Raveled Threads
Behind him, the city blazed. Squat green demons thronged him, gurgling their strange, strangled cries as they circled him.
He grinned. When the first leapt at him, Connor sliced it cleanly in half. The others poured down on him – a cartilaginous
wave with fangs, but the Scythe cleaved and swept and pureed them and Connor scarcely had to react until –
One sank its pink fangs into the meat of Connor’s left thigh.
At first he felt nothing, but then the wound burned and froze like a hundred tiny shards of dry ice embedded in his skin.
Connor gnashed his teeth against the sensation and clocked the wretched frog between its protuberant eyes. The beast
spread its mouth in a slack-jawed grin before it oozed to the rooftop. Connor squished it with his booted foot, but
staggered backward under the weight of the pain.
Seventeen frogs pressed the gap, ready to charge him. Connor dropped to his right knee and brought the Scythe up. Behind
him, his father whispered, “Get up. Don’t let them take you.”
“I won’t,” Connor gritted out.
The demons thought collectively. They sailed to Connor’s left, their slimy bodies glistening green in the baleful light of the
fires. He parried the first out of the air, but noted with mild horror that it spread its arms and legs like flying squirrels to
glide unharmed out of sight.
Everything slowed. The remaining demons flew at him. He brought the Scythe back in a broad arc – too slow. Three grappled
him: head, torso, right shoulder. Three more wrapped around his legs. Two were preparing to bite, and the one on his head
wasn’t writing Christmas cards.
Desperate now, Connor began to flail. The bite on his leg turned icy and the cold was spreading which could only mean…
“Poison,” Connor said.
“We’ve had worse, Connor,” Angel said. “Kill the bastards and get on with it. We have work to do.”
Connor stood again, pulling the writhing demons with him. Beyond them, a ring of filthy Shedim stood, bouncing in unison on
the balls of their feet like a grotesque performance troop waiting to take the stage. They weren’t attacking, but Connor
kept their positions in his mind. Gripping the Scythe in both hands, he spun in a blinding arc, splattering the frog demons like
gunk-filled piñatas. He raised the Scythe over his head, preparing to hilt-slam the next demon when he encountered
resistance.
He looked up, thinking perhaps he’d lodged the blade in the concrete cornice of the adjacent building, and found instead a
pair of hands, slim-yet-muscular arms, and the unhappy upside-down countenance of Faith. She hung suspended with her
feet crossed over the railing of the balcony overhead.
“Hey,” she said, “This is mine.”
Connor sneered. He pulled down on the haft with all of his waning strength, hauling her and the blade toward him.
She’d anticipated this move, however, and turned midair, landing nimbly, squashing four of the frog demons and booting
another over the roof’s edge, just for the hell of it. But never did she loosen her grip on the Scythe’s haft.
“It’s time to go home, Connor,” she snarled.
Behind him, his father said, “We have no home. Demons destroyed it.”
Connor said, “Demons destroyed it.”
“We have to kill them,” Angel said.
“Kill them,” Connor repeated. “Kill them all.”
Bracing herself, Faith heaved the Scythe in a wide semi-circle. Connor held firm, following the inertia until he collided with
the Plexiglass windows of the office building. Cracks fanned around him like fissures in an ice pond, but he held onto the
weapon. Faith brought her boot to his throat, pinning him against the wall.
“You’re the Destroyer,” Faith said. “That’s what they called you.”
“That’s what you are,” Angel said into Connor’s ear. “They made you.”
“They made me,” Connor said. Faith pressed her boot under his chin. Behind her, the frog demons inched closer, mucus
dripping from their fangs. One leapt in. She sent it flying with an elbow to its face.
“Not they,” Faith said. “It. The Glass.”
“Kill her,” Angel said plainly.
Connor hesitated. “Dad?”
“Dad…” Faith said, and for a split-second her guard fell.
Connor wrenched the Scythe and twisted. Faith’s balance wavered; Connor dived. She held the Scythe and fell backward
with him. Together they sprung back up, stalemated again, but this time surrounded by six grinning Shedim.
Faith let out an irritated breath. “Fuck.”
And she released the Scythe.
“Millennia ago,” Thellian said. “Luxe first took human form. It is a gift all Kimaris have; makes them ideal predators. Among
them, Luxe became legendary because though he could wear a human’s visage, he bore them no kindness, no… humanity.”
“What does this have to do with Maya?” Xander snapped. He was at the bar, rolling an orange between his hands on the
Formica surface.
Willow, who had taken up position behind Thellian, shut Xander down with an arch look. Thellian appreciated that connection
between Xander and Willow. He knew he could count on it to keep them both in check.
Thellian nodded once, then continued. “During his tenure at Wolfram & Hart, Luxe came upon many objects of power, which
he used to bring creatures under his control.”
Maya cocked her head, color rising in her cheeks, as if mentally preparing her self-defense. Thellian suppressed a grin as he
followed the girl’s thoughts.
“Around two hundred years ago, Luxe formed an attachment to a human female, a Romanian called Frieda Dieschel,” Thellian
said. “Luxe gave Frieda a gift, an item of true primal force, which he had stolen from King Ludwig II, the Dream King of
Bavaria, a vampire. This artifact came from the time before mankind – a relic of the Demon Age called The Dragon’s Eye.”
Thellian observed Maya closely, but she had recovered herself now, perhaps counting herself off the hook with the mention
of this other woman. He sat forward in his chair, steepling his hands in front of him.
“But Luxe is not a creature who freely gives anything to anyone. Even then, he had a plan, though I doubt even he might
have guessed how it would play out,” Thellian said. “He planted a seed; that is all.”
Directly across from Thellian, Rupert spoke for the first time since they adjourned to the kitchen. He said, “This Dieschel
woman, what became of her?”
Thellian studied Rupert and Rachel for a half-second before answering. “She bore a child,” Thellian said. As he’d predicted,
Rachel’s body angled instinctively toward Rupert’s. Humans, Thellian thought with delight, more readable than a New York
Times Best Seller.
Xander tossed the orange backward and forward between his palms in agitation. “Thus that child bore a child, and that one,
too. Big circle of life; we get it. Your point?”
Nonplussed, Thellian continued. “Frieda Dieschel passed this artifact to her daughter, who in turn passed it to her
daughter, who passed it to her son.”
Thellian turned in his chair to tip a meaningful look at Willow, indicating that she could deliver the tale’s conclusion.
Willow said, “Her son gave the Glass to Maya.”
His moment of surprise ended when Faith gripped the nearest Shedim by the shirtfront with both hands and lifted him over
her head. She tossed it like a sandbag at the other five, which drove them back a few feet before they surged forward
again.
“We have to get off this roof!” she shouted. “We’re swarmed!” She kicked at a group of frogs, who veered shy of her boot
and hissed.
Connor stared at the weapon in his hands as if seeing it for the first time. He took in the tense form of Faith, her body
crouched low, ready to defend; sweat beaded and ran down the back of her neck and her arms, where he saw a twisted scar
still stitched with coarse black thread. A strand of conversation wound through his mind, beyond his reach. He remembered
watching the needle as she drew stitch after stitch…
“You’re lucky you didn’t lose that arm,” Connor mumbled.
Faith hazarded a glance over her shoulder at him. The Shedim had recovered and they, along with uncountable frogs, were
hemming them in.
“Please,” she said. “I have had so much worse. Like we’ll have soon, if you don’t use that Scythe.”
“Kill her,” Angel bit out. “She’s in the way.”
Connor raised the Scythe like an axe over his head. “You’re lucky is all,” he said.
Maya blanched. “Freddy,” she said, the truth dawning on her. “The Glass. But I…”
Xander jumped up from his barstool. “You bastard,” he said, wielding the orange like a grenade. “You must feel so high and
mighty, implicating her? You know she had no idea…”
Willow moved from her place behind Thellian to stand in Xander’s line of fire. “Of course she didn’t know,” she said, in her
peacemaking tone. “Xander, we’re not going all Salem Witch Trial.”
“We? Like you plus him equals we?” Xander said. “Willow, don’t you know what this thing is?”
Willow’s fingers went to the silver pentacle she wore at her throat, the one Thellian had given her in Japan. “Of course I do,
Xander,” she said, her lips all pouty like they had been since Sunnydale Elementary. “Just as I know what I am, and what you
are.”
Xander squeezed the orange so hard it left indentations in its dimpled skin and his wrist began to quake. But Maya appeared
behind him.
“The Glass,” she said, quietly addressing Thellian. “You said it’s an object of great power. How great?”
Thellian got up from his chair and stepped toward Xander. As the vampire expected, Xander retreated to stand shoulder to
shoulder with Maya.
“It has a will of its own,” Thellian said. “It seeks the greatest source of power, and attempts to exploit and deceive by
showing you what you most desire,” Thellian explained. “Before Freddy met Maya, he was that power. You entered the
picture, and the Glass sought you. After that…”
Maya lowered her eyes and uttered a bitter laugh. “I brought the Glass here,” she said.
Rupert shuddered. “Where you handed it to the most powerful creature it had ever encountered,” he said.
Xander looked at Willow, who pressed her lips together and shook her head. He was confused, and took a wild guess.
“Connor?”
Thellian nodded appreciatively, and Xander felt an involuntary spring of pride, like a student who had finally won his
professor’s approval.
“Connor,” Thellian affirmed. He ran a cool hand along Willow’s shoulder and down her arm. “Willow has great power, but it is
bridled,” he explained. “She controls it. Connor lacks such discipline. The Glass has overtaken him completely. He is an
instrument of pure instinct and destruction. Luxe knows this. He will use it to his advantage. Connor must be destroyed, or
Luxe will use him to destroy us all.”
Connor gripped the Scythe so hard his knuckles whitened. The ragged bite above his knee thrummed with dull fire. The frogs
were getting ready to spring, and the Shedim crept closer and closer, their filmy eyes full of voracity.
“Do it, Connor,” Angel said. “Get it done. Now.”
Connor closed his eyes. He felt his heartbeat in his throat. “I can’t.”
“We can,” Faith said. “The fire escape – it’s right over there. We’ll cut a path.”
“Cut a path,” Angel said. “Clear the way. You have to clear the way.”
Connor opened his eyes again. “Clear the way for what?” he asked.
“Don’t do that,” Faith answered. “Don’t give up. We have to get home.”
Connor clenched his teeth. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. “Home,” he whispered.
“Destroyed,” Angel hissed.
“NO!” Connor brought the Scythe down.
He cleaved the first Shedim collar bone to pelvis, and had to kick its body free of the blade as he brought the pointy end of
the Scythe to meet the next Shedim between its eyes. Frogs pelted them with a full assault, but he found that if he kept
moving, he could shake them free before they could bite.
Faith was right behind him. She snapped the neck of a Shedim, but it continued to attack, unfazed by the fact that its head
was on sideways. It managed to lock her arm when a dozen frogs scaled her legs and back. Connor wheeled, chopping the
Shedim’s arm at its elbow, which gave Faith the chance to pound the frogs to pulp.
Connor reached back and grabbed her wrist. Together they made a break for the fire escape. The frogs sent up a chirring
yowl of excitement that seemed to pierce Connor’s skull like an ice pick. His leg had gone stiff as a stilt, and he realized that
he was slowing her down. Every other second, they threw off two or three frog demons, and more than twice he felt the tug
of one of them coming too damn close to landing another bite.
At last they slammed into the low ledge of the roof’s edge.
“Here,” Faith yelled. “Gimme that!”
She swiped the Scythe from him, easily this time, and shoved him over onto the fire escape platform. Connor landed wrong,
being wholly unprepared, and his leg bloomed with excruciating fire. As he struggled clumsily to right himself, he heard a
series of thwacking sounds, followed by the wailing song of the Scythe as it whirled through the air. Another heartbeat
later, Faith was beside him, and then she was dragging him down the dizzying spiral of the fire escape.
Connor was fading, and he knew it. The poison climbed with every breath and heartbeat. By the time they reached the
lowest level and dropped to the street, with him falling in a crumpled heap in a patch of oily ice, he was barely conscious.
Faith lifted him by his shoulders and pressed him against the wall. She clutched the Scythe in her hand, and its scimitar blade
lay against the brick close to his head, reflecting his blue eyes back to him.
“My Dad’s eyes,” Connor recalled. A weak cough wracked his chest. He could taste the sour sweetness of poison in the back
of his throat. “They’re… brown. Not green.”
“Don’t do this,” she said, shaking him. “Damn you, don’t do this!”
Connor looked down into her stern face, her beautiful dark eyes like twin pools of midnight. “It’s done,” he said.
She pressed her body against him, burying her head against his shoulder. He brought his left arm around her in a loose
embrace. He raised his eyes to the low gray clouds and beheld a glittering of snowflakes spiraling toward them.
“This is real,” he said. “I’m home.”
He let his eyes flutter closed.
Against him, Faith’s body shuddered, flooded with grief and rage and she twisted her hands into the fabric of his coat. And
then she kissed him, hard and without quarter, and swung him over her shoulder. “You’re not home, yet,” she said.
Behind him, the city blazed. Squat green demons thronged him, gurgling their strange, strangled cries as they circled him.
He grinned. When the first leapt at him, Connor sliced it cleanly in half. The others poured down on him – a cartilaginous
wave with fangs, but the Scythe cleaved and swept and pureed them and Connor scarcely had to react until –
One sank its pink fangs into the meat of Connor’s left thigh.
At first he felt nothing, but then the wound burned and froze like a hundred tiny shards of dry ice embedded in his skin.
Connor gnashed his teeth against the sensation and clocked the wretched frog between its protuberant eyes. The beast
spread its mouth in a slack-jawed grin before it oozed to the rooftop. Connor squished it with his booted foot, but
staggered backward under the weight of the pain.
Seventeen frogs pressed the gap, ready to charge him. Connor dropped to his right knee and brought the Scythe up. Behind
him, his father whispered, “Get up. Don’t let them take you.”
“I won’t,” Connor gritted out.
The demons thought collectively. They sailed to Connor’s left, their slimy bodies glistening green in the baleful light of the
fires. He parried the first out of the air, but noted with mild horror that it spread its arms and legs like flying squirrels to
glide unharmed out of sight.
Everything slowed. The remaining demons flew at him. He brought the Scythe back in a broad arc – too slow. Three grappled
him: head, torso, right shoulder. Three more wrapped around his legs. Two were preparing to bite, and the one on his head
wasn’t writing Christmas cards.
Desperate now, Connor began to flail. The bite on his leg turned icy and the cold was spreading which could only mean…
“Poison,” Connor said.
“We’ve had worse, Connor,” Angel said. “Kill the bastards and get on with it. We have work to do.”
Connor stood again, pulling the writhing demons with him. Beyond them, a ring of filthy Shedim stood, bouncing in unison on
the balls of their feet like a grotesque performance troop waiting to take the stage. They weren’t attacking, but Connor
kept their positions in his mind. Gripping the Scythe in both hands, he spun in a blinding arc, splattering the frog demons like
gunk-filled piñatas. He raised the Scythe over his head, preparing to hilt-slam the next demon when he encountered
resistance.
He looked up, thinking perhaps he’d lodged the blade in the concrete cornice of the adjacent building, and found instead a
pair of hands, slim-yet-muscular arms, and the unhappy upside-down countenance of Faith. She hung suspended with her
feet crossed over the railing of the balcony overhead.
“Hey,” she said, “This is mine.”
Connor sneered. He pulled down on the haft with all of his waning strength, hauling her and the blade toward him.
She’d anticipated this move, however, and turned midair, landing nimbly, squashing four of the frog demons and booting
another over the roof’s edge, just for the hell of it. But never did she loosen her grip on the Scythe’s haft.
“It’s time to go home, Connor,” she snarled.
Behind him, his father said, “We have no home. Demons destroyed it.”
Connor said, “Demons destroyed it.”
“We have to kill them,” Angel said.
“Kill them,” Connor repeated. “Kill them all.”
Bracing herself, Faith heaved the Scythe in a wide semi-circle. Connor held firm, following the inertia until he collided with
the Plexiglass windows of the office building. Cracks fanned around him like fissures in an ice pond, but he held onto the
weapon. Faith brought her boot to his throat, pinning him against the wall.
“You’re the Destroyer,” Faith said. “That’s what they called you.”
“That’s what you are,” Angel said into Connor’s ear. “They made you.”
“They made me,” Connor said. Faith pressed her boot under his chin. Behind her, the frog demons inched closer, mucus
dripping from their fangs. One leapt in. She sent it flying with an elbow to its face.
“Not they,” Faith said. “It. The Glass.”
“Kill her,” Angel said plainly.
Connor hesitated. “Dad?”
“Dad…” Faith said, and for a split-second her guard fell.
Connor wrenched the Scythe and twisted. Faith’s balance wavered; Connor dived. She held the Scythe and fell backward
with him. Together they sprung back up, stalemated again, but this time surrounded by six grinning Shedim.
Faith let out an irritated breath. “Fuck.”
And she released the Scythe.
“Millennia ago,” Thellian said. “Luxe first took human form. It is a gift all Kimaris have; makes them ideal predators. Among
them, Luxe became legendary because though he could wear a human’s visage, he bore them no kindness, no… humanity.”
“What does this have to do with Maya?” Xander snapped. He was at the bar, rolling an orange between his hands on the
Formica surface.
Willow, who had taken up position behind Thellian, shut Xander down with an arch look. Thellian appreciated that connection
between Xander and Willow. He knew he could count on it to keep them both in check.
Thellian nodded once, then continued. “During his tenure at Wolfram & Hart, Luxe came upon many objects of power, which
he used to bring creatures under his control.”
Maya cocked her head, color rising in her cheeks, as if mentally preparing her self-defense. Thellian suppressed a grin as he
followed the girl’s thoughts.
“Around two hundred years ago, Luxe formed an attachment to a human female, a Romanian called Frieda Dieschel,” Thellian
said. “Luxe gave Frieda a gift, an item of true primal force, which he had stolen from King Ludwig II, the Dream King of
Bavaria, a vampire. This artifact came from the time before mankind – a relic of the Demon Age called The Dragon’s Eye.”
Thellian observed Maya closely, but she had recovered herself now, perhaps counting herself off the hook with the mention
of this other woman. He sat forward in his chair, steepling his hands in front of him.
“But Luxe is not a creature who freely gives anything to anyone. Even then, he had a plan, though I doubt even he might
have guessed how it would play out,” Thellian said. “He planted a seed; that is all.”
Directly across from Thellian, Rupert spoke for the first time since they adjourned to the kitchen. He said, “This Dieschel
woman, what became of her?”
Thellian studied Rupert and Rachel for a half-second before answering. “She bore a child,” Thellian said. As he’d predicted,
Rachel’s body angled instinctively toward Rupert’s. Humans, Thellian thought with delight, more readable than a New York
Times Best Seller.
Xander tossed the orange backward and forward between his palms in agitation. “Thus that child bore a child, and that one,
too. Big circle of life; we get it. Your point?”
Nonplussed, Thellian continued. “Frieda Dieschel passed this artifact to her daughter, who in turn passed it to her
daughter, who passed it to her son.”
Thellian turned in his chair to tip a meaningful look at Willow, indicating that she could deliver the tale’s conclusion.
Willow said, “Her son gave the Glass to Maya.”
His moment of surprise ended when Faith gripped the nearest Shedim by the shirtfront with both hands and lifted him over
her head. She tossed it like a sandbag at the other five, which drove them back a few feet before they surged forward
again.
“We have to get off this roof!” she shouted. “We’re swarmed!” She kicked at a group of frogs, who veered shy of her boot
and hissed.
Connor stared at the weapon in his hands as if seeing it for the first time. He took in the tense form of Faith, her body
crouched low, ready to defend; sweat beaded and ran down the back of her neck and her arms, where he saw a twisted scar
still stitched with coarse black thread. A strand of conversation wound through his mind, beyond his reach. He remembered
watching the needle as she drew stitch after stitch…
“You’re lucky you didn’t lose that arm,” Connor mumbled.
Faith hazarded a glance over her shoulder at him. The Shedim had recovered and they, along with uncountable frogs, were
hemming them in.
“Please,” she said. “I have had so much worse. Like we’ll have soon, if you don’t use that Scythe.”
“Kill her,” Angel bit out. “She’s in the way.”
Connor raised the Scythe like an axe over his head. “You’re lucky is all,” he said.
Maya blanched. “Freddy,” she said, the truth dawning on her. “The Glass. But I…”
Xander jumped up from his barstool. “You bastard,” he said, wielding the orange like a grenade. “You must feel so high and
mighty, implicating her? You know she had no idea…”
Willow moved from her place behind Thellian to stand in Xander’s line of fire. “Of course she didn’t know,” she said, in her
peacemaking tone. “Xander, we’re not going all Salem Witch Trial.”
“We? Like you plus him equals we?” Xander said. “Willow, don’t you know what this thing is?”
Willow’s fingers went to the silver pentacle she wore at her throat, the one Thellian had given her in Japan. “Of course I do,
Xander,” she said, her lips all pouty like they had been since Sunnydale Elementary. “Just as I know what I am, and what you
are.”
Xander squeezed the orange so hard it left indentations in its dimpled skin and his wrist began to quake. But Maya appeared
behind him.
“The Glass,” she said, quietly addressing Thellian. “You said it’s an object of great power. How great?”
Thellian got up from his chair and stepped toward Xander. As the vampire expected, Xander retreated to stand shoulder to
shoulder with Maya.
“It has a will of its own,” Thellian said. “It seeks the greatest source of power, and attempts to exploit and deceive by
showing you what you most desire,” Thellian explained. “Before Freddy met Maya, he was that power. You entered the
picture, and the Glass sought you. After that…”
Maya lowered her eyes and uttered a bitter laugh. “I brought the Glass here,” she said.
Rupert shuddered. “Where you handed it to the most powerful creature it had ever encountered,” he said.
Xander looked at Willow, who pressed her lips together and shook her head. He was confused, and took a wild guess.
“Connor?”
Thellian nodded appreciatively, and Xander felt an involuntary spring of pride, like a student who had finally won his
professor’s approval.
“Connor,” Thellian affirmed. He ran a cool hand along Willow’s shoulder and down her arm. “Willow has great power, but it is
bridled,” he explained. “She controls it. Connor lacks such discipline. The Glass has overtaken him completely. He is an
instrument of pure instinct and destruction. Luxe knows this. He will use it to his advantage. Connor must be destroyed, or
Luxe will use him to destroy us all.”
Connor gripped the Scythe so hard his knuckles whitened. The ragged bite above his knee thrummed with dull fire. The frogs
were getting ready to spring, and the Shedim crept closer and closer, their filmy eyes full of voracity.
“Do it, Connor,” Angel said. “Get it done. Now.”
Connor closed his eyes. He felt his heartbeat in his throat. “I can’t.”
“We can,” Faith said. “The fire escape – it’s right over there. We’ll cut a path.”
“Cut a path,” Angel said. “Clear the way. You have to clear the way.”
Connor opened his eyes again. “Clear the way for what?” he asked.
“Don’t do that,” Faith answered. “Don’t give up. We have to get home.”
Connor clenched his teeth. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye. “Home,” he whispered.
“Destroyed,” Angel hissed.
“NO!” Connor brought the Scythe down.
He cleaved the first Shedim collar bone to pelvis, and had to kick its body free of the blade as he brought the pointy end of
the Scythe to meet the next Shedim between its eyes. Frogs pelted them with a full assault, but he found that if he kept
moving, he could shake them free before they could bite.
Faith was right behind him. She snapped the neck of a Shedim, but it continued to attack, unfazed by the fact that its head
was on sideways. It managed to lock her arm when a dozen frogs scaled her legs and back. Connor wheeled, chopping the
Shedim’s arm at its elbow, which gave Faith the chance to pound the frogs to pulp.
Connor reached back and grabbed her wrist. Together they made a break for the fire escape. The frogs sent up a chirring
yowl of excitement that seemed to pierce Connor’s skull like an ice pick. His leg had gone stiff as a stilt, and he realized that
he was slowing her down. Every other second, they threw off two or three frog demons, and more than twice he felt the tug
of one of them coming too damn close to landing another bite.
At last they slammed into the low ledge of the roof’s edge.
“Here,” Faith yelled. “Gimme that!”
She swiped the Scythe from him, easily this time, and shoved him over onto the fire escape platform. Connor landed wrong,
being wholly unprepared, and his leg bloomed with excruciating fire. As he struggled clumsily to right himself, he heard a
series of thwacking sounds, followed by the wailing song of the Scythe as it whirled through the air. Another heartbeat
later, Faith was beside him, and then she was dragging him down the dizzying spiral of the fire escape.
Connor was fading, and he knew it. The poison climbed with every breath and heartbeat. By the time they reached the
lowest level and dropped to the street, with him falling in a crumpled heap in a patch of oily ice, he was barely conscious.
Faith lifted him by his shoulders and pressed him against the wall. She clutched the Scythe in her hand, and its scimitar blade
lay against the brick close to his head, reflecting his blue eyes back to him.
“My Dad’s eyes,” Connor recalled. A weak cough wracked his chest. He could taste the sour sweetness of poison in the back
of his throat. “They’re… brown. Not green.”
“Don’t do this,” she said, shaking him. “Damn you, don’t do this!”
Connor looked down into her stern face, her beautiful dark eyes like twin pools of midnight. “It’s done,” he said.
She pressed her body against him, burying her head against his shoulder. He brought his left arm around her in a loose
embrace. He raised his eyes to the low gray clouds and beheld a glittering of snowflakes spiraling toward them.
“This is real,” he said. “I’m home.”
He let his eyes flutter closed.
Against him, Faith’s body shuddered, flooded with grief and rage and she twisted her hands into the fabric of his coat. And
then she kissed him, hard and without quarter, and swung him over her shoulder. “You’re not home, yet,” she said.
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
One look at love and you may see
It weaves a web over mystery,
All raveled threads can rend apart
For hope has a place in the lover's
heart.
Under the heavens we journey far,
On roads of life we're the wanderers,
So let love rise, so let love depart,
Let hope have a place in the lover's
heart.
Look to love and you may dream,
And if it should leave then give it
wings.
But if such a love is meant to be;
Hope is home, and the heart is free.
Hope Has A Place, Enya
It weaves a web over mystery,
All raveled threads can rend apart
For hope has a place in the lover's
heart.
Under the heavens we journey far,
On roads of life we're the wanderers,
So let love rise, so let love depart,
Let hope have a place in the lover's
heart.
Look to love and you may dream,
And if it should leave then give it
wings.
But if such a love is meant to be;
Hope is home, and the heart is free.
Hope Has A Place, Enya