Femme Fatale

By Willow Taylor

They were in the hills and skipping through snow banks below a dimming sky. For a while they were moving so fast that Asher couldn't get a deep enough breath to question their flight. At last they slowed down a touch, and Victor handed her a canteen.

"What's going on? Why are we headed this deep into the hills?"

"I ran into that problem we talked about."

"Problem?"

He turned gray eyes on her. "Yes. They're going to attack the village."

"Who? What village?" Asher asked confused.

"The slavers - they found Wintersong and Memorydancer's village somehow." He pushed through some underbrush and reached back to hand Asher through. "They're going to attack tomorrow morning."

"I thought you agreed this wasn't any of your business!"

Victor gave his lover an incredulous look. "Asher, I said I wouldn't look for trouble - this trouble found me!"

"Hence the mad dash across two mountains to get there," she said dryly. He smiled at her and gave her a kiss on the nose.

"Well, yeah. Look, I have to do this."

"Do you?" Asher asked forlornly from behind him.

"I can't just look the other way, Asher, this is important. These are people's lives we're talking about. I have to stop them."

"Yes it is." She sighed, snow crunching beneath their boots.

"Good. I'm glad to have you with me. I can handle a lot by myself, but with you, I think I can handle anything."

"Yeah. You probably could, Angel-luv."

Suddenly there was a sharp blow at the base of Angel's head, where the spine joined with the skull. The pain was staggering. A second blow, this one with a boot sent Victor into the snow.

"Asher - " he started to call out in warning, then rolled half onto his back, and found himself looking down the barrel of his own gun. Which was aimed by Asher very carefully at his forehead.

"What?" the dark haired drifter said, confused.

"I can't let you stop them Angel dear," she said, wind taking tendrils of her hair and blowing them about. "I've got too much tied up in this."

"Asher... what... what kind of hold do they have on you?"

"You just don't get it, do you Victor?" the woman said shaking her head, though the gun never wavered. "It's not the hold they have on me - it's the hold I have on them."

"No..." groaned Victor and tried to stand.

"Stay there, Angel," she said sweetly, "or I will shoot you."

"Ash... why?"

"Because I like money Victor, and this is a sure way to get a lot of it without that much work." She smiled at him, that little devilish turn of the lips that he loved so much. "You can help too, Victor, with your help we can do anything."

"No," Victor said, as his head swam with pain. He tried to block it out. "It's wrong, Asher."

"Victor please!" she said with urgency. "The times I've had with you are the best memories I've got."

"Asher, you aren't going to convince me. These are people we're talking about."

"No they aren't! People can't be bound with a silver chain!"

Victor shook his head, and almost threw up.

"They're people to themselves."

"They're animals, Victor! Pelts or Pets, they fetch a high price."

"Too bad you believe that," he said and managed to get himself onto his hands and knees.

"Don't move again, lover," Asher snapped. Then she shook her head sadly. "One last kiss Angel?"

"Go to hell Asher. Or better yet theater, they need people who can impersonate human beings."

"Angel-luv," she said, a touch of hurt in her eyes. "I thought you loved me."

"You know what?" Victor said, resting back a bit on his heels, but still not looking at her. "I thought the same thing." She frowned and bit her lip, glaring at him. Victor just remained half crouched in the snow.

"I'm sorry Victor," Asher said at last, gray eyes bright. "We could have had something special, if you'd just been a little less stubborn."

"Yeah," said Victor, looking up at her, and smiling faintly. "I'm sorry too." And a gun went off. A smaller gun, that Asher hadn't even known he'd owned, let alone where it had come from, went off. Pain blossomed and she choked falling backwards into the snow. A wave of crimson spread out from her body in an ever widening ring. Victor shakily got to his feet and touched a gloved hand to the back of his head. Then he pulled the glove off with his teeth, and touched it again. His fingers came away bloody. He looked down at Asher's body as he pulled the charcoal gray glove back on. Then he reclaimed his gun, headed out. Because even with Asher dead, he still had to stop the plan. Wintersong and Memorydancer were counting on him. And he had to save them, if only because he couldn't save people who'd been closer to him.

He turned away from the cooling body and ran. His breath screamed in his lungs, and unvoiced sobs and screams filled his heart. All the clues were there, the whole time. He'd been an idiot not to see them. Every move Asher made, every oblique statement she'd made - it would have been obvious if he'd only been paying attention. Victor leapt a log in his path and immediately ducked under a half fallen tree. Going cross country was faster, even with the danger of...

Damn it! The snow under his feet tumbled; he'd found a pocket valley in its winter disguise of a harmless clearing, and had tumbled into it, breaking crust and falling deep into the pile of snow. A brief self examination determined that he hadn't hurt himself more than a few bruises. With the help of a nearby tree, he hauled himself to his feet, and continued on his way. By himself he should move faster than the amount of fighters it would take to raze a garou village. If he could make it there in time to warn them what was coming, noncombatants could be protected, and they could prepare for an assault with silver weapons. He had to keep his mind on what would happen if he didn't get there - because if he let himself truly think, it would be over. The night got darker, and he kept running.

The sky was starting to lighten when he skittered down the slope into the village, panting, his eyes shut for a moment, when he opened them, he was ringed with wolves and half-shifted forms. No surprise, he'd made to real effort to conceal his approach.

"Came to warn you..." he panted out.

"Breath," came a commanding voice, as a white wolf-figure pushed through the crowd.

"No time... they'll attack soon."

"Attack?"

He nodded, and gulped the proffered drink. "The slavers, they found out where this village is, and they're coming here."

Memorydancer tipped her head to one side, studying his face, then threw her head back and howled. The entire town burst into a scurry of movement, while Victor panted, head between his knees.

"Are you quite well?" asked the Garou.

"I'll live. Be fine when I catch my breath." Victor pulled at the collar of his shirt and grinned softly. "I'll be ready when the battle comes."

"You've already done so much, from finding the source to warning us, and you will still fight."

"I have to do something," he said, shaking his head, hiding his eyes behind his spiky black bangs.

"If you say so." She loped off to help organize the battle. After a few moments of breathing deeply, Victor clambered up the watch tower, and turned his eyes on the woods.

"I do not think you will see them come," the grizzled man beside him said, counting the arrows in the basket he shared the lookout perch with. Below them, a young girl in a thigh length leather tunic began to scale the watch tower.

"No," Victor said, sighing. "But I had to look." Below them a lanky wolf streaked into the village, howling as he ran.

"They're coming."

They came out of the woods slowly, carefully keeping the wind in their faces. Their clothing was camouflaged, and they moved with more stealth than Victor expected. But then if you were going to hunt werewolves, you'd have to be good. He only hoped that he'd be good enough to make the difference. Even if they were planning on taking the village by surprise, they were still prepared to fight a large pack of garou. He tipped his face into the cold wind, and said a prayer.

"Time to get bloody," he whispered, and got his feet back on the ground, leaving the elderly lookout and the girl archer.

The battle was long, and not without casualties on the side of the wolves. Wintersong, the gentle leader, fell himself, holding back a score of men from where the cubs too small to fight had been hidden. As the last of the bodies were cleaned up, the enemies taken away to be buried in a mass grave, and their families to be burned. Victor stripped to the waist, shedding shirts that were stiff with blood. Limping from a foot that was still healing, Memorydancer approached him. "Will you stay for the mourning?"

"Your ways are not my ways, heart sister," he said, shaking his head, and submitting to having a half-wolven face rub up against his. She licked his ear. "Besides there's something I need to do." Memorydancer rubbed her face along his one last time, and kissed him on the forehead, like a mother. Then she limped away. Victor covered his face with his hands, then took a clean shirt from his pouch. Then he slipped into the woods, heading back down his trail. It took longer to get back than it took to get to the village. He wasn't sure he really wanted go back, and couldn't muster the energy to run anyway. The sun had set and the moon had risen by the time he reached her body.

It hadn't snowed, so only a faint brush of loose snow blown up by the wind covered Asher's body. That did nothing to disguise the wave of crimson around her. The dark haired drifter knelt down beside her body, and pulled it into his lap. Why did he bother anymore? His chest ached fiercely, and he rocked back and forth, holding the cold, stiff body. Why did it have to hurt so much? Love always did. Every time he opened himself up he hurt. He didn't want to love again. Finally regaining control of himself, Victor set Asher's body down and began scraping at the snow. Half of him wanted to leave her for the scavengers, but the rest of him, the human part, couldn't bear that thought. After a few moments a shaggy gray body pressed up against him. It was the slave-bitch. She licked the tears from his face, and scraped with her paws till they reached the ground.

"Why are you helping me?" he asked hoarsely, his throat too tight to speak normally. "It was people like her who did this too you."

"I do not do it for her, Angel. I do it for you." He wrapped an arm around the wolf's neck and sat for a long moment, before climbing out of the drift to pull Asher's stiff corpse in. It tumbled into the hole, crashing down on him. Beneath her body, Victor looked up at the sky, gray as her eyes, with streaks of scarlet from the setting sun. The light faded as the clouds began to sift cold white powder down on him. For long moments he was tempted to let the snow cover him, and lie there forever with her. Then he struggled out from beneath the shell she'd left and arranged her neatly, hands covering the hole he'd put into her smooth body. The wolf-bitch looked at him, calmly blinking in the gathering dark, bright eyes catching and holding the last of the light. He looked back at her and hung his head, lips moving in a silent prayer for the sins of the dead to be forgiven. He leaned down and kissed her, then began pushing the snow back into the hole, slowly covering her. At last it was full, and he looked at the wolf-bitch.

"What will you do now?" he asked her.

"I shall go to my people, and they will strike these chains from me. After that battle, they will welcome even my web-draped self. Perhaps one day I shall have children." She licked his face again, insinuating herself under his arm. "And if I do, I shall tell them of you, Angel."

"Don't bother," he said softly. "Nothing I do ever seems to go right."

"And yet so much is done."

Victor watched the moon for long minutes. At last he exhaled in a cloud of steam. "I don't pretend to understand your people, but my path keeps crossing yours." He stood up and brushed snow off his pants.

"And we do not pretend to understand you, but we thank you for your help."

Her cool eyes looked up at him, and he knelt down again, to scratch her around the ruff. He buried his face in her fur, and remained like that for a while. Then he stood up again.

"I guess we'd better each be on our way."

"Yes." Without further goodbye the wolf-bitch loped into the forest, following the double trail of footprints he'd left to the werewolf village. Victor sighed, and turned his face into the cold wind.

"This looks like as good a direction as any," he said, lighting a clove. "I think... I think I'll head south. Get out of the cold." Head down, he walked away from the mound of snow behind him.

Epilogue:

Doc paced, pipe lit, while spring rains poured down outside. He stopped and stared out the window. No one of the raiding party had come back, and it had been over a month. More than that, Asher had been missing just as long. No word at all. It had gone beyond worrying to just plain wrong. Last sign of her had been just before the raid, she and her boy toy had headed into the woods. He had trackers out now, and they should.

"DOC!" cried a voice, and he rushed down the stairs. There were the trackers, holding a bundle.

"Well...?"

"It's bad, Doc, it's really bad..."

"What is?"

"We found her."

"Oh my gods."