Disclaimers in Chapter One.
Be warned: what follows will NOT be pretty or pleasant. Proceed only at your own discretion.
Joseph Connell.
Judging by the ruin which had once been a bookstore, to say nothing of the owner, doubts over the woman's identity were completely justified.
Hope knelt beside the mangled body of Malachai, careful not to disturb his obviously tortured form. His back was twisted at a bizarre (and no doubt painful) angle, as was his neck and right leg. The rest of his limbs were not so much broken as their bones ground to powder or simply bent beyond their structural limits, save his left arm, which had been pulled from its socket and tossed just beyond the rest of him.
The bookstore was in about as bad a shape as the owner. Shelving knocked down or simply torn from the walls, rare volumes scattered all about, several turned into so much scrap paper, large holes knocked through the walls...this was a scene which spoke as much of desperation as of violence.
Even at her worst, Xena of Amphipolis had never set torch to scroll or archive. She'd clearly done far worse this night, and this told Hope volumes...not a bit of it useful.
"Unsatisfied customer, Malachai?" she asked, managing to sound chiding and amused. The shadows were deep enough to hide her anxious eyes.
"That bitch!" the Bacchae managed to gurgle, his voice working in defiance of his wounds. "You see what she's done?!"
"Malachai..."
"My poor BOOKS!"
"Malachai.." Hope's sympathy went only so far, and her patience far shorter.
"And look at *me*" I'll be weeks healing! Weeks!"
Hope bellowed "MALACHAI!" The broken Bacchae silenced and looked up, glazed and milky eyes meeting her flint-hard ones. Those eyes told Hope what questions had been asked here, and what methods had been used to extract the answers. She herself didn't have the luxury of time to utilize the same, and so accepted she had to trust this worm if disaster was to be avoided.
"What did you tell her?" was all she asked, the tri-blade golden dagger in her hand adding extra emphasis. Not by the sight of it, mind, as Malachai was likely blind right then. He wouldn't need sight, however, to *feel* the danger in her hand.
A heartbeat of silence.
Malachai spoke only two words.
And Hope was gone into the shadows from which she'd walked.
Leaving Malachai to ask to the empty room "Hey! Won't ya give a guy a hand up?"
******
There is a moment between dreaming and awareness where the dreamwalker might loose themselves forever, a limbo more barren and terrifying than anything Rod Serling could have envisioned. Upon opening her eyes, Gabrielle wished desperately she might have fallen into that momentary abyss.
The four pairs of red eyes, which burned into her, spoke only of horrors to come, not ones already endured.
She only vaguely recognized them, these self-styled rulers of the night. The Roman was a rabbit she and Xena had literally tripped over when the Visagoths had overrun Rome. The African had been a medicine woman who had been torn from her grace, corrupted by rape and now corrupted all she might touch. And the cloaked one...well, there was history enough between them. The others she had heard of, perhaps even glanced out of the corner of her eye, but not yet encountered.
"Awake again?" spat the Roman. Again? Had she passed out before? She couldn't remember. She couldn't remember anything, in fact...save the pain now coursing down her back...and between her legs...oh, gods...had they...?... oh, gods...
"Now we can begin again." This was from the fat one with the wig, a barbed cat-o-nine-tails in each hand.
Focus, Gabrielle told herself, her eye squeezing themselves shut. Focus! Think about...about...Xena...
She couldn't stop her screams, any more than she could stop lashes which brought them...or what the violations which came next.
******
When she had been torn away from Xena's dreamscape, Gabrielle had awakened in their bedroom surrounded by strong looking minions. Gabrielle would have normally made short work of them...save that one had his claws pressed lightly around Xena's strong neck. The threat was clear, as had been the one Gabrielle threw in response with eyes alone.
To their credit, none of the minions shifted or showed the fear she smelled from them. It was a vain effort on her part anyway. Oh, she *could* try and snatch Xena away, or simply burn these degenerates to ashes with but a thought. But these were *hardy* degenerates, and so Gabrielle was none too sure she could have moved fast enough or killed them all quick enough to keep them from making good on their unspoken promise.
There hadn't been any choice. She exchanged herself for Xena, who slept blissfully on. Gabrielle was grateful for this, and for having the foresight to have changed her will. Her 'princess' would never want for anything, ever. Gabrielle had kept her eyes fixed firmly upon the sleeping child's innocent face, right up to the moment they rendered her unconscious, not being the least gentle about it either.
And here she had awakened, suspended by her wrists, both of which were buried into the native rock of the low ceiling. Her toes only barely brushed the ground, giving her no leverage and her muscle no relief. Not that her 'hosts' would have allowed her any.
These four had begun working on her even before she'd awakened, agony and unwilling orgasm rolling through her time and time again.
Even the sight of Xena's face she focused herself on, a vague sight at that, now did nothing save taunt her. "Look, but don't touch" it taunted, somehow giving her strength enough to endure another round of their play.
She prayed it would be the last.
******
"Hillcrest Cemetery."
Those had been Malachai's words. Hope had long suspected the Circle would do something so tacky and unimaginative as settle in a cemetery. It befitted their facade perfectly.
The markers were largely in disrepair, the lawns overgrown, and the few trees in the area were barren. Add the cloudless night and a silvery Luna overhead and the secene was complete.
Hope moved slowly past the markers, more than a few of which were listing to their sides or ready to crumble at a touch. Her slow pace was as much for caution as for silence. She knew enough of the Circle to appreciate their devious nature. So while she had no fear she could deal with their minions in a cold second, *finding* where they hid was more problematic. Hence her slow, deliberative, stalking pace through the cemetery.
Even so, Hope doubted she could restrain herself much longer. It was quarter past eleven.
That thought alone caused a sweat, though it might have also contributed to her tripping over what felt like a large root sticking up and catching her foot.
She didn't curse, aloud at least, but did inflict the offending object with such a scathing glare it might easily have shrunk away to die a miserable death...which it actually seemed to be doing!
Hope looked closer, Luna's light telling an unsettling scene.
It was *not* a root or any kind of natural debris which had tripped her, but what by all rights was a human arm. An arm which had been cleft just below the shoulder, and quite cleanly from the looks of it. But that wasn't what proved so unsettling to Hope, as she expected to find such sights near a bacchae den.
It was the fact this arm was literally *pulling* itself across the grass, one handful at a time.
For the first time in centuries, Hope felt bile rise in her throat.
That was when she heard the low sounds which clung to the marker stones and drifted over the patches of wild grass and brambles. Sounds she might have mistaken for nightsong, save that these were not the melodies of crickets nor the call of owls.
Moans, some of despair, most of pain.
Human moans.
Leaving the still-crawling arm to itself, Hope rose to her feet and moved in the direction of these voices. She steeled herself for sights of horror only the insane fantasies of her sire's imagination.
She was not disappointed...and a thousand times more shocked than if she found the yard empty.
There were bodies in abundance. Well, body *parts* actually: arms, legs, trunks and torsos, hands, feet...heads...and bits and pieces thereof. Many of these flopping about like trout taken from the water, or were crawling-dragging themselves without clear direction. The trunks and torsos, only a few of which still had their heads, rolled and lolled in empty gesticulations of desperation and despair. The severed heads lay scattered on the ground, all giving incoherent noises which had drawn Hope to them.
Hope herself was unmoved by their collective plight. These were bacchae, one and all, and each in the service of the Circle. Little better than the maggots sure to feast on *them* soon. Still, she considered, going by the odor of fresh-spilt bacchae ichor and the relative proximity of the more mobile arms and hands, this little massacre had been finished only moments ago. The air was still reasonably fresh, their stink not yet having had time to pollute it.
There was no question as to *who* was responsible for all this, and therein lie Hope's desperate gamble. *She* would not have left these wretches alive unless one or another of them had told her where to find her *true* goal.
The problem this presented to Hope was exactly *who* would she herself ask? From the look of it, every head was either catatonic with shock or incoherent with the horror of what had befallen him or her. No surprise there. Xena, after all, could be every inch the avenging demon when it suited her. Hope had seen it once, only once, and it had left her shaken as not even DahokÕs true visage had.
She had no time to search. Hope stood tall and all but shouted out to the assembled bacchae "WHERE ARE THEY?"
The only answer was the moaning becoming a little louder. One voice did call out to her; not by name, but by a shrill peal of laughter.
Hope sought out and quickly found the laughing head, one which had been cut along a perfectly horizontal angle, thereby leaving its voicebox intact. Others had not been so fortunate. It wasn't a terribly hansome visage, so lean and thin, every smile seemingly a dozen times wider than should be allowed. She held it by its greasy hair, so not to risk disturbing its ability to talk, not that it should have been making as much noise as it was in the first place. But then, bacchae weren't governed by the same laws of physiology as mortals.
"Where?" Hope asked again, her teeth baring with sufficient menace, (you'll pardon the expression) she hoped, to penetrate its lunacy.
More laughter, now accompanied by rolling eyes, was her only answer. Had she misinterpreted this one's response? She had no time for mistakes like this!
Then Hope noticed something. The head's eyes rolled not wildly, not randomly, but between two points. The first was at Hope herself, both eyes meeting her's without flinching. Whether this was courage or simply insanity, Hope could not tell.
The second place it constantly looked towards was an area of ground just behind it.
Hope drew the head closer to her, their noses almost touching. "If you're lying to me," she promised in a low voice, "you will spend all eternity in worse shape than this."
That said, she unceremoniously tossed the now-shrill head over her shoulder and set off.
Desperation and zeal caused her to lose all restraint and forget all caution. It was eleven-seventeen, and time was her greatest enemy now. It might well already be too late to prevent the Circle's designs from reaching fruition. Were that the case, Hope had no intention of living to see morning.
Her research, which had taken her from Gabrielle's side for those critical minutes, had driven home the reasoning behind their choosing All Soul's Night for to work their twisted magicks. There was an obscure conjunction of stars about a distant nebula, said conjunction being cleft in two by a comet between quarter after eleven and five past midnight this night. Contrary to the claims of the rational, the stars exercised great influence upon the affairs of the living, though not in ways easily described or readily comprehended. Just as the simple and implacable force of gravity of such distant bodies prove enough to command the tides of the seas, and so do less measurable forces command the rest of all things in existence.
Their assault was not so much a physical one as it was spiritual, their weapon of choice being the amalgam of old folk wisdom and human corruption. A bit of Celtic wisdom, a rite performed only between Samhain and All Soul's and involving the careful mixture of sacrificial blood and the fluids of the living, by which the soul would be released from its shackles of flesh and bone without the trial of the body's death. This ritual gave opportunity for more developed souls to take up immediate residence amongst the living, and as such was a rare event. Unlike many of their successors, the Celts had great respect for the unseen world, this respect keeping them from daring too greatly in their dealings with it.
This rite was taken and twisted to the designs of particularly corrupt Inquisitor, his name forever stricken from any list or record kept by his Church. Many a virgin boy was ruined by his experiments with the knowledge he'd torn from his early victims. He enjoyed no success in altering the mixtures he used, favoring a pinch of one fluid over the other, and so was never reunited with his deceased lover.
Those more attuned to the consequences of his recklessness saw each of those boys torn from their earthly bodies, and yet remained shackled to the mortal plane for the remainder of eternity. They could not transcend to whatever lay beyond, nor could they ever again inhabit a corporeal body, whether newborn or vacant. These wretches were ghosts in the purest form, their fate feared by all. Such a damnation was beyond even the scope of her own sire, Dahok.
This was the Circle's plans then: to not simply destroy Gabrielle's body, but to remove her from reach forever more. On this night, when the veil between worlds was weak, all the moreso thanks to that convenient conjunction of stars likewise weakened by that bloody convenient comet, such a spell would prove a hundred times as potent as it normally might.
This is why Hope ran as though possessed by Mercury himself, cursing herself all the way. Oh, she now knew exactly *why* the Circle had sent its minions months ago to steal a dozen old tomes and scrolls, ones Malachai had sworn to her were not worth the energy they'd expended in the effort. Her own research, done first out of vague curiosity, had dropped hints of their designs.
Hope cursed herself for her lack of foresight, for underestimating the enemy...for not getting to where she needed to be fast enough, dammit!
She ran with utter abandon.
Which explains why she fell into the exhumed and open gravesite that lay directly in her path. This particular grave, however, proved deeper than the legal depth of six feet...deeper by several stories, judging by the length of time she fell.
Hope fell, and fell, and fell...until she landed without a shred of dignity on her rump. This did nothing to improve her disposition. Her dagger was still in hand, its bronzed length suddenly alight with her well-stoked rage. This cast a clear glow which revealed all of her new surroundings. The grave emptied, it seemed into a small cavern well below the surface, one just large enough for her to stand up in and move about, though without much clearance in any direction.
Particularly interesting was the open mouth of a tunnel leading downwards immediately in front of her. It was low and would doubtlessly be a tight fit to squeeze through. For all she knew the damned thing had been dug out by Circle-spawned rats, such monsters generally the size of adult Saint Bernards. There was a dim form crouching beside the tunnel. Hope swung the dagger into a ready stance, only to have her shoulders drop in mild disappointment. It was a (barely) intact husk which stood sentry here, its demise clearly recent, given the way its wounds still oozed thick trickles of ichor.
Not willing to waste time wondering about the blatantly obvious, Hope herself crouched down and crawled into the tunnel, the dagger leading her descent.
It actually proved easier crawling than she expected, the shaft's surfaces smoothed from use yet remaining firm and solid. The gentle incline helping her journey along. Indeed, before she knew it, Hope had the opposite end in sight.
Caution now openly warred with desperation, Hope no longer sure how much time she had before midnight...if she even had time at all. To simply charge in might well be suicide, yet to attempt stealth at this late date could only waste desperately needed time. This stopped her just short of the opening, her muscles rigid with tension and mind utterly distracted.
Consequently, she was too surprised to even cry out when inhumanly strong hands closed about her mouth and grasped her shirt's collar. The former applied a crushing grip to her jaw, silencing any protest, while the latter pulling her through the opening as though she were nothing more than a child's rag doll.
Those same hands drove her so hard into the stone floor, Hope felt consciousness slip away, her vision filled with shadows which fell upon her one and all.