some derived pleasure from their use – she would not.  They were going to do to her what she had seen being done on Doma’s dancefloor, except that she was not going to enjoy it at all.

     The cool touch of the flechette returned to her breast.  She shook now in terrified anticipation.  Slight pressure - her flesh parted effortlessly.  Pain like fire blossomed in her chest as the lamia carved a line all the way down to the base of her solar plexus.  Blood welled in tiny beads along the fine wound the flechette had wrought.

     She could hear the lamia’s pleasured laughter.  He was far from being finished.

     He cut her again, deeper this time, across her hard-muscled abdomen.  She arched weakly against the pain, a whimper escaping her lips.  She felt hot blood run from the wound.

     She heard another lamia step close.  He drew near, very near.  Hot breath on the skin of her stomach, then the feeling of the lamia’s tongue caressing the wound.

     They cut her again and again, more of them coming to feed on the trickling blood.

     Drowning in agony, she knew only one thing: they weren’t going to kill her, not like this.  The wounds were superficial, small cuts that would heal quickly.  This was meant to be torture; slow agonizing, but ultimately survivable torture.

     The flechette bit into her thigh – the lamia pressed its mouth to the wound, drinking deeply of the freshly drawn blood until she lost consciousness...

                                                                                *             *             *

They were taking him back to that dreaded chamber, the one in which he had been turned.  They were taking him to Jarra.  The lamia that had turned him, the one who was obviously their leader, walked him to the chamber’s entrance and opened the door.

     “Remember what I told you,” the lamia said forebodingly.  “There is only one way to save her.”

     With that he was shoved into the chamber, door shut and locked behind him.

     On the floor, sprawled unconscious on the bed pallet completely nude, was Jarra.  Tears filled his eyes - cuts and bruises marred her perfect, beautiful skin.  The wounds were not severe, but the pain caused in inflicting them surely must have been.  Who had done this?  Ezra had a pretty good idea, and it sickened him.  Somehow he would make the lamia pay for doing this to her...

     He crouched beside her, covered her with a blanket, and stopped cold.  He could see the pulse throbbing in her neck, and with his new lamia senses, hear her heartbeat.

     Thud-thud.  Thud-thud.  Thud-thud...

     The change came over him before he was even aware of it, his fangs elongating, his eyes changing.  His hunger surged so strongly that he almost took her right then.  So hungry...  The other lamia had deprived him on purpose, to make this easier and to make his first kill that much harder to resist.

     Thud-thud.

     Jarra’s heartbeat was weaker than normal.  He pulled back the blanket, looking for – there.  Bite marks around the wound on her thigh, on her neck.  They’d fed on her.  The godsdamned bloodsuckers had fed on her before bringing her here.

     Reigning in his hunger, he kissed her closed eyelids.  Slowly she came awake.  He tried to pull her close, but she fought him, pushing and twisting away.  She though he was one of them, trying to hurt her.

     You are one of them...

     “Jarra, sweetheart, its me.  You’re safe.”

     The fight went out of her at the sound of his voice.  Her arms twined tightly around him, holding him like she was never going to let go.  She wept – with joy.  “Oh gods, you’re alive...”

     This time when he pulled her to him, she didn’t fight him.  Framing his face with her hands, she showered him with sweet kisses.  When her lips finally found his, the kiss was long and sweet.  When she would have deepened it, he pulled away.  Instead he pressed a kiss to her neck – he could feel the pulse beneath his lips.  He could take her right now... No.  Not like this.

     “Thank the gods you’re okay,” she breathed against his neck.  “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”

     He stiffened.  She withdrew from him, wincing as she sat up, pulling the blanket more tightly around herself.  She must have felt his distress – she was looking at him earnestly now.

     “Ezra?  What did they do to you?”

     How could he tell her?  How would she feel about him then?  But he’d never kept anything from her – he wouldn’t start now.

     He heard her pulse quicken.  “What’s wrong with your eyes...?”

     Ezra knew it wouldn’t be long before she noticed the red tint to his otherwise blue eyes that had never been there before.  The same red that glowed in the eyes of Doma’s lamia guards.

     A sharp intake of breath.  “Your leg...”

     Her hand went to the spot where his own blade had impaled him.  The slice in his leathers remained, but Jarra’s probing fingers found only smooth, perfect skin beneath, as if the wound had never been there.

     Her eyes searched his.  “What’s going on, Ezra?  How is this possible?”

     Subconsciously, she had already made the connection.  Instinctively, she knew what he had become.  Her behavior toward him was already changing.  He could sense the beginnings of fear in her.  Her touch became hesitant, wary.  But she had yet to realize what her warning signals were trying to tell her.

     So he told her, with no preamble at all, “I’m one of them.”

     Jarra blinked.  “I don’t understand.”

     Oh yes she did.  Sudden and fierce denial was keeping her from believing it.

     “I’ve been turned, Jarra,” he said hollowly.  “When I make my first kill, the change will be permanent.”

     He watched the horror come over her face, saw the way she was recoiling from him.

     “What?  No...”

     And he saw the hatred spark in her brown eyes.  “They did this to you.  The lamia.”

     It was not a question.  Jarra’s sudden calm came from a place beyond fury.

     “First they murder my father.  Now this.  I draw the line here – this far, no further.  I am going to make them pay for what they have done.”

     If the sheer power of her hatred could have harmed the lamia, they would all have turned to dust in that moment.

     “How?”

     “I was dying,” he answered frankly.  “Beyond all help.  I was given a choice: to die, or to drink.

     “I didn’t know what it would mean to drink, except that I would live if I did.  All I could think about was living to see you again.

     “I chose to live, and their leader made me drink his blood.  It made me one of them.”

     “But the change isn’t permanent?”

     “Not until my first kill,” he reminded her.  “But they’ve starved me, on purpose, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.  It’s terrible – the hunger is stronger than anything you can imagine.  It claws at you, tears at you, and never lets go for an instant.”

     Her heart pounded harder.  She was afraid of him.  She should be.  He wasn’t human anymore – he was a monster.

     “We need to get out of here,” Jarra said urgently, almost panicked, reaching for her leathers, which had been left neatly folded by the side of the bed.

     His hand gripping her arm stopped her.

     “There are too many of them, Jarra.  They would capture and kill us before we took two steps.”

     “We have to try – ”

     “No.”

     She looked amazedly at him.

     “Jarra, if we could get out, we would have to fight them sooner or later.  To fight them and win we would have to be at our very best.  The leader knows that.  That’s why they did what they did to you.  They did it to weaken you so you couldn’t fight them.  It one of the reason’s they’ve starved me.”

     He couldn’t bring himself to speak the other.

     “We are too weak to fight them.  We can’t escape like this.  They’d kill us both.

     Jarra was far from being a stupid woman – she understood his logic, and couldn’t help giving in to it.

     “What’s the other reason?” she asked suddenly.

     “What?”

     “What is the other reason they’ve been starving you?”

    This was it.  He couldn’t escape telling her for any longer.

     “At first, I thought they were trying to urge me into making a kill,” he began, “but then – ”

     He hesitated.  He didn’t want to do this horrible thing...

     “I realized,” he said slowly, “its to make it easier to do what I have to do to you”

     The sudden pallor of her skin and the naked terror in her eyes, not to mention the wild pounding of her heart (like thunder in his ears) told him that she understood perfectly well.

     “Jarra, its the only way-”

     He reached for her and she recoiled from him like a frightened deer.

     “How can you do this?”

     “If I don’t, they’ll kill you.  Do you understand?  This is the only way I can save you, or else they’ll finish what they started.”  He gestured to the cuts covering her body for emphasis.

     “Changed as I have been, I can never die, and I will be left for all eternity to suffer without you if they kill you.  Do you want to die?  To leave me?

     “What kind of life will we have –”

     “Gabrielle will find a way to save us,” he said, and was amazed to discover that he actually believed it.  He believed in their friend. 

     It was that last bit that got to Jarra.  She believed in Gabrielle with all her heart.

     Never taking her eyes from him, Jarra pulled her hair back, exposing her throat, the artery leaping beneath the skin in time with her racing pulse.

     Ezra fought his roaring hunger down – he’d very nearly lost control at seeing her gesture of surrender.  So hungry – but he refused to give himself over to it.  Monster he may be, but he would not ravage her like some nameless victim.  He loved her with all of his heart and soul - she deserved better than that if this was how it was going to be.  Gods, he didn’t want to hurt her any more than he had to; in a twisted parody of the act of love, he would take her.  It would be less painful that way.

     She was rigid with fear when he took her in his arms, pulling her close.  She trembled violently against him as he lowered his lips to the tender hollow of her throat.

     “I’m afraid.”  The words emerged as a broken whisper.  He heard in her voice the tears that were filling her eyes.

     The admission, coming from his brave Amazon, wrenched his heart in his chest.  It nearly broke him.

     “I know.”

     It felt like someone was cutting his heart out.  How could he let himself do this to her?  But it was the only way to save the most precious thing in his life.

     He wondered if he was truly saving her at all.  If he really did love her, would he condemn her to this?  But he couldn’t let her die.  He just couldn’t.  Then again, some things are worse than death.

     He banished all thought from his mind.  He couldn’t bear to think those thoughts anymore.  They would tear him apart.

     I have to save her, he told himself over and over again.  It was of no comfort.

     With his first bittersweet kiss, she knew that he was still the man she loved.  Even though she knew what he was, what he would do, she still trusted him, and gave herself over willingly.

     No matter what his heart felt his hunger would insure that he would go through with it, even though it was making him sick inside. 

     She still trembled; it was no longer due to fear, but to the gentle caress of his hands and lips on the fading lines of her wounds.  The bleeding had long since stopped, but the lines were clear.  She inhaled sharply as he traced one line up the inside of her thigh.

     Whatever else he might be, he was still her lover.  He knew every secret that her body held for him, every place she liked to be touched or kissed that would give her the most pleasure...

     But this had nothing to do with love.  It was a nightmare devoid of desire or feeling.  Everything about it was cold, empty.  No love, no passion, only hunger.  So cold...

     Yet he still wanted her, as much as ever, and she responded to him just as strongly.

     Somewhere in that frigid eternity his clothes were stripped away – she captured him, wrapped her legs tight around him, raked her nails down his back in wild desperation.

     He moved slowly with her, holding the hunger at bay despite the agony it caused him.  It wasn’t long before he felt the first tremors of her climax.  Not until she surged into her release, shattering in his arms, did he sink his fangs into the sweet flesh of her neck.

     She arched beneath him, but it was not with pleasure.  He was hurting her, knowingly causing her pain, and he couldn’t bear it.  He couldn’t stop, either.

     In that one fiery instant, Jarra knew indescribable pleasure and unbearable agony.  He took her quickly, his arms like steel bands trapping her.  The world died away.  Her heart thudded dully in her ears, the beat slow and irregular.  She was near death, all pain suddenly gone.

     As if in a dream, she saw Ezra bring his wrist to his mouth, tear open the flesh and the vein just beneath the surface. 

     Then the blood came, coppery on her tongue; it poured through every fiber of her body; she was legs and arms again as it electrified her limbs, skin tingling with heat, the hunger making her writhe with need.

     They lay in each other’s arms, skin burning with heat, becoming one wet and tangled thing, her head resting against Ezra’s chest as she gnawed at the fount, shocks of ecstasy passing through her one after another.

     Suddenly Ezra drew away and turned her face against the pillows.  Jarra felt the razor-sharp teeth pierce her skin, felt it all being taken back, drawn out, the sensation of being emptied, devoured.

     “Drink again, my love...”

     Slowly she opened her eyes, saw his perfect throat.  She reached out and caught it in her hands, and this time it was she who broke the flesh, tore it.  When the first spill of blood hit her tongue, she pulled Ezra down under her, took him inside her.  Utterly compliant, he was hers, his flesh against hers, moving with the slow rock of her hips against him; his lips against her face as she sucked the blood, sucked it harder and harder, knowing the pleasures of the blood tide and the body in the same exquisite instant, surging so strongly she thought she would die of it.

     It was done.

     They slept, or almost slept, folded against one another.  The pleasure left its shimmer; it seemed that to breathe was to feel again, to shift against the silken bedding or Ezra’s bare skin was to begin again.  She did not experience the pain of the change as Ezra had.

     Neither one knew how long they lay there, bare skin against bare skin, basking in the afterglow despite the gross perversion of their lovemaking.  How could their bodies betray them so completely...?  Then the reality of just what had transpired hit them.

     Jarra looked as though she might be ill.  “What have we done?” she breathed, not without horror in her voice.

     What have you done? Ezra’s own inner voice asked him.  You’ve condemned her to live a nightmare...

     It was done.  There was no going back.

     “We’ll get out of this,” he said with conviction that he didn’t truly feel.

     “I hope so.”

     They were startled by the sound of the door opening.  Both scrambled to cover themselves with blankets, to preserve their modesty and at least some shred of dignity.

     Whoever had just entered, Jarra could not see, for the only partially opened door was blocking her view.  Apparently, Ezra could, and his mood immediately turned frigid and unfriendly.  Silence stretched – Jarra used those few seconds to hastily pull on her leathers under the cover of the blankets.

     A slow clapping of hands issued from the doorway.

     “You’ve done well, Ezra,” a smug voice said.

     Jarra froze – she knew that voice, as smooth as silk...

     That was when he stepped forth into her view.  She stared – it was impossible for this man to be standing before her, yet he was. 

     Dressed in robes of blue velvet, he was tall, and though thin, there was no mistaking the power of his lean, muscular frame.  His features were so fine that he was beautiful rather than handsome, with high cheekbones and pale green eyes the color of the sea, his lustrous black hair pulled into a tight ponytail at the nape of his neck.  Impossibly, he had not aged a day since last she saw him.

     “Czokas?”

     He smiled at her, which repulsed and terrified her, though she didn’t understand why.

     “Jarra,” he said smoothly, “if such a thing is possible, you have grown even more beautiful since the last time we met.”

     “You know him?” Ezra asked, bewildered. 

     “Yes,” she replied absently, her mind working furiously to assimilate and understand this latest turn.  “He’d been doing business with my father, right before...”

     She trailed off suddenly.  Somewhere in her mind, a horrible truth had been revealed.  Czokas was a lamia... Oh gods...

     Czokas smirked cruelly at her stricken expression.  “Your father should have known better than to hunt my people, Jarra, in the service of his king or otherwise.  If he’d minded his own business instead of meddling in ours, he might still be alive today.”

     She shook with renewed rage and hatred.  All those times her father had gone off with his “hunting kit” (it had contained weapons and tools that she’d never seen used for hunting before or since), he’d been hunting lamia, and they’d killed him for it.

     Dimly she heard Ezra’s horrified gasp.

     “I killed him myself,” Czokas bragged.  “Tore his throat open and drank every last drop of his life’s blood, with the exception of what I used to paint the walls.”  He related it wistfully, as though recalling a fond memory.  “I can still remember the sweet sound of his screams...  My only regret was not being able to kill you.  I had intended to, you know, after raping and mutilating your beautiful body...”

     Half-gagging, bile rose in her throat.  “You son of a bitch...”

     Her voice was nothing more than a deadly whisper.  She was beyond tears, beyond screaming, beyond rage.

     “But this,” Czokas said triumphantly, “is so much better.  You’re one of us, turned by your own lover.”  His gaze fell on Ezra then.  “Bravo, by the way,” Czokas told him.  “Taking her even as you made love to her – so wonderfully perverse.  I don’t think I could’ve done better myself.”

     He laughed maniacally.  “You played right into my hands, both of you, and when your friend comes to rescue you, she’ll be mine.”

     The threat was the last straw for Jarra, who leapt at Czokas with a feral snarl.  Ezra just barely managed to catch her by the ankle and drag her back down before she could wrap her hands around the lamia’s throat.  Though her rage had given her strength, she was still too weak to fight him, and much to weak to fight Czokas.

     Czokas laughed again smugly.  “You should tame your woman, Ezra, if you know what’s good for her.”

     Jarra struggled, but Ezra held fast, both of his arms wrapped tightly around her.

     “No one ‘tames’ me,” she spat furiously, “and I am not his woman.”

     Czokas merely laughed, greatly amused.

     Without another word, Czokas left them, Jarra stewing in anger and Ezra adrift in guilt and despair.

     “I’m so sorry, Jarra...” Ezra began.

     She caressed his cheek, a world of understanding and even forgiveness in her eyes.  In that moment, no words were required.

     “I should never have come, not without Gabrielle,” she said shaking her head.  “I walked into this trap.”

     “Do you think she will come for us?”  He meant Gabrielle.

     “She’ll be here,” she said, and in her voice there was both hope and dread – hope because she didn’t doubt that Gabrielle would come.  Their friend wouldn’t abandon them.  But Czokas had laid his trap, and Gabrielle would be walking right into it with no warning.  If anyone could survive it and save them, Gabrielle could.  If she didn’t, they were doomed, and would have to live forever knowing their friend’s demise was their fault.

     All of that would be moot, however, if the hunger got them first.  Already, Jarra could feel it, and she didn’t know how long she would be able to resist.

                                                                                *             *             *

During those last hours of darkness, Gabrielle was unable to get any more rest.  Every time she was about to drift off, the nightmares came, the half-remembered remains keeping her mind far too busy to allow sleep.  She endured the dark night alone at the mercy of her fears – fear for dear friends and their fate, and worst of all, fear of the battle that she was to face.  It wasn’t the lamia that she was afraid of, or even the possibility of her own death.  She feared her own failure. 

     Dawn arrived too quickly and at the same time not fast enough, without the return of Jarra.  Gabrielle could guess what had happened to her.  Foolishly she had hoped that her friend would make it, rescue Ezra and come back safely.  Of course that was not to be.

     She was going in alone.  Everything depended upon her.  She didn’t know how many enemies she would face, or if she was even capable of defeating them all.  It was a trap and she knew it, but it didn’t matter.  Not even saving the city from the scourge of the lamia mattered anymore.  Getting Jarra and Ezra back was the only thing she cared about now.  Regardless of the odds, this was something she had to do.  She couldn’t walk away without knowing for sure.  Some things were worse than death – abandoning the people you care about was one of them.  Letting them down when they need you the most was another.

     What good had waiting for daylight really done?  By now it could be too late, and the slim advantage it gave her suddenly didn’t seem worth the wait, let alone her friends’ lives.  She should have gone the instant she realized Jarra was missing.  Should have...

     The thought of losing them, never seeing them again, crushed her.  She had Xena, she would always have Xena...  But after everything they had been through over the past weeks, everything they had shared, they had become so much closer to her, so much more important.  She needed them...

     Only one thing would be worse than finding them dead: to find them very much alive and be unable to save them.

     “Are you okay, Gabrielle?” 

     Xena’s hand touched her shoulder – she tried to draw strength from the simple connection to her soulmate.

     As difficult as it was going to be for her to say what she was thinking, she had no need to keep anything from Xena.  She was the only person she could open her heart to completely.  It was a relief, not having to hold anything back.

     In one simple statement, she revealed her worst fear.

     “I don’t know if I can do this.”

     Xena took her face in both hands, forced her to look up into intense blue eyes.

     “I know you’re afraid, and I know that you blame yourself for what’s happened to your friends.  You think that when it comes to the people you really love, you’re going to fail because somehow you’re not good enough.”

     “After what I let happen to you, I –”

     “I know.” Xena smiled then, eyes shinning with her love.  “Gabrielle you have everything that I’ve ever taught you, and so much more – so much heart...  I know you can do this.  You didn’t fail me, you won’t fail your friends.”

     “I wish I could believe you.”

     She couldn’t help noticing the worried disappointment on Xena’s face.

     “Good luck, Gabrielle.”

     Between one moment and the next, Xena had gone.

     She checked her sais, her sword, adjusted the clip at her belt so that she could easily free the chakram but it wouldn’t come loose at a run or during heavy fighting.  The horses were secure, the supplies as well hidden among the debris as the dark alley would allow.

     She was going, whether her friends were alive or not, whether she could save them or not.  She had to get them back.  She had to, or die, a fate that held no fear for her.

     “You’re too late, you know.  They’ve been turned.”

     She spun around, startled, looking for the source of the voice that had spoken from the shadows.  It took but an instant for her to identify the speaker, Ares, their personal tormentor.

     “What are you talking about?  Are they alive?”

     “Very much so, but perhaps not in the way that you would like.”

     She didn’t want to play this game, not now.  Why was it that he always had to be so cryptic?  There wasn’t time for this.

     “You said they’ve been turned,” she said carefully, putting a no-nonsense edge into her voice, trying a different approach.  “What do you mean?”

     He smiled slowly, as though he were taking great pleasure in drawing out the moment for greatest effect, as though he enjoyed knowing something so important that she didn’t and didn’t want to share.  Ares was a glutton for drama, and he was playing this to the hilt.  That was what frightened her.  He wouldn't bother if the information were trivial.

     “What do you mean?” she asked again, demanding it fiercely this time and mad at herself for giving him the reaction that he wanted.  She was out of patience, especially with him.  Why was he still hanging around?  It was almost like he was pushing her...

     “They’ve been turned into the very thing that you seek to destroy in this city,” he said slowly, carefully, savoring every moment and her every reaction.

     What she sought to destroy?  No...no.

     “They’re lamia.”

     By the gods, no...

     “You have until they make their first kill to save them.  Good luck, Gabrielle.”

     She watched as Ares, as though moving in slow motion, raised his hand and made to snap his fingers, one of the idiosyncratic gestures that he sometimes made before disappearing.  He was leaving her?  Now, after telling her all of that, the bastard was going to leave her hanging.  He had the knowledge to help her and he was going to cut and run.  It was his way.

     She couldn’t let him get away, not this time, and though she was loathe to ask what she was thinking, she didn’t know what else to do.

     “Ares!”

     He stopped, frozen by her unexpected outburst.  Had she not been so desperate, so angry with him, she might have noticed that he almost looked startled by the intensity of her emotions. 

     “You know how to stop the lamia,” she said pleadingly.  “You taught Jarra – ”

     “What are you asking, Gabrielle?”

     Ares was being coy – he knew damn well what she wanted, but he wouldn’t say it.  He wanted her to say it instead, to see the humiliation that it would bring her.

     “I am asking for your help!”

     She knew that with those words she had lost any and all power she had in this struggle.

     “If you have to ask,” he said with undisguised disdain, “you aren’t worthy of my help.”

     Ares had no respect for anyone who asked for his help.  In his eyes anyone who had to ask was unworthy.  She had been pushed, forced into it.  He was toying with her, she knew it, like a cat with a mouse.  He’d wanted to make her say it, so he could watch her squirm helplessly, completely at his mercy.

     “You want the lamia destroyed, don’t you?”

     He stood silently, staring at her.

     “I know that you can’t do it yourself, but you do know how.  Tell me.”

     “Why should I?  You’ve shown me just how weak you are.”

     Tears of desperation and frustration stung her eyes, but she refused to let him see her cry.  He had the upper hand, she’d given it to him by asking for his help, and he was taking full advantage of his favorable position.  It angered her to no end.  Time was slipping away from her with every second that Ares proceeded to waste.  And for what?  To make her suffer?  If that was the point, then he was doing a fine job.

     “If the lamia aren’t destroyed,” she said as calmly as her racing mind and heart would allow, “Jarra will be lost to you.  Do you really want that, when potential like hers is in such short supply?”

     She had his attention now, but his answer was not the one she wanted.

     “There will be others,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.  He didn’t fool her at all.

     “Xena cared for her, and for Ezra; I do, too.  I’m not going to lose any more friends.”

     Ares shrugged, spreading his hands in askance.  “And I care because...?”

     “I love them!” she shouted at him, a cry of desperation that came from her very soul.  It was probably a mistake to have said it – Ares would only see it as weakness – but she couldn’t hold it back.  She was sick and tired of him, and she had a few choice things to say...

     She stared at him, pinning him with her intense gaze, cold rage dominating the tempest roiling in her storming, sea-colored eyes.

     “All that time that you were mortal, I thought it might have changed you, but you haven’t changed at all,” she seethed, beyond the point of raising her voice, words dripping with the scorn and disgust she felt toward him.  “You’re still the same selfish, cruel manipulator you’ve always been.  You say that you loved Xena, but you know what I think?  I think that you wouldn’t know love if it leapt up and bit you on the ass.”

     The last bit elicited not so much as a smirk from Ares – unusual, since she had almost expected him to laugh at her anger.  Instead he looked offended.  Good.  She wanted to hurt him.

     “Do you know what love is?” she asked honestly.  “Really?  What it is to need someone, to care about someone?  You think you loved Xena – I don’t believe that you really did.”

     The fiercest, most dangerous look she had ever seen came over the god’s face.  The confidence with which she had just spoken flagged when she saw the look in his eyes.

      “I do know what it is to need, to care for, and yes, even love someone.  Xena made me feel those things for the first time in my entire existence.  But I am also the god of war – its who I am, and that will never change.”

     The last part sounded like him, sounded like what she expected, but the rest of it was an admission that she could scarcely believe she had heard.  Not because she thought he was lying, but because to her surprise, she believed he was telling her the truth.

     “You can think whatever you like,” he said.  “I loved her.”

     No lies, no deception; she was still having a hard time wrapping her mind around it, that Ares for once had been straight with her, and about that.  She’d been caught completely flat-footed.  He’d just shown her vulnerability.

     And she saw an opportunity to use it.  They stood staring at each other, critical seconds passing.  It was a showdown.  Her mind worked furiously – then it came to her.

     “You loved her,” she said, and this time there was no venom, no malice.  Her expression softened, but there was no less desperation as she told him, “I love my friends.”  She took a deep breath, letting it out in a sigh.  “What you tried to do to Jarra, what you’re doing right now, it’s hurting me.”

     There wasn’t the slightest sign of a reaction from the god.  His eyes hardened as he watched her – she was losing him, but she wasn’t done yet.

     “That would hurt Xena,” she continued softly.  “If you ever loved her, you’ll help me.”

     He stood, an unmoving, imposing statue, contemplating her darkly.  He didn’t like one bit the position she’d just put him in.

     When he next spoke, it was with deadly seriousness so intense that it sent shivers down her spine.

     “I will do you a favor, for Xena’s sake, this time and this time only.  Kill the leader, Czokas; your friends will be human again and the lamia will be destroyed.”

     He once again made to snap his fingers – her stomach dropped.  He was still going to leave, after all of that.  She needed more than this...

     She couldn’t have been more surprised when it was she who disappeared.

Chapter Fourteen

When Gabrielle reappeared a heartbeat later, she fell to her knees, disoriented and dizzy after the sudden shift.  At some point her head stopped spinning.  Equilibrium regained, she looked up – she was on the dancefloor of Doma, now empty and devoid of light, with the exception of a few weakly flickering torches that did more to deepen the shadows and darkness than to create light.

     Once her eyes had sufficiently adjusted to the dimness, she could see the ash still strewn everywhere, the remains of those she and her friends had vanquished just hours before.

     When she had asked for help, this wasn’t exactly what she meant.  Just telling her what to do hadn’t been enough, but zapping her into the heart of the enemy’s lair without warning was the other extreme.  Such was the nature of help received from the gods, especially from Ares.

     Confused, surprised, and even a little bit in shock from the sudden change in surroundings, it would be easy for the lamia to catch her off-guard.  She never even heard them coming, and they sprung the trap she knew had been waiting for her all along.

     Perhaps if she had been better prepared and not put so far off balance by the way she’d gotten here, she would have had a chance to successfully fight her would-be captors, but they caught her completely unawares.

     Ambushing from behind with perfect stealth, they must have been waiting for her in the darkness, expecting her to come this way in search of her friends.  They knocked her to the floor – she couldn’t put her arms out to break her fall because lamia had a hold of both as she fell, and the jarring, unbroken impact with the hard stone floor knocked the wind out of her, her breath coming out in a painful gust.

     Gasping for air, breathing was made all the more difficult by the lamia perched atop her, holding her down with incredible strength, its weight crushing.  She struggled, albeit futilely – the lamia held her with ease.  It grabbed her with both hands by the wrists and wrenched her arms behind her back with excruciating force, so hard she thought her shoulders would pop free of their sockets.  Her shoulder muscles screamed with electric pain, overtaxed by the force being exerted upon them.  She could not suppress the whimper of agony that eventually escaped her lips.  She couldn’t struggle with her arms bent so painfully. 

     They had gotten her before she’d even had a chance to draw a weapon.

     Failure – a bitter, clawing feeling that made her nauseous, and which made her feel as though her heart had stopped or, worse yet, been torn to shreds.  Her friends would suffer a fate worse than death, now.  She’d gotten far, but not far enough to even have a hope of saving them.  If she had gotten close, then maybe... but she hadn’t.  The lamia had gotten her almost instantly.

     Couldn’t I have done better than this? she asked herself.  Apparently not.

     She was suddenly grabbed roughly by the hair, her head hauled up sharply and painfully.  A lamia with an unmistakably regal bearing knelt before her, dressed in fine blue velvet.  He would have been beautiful if not for the sadistically triumphant smirk that twisted his fine features.

     She tried feebly to pull free of his grasp – he wrenched her head back in reward, pulling on her hair so hard she thought it would tear free from the roots.

     Stifling a scream, she lay still, knowing that she couldn’t get free.  What did it matter anyway?  She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, she was barely breathing – she was numb.  She had tried so hard, gotten so far, and in the end it didn’t even matter, because she was still going to fail.

     “I would kill you myself,” the blue-clad lamia told her sinisterly, “but I have much better plans for you.”

     Bound and gagged, a rough woolen hood over her head, they dragged her.  Exactly where they took her she didn’t know – she couldn’t see a thing through the hood, which even the smallest dazzle of light could not penetrate.  She was being dragged through darkness, a dark night of the soul, not even feeling the rough stone of the floor as it tore skin from her knees and arms.

     Raw and bleeding where the stone had been continuously abrading her, they threw her down roughly after an undeterminable amount of time.  With no way to break her fall she slammed face first into hard stone.  She tasted blood, having bitten her lip hard on impact.

     The hood was removed, and she was grabbed roughly by the hair once more.  Her scalp, still extremely tender as a result of its earlier abuse, protested even more painfully than before as she was yanked to her feet.  Getting up proved difficult with her legs tightly bound at the ankle, and the lamia pulled on her hair that much harder to compensate.  All she could do was clench her jaw tight to hold back the cries of pain that were threatening to escape.  She would not show the lamia weakness.

     Her eyes finally adjusted in the torchlight, bright after the absolute darkness of the hood.  She was in a circular chamber, not small but at the same time not overly large.  A bed of cushions and rich fur blankets lay in the middle.  With the exception of the opulent bed, simple red wall draperies, and a few torch sconces, the room was bare.

     The guard that had hauled her to her feet was still holding her, gripping her with painful strength.  One wrong move and he would snap her in half, of that she was certain.  The others (three of them) had taken up positions around the room along the walls.  At some point her weapons had been taken – a guard held her sais, another her katana, while the one in blue examined the chakram, turning it over in his hands. 

     “The legendary chakram,” he said with a tinge of awe.  “It belongs in the hands of someone worthy of its godsforged origin.”

     “You won’t be keeping it, then,” she retorted sarcastically.

     She saw his eyes change, watched them cloud over with anger.  He snapped his fingers, and the guard holding her pulled her head back hard, once again by the hair.  The only sound was her strangled yelp and the rustle of blue velvet as the lamia moved suddenly, faster than any human being possibly could.  In the space between one heartbeat and the next he was standing over her with the chakram pressed to her throat.  He pressed harder; flesh parted; she bled.  She saw his eyes glint hungrily for an instant before they once more hardened with anger.

     So what if he killed her?  She had already lost, already failed.  There was nothing left for her to lose.

     “Such a fragile creature – I could easily slit your throat, let you bleed out, die so slowly...”

     Do it, she dared him silently.  She no longer cared whether she lived or not.  Her last moments would be terrifying, but they wouldn’t last long.  Then she would finally be free...  

     He took the weapon away from her throat, moved it lower, the fine edge scraping lightly over her abdomen where it stopped, coming to rest just above her naval.  Involuntarily, her stomach muscles clenched in anticipation of the pain he could inflict.  He chuckled low in his throat, amused.  Slowly he cut her, skin parted effortlessly by the chakram’s edge; he did it in such a way that the pain lasted, was prolonged until it became unbearably excruciating, even though the wound was not deep.

     “Or I could spill your entrails onto the floor.  Watch you, mind addled by the shock, feebly trying to put them back...”

     Pain like fire was consuming her, and she surrendered to it.  She saw no point in fighting.  Whatever he was going to do, she just wished that he would get on with it.

     “Do what you will, Czokas.  I don’t care anymore.”

     He stopped, caught off guard by the fact that she knew his name.  Her guess had been correct.  Her yielding infuriated him even more  - she was taking his pleasure away by not showing fear, by not begging to be spared.  It was an insignificant victory.

     Czokas wanted to kill her; why was he holding back?  Then he smiled, so cold and so cruel that it put fear back into her heart.

     Another snap of his fingers and the guard nearest the door opened it.  Jarra and Ezra entered, seeming to glide into the room rather than simply walk.  So pale and ethereal – they had a kind of morbid beauty.  She could feel herself being drawn in by them.  Even if she hadn’t known about their transformation, she would have been able to see the change in them.

     Only the smallest trace of humanity remained in their eyes, eyes that looked at her with pure desire – no.  Pure hunger.  It was then that she knew what Czokas planned.  He stood, watching smugly as the blood drained from her face.  Her heart slammed in her chest.  They were going to...

     Were they even still the people that she knew?  Whatever they were, she couldn’t hide the horror she felt, seeing them with that ravenous look, knowing it was focused on her as they descended upon her like sinister angels fallen from heaven.

     How brilliant – Czokas was using the people she cared about to destroy her for daring to challenge his control over the city and its people, for daring to think that she could destroy him.  From his smirk, she could see he thought it brilliant as well, such a fitting punishment for one who would dare to go against him.  How many others had suffered this fate?  Perhaps this method was unique to her.

     Wasn’t she the lucky one.

     She would be their first, the one whose death would damn them for eternity.  It was that which truly broke her.  Worse than failing them, she would be the instrument that sealed their fate.

     “Don’t be so horrified,” Czokas told her silkenly.

     “What have you done to them?” she demanded, some of her fire returning.

     They had her in their iron grip now, their strength superhuman.

     “My dear, I did nothing.  They chose to become what they are,” he informed, sounding oh-so-reasonable and assured of his logic.

     She found what he said hard to believe.

     “Ezra chose to drink of me rather than die; Jarra surrendered to him rather than be destroyed.  The choice was theirs to make.”

     “Some choice,” she spat, even as they pulled her down onto the bed.

     They laid her down with surprising gentleness, untied the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles, rolled her over.  Ezra straddled her hips, pinning her on her back.  Jarra seized one wrist, licking her lips in anticipation, her fangs glistening, while Ezra held the other fast.  Gabrielle struggled, but it was no use.  With his free hand, Ezra forced her head to one side.

     Up until this point, she had not feared the possibility of her own death, but the instinct to survive was a strong one, and whatever had been holding it back suddenly gave way.  She was gripped by the most horrible feeling of fear and panic imaginable, straining to break free.  Her panic escalated when she could not.  She shook uncontrollably with abject terror, knowing that she couldn’t stop them.

     “Please don’t do this,” she whispered in one last desperate appeal.

     “I’m sorry, Gabrielle,” Ezra breathed in her ear, “but we have to feed...”

     She twisted beneath him, but he held her down easily.  Any hope she had of reaching the humanity in them was gone.

     She gasped in a paroxysm of helpless terror as, in unison, their fangs bit deep, Ezra’s into her neck and Jarra’s into her wrist.

     Everything faded away except for the roar of her pounding heart in her ears.  The pain – she couldn’t help arching with the sheer agony of it, muscles taut, mouth open in a silent cry.  Ezra’s arm wound underneath her back, crushing her against him so hard she couldn’t breathe.  She felt the warm rivulets of blood running down her neck, her arm.  He lifted her up, then suddenly released her.  Jarra let her arm drop as she fell back onto the bed.

     What - ?

     She looked up at them, but they were paying no attention to her.  Blood, her blood, stained their mouths, their chins, making a nightmarish vision of faces she knew and loved.  Their red eyes stared unblinkingly at Czokas.  Jarra savoringly licked the last traces of blood from her lips, the look in her eyes feral and dangerous.

   Wait.  That look...

     “What are you doing?” Czokas demanded.  “Finish her!”

     “No,” Ezra sneered.

     The next instant he lunged at the nearest guard, knocking the surprised lamia to the ground.  In one smooth movement he drew the guard’s sword and beheaded him with it.  It was the same guard that had Gabrielle’s sais, which he promptly commandeered.  Meanwhile, Jarra, having caught Czokas completely off-guard, delivered a savage kick that sent the smug lamia sprawling.  The chakram flew from his hand, clattering to the floor.  Jarra scooped it up quickly before he could even begin to recover.

     Bewildered, Gabrielle could scarcely believe what she was seeing, but it was happening.  This was her opportunity.  She got to her feet...

     A guard flung himself at Jarra – she swung the chakram and severed his head.  As he fell, dissolving into dust, she took the katana from him, ready to turn on Czokas.  But first –

     “Gabrielle!”

     Their eyes met for an instant and Jarra tossed her the chakram.  It had scarcely left her hand before she turned to Czokas, her eyes burning with perfect hatred.

     Ezra dusted another guard with a well-placed stab.

     Gabrielle caught the chakram, spun, launched the deadly metal disk –

Jarra raised the katana, ready to behead Czokas herself and finally have her revenge –

     The chakram whizzed past, just missing Jarra’s head, and appeared to miss Czokas as well, ricocheting off the wall behind him and arcing into Gabrielle’s hand.

     Czokas stood unmoving, as did Jarra, his face frozen in surprise.  Then Jarra saw it, blood welling up, beading in a thin line all the way around his neck.  As his head came free, his body tumbled to the floor with it.  The chakram had not missed – it had cut straight through, so cleanly that there hadn’t been so much as a spray of blood.

     The body of Czokas, along with is dismembered head, began to melt.  Jarra watched, until all that remained was a puddle of viscous black ooze.  Czokas was dead.  Her father’s murderer was dead, but not by her own hand as she had wanted and envisioned for so long.

     A blood-curdling scream issued from the last remaining lamia, a guard that Ezra had been fighting.  He fell, writhing and screaming, spontaneously bursting into ash.

     All through the Doma compound, all over Sapai, horrid screams echoed, heralding the deaths of all the minions Czokas had even sired as they exploded into ash.  Czokas was dead, his spawn could not live without him, without his life-force to help sustain them.  Only Jarra and Ezra were spared, for they were only half-lamia, not permanently changed, not permanently bonded to Czokas.

     Spared they may have been, but it did not mean that they were unaffected.  It hit Ezra first, then Jarra, otherworldly pain strobing on and off all over and through their bodies as all traces of their lamia selves were stripped away.  Gabrielle tried not to panic, rushing back and forth between them, desperate to figure out what was wrong, but there was nothing she could do to help them.  The pain did ease finally, leaving them curled up fetally on the floor in a shivering cold sweat.

     While Gabrielle scrambled to get blankets for them, Jarra dragged herself off to one side and retched.  Though there was nothing for her to purge except bile, and yes, blood, her stomach heaved until there was nothing left, and continued to afterward, so sick was she with the aftermath of her hatred and vengeance and the hurt she had inflicted upon the person who was more her sister than just merely her friend.

     Having tended to Ezra, Gabrielle quickly went to Jarra, draping a blanket around her shoulders.  She tried to put a comforting arm around her friend, but Jarra pushed her away, shoved her, on the verge of being sick again.  Gabrielle was genuinely wounded by the unexpected rejection.

     “How could you do that?” Jarra demanded harshly.  “Czokas killed my father!  He was mine to kill!  Mine!”

     Another wave of nausea broke over her and she turned away, going into another fit of dry heaving.

     “I couldn’t let you do it,” she said with simple honesty in the face of such raw anger.

     “Who are you to decide?”

     “Someone who cares about you.” She sighed heavily.  “Revenge only makes things worse.”

     “How could you take that from me?”

     “I had to.  I told the you story about Gurkhan and how he murdered my mother and father, and how much I wanted to kill him for it.  Trust that I know how you feel, and trust me when I tell you that you wouldn’t like what you would have become if you had taken your revenge.  I was just trying to spare you from more pain.”

     “I can never forgive you for this,” Jarra said coldly.

     “You will,” Gabrielle told her, doing her best to disguise the hurt her friend’s attitude was causing her.  “Eventually, you’ll thank me.”

     In a flash of godlight, Ares appeared – simultaneously, time froze.  Everything and everyone was frozen except Ares and Gabrielle herself. 

     He clapped slowly, deliberately, in mocking applause, the sharp sound oddly dull when it failed to echo.

     “Well done, Gabrielle.  You’ve done a great service today,” he told her ingratiatingly.  “You’ve rid me of the lamias’ menace.  My cult followers here are safe.”

     “Don’t thank me,” she said, making no effort to hide her disgust.  “It was you who manipulated me into doing it.”

     “That I did,” he said with pride.

     His face darkened when he asked, “Why did you stop her?”

     He meant Jarra.

     “I couldn’t let her make a mistake that would open her up to the likes of you.”

     He was seething now.  She could feel the anger coming off of him.  “I had her.  She was mine – ”

     “She was never yours,” she shot back.

     “If you hadn’t interfered, her revenge would have been the perfect tool.”

     “Don’t be so sure.  I’ll never let you touch her, Ares.  You were lucky to have gotten so far this time.  It won’t happen again.”

     “This isn’t over,” he warned with barely controlled fury.  The next instant, he disappeared.

     No, it wasn’t over.  As long as Ares saw potential in Jarra, he would never stop.

     Time unfroze.

     She suddenly felt faint – relief and exhaustion hit her all at once.  She hadn’t realized the strain she’d been under until it was gone.  She was drained beyond imagining.  She sank to the floor – she no longer had the strength to stand. 

     She’d nearly lost them, along with her own life...  But they were all alive.  The lamia were dead – Sapai was free.  They’d done it.  She hadn’t failed them after all.  How much of it was simply luck she would never know, but she hadn’t failed...  That was almost the greatest relief of all.

     Ezra went to her the instant that he saw her collapse.  Though Jarra looked concerned, she did not move.  Whatever animosity she felt now would eventually subside.  He knew her too well to think otherwise.  He took Gabrielle in his arms and she embraced him tightly.

          The tears came unbidden then – Gabrielle could not stop them.  She cried, releasing everything that she had been holding in all through this ordeal, all the fear, all the blame – everything.

     “You’re safe,” she whispered over and over again, as though she had to to convince herself that it was really true.  “You’re safe...”

Epilogue

They left Sapai that afternoon on foot, horses trailing behind, shouts of thanks from the city’s inhabitants echoing in their wake.  They couldn’t bear to stay any longer.  Too much had happened there, too much remained to haunt them.

     Their experiences had left their mark on all of them, especially Jarra.  Ezra could not so much as touch her without her going totally rigid, even pulling away, though only the slightest bit – a symptom of the intense trauma she had endured, and that they all shared in some form.  She didn’t blame Ezra for turning her – she understood why he had done it; given the same choice, she would have taken the same course of action.  It was the only way Ezra knew to save her, and it had bought them the time they needed.  But the twisted warping of their intimacy – it had left scars.  She just needed space for a while; she didn’t know what else to do.  There was no way to really explain, other than that, in the wake of the nightmare that had been their captivity, his touch only reminded her of pain.  It was all she could see, all she could feel when they got close.  The wounds ran deep, but she knew that they would heal.  They were already beginning to.  She loved him – that hadn’t changed.

     There was healing to be done elsewhere, too.  Jarra was apologizing far too much it seemed.  This wasn’t going to be easy for her...

     “I’m sorry, Gabrielle,” she said haltingly, breaking a very long silence.  “I had no right to say the things I said.  I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and...  I forgive you, for killing Czokas.  I know now what a mistake it would have been if I had... Thanks, Gabby, for everything.  You saved us.”

     Gabrielle’s smile at that moment said it all.  “You’re my friends.  I had to.”  That was the absolute truth.  Her smile faded.  “I was so scared...”

     “You?  Scared?” Ezra asked, incredulous.

     “Terrified, of losing you both.”

     “I wasn’t scared,” Jarra said softly.

     “What?” It was Gabrielle’s turn to be surprised.

     “Maybe I wasn’t completely aware of it, but inside I knew that you would come, I knew that you would save us.”

     “How?” Gabrielle had doubted it herself, yet Jarra had believed in her.

     “Because you’re you,” Ezra told her, a simple statement straight from the heart that spoke volumes. 

     Gabrielle hugged him fiercely, too deeply touched for words.

     The coast wasn’t far now.  They would most likely reach a port by the next afternoon.  It was strange for Gabrielle to think that they would be leaving Greece, not having any idea when or if they would be coming back.  There was so much that had happened here – it was home.  So much history – that was why she had to go.  There were too many memories here, and Egypt needed her.

     They walked off down the road together, at times quiet, at other times laughing, but grateful to have each other all the same.  They walked toward their greatest adventure yet.  The Land of the Pharaohs was waiting...

Look For The Exciting Conclusion:

The Chronicles of Gabrielle

Heart of a Warrior Book III

“Land of the Pharaohs”

RECOMMENDED  LISTENING  FOR  THE  CHRONICLES

Ø       “In The End” – Linkin Park

Ø       “Hero” – Chad Kroeger (feat. Josey Scott)

Ø       “My Sacrifice” – Creed

Ø       “Frozen” – Madonna

Ø       “Silence” – Delirium feat. Sarah McLaughlan

Ø       “This Love” – Pure Moods IV

Ø       “In Winter” & “What I Always Wanted” – Kittie

Ø       “6 Underground” – Sneaker Pimps

Ø       “Crawling” – Linkin Park

Ø       “Praise” – Sevendust

Ø       “Change (In The House of Flies)” – Deftones

Ø       “Cold” – Static – X

Ø       “My Plague” – Slipknot

Ø       “Save Yourself” – Stabbing Westward

Ø       “Before I’m Dead” – The Kidneytheives

Ø       “The Sickness” - Disturbed

Taiko's Scrolls of the Xenaverse