Second Time is a Charm

With her father so ill, Khaat was taking to trying to stay in hiding. She had taken Belby and had left her house at 3 am, gone into her office at the Ministry, gotten a large messenger bag full of paperwork and had repeated it at the hospital. She was working from her father's side.  Or as close as she could be to him, rather.

It was exceptionally cold tonight. Marcus had gotten out her warmer cloak. It just brushed the ground, and the hood covered her face. It was quiet this time of night. The drunks had all gone home, and the morning crowd hadn't come out yet. A cold, steady rain started.

She shivered in the unexpected cold, the rain making it feel bitterly cold to her. She pulled her cloak around her. She was having trouble balancing her bag, her wand and pulling the cloak closer about her.  She saw Marcus had his wand in his hand, so she saw no reason for carrying the wand as well. She sheathed it in her cloak.  Marcus was gentlemanly enough to take her messenger bag from her and shoulder it on his own shoulder for her.  

"Lizzie is in this time of the morning," he said. "Why don't we go in for a cup of her spiced cider before we go home? Or some of that special cocoa you've been telling me about? It would help you sleep when you get home."

"Good idea," she said. "We'll have to go in the kitchen door because its not open yet."

"That's fine by me," Marcus said. "Its only a few steps further."  He left his wand drawn as they made the turn to go down the small narrow walkway, to the back of the bistro to go in the kitchen door.

A quarter til five in the morning, and nothing to show for it. James was hungry, and so was his pack. The sudden cold snap had driven their prey indoors around their fires, and now the stomachs of those who followed him growled. And so did they.

James had sent them off, told them to break into the butchers and eat their fill. They'd left him nearly 90 minutes ago. James, on the other hand, was on the prowl for better fare.

He had seen the chef for the bistro go in to make morning pastries. James had had full intention of following her into the kitchen and then was sharply interrupted by voices. He hid in the darkness of the alley and waited, watching.

He saw the two humans coming into the back alley, also hunting the back entrance of the bistro. He saw the blond woman, and that damned stone around her neck starting to glow green. He wanted the stone. He wanted to discover the secrets of its power. She was relatively alone. The one man with her didn't appear to be all that much. He grinned. It was the first he had seen her so ill prepared to meet the world since he'd caught her with the child in the bookstore. This would be childsplay.

From his position in the pitch blackness, he raised his wand and fired at the man. With him gone, she would be easy pickings.

Marcus hadn't seen it coming--the wandfire that blasted into his upper arm.  Blood spurted all over the brick beside him, the pain not registering until a moment later. He hadn't expected an ambush, but it didn't mean he couldn't meet the challenge.

Beside him, he saw Khaat jump, startled, frightened.  Marcus aimed his wand into the direction of the wandfire.

"Get behind me," he ordered, stepping in front of her and using his wounded arm to wrap around behind him to shield her.  He fired into the darkness. "Your wand," he ordered her. "Shoot to kill," he told her calmly. And why not? Their assassin was. Marcus intended to meet fire with fire.

James stepped out of the darkness, grinning.  He liked the fear in her eyes. He wasn't crazy about the green glow of the stone. It hurt his eyes, and the more he intended to threaten her, the more aggravated the stone seemed to get. It started to sound a tone. One that was particularly annoying to his not-so-human ears. And he knew, from experience, that the closer he got to her, he more annoying that damned thing would become.

"Do you know what I want?" he asked, enjoying a bit of play before dinner.  The blond humans weren't apparently in the mood to play.  Neither of them spoke at all.  

"I'm hungry.  I like meat, you know. And I prefer it raw," he said to the bodyguard.  "Hand her over, and I'll let you live.  Play a little longer, and I'll have you too."

Marcus wasn't in the mood, and he knew that James had no intentions of letting either of them leave alive. He fired a killing curse in Blood's direction. He saw it skim by Blood, missing him, and then he heard the deep, baritone laughter with its odd criminal overtones.

"Your portkey," he told Khaat softly. "Use it. Get out of here. I'll buy you some time." He knew she wouldn't go, but he had to try. If she left, he would only need to take care of himself, but he knew she had no intent whatsoever of leaving him. He felt her clutch onto the back of his jacket. Well, at least he would know where she was that way. She was well shielded by his own body, and that was the way he wanted it.

"What do you want, James?" her voice asked from behind Marcus. Marcus heard her attempt to be brave in the face of a man who was so much larger than she was.

"Do you have any idea what a mess you've made out of things?" James said, aggravated with her stupidity, hers and her family's, and the rest of the humans who adhered to those sorts of beliefs.

"You and that stupid legend you've blinded everyone to. Its all propaganda. Lies. And for decades I've paid the price for your kind wanting me to feel less for being not human--superhuman.  

"What do I want?" he asked incredulously. "I want you to be put in your places.  You are not the highest creature on the food chain." He paused to grin at them, intending to intimidate. "I am."

"What I want," he said. "is for you and your legendary family to die. And any one of your kind that won't elevate themselves to a higher form of life. Make it easy, or make it hard. Your choice.  But I intend you to die." He leaped at them, using pure brute strength to grab the bodyguard with all intent of killing him instantly.

Khaat saw James grab Marcus, and Marcus was ripped from her grasp. James slammed him into the brick wall of the alley, knocking the wind out of Marcus. Marcus fell limp, momentarily.

Her heart felt like it was in her throat. She thought Marcus was dead. She didn't want him to be dead. Her mind rebelled against that and seemed to freeze for a moment.

She was staring at him when she felt James clutch her with both his hands...claws...paws...whatever they were. She felt pain, saw blood spattering in front of her eyes. Time was stopping. The stone was screaming now, shining a blinding green light. And as her mind started to fade, she thought she heard a multitude of voices.

One sounded strangely like Remus. Fight! You need to fight! the voice was saying.

"Give me that damned stone!" James seemed to be bellowing, and she wasn't sure whether it was anger or pain she was hearing.

"Your patronus!" a third voice was urgently shouting to her. "Fire your patronus!"

She didn't know if she had the power left to even fire a wand, but she did her best. She pointed her wand skyward and fired.

"Expecto Patronum!" A bright white beam jetted from her wand, and a patronus of an eagle lit up the pre-dawn skies over Diagon Alley, a clear distress signal for anyone who knew it. At the same time, she thought she heard something that sounded a great deal like her father's emergency distress signal for the Ministry aurors. But she knew that was impossible. He wasn't here.

Jack was in Weasley's, because she was exhausted and she could not be in her house any more for the night. This stupid marriage law had her all twisted up in knots, and being able to get out the the store and play with explosive fireworks was a wonderful release for the tense Quidditch player. She had finished tinkering and was now wandering the shop, playing with the merchandise as she recalled her youthful days full of pranking and mischief. How innocent Trouble had seemed then...

A sparkle of silver caught her eye and she looked up to see a Patronus darting down the street. Jack immediately caught up her wand and hurried to the door, peeking down the street where she saw three figures, one collapsed. Jack squinted and could make out the shape of Khaat Lupin and, above her, a werewolf by the name of James Blood. Jack knew the werewolf communities, as she had spent excessive amounts of time attempting to bridge the gap between humans and werewolves. Some had been incredibly willing. But there were always those who just wanted to feast.

Jack crouched and silently took off running towards James. He was faced away from her, giving her the advantage As she approached, she held out her wand and pointed it at the ground beneath his feet, silently casting Bombarda!

James had pinned the Lupin woman. He had managed it by crushing her left shoulder and holding the shoulder fast by his claws, and he had been attempting to rip the green stone pendant from around her throat with the claws on his other hand.

The pendant's chain refused to break. Impossible, James thought.  He honed his claws as close to razor blades as he could get them.

He was busy concentrating on his work, while watching the bodyguard out of his peripheral vision. The man was trying to regain himself.

And then there was an explosion. It collapsed the ground beneath his feet. He fell into the underground, letting go of the woman. One of his claws snagged on her cloak, and it started to pull her into the underground with him, and if he were lucky, he'd manage to take her along.

"No!" Belby reacted, stretching and reaching. He caught the end of her cloak as she fell and grasped it for all he was worth. He felt her weight pull against the wool, feeling it like dead weight on his good arm. She felt like she must be limp.  Perhaps unconscious or nearly so.

"Khaat!" He called urgently. "Hold on! Stay with me! I've got you!"

But he wasn't letting that beast have her.  No matter what.  As he pulled, trying to pull her out, he was starting to worry that perhaps she was hanging by her neck and hanging herself, or that the clasp on her cloak would fail, either one of which was a distinct possibility from what little he could see. Or that the beast in the pit would grab her again.   And he was hoping he could somehow manage to get her, with one hand--before any of the ugly scenarios in his head could play out.

And from the pit, for the moment, he heard nothing.