Dresden Files, House, M.D. 1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

"**And here are the floor designs for the new lobby, are they up to spec?" **

**Cuddy blinked and dragged her gaze down from the scaffolding that she had been glaring at. She forced herself to focus on the drawings spread out before her. She scanned the neat and perfect construct of blue lines on blue graph paper and they blurred into a right angled mess for a moment before her eyes managed to make the switch between two and three dimensions. They finally coalesced into a recognisable image and she hummed over them for a moment before reaching over blindly and pulling a pen from the architect's breast pocket without looking. She uncapped it and hesitated for a moment before bending to the drawing and stroking the pen over it in bold strokes. She thought she heard the faintest protests from the architect but he swallowed it before properly voicing it. **

**Wise man. **

"**This, should be more like this." Cuddy sketched it out how she wanted it beside the original and then made a few more changes. "And that…more…elliptical." Cuddy scored the biro over the drawing with impunity and finally had it looking the way she wanted it. **

"**Elliptical…" The architect echoed faintly and stuffed his hands into his pockets, glaring at her mulishly. Cuddy's temper flared. **

"**Something wrong?" **

**His jaw hardened and, for a long moment, he looked like he was about to make his displeasure known, before shaking his head sharply. "No, ma'am." **

"**Good, are we on schedule?" **

"**Actually we're a week ahead. The stone from the old hospital, the one they demolished in the fifties? The boys have been polishing it up and cutting it ready for rebuilding, it's ready to hit the mortar tomorrow." He gestured over to the massive pile of pale sandstone that was going to be recycled and refurbished into the new free ward. Specially aimed at the homeless and poor. Those that couldn't pay for medical help would have it, as much as Cuddy was able to give them anyway…if she could stand to oversee the building of the damn place that was. **

**Something brushed up against her and Cuddy's jaw clenched. She locked her muscles to prevent herself from whirling and clawing at the air. She **_**knew**_** there was nothing there. Just like there had been nothing there for the past several minutes, **_**despite**_** the repeated screaming of her internal alarm that something was watching her and it was not a pleasant something. Cuddy inhaled a deep and shuddering breath and let it out with careful ease. Just the wind, she told herself. Just a draft, the building was odd because it lacked complete walls at the moment. That was all.**

**She kept telling herself that, but her Ishaaran side promptly refuted it with a low growl from her panther. That uncanny sixth sense of hers started yowling as soon as she set foot in this place, and didn't shut up until she was back in the safety of the hospital proper. **

**It was driving her crazy. **

"**Ma'am, do you wanna see the stone?" **

**Cuddy considered for the briefest of seconds and, loathe as she was to admit it even to herself, knew that her nerves weren't up to it. "Tomorrow maybe, I have another meeting to get to. Keep me informed." **

"**Will do, ma'am." He tugged at the prow of his bright yellow hard hat and then swaggered off to see his men and no doubt tell them of the fickleness of the female mind that the damn administrator had gone and demanded **_**another **_**change to the plans and wasn't it lucky that she had such a fine ass to make up for her bitchiness? **

**Cuddy growled a low sub vocal warning at that last and the men glanced at her uneasily before laughing nervously with their boss, not entirely sure whether she had heard them or not. **

**That thing brushed up against Cuddy again and her skin crawled. She whirled and stalked away. She just needed away, that was all. **

**Sinister Scribe**

"What's wrong?"

Cuddy let out a yelp and whirled, hand forming into claws without thought and nearly raking across his belly before she stopped herself. Her chest heaved and her eyes were wild. She threw herself at him and buried her face against his chest. Her arms wound around his slim middle and she inhaled his spicy feline scent gratefully.

"Don't." She pinched him hard on the side. "Do that again."

He winced at the flinch of near pain and slid his hands down her back to slide under her jacket, just enough to touch her skin. He rubbed soothing circles over the dimples of her lower back with his thumbs and rumbled back at her.

"I do it all the time." House's eyes scanned hers. Luminescent and deep feral blue. His silver hair was wild and streaked with steely black. He was long and lean, pressed up against her. Standing unaided on both legs for the first time in years…and he was all hers. He freed a hand to reach up and cup her chin, forcing her to look up at him. His thumb slid over her lower lip and her tongue snaked out to taste him before she could stop herself. He rumbled deep in his chest, below the range of human hearing, but Cuddy recognised the purr for what it was. "What is it? You were freaking out a minute ago."

House did not feel it prudent to add that as soon as he had felt the change in her mood he had left his fellows, practically mid sentence to sprint to the stairwell, a quick glance up and down before hopping the banister and dropping down between flights to land without a hitch three storeys down.

"It was nothing." Her grip did not loosen on him and she did not step away.

"Ah, so there was an it?" He tugged her to the couch and then down onto his lap. Usually she would have protested, no nookie at work was a harsh rule that she enforced…most of the time…when it didn't suit her to have rug-burn on her back. He was usually lucky if he could snatch a quick kiss between clinic patients, that wasn't to say that she had never pinned him to his chair in his office and had her wicked way with him, or that he hadn't laid her out over her desk and savoured her like a six course dinner but, in the year of their public relationship, she had never allowed him to have her on his lap like this, when just anyone could walk in. Especially since she was draped over him like a week old kitten.

He settled her properly over his lap and laced the fingers of his right hand with her left. Matching silver bracelets were twined around their wrists. Each one was made from a finely beaten and polished piece of metal, encircling their wrists, with ancient Ishaaran wedding vows inscribed into the metal in beautiful swirling symbols. They wore them in lieu of rings. Rings were highly impractical when they might have long tapered fingers one minute and then stubby paw toes the next. Ah, the life of a werecat. They were not married by any human standard. Neither could ever leave the other nor would they have any wish to. A contract with the state held little appeal when one knew one was living the rest of a lifetime (that could last as long as a thousand years) with their soulmate.

Just a year ago, House would have laughed out loud, long and bitter, at the very concept of a soulmate. Then he had gone to Chicago and met the only resident wizard PI, one Harry Dresden, discovered magic, tiny police woman that could chew nails with the best of them, werecats and the woman he loved.

Not to mention being turned into a werecat himself.

He always forgot that part.

"You've been acting weird for weeks." He accused softly, inhaling the scent of her rich shampoo from her silky hair. "When you going to tell me what's eating at you?"

"I don't want to bother you." She still wasn't looking at him, gaze instead, focused on the light glinting off their hand-fasting bracelets.

"Consider me bothered. Not knowing is driving me nuts." He turned his head, forehead brushing hers, their noses rubbing. If anyone had been watching, they would have said the motion was more cat than human and they would have been right.

"I think it's just stress. With the new ward."

"Ah, the need for changing the world. Told you it wasn't going to be an afternoon job."

She elbowed him in the ribs and he chuffed at her in a low warning that retaliation would ensue if she didn't get on with the story.

"It's just, every time I go out into the construction site I get…a bad feeling."

"A bad feeling…" House mulled that over and then latched onto the more important detail. "And what are you doing out there anyway? Your job is here. Inside…away from all the leching." His hand slid lower over her back at her arched brow look and he stroked her thigh and back up again. "Well, maybe not _all_ the leching."

"Huh, thought as much."

"Don't go out there anymore."

"House, I've got to go out there. I need to confer with the project manager and…"

"So have him come in here. If going out there gives you a bad feeling, go with it. You having a hissy fit distracts me and some of us have important work to not be doing." He smirked at her and spoke loftily, but she could feel the soft violet of his concern under the yellow amusement at toying with her. Many still refused to believe it, but Greg House _did_ care for Lisa Cuddy.

Deeply.

"I'll think about it." She kissed him on the cheek and then levered herself up and away from him. Her head spun for a wild moment but then she recovered and looked around to see him staring at her in that visually consuming way of his. He devoured every detail of her and then weighed it up against her words. If he found them wanting, she had no doubt that she'd have a diagnostician loose on the new ward before the day was out, searching for a 'bad feeling'.

A polite knock on the door forestalled him pressing for a more definite decision from her. He grumbled at the interruption but turned to see the latest assistant, the one he hadn't gotten around to scaring off this week, pop her head around the door.

"That's your three fifteen here, Doctor Cuddy." The girl nodded once to House in deference to his presence and then promptly disappeared back whence she came.

"Who's three fifteen?" He demanded.

Cuddy fought the urge to roll her eyes. If House had been possessive of her before she had turned him Ishaaran, he was outright jealous of any and all men that came within fifty feet of her now. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised, she'd always been able to scent his attraction for her, add to that the natural Ishaaran male's possessive traits over his mate and you had one very dangerous cat for any male of the human species.

"Regin Nast." She pushed him towards the door. "Female, Regin Nast." He promptly whirled at that.

"Ooh, a lady friend, maybe I'll stay."

Cuddy's eyes flashed. Okay, so maybe he wasn't the only possessive one in this relationship. "No, you won't. She's a visiting professor from Britain whom I had to _beg_ to come and do a series of lectures here. I'm not having you scare her off because you don't like her accent or something."

"Hey, I like the British. I have a cousin who's British, he's a comedian, or an actor or something. Can't be very good though, I've never seen him in anything." Cuddy nodded at this, still propelling him towards the door. He dug his heels in suddenly. "Wait a minute, Regin Nast as in the same Regin Nast that's been touring doing lectures on the birth of medical science from the healers of ancient Egypt to the druids of the Celts, _that_ Regin Nast?"

"Yes, that Regin Nast. I told you last week she was coming here."

"No you didn't."

"Yes I…" Cuddy inhaled a deep breath. He was stalling and she would not be drawn into this. He could be her soulmate all he liked, that didn't stop him being a pain in the ass when he wanted to be. "It was last Friday, we'd just been for a run…"

"Oh, _now_ I remember. That was the Friday that I took off your favourite blue panties with my teeth." He had wedged himself in the doorway so that she couldn't force him out of it without splintering the wood and shattering some glass. Which wouldn't really be a very dean-like thing to do. Cuddy shot a glance at her assistant who was typing with a steadfast determination…and turning beet red from suppressed laughter. "No wonder I didn't hear you, difficult to make out amongst all the screaming."

"Keep going and you'll never be making out with anything ever again." He scowled at her and she smiled feral, playing her best bargaining chip that never ran out. "Leave now and I can get out of here early."

She could almost see cat ears super-imposed onto his skull that swivelled forward with avid interest at the titbit she was so shamelessly dangling in front of him.

"Early enough to go…out?" His careful phrasing showed he was aware that others could overhear them.

Not that he was worried that anyone would suddenly figure out that the dean and her best doctor boy-toy could turn into massive cats. House's faith in humanity's ever-lasting and limitless stupidity had only been confirmed by the knowledge that an entire world of magic co-existed along side the 'normal' world and nobody had made a peep about it since the middle ages.

"I'll even wear my fur." She grinned at him and he smirked back. He'd gotten what he wanted, now it was time to mosey, except wasn't he forgetting something…?

"Oh yeah, one more thing."

She turned back to him, having been retreating from the door to ready herself for Professor Nast's arrival. She barely had time to gasp before he cupped the back of her neck firmly and dragged her mouth under his.

The kiss was hard, fast and hot. A promise of blatantly lustful things to come that would no doubt have her screaming his name and clawing his back. He slid his tongue against hers, teasing himself as much as her as the hospital burbled on behind them, mostly unaware of the clinch that the dean was in at the moment.

He finally released her, still too soon for his own liking, with one last nibble to her lip.

"Keep that for me, I expect it back later." He smirked at her and then spun on his heel to prowl away. Cuddy noted with satisfaction, and a little smattering of jealousy, that several female heads turned to follow his distinctive figure across the lobby and back towards the stairs. He bounded up them with the vigour of a man half his age. Cuddy's fingers trailed over her lips at the remembered taste of him.

"He yours? Because if he's not taken…"

"Oh, he's taken." Cuddy said quickly and turned to the cool voice of the speaker. Cuddy took the other woman in at a glance and noticed several things at once.

She was tall, huge in fact, well over six feet in her heels. She had thick black hair that shone purple in the late afternoon light. Cuddy couldn't be sure but she thought she could see dark braids wrapped in some kind of deep green wire, twining through the neat knot at her nape. Her features were sharp and striking and undeniably beautiful. She wore a long deep red crocodile skin coat in the same style as a familiar wizard's duster but under that was an expensively tailored aubergine pant suit with a lime green button down silk shirt. Matching green snakeskin shoes added to her already statuesque height. She held out a pale skinned hand and smiled a wide dark lipped smile.

"Good afternoon, I'm Regin Nast."

Cuddy actually had to reach up to take the woman's hand she towered over her. Cuddy tried and failed to resist the urge to crane her neck back to meet her eyes. As soon as her fingers were engulfed in Nast's large firm but gentle grip, she jolted. Hard. As if a current had been passed up her arm and down her spine.

Then Cuddy noticed another thing about Professor Nast.

She wasn't human.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2:**

Cuddy released Regin Nast's hand and every instinct she had went into full alert. Regin had a slight frown on her face and she looked down at her hand, flexing her fingers and then back up to Cuddy. She arched a brow and then said.

"Something wrong?"

This wouldn't have been nearly so alarming if she hadn't said in flawless Ishaaran.

Cuddy's eyes widened and she took a half step back. She'd rather not take on…whatever Regin was in the middle of her hospital, but if it came down to it, she'd do it. Her hands clenched into fists and her body tensed, ready to spring. She felt her teeth sharpen and her claws lengthen.

"You might want to calm down, kitten." Regin strode past Cuddy and into the smaller woman's office. "Your skin is silvering."

Cuddy was stunned for a moment and then followed Regin into the office. She trod carefully, in case she had to leap out any windows anytime soon. Regin had recognised her for what she was. Within seconds. That just didn't happen. Ishaaran were known as the Secret Race for a reason, not only did they play things very close to the chest, but there was only a handful of species that could recognise one straight off. All of them very powerful and all of them for whom mercy was a foreign concept.

Regin seemed oblivious, or to be ignoring, Cuddy's cautious attitude and flopped down onto the couch without missing a beat. She flopped her coat over the arm of the chair with a heavy clunk and Cuddy eyed it. Last time she had checked, alligator skin didn't _clunk._ Regin lounged back, while Cuddy pondered what kind of nasties were in that coat, and took up most of it just by stretching her arms out over the back. Cuddy was very aware that Regin looked like she could snap Cuddy in half with her bare hands. No matter what form she was in.

"Oh please!" Regin suddenly snapped in English, Scottish accent irritated. "If I was going to harm you or your mate, you think I would have announced my presence by doing a series of lectures?" Cuddy rocked back on her heels and considered that. The woman had a point. "Now, if you want to stand there and grow tall, that's perfectly understandable but, where I come from, one sits for civilised conversation."

Cuddy edged forward, still unsure and took a seat. Regin rolled her eyes and sat forward in her seat, her hand snaked out faster than even Cuddy could track and latched onto Cuddy's wrist. Cuddy jerked back and found her Ishaaran strength useless when Regin just arched a brow at her. Her claws extended to their full length and sank into the pale flesh of Regin's wrist. Dark, purplish, blood flowed from the wounds but Regin didn't even blink. Instead, she spoke to Cuddy in measured, bored tones.

"I swear by my power and the Goddess Artemis that I will not harm you or yours. It is not my business to cause trouble in this province and my purpose here is of mortal means only." The words rocked through the room like a physical thing and Cuddy sheathed her claws. The power behind those words, just in speaking, Regin had made Cuddy's panther sit back and take notes. _Nothing_ had ever spoken to both the beast and the woman with such ease before.

Cuddy hadn't known that anything _could. _

"What are you?" Cuddy still sat tense in her seat, despite the oath Regin had just invoked. Regin sat and pulled a tissue from the box on the coffee table between them, she dabbed at the blood on her wrist, too dark and thick to be human, and swiped it away to reveal faint pink welts. Cuddy had dug her claws into the bone, Regin should have been bleeding out right about now, but the scars already looked months old. They would be gone within the next minute or so.

That wasn't healing, that was full on regeneration. Cuddy had heard of true immortals. Beasts and beings that could die and then simply regenerate back to life again. Nothing beyond legends of the faerie queens, dragons, angels and a few of the more powerful corporeal demons…Regin was none of those things.

"For the purposes of this visit, I'm nothing more than a university lecturer. Here to teach some yanks about the birth of medicine." Regin smiled at her and leant back in her chair again. Arms spread out over the back in a completely open and vulnerable gesture. Cuddy had no doubt that this was more for her benefit than anything else. "Had I known I was going to meet an Ishaaran, I would never have taken this job. It is not within my mandate to reveal what I am…if you hadn't seen through my humanity, I still wouldn't have mentioned it."

Cuddy just arched a brow at her, trying to figure out what was true and what wasn't. Regin's brows snapped down in a terrifying frown and Cuddy eased back a little further.

"I do not harm young!" Regin sounded disgusted at the very notion and Cuddy frowned at her, this time in confusion.

"I may be young, but I'm not naïve."

Regin's eyes flickered over her and she harrumphed. It was odd to hear such a disgruntled sound come from within a…creature with such a power. It seemed to pulse off her in waves, it sent shivers down Cuddy's spine and gave her the simultaneous urge to run and to roar.

"So…what are we going to do?" Regin asked. "You're _obviously_ not comfortable with me here and I've no desire to become your mate's scratching post when he discovers that I've invaded his territory."

Ah, there was a point. Ishaaran males, like all big cats, required their space. It hadn't been much of an issue for House, most magical critters tended to prefer New York over New Jersey any day of the week and twice on Sunday, but there had been a couple of incidents with the werewolf pack right on the edge of town. Nothing bloody, but enough to make House irritable and go for runs 'alone' when he knew they'd crossed to far over the line. He invariable came back with a few bruises and a feral look in his eyes…then there was the wild sex afterwards…one of the reasons Cuddy hadn't even tried to stop it. She knew enough about House and the Ishaaran mindset to know when she wasn't going to win a battle like that.

Cuddy bit her lip and considered this. Her cat was calming down now. She could practically feel her tail twitch with interest and her ears swivel forward in curiosity. Regin was new and unquantifiable, any cat would have trouble resisting the urge to find out what she was. House most of all…once he got over his testosterone.

"You realise that when you said 'me and mine' in your oath, that I view this entire town as mine?" Cuddy asked carefully and Regin lifted a shoulder in a negligent shrug.

"Naturally."

"That puts a big restriction on your powers don't you think?"

"I try to do as little thinking as possible." Regin grinned at her and Cuddy found herself smiling back before she could help herself. Once you got over the natural reaction to run screaming for the hills on finding out that Regin was a Creature With Which One Did Not Fuck, on a biblical scale, she was actually surprisingly relaxing to be around. Cuddy doubted many people stuck around to get over that first reaction though. "Seriously, though, I'm not here to pick a fight, I'm just here to earn an ordinary paycheque."

"Believe me, at your rates, there's nothing ordinary about the paycheque I'm signing for you." Cuddy snorted and settled back into her chair. Reassured now. Harry was always saying that words had power. Oaths on ones own power in particular. If Regin reneged on her deal, she'd find herself missing a huge chunk of her power and a whole bunch of psychic feedback on top of that. It would not be pleasant, to put it bluntly.

"So what about his Royal Himness? There's something different about him and, while he couldn't kill me, I'd rather not have to wrestle a pissed off panther." Regin folded one leg over the other. "These are my good shoes."

Cuddy noted that, not that House wouldn't try to kill her, but that he _couldn't._ Not said with hubris either, just a simple statement of fact.

Cuddy tried to think this over. She wasn't just speaking for herself here. When she had said the town was hers she had meant it. She knew it and every other supernatural that lived in the area knew it too. With being mated to House, Cuddy's power level had gone from heavyweight to juggernaut. Together, they were arguably the most powerful beings within state-lines and possibly beyond, ignoring a few of the faerie nobility that came and went in the local bars. Even House's sparring partners, the werewolves would never try to challenge them for power. With that power came the responsibility of looking after the comparative have-nots of the magical community. There were no Wardens within the New Jersey area and there was no need for any because House and Cuddy were here. Word had spread quickly amongst the community that, if you were in trouble, Princeton-Plainsboro could do more for you than patch up your cuts and scrapes. They had, in effect, become the protectors of the town.

House had rankled at that at first, but had soon quietened down when he had been confronted with a victim of one of the White Court vampires. She had been fourteen years old and had been raped for the vampire to feed from her.

Repeatedly.

Cuddy had gone with him for that hunt and no White Court vampire had set foot within New Jersey since. The Reds and the Blacks had even had the sense to stay away.

The point was that if Cuddy invited Regin in, as it were, it wasn't just her ass she had to look out for.

"I heard what you did to that vampire, by the way." Regin said quietly. "Of course, I hadn't known it was you, at the time. Leaving his head on his partner's pillow was very…_Godfather_ of you. Plus, getting in and out without waking him, just letting him know you _could _have snuffed him. Genius." She smiled and it was a particularly bloodthirsty grin. Cuddy tilted her head. Being Ishaaran, she had never really understood human bloodlust. To kill for sport is not an animal thing, whenever Cuddy heard on the news of an 'animalistic' killing spree perpetrated by some sicko with a sawn off shotgun, her jaw clenched and she growled low growls. Yes, Cuddy had killed before and, yes, it had been bloody, but she had never gone out of her way to hunt down someone just for the sport of making them bleed.

"Hmm." She looked Regin over and decided she had no idea what her decision was. "I'll have to talk it over with Greg."

"As I expected." There was nothing in her tone to suggest insult, despite Cuddy's automatic assumption that there would be. Let's just say that her friends or the staff hadn't taken to her relationship with House as well as she might have hoped. Regin stood, towering over Cuddy like a redwood to a fern and Cuddy surged to her feet so as not to look like a complete midget. She shook Regin's hand, accepted the cell phone number and hotel room number that she was handed for contact details and bid her goodbye.

It wasn't until Regin had disappeared out the door and across the lobby, the crowds in the room parting for her, that she realised she had never found out what exactly Regin Nast was.

**Sinister Scribe**

The keys jangled in the lock and Cuddy swung the door open blindly with her hip. She sorted through the mail that she had retrieved from the box and muttered under her breath.

"Bill, bill, bill, junk, junk, more junk and…ooh." She tossed the rest of the letters onto the hallway table and examined the thick parchment paper of the last two letters. One was a pale silvery one that bore teeth marks on the edges and the other was a deep red. She ripped the first chewed one open and smirked at the card. It was two cats struggling into a ramshackle house. The female cat (identifiable by her fuzzy curves and lipstick) was making grand gestures up at the clearly dilapidated house. The male cat was mostly obscured by a heap of boxes piled upon him from the removal van. Cuddy opened the card and read the familiar scrawling spiders of Harry's writing.

_Hey, Cuddy-cat and House-cat,_

_Congratulations on the new home, I'd send a casserole but we both know I can't cook. Hope the move went okay and I'll be visiting soon if the big bad werecat will let me. _

_Love, Harry. _

_P.S. Sorry about the chewed up card, but Mouse disagreed with me on the card design. I think he thought it was too crass. _

_P.P.S. Bob says thanks for the books you sent him last month too. _

Cuddy frowned at the last, she sniffed the envelope cautiously and inhaled an ancient kind of spicy aroma…that she recognised immediately as being canine. First thing she'd heard of a new dog, but Dresden did end to pick up waifs and strays as he went. The latest one was the daughter of the Knight of the Cross that Harry knew…Michael something. Apparently she'd gotten mixed up in some dark magic and Harry had stepped in to save her from the Warden's sword. He was now under the Doom Of Damocles.

Again.

Cuddy suppressed a growl. Just let the bastards _try_ and harm him. She'd have a few things to say about that, that was for sure.

Cuddy distracted herself from declaring war on all Wizard-kind by opening the second envelope. It revealed a second card of thick black paper with two cats drawn curled together in a stylised design in silver ink on the front. Cuddy ran her fingers over the image of the huge silver leopard with the slightly smaller black Panther silhouetted in front of him. The only telling features of the panther were her whiskers and her eyes. She opened it and read the silver inked message inside.

_Dear Lisa and Snowball, _

Cuddy laughed at this and knew who it was immediately. Karin Murphy had apparently allowed Cuddy into her good books upon Cuddy saving Harry's life in the warehouse last year. She still, however, insisted on calling House 'Snowball' no matter what.

_Harry told me about your new place and I thought I'd extend my congratulations. Harry's been making noises about visiting and I'll see if I can tag along, I figure you might want some reinforcements against all the testosterone that will invariably follow. _

_See you then, enjoy your gift, _

_From Karin. _

Cuddy noted the slightest hesitation on the ink over the K and knew that Karin had nearly signed the card as Murphy. She fingered the rich paper and a crinkling of the envelope revealed a voucher enclosed inside for a department store. Cuddy made a mental note to squirrel that away to buy something _useful_ rather than the increasingly obscure gadgets that House found whenever he accompanied her to the store. He hated it. Hated it more because he knew that if he stayed home he'd be driven crazy by the thought of her out there and unescorted amongst all the men-folk. Cuddy knew it wasn't because he didn't trust her, she knew that's what her friends thought, he just couldn't help himself.

Ishaaran males just don't share.

Cuddy turned her attention back to the two cards from their friends. Their only friends that had blessed the union at any rate. Two separate cards. Cuddy frowned and wondered when those two were just going to bite the bullet and get it together. She knew they already had, physically at least, but they were still intent on making it a lot more difficult for themselves than it needed to be.

She moved to the mantle piece in their new, sprawling farmhouse that backed onto the woods. Ideal for a pair of wild things like themselves. It was practically in the middle of nowhere, their neighbours separated by a healthy stretch of meadow, several acres wide, road on one side, the thick woods and the brook on the other. It was in need of some repair work. The décor was still out of date on the third floor, but the roof had been fixed, most of the garden tamed (as much as they were willing to tame it) and there was plenty of room for both of them. Even an old barn for expansion across the cobbled courtyard.

Being, literally, joined at the soul did not mean that Cuddy didn't just relish her own company at times. House too. Probably more so.

Strong arms slid around her waist from behind, her bag was removed from her shoulder and tossed aside.

Speak of the devil…

"Mmm…you smell good." He buried his face in her neck and inhaled deeply, warm, wet velvet tongue lapping out against her skin. "Taste good too."

"Is this a subtle hint for dinner?" She turned in his arms and was pleased to find him partially undressed. His jeans were slung low on his hips and his feet bare. His shirt was hanging open and unbuttoned over his naked chest. She smoothed her hands over the rippling planes of his muscles. She'd found him attractive before the feral magic of being Ishaaran had given him a magical make over and left him lean, mean and devoted to her.

Now he drove her to distraction.

"Not hungry." He stole tiny kisses along the line of her neck and she chuckled at his lie. He was _always_ hungry. Changing shape took a lot of energy and the man could now suck back food like you read about. He smirked against her skin. "Not for food, anyway. I believe I was promised a run?"

"Run?" She feigned ignorance, pushing herself away from him and giving him a mock frown. "I don't believe I said anything about a…" and, just like that, she was gone. Dancing out of his arms, hurdling the couch and into the hallway.

She kicked off her shoes and heard his low growl behind her. She let her grin spread across her face as she tugged off her jacket and let it furl to the floor behind her. Thankfully, her skirt was a loose one today and it allowed her legs to run to their full extension. She sprinted through the kitchen and out the already open back door. She flew off the porch and across the yard in one leap before disappearing into the trees. Only the bounce of her hair clip hitting the grass left any trace of her presence.

She laughed out loud and then stifled it to a giggle, it wouldn't do to have him catch her too soon. She heard him crashing into the undergrowth, he was deliberately making noise, he could be deadly quiet when he wanted to, but right now, he wanted her to know he was chasing her.

A thrill darted through her and she ran harder and faster, deeper into the lengthening shadows of the trees. Her shirt came off next and she was out of her skirt in a surprisingly graceful hop and skip. She could feel her skin silvering, her teeth sharpening and her claws raking the air. She couldn't hold the laugh back this time and it bubbled out of her throat lower and huskier than any human throat could make. Few Ishaaran had this much control over their cat, to keep it on such a short leash like this, so close to the surface. Cuddy could smell him on the air, his aftershave and adrenaline and then the deeper headier scent of his animal rising primal from within him. Her tongue traced over her teeth and she let go. The leash loosed and the cat sprang free with a coughing roar that shook the trees.

One minute she was running through the trees, ducking through shadow and light and then she _was_ shadow. A flash of silver glitter, her skin flaking away from her body like leaves from a tree, black mist enveloping her, coalescing into velvety black fur with darker satin rosettes over it and a panther was bounding through the forest where the woman had been a second before. Fleet and silent paws rushing over the leaf litter with barely a whisper of sound. Long tail slinking and swinging like a rudder behind her, helping her change direction on the fly, spin on the proverbial dime and flip mid air if necessary. Her neat ears spun and cocked on her blunt skull and reported the varied voices of the forest to her. She lifted her head and inhaled deeply with her powerful lungs, reading scents from the heart of the forest and right out the furthest tamed edges.

A flash of silver to her right had her slamming on the brakes with a surprised grunt. Her forelegs locked straight and her rear skidded down onto the ground she stopped that fast as four hundred pounds of silver and ebony pelted snow leopard burst out of the ferns at her side.

She reacted in an instant, faster than any human thought, one second she was staring at him, stunned, the next she was bounding through the air. Straight over his head, ricocheting off a tree and away into the forest once more. He growled at her, but it was a low chuffing sound.

Cuddy grumbled when she recognised the laugh for what it was.

That was it, she'd had quite enough of being chased, time to turn the tables. She piled on the speed and wheeled around in a huge circle, darting this way and that. Double crossing back over her trail and mixing it up with as many different ones as possible so as to confuse him. He admitted it only under pain of no-sex-for-a-week, but she was the better tracker between them and this would slow him down.

Long enough for her to spring her trap.

Cuddy wound her labyrinth of trails and then found a likely spot. She eyed the tree with care, making sure the foliage was thick enough and the branches sturdy enough before confirming it as a good choice. She crouched low, gaze fixed straight up and gave a little wiggle of her hindquarters before leaping.

Straight up.

She whispered through the leaves of the ancient oak and caught the trunk with all four sets of fully extended claws. They sank inches deep into the bark and then she crawled up the tree with the ease of her stalking across the clearing below. She belly crawled along the branch, confidant she was hidden by the leaves from below, and settled down to wait.

She was not kept long.

It was a truly odd thing for a panther's breath to hitch, but that's what she did when the massive silver snow leopard melted out into the clearing below. He was magnificent, there were few other words for it. He was long and lean, his blue eyes glowing out from his aristocratically featured face, silver pelt a hue of pearls and clouds, darkened by thunderheads of black rosettes. There were many similarities between them, both of them being big cats, but many differences too. Not just colour either. While they were built along the same lines, he was undeniably bigger, broader and had a thicker pelt. His tail was longer and slunk back and forth behind him in irritation when he scented the air and found her scent all over the place. She resisted the urge to give a chuffing laugh and waited for the opportune moment.

He edged into the clearing, his instincts warning him not to become too exposed, the need to find her taking precedence though. He dropped his muzzle to the ground, sniffing as a dog would and she would make sure to remind him of that when she had a human mouth once more. House's dislike for dogs had increased exponentially since becoming Ishaaran…though she was pretty sure he just used that as an excuse.

He found one trail, took a few steps that way, and abandoned it, turning back to find another. Cuddy buried her nose against her paw to keep her feline giggles in and waited still patiently for him to wander within reach. He sniffed again, huffed out an annoyed breath and picked another trail. Which happily led him right under her branch. Cuddy seized her chance, tilted sideways and silently dropped on him from above.

Her gleeful silence changed to a startled yowl when he whirled on her as she dropped and reared onto his hind legs with a snarl of satisfaction. Cuddy slammed into his chest, unable to change direction at that late stage, and they both rolled across the clearing with feline cursing growls echoing. He was careful not to hurt her as they rolled, being the larger of the two, but he clearly wasn't above using his size to advantage, as Cuddy found out when he pinned her to the forest floor through the simple means of parking himself on top of her like a truck.

She growled and wriggled, trying to get out from under him, but she was helpless pinned on her side beneath him like she was. House just settled himself over her more fully and waited, with a bored expression that even the smallest housecat has the greatest command over, for her to tire herself out.

She finally stilled and panted, tired from trying to shift his weight. She wriggled some more though and managed to flip onto her back. He eyed her, and she leant up to him, nuzzling his neck and licking at his cheek. He grunted and turned his face away. Her ears swivelled flat on her skull and the claws of one paw extended, right into the sensitive fur over his belly.

With a yowl he reared back and she was out from under him like a shot. Bounding through the undergrowth again, tail held high in a mocking salute. This time she let her cat laugh ring out loud behind her and his answering growl had the fur along her back rising in feline goose-bumps.

She led him through the forest at breakneck speed, dodging fallen logs, trees and startled wildlife with stunning skill. He followed behind her, his long legs and greater stamina allowing him to gain on her. She felt her ears flicker in a feline frown and wondered at that. She should be able to get further than this before he began to catch up with her, she must be getting slower… or maybe she just liked being caught better than running lately.

Still, best not to let him know that, she pushed on a little harder and shot out of the forest and across the yard. She flew through the back door and went sailing across the tiled floor when her paws refused her purchase, narrowly avoided a cupboard and scrambled out into the hallway. She gained better footing on the hallway rug and cruised through the passageway, vaulted the banister and up the stairs…she made it to the first landing this time.

His weight slammed down onto her hard enough to have her coughing in surprise. Her legs gave out under his greater size and the rug rumpled under them as they slid across the hardwood flooring to bump shoulder first against the wall.

She Changed first. Abruptly shrinking down between his muscle roped forelegs. He gave a grunt of surprise at the move that changed to a growl of impatience when she shot backwards under his huge body, and slithered out from under him. She grabbed his tail and grinned as she gave it a yank before he whirled and charged at her. He gave a mock snarl that rattled the windows and by the time he hit her again and tackled her to the floor once more they were skin to skin and tumbling in a tangle of naked human limbs.

"Saucy minx, trying to drop on me like that." His voice was still hoarse from the Change and he threw his head back on a groan when her teeth sank into the muscle of his chest. She lapped away the blush of blood.

"Sorry."

"No you're not." He grinned at her, all teeth and wildness, and manhandled her until she was forced under him again.

"How'd you know I was there?" She was referring to the tree, but it took a little more thought to remember that when he was nudging her legs apart with his hips.

"Tail." He growled against her skin, tongue lapping out over a nipple. He could taste her arousal on the air. Spicy and heady. She arched to his mouth and he though she deserved a little more teasing. "It went, twitch, twitch, twitch."

Her claws sank into his shoulders and he winced at the sweet tinge of pain. She dragged her curling nails down over his back in a blaze of honeyed agony and he growled. She purred back and thrust her hips up at him. He held back and denied her, her eyes blazed and he laughed.

Pounce.

The world flipped and House found himself, faintly surprised and on his back. She gripped both his wrists and slammed them to the floor above his head hard enough for the wood to creak. She straddled him and grinned down, her lips still black, making her teeth seem sharper and whiter. She sat forward and took his mouth in a hard, biting kiss. He gave it all back with equal fervour, still a little bemused. She had never been _quite _this aggressive before, preferring to toy with him, but ultimately let him take the lead, which suited him just fine. Her claws dragged the length of his arms and down over his chest to match the ten card he had on his back and she writhed down against him. His hands went to her hips, to pull her down onto his raging cock and he grunted in surprise when she snarled and slapped him across the face.

The sting was immediately soothed by the sweep of her tongue that led to another hot and wet kiss, but House definitely had the feeling that something was odd tonight. He tried to sit up.

"No." The imperious command was enforced with her hand manacling his throat and pinning him to the floor. He grunted in surprise but choked off when she dropped down onto him and he bucked his hips up to thrust deep into her. His hands found her hips again but this time she didn't slap him for it. She threw back her head and purred deep in her chest, the sound mixing with a very human sounding moan of pleasure. She rolled her hips against him and he knew he wouldn't last long, neither could she judging by how frantic her movements were. He shifted one hand up over her heaving chest and twisted a nipple between his fingers, she mewled in pleasure and it turned to a deeper groan when his other hand slipped between her legs and his thumb stroked hard and shocking over her clit.

It was enough. She bucked and screamed, riding him hard as she came, claws raking his chest again and he thrust up into her with a shout, following her into pleasure that bounced back and forth along their connection. Amplifying and echoing until it was nearly unbearable, finally ebbing and letting them slump into exhaustion. She draped herself across his chest with a happy mumble and licked at the claw marks on his neck.

"Sorry. Got carried away."

"Uh-huh." He didn't know if he believed that, but he'd settle for it just now. It wasn't as if he could complain, her scarf collection had increased exponentially in order to hide the multitude of bites that he had marked her with. He usually made sure to steal them at the hospital so that everyone noticed that she was a marked woman. Just in case they had missed the memo. "Wild woman." He smirked and rubbed his hands down her back. Watching her carefully. This wasn't the first time she had been different. Lately she had been…odd. Her moods swinging more than usual, and without his provocation for a change, she would go quiet for long stretches of time and then seek him out, not for sex, a run or conversation, but just to curl up beside him and be held. At first, he hadn't worried, it had coincided with them moving into the new house and it was an adjustment for them both, despite her practically having moved into his apartment for months before that, but now she even smelled different.

Not drastically, but a softer smell under her own usual scent.

Something had changed and he didn't know what. Worry nagged at him. The sudden fear that their mating wasn't a proper one and that she would be taken away from him clawed at him so hard he had to force himself to remember to breathe.

"What?" She was watching him back with those aqua eyes of hers, leaning her cheek into his hand as he cupped her face.

"You're okay?" A rare serious question from him.

"Hmm…little hungry." And a glib answer from her. "Oh, that reminds me." House was distracted from any further queries after her change when she launched into recounting her meeting with Regin Nast. House frowned when she finished her retelling.

"She heard of what we did to the leech? From all the way over in Britain?" He rubbed at her back and she hummed, laying her head on his chest. They were both still sprawled naked in the hallway, but nobody was here to see and neither of them felt the cold so what would be the point in moving? "You think she's telling the truth about not being here to stir up trouble? Cause, you know, that's my job."

Cuddy leant up and propped her elbow on his chest, planting her chin on her hand in thought. "She didn't smell like she was lying and her heartbeat didn't change either…but then, I know she wasn't human or anything else I've ever come across so…I'm not sure."

"What did she smell _like_, if you don't recognise her exactly?"

Cuddy shuttered her eyes in brief thought and they gleamed a little when she opened them again. "Old. Really old, like…primordial. You know how dinosaur bones smell? Older than that." Cuddy tapped her lips another moment. "A bit of werewolf, something reptilian and something…else."

"You think Harry might know?" House would never admit it, but Dresden had been invaluable in helping him adjust to the supernatural world. House had spent many an hour talking to both the wizard and his pet skull, Bob, absorbing every bit of information they had to give. For someone as curious as House to suddenly have an entire new world opened up to him…he asked more questions than a three year old in a department store.

At Christmas.

"He might. Someone as powerful as Regin wouldn't be able to move through circles like ours without tripping off some story alarm bells. Myth and hearsay if nothing else."

House nodded, already decided on calling the wizard. "So, what do we do in the mean time? Frog-march her to a plane and tell her never to darken our doorway again?"

"Nope." Cuddy smiled and then rolled up and away from him. He watched her go appreciatively but stiffened at her next words.

"We invite her to dinner."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

**House peered around the doorjamb and spied his lovely wife leaning over the dresser and applying something to her face. The woman spent an inordinate amount of time primping, he decided, but knew he was better off not mentioning it. Instead, he snagged the phone from the hub and punched in a long number, including the out of state area code. He had it clapped to his ear and waited impatiently for the ringing to stop. **

**He jogged down the stairs and stopped in the hallway landing, grinning to himself as he bent and straightened the rug. There were several scuff marks on the wood, but he was fine with it. The house was old and the floor scarred anyway. Besides, if marking up the floor allowed him to better pin his mate, he wasn't about to complain. He rubbed at his throat, not that he had been the one doing any of the pinning this time. **

**Finally, the answer! **

"**Sherlock's Elementary School, Watson your mind?" **

**House was quiet a moment, an amused smirk on his lips and then he answered the deep baritone on the other end of the line. **

"**Dresden, bite the bullet, buy an answer machine if you don't want to talk to people. Works for me." **

"**Hey, nobody wants to talk to you anyway." Harry laughed into the line. Both men staunchly denied they had any affection for each other. That would involve House admitting that he (eek!) liked someone and Harry admitting that he found House amusing despite his bastarding tendencies. "So, what does my favourite monster cat in the whole wide world want with me this week?" **

**House moved down onto the ground-floor of the house and set about fixing up the damage caused by several hundred pounds of horny werecat tearing through it. He closed the back door and passed his hand over it. He felt the barrier of the threshold and grunted in satisfaction. The threshold on a house, as Harry had laboriously explained to House, was a barrier of energy created by the people that lived within the building. That myth about vampires being unable to enter a house without being invited didn't just work for the leeches. Any being with power would have to leave a massive chunk of it at the door if it wanted to come in here without an invite and, though they had only been in the house for a few weeks, they had done a lot of living in it and the barrier was strong. Probably empowered by the fact that they were both very private people. **

"**I'm about to go out to dinner." House started. **

"**Gee, thanks for the bulletin. I'll get right on to the newspapers." **

"**Can it, Dresden. The little woman is taking me out to meet something that she can't identify." **

**Silence crackled along the line at House's words and he could practically hear the wheels in Harry's PI brain tumbling over and over each other. **

"**I'm three states away, House." **

"**I know that. Cuddy thinks it's friendly but…" **

"**If I don't hear from you tomorrow come in all guns blazing?" **

"**Something like that." House eased back against the kitchen counter top. It still struck him as slightly surreal to be planning contingencies for if he didn't make it through dinner tonight. He knew it was possible to drop dead at any minute. He'd been human for the first forty-five years of his life. Mortality had been his constant companion, a nut job with a gun, a leg infarction and his own idiocy with drugs had proved that he could die whenever he felt like it, but knowing it could happen at a moment's notice and actively planning around it, were two very different things. Still, it was nice to know he had someone to come in kicking ass and taking names if he ever dropped off the radar. Harry was good that way. "The…woman, we're going to meet is powerful. Lisa says she smells older than dinosaur bones. Name's Regin Nast, ring any bells?" **

"**Hold on." There was a scuffling on the other end of the line and a crackling like an internet hook-up being initiated on the same line. House made out Bob's voice. Harry conferred with the skull for a moment and House perked up as Cuddy padded into the kitchen, slipping one of her earrings through her ears and adjusting her pearls. He gave a low growl of approval at her choice of clothing. She looked almost edible in the short slinky black dress. A staple in any woman's closet but made all the more desirable by the fall of her just-been-tumbled hair, the midnight blue shrug she wore over it and the matching stiletto heels. She stepped into his ready embrace and leant against his chest. Smoothing her hands over his shirt. **

**He matched her with a cobalt button down, black slacks and butter soft leather loafers. He was not a big fan of the shoes but they had both agreed that going Change-ready was better than not. Neither of them wore more than the single layer of clothing and knowing his wife was without underwear was doing more than a little to distract him. **

"**Okay, good news and bad news." Harry's voice came back on the line and House hummed a wordless question. "Good news is that Bob's only ever heard of one Regin and she's fairly new on the power-play scene so if your Regin's as old as Cuddy-cat thinks she is, then it's unlikely the same person." **

"**Bad news?" House had a bad feeling. A low prescient cold in his gut. He recognised the Ishaaran sense for what it was and worked to quiet the cat in the back of his head so he could better listen to Harry. **

"**If she **_**is**_** the same Regin, then you'd better tread carefully. She's known as Regin the Ruthless and…the stuff she's done, it's what nightmares are made of." **

**House's arm tightened around Cuddy and she rested her head against his shoulder, listening into the conversation with ease. **

"**She's affiliated with the Hunters." Harry went on. Lisa stiffened and House looked at her expectantly, she shook her head. Later. "Not much on them, they tend to wipe out everyone they come across so information's a little thin on the ground. Bob says…he says they're bad, like, biblical scale, four horsemen, bad and she's their big gun. Other than that, I got nothing." **

"**Right, so no clue as to what she actually **_**is?**_**"**

"**Well, she's a Hunter, but that's a position that's appointed rather than something you're born to. I'm gonna do some more digging. See what I can get. There is always the chance that this is some other Regin though." Harry said with forced brightness. **

"**But not a good one." **

"**Nope. Not really." Harry sighed. "Want me to come over?" House considered it. Briefly. **

"**No, it's cool. Do me a favour and have your cop chick to a background on Regin Nast, she's a British citizen so it might take some time."**

"**No problem. Tell Lisa I said hi and keep me posted." **

**House grunted and signed off. He held the phone handset and flipped it over and over in his palm. Then he handed it to Cuddy. **

"**Call her. Arrange some dinner. Somewhere public." She arched a brow at his tone but took the handset and punched in the number from the card she had in her hand. House listened in to the conversation easily with his sensitive hearing. **

**The phone barely finished its first ring before it was snatched up. **

"**Baba, you…" Cuddy blinked as a sudden string of invective in a language she didn't recognise was blasted down the line at her. **

"**Um…hello?" **

**Silence reined for half a minute. **

"**Doctor Cuddy?" Scottish accent, female voice, husky but not unattractive. Cuddy nipped him with her fingers again when she sensed the train of his thoughts and he nibbled on her free ear in retaliation, she brushed him away so as to better listen to Regin. "I thought you were someone else." Came the slightly sheepish rejoinder. **

"**I figured that. Listen, Greg and I are going out for dinner, we were wondering if you wanted to come along. First night in a new town and all." Cuddy spoke casually but he had no doubts that Regin was fully aware that she was about to be vetted. **

"**Sure. Where and when?" **

**House's brows rose at the complete lack of hesitation. In the past year or so, he and Cuddy had helped out more than their fair share of troubled supernaturals and all of them were a lot jumpier than Regin appeared to be. It could mean one of two things; one, she was genuinely naive and didn't believe that two werecats could cause her any problems or two (and more worrying) two werecats and any friends they might bring along genuinely **_**weren't **_**a threat to her. **

**Cuddy named the restaurant and the time and Regin agreed again. **

"**Hope it's nothing too spiffy, I don't have much in the way of fancy clothes." A change in the tone of her voice, a slight echo and House guessed that she had moved through to the bathroom. "That's not a problem is it?" **

"**No it's fine. So, we'll see you in half an hour?" **

"**No problem." **

**Cuddy said her goodbyes and hung up the phone. She looked at the handset and pursed her lips. Looking up at House she voiced her question. **

"**What do you think?" **

**House considered it briefly. He shrugged. "I think we're going to dinner." **

**Sinister Scribe**

"Regin, good to see you again."

House turned his head and stopped so suddenly upon being confronted with Regin Nast that the waiter behind him slammed into his back and bounced off. The guy apologised profusely but House waved him off, more focused on the…thing, in front of him. He inhaled deeply and caught the same mix of scents that Lisa had. Wolf, wild, forest, old and something coolly reptilian. He saw her from the back first and ticked off the details in his head. She was powerfully built, her arms lean and rippling with the muscles of an athlete. Her hair was long and had a purplish cast to it, it tumbled down her back and long braids wrapped in something metallic and green hung amongst the curls over her shoulder and back. She turned at the sound of Lisa's voice to reveal a sharp featured face that was striking more than pretty. Her lips parted in a ready smile and he noted that while she wore no gloss on her dark lips or mascara on her long lashes, she had concealer on one side of her face over her brow, eye and cheek.

Scar?

Then she pushed her chair, with her distinctive crocodile skin red duster coat draped over the back of it, back and stood from the table.

And stood.

Several heads turned from the surrounding tables at the veritable Amazon amongst them. Even in her flats, she was an equal to House's height and he could only pity whoever stood next to her if she ever pulled on heels. She towered over Cuddy and House suddenly realised how small his mate was in comparison. If Regin chose to, she could have crushed Cuddy's skull in one hand.

House stepped forward and wrapped his arm around Lisa's waist, pulling her back against him. He swallowed the snarl, reminding himself to be as pleasant as possible to the monster they were dining with, but it took effort. Cuddy leant back against his chest, her hand resting on his forearm and making the movement look natural and cosy to the other patrons. Regin wasn't fooled though, she dipped her chin in the slightest of nods and stepped back to her side of the table.

"Hope you don't mind, I took a table on the edge. The music is…loud to me." Regin waved a hand at the table and deliberately turned her back on them both as she took her seat. If they were going to attack her, then would have been the opportune moment, when she was standing in flip flops, almost white jeans and a white tank top, far from her coat and the metal that House could smell inside it. The coat didn't exactly match with Regin's outfit but House was soon to learn that she was rarely without it.

Cuddy subtly elbowed him in the ribs and House let her go so they could sit. He moved his chair closer to hers though so that their knees and elbows brushed when they moved.

"So, what's good here?" Regin asked brightly and House was still figuring her out so he let Cuddy answer.

"The steaks are good, as are the pizzas and the fish." They were at a small restaurant in the park. The _Bandstand. _It was a live music venue, as the name implied, with a small open air restaurant on the cobbled stones surrounding the vaulted original bandstand that had been converted to a small bar, open plan cooking area and a stage. Tables were lit with candles and strings of fairy lights twinkled gaudily overhead and twined around the ancient trees nearby. Cuddy had picked the restaurant because if things went South, she wanted to be able to get away quick and clean and things like that were so much easier when one didn't have windows and doors to negotiate.

Plus, melting away into trees was a lot easier for a cat than trying to do it in a crowded well lit street.

Regin studied the menu for a moment and then set it aside with a small sigh. She looked up and pinned House with her eyes. It was the first time he noticed their colour and he was a little off put by them.

They were dark and all consuming black, lit up only by the smallest of silvery sparks in their depths. Like the vault of stars overhead, her eyes seemed to go on forever and he found that…disconcerting.

"If you're going to stare at me all night, you're wife's going to get jealous. If you have questions then I will gladly answer them, but do not gawk at me like some slack jawed yokel, I get plenty of that from the rest of the general public." She raised her voice for the last few words and then turned to arch a brow at a fourteen year old boy not two tables away, staring at her, with pasta laden fork halfway to his open mouth.

Cuddy looked down at the menu she was sharing with House and coughed to cover her laugh. He glared at her and it only caused her to chuckle harder.

The boy looked away at Regin's fierce glare and House sat back in his chair, arm going over the back of Cuddy's, thumb brushing her bare neck under her hair.

"Okay, let's start with the fifty thousand dollar question; what are you?"

"Many things. What have your contacts told you about me?"

House's jaw clenched and he was forced to swallow another growl when the waiter came by with his pad to take their order. He turned back to Regin when the young man was sent scurrying with their drinks order.

"That you're not a pleasant lady to be around, if you are who we think you are." House answered. He could be enigmatic too. "The name Regin the Ruthless came up, that you?"

Regin tilted her head. "One of the many names I go by. The others aren't really repeatable in civilised company." She smirked then and sat back in her chair. She tapped her long dark fingernails on the table top and seemed to think something over. "If you want to know what I was born, the answer is human. If you want to know what my 'profession' is, I am a Hunter. If you want to know my inner nature than the closest translation you would have for it is a _Furya_, but if you want to know what I _am_ then the answer is simple; I'm dangerous." She rolled her hand on her wrist so that it faced palm up in a harmless gesture. "But not to you."

"And we're supposed to…take your word on this?"

"If I intended you harm I would have had one of my sisters blow your head off from a mile away." She spoke flatly in an almost bored tone. "There are a thousand different ways I could have killed you since you got out of your car three streets over and then cut through the trees to get here."

Cuddy stiffened at that. "How did you…?"

"I just know. I know a lot more than that, but if I tell you, you'll be frightened of me and…I'm a little tired of being frightening right now." She looked away and out over the park, her eyes rested briefly on the boy that she had glared at earlier and he snuck another glance at her only to hunch his shoulders and cringe away from her. Her jaw clenched and she turned back to them.

Silence echoed between them over the jazz of the band and the burble of sound from the other patrons. Their drinks came, orders for food were made (Regin ordered an incredible amount, even compared to what House and Cuddy planned to eat) and Regin toyed with her tumbler of straight scotch, staring at the bubbles in her Diet Coke chaser.

"You're really just here for the lectures aren't you?" Cuddy asked quietly. She couldn't say why, but the…fatigue in Regin's voice had struck a chord in her. She felt sympathy for the other woman, she couldn't say how or why, she just did.

Regin nodded and knocked back the double measure of scotch in a single gulp. "I can't say that trouble won't follow me here, I seem to have a knack for attracting it, but I've already given my word that I won't start any." She shrugged. "More than that, I can't offer you."

Cuddy looked at House and he felt the pale pink of pleading colour come from her along their connection. He fought against it for an instant and then nodded once in acquiescence. Cuddy smiled a sunny smile and sat forward, planting her elbows on the table and grinning at Regin.

"So, what's your first lecture plan?"

Regin looked between them before laughing once. Low and soft. She sat forward so Cuddy could better hear her and smirked.

"Well, between you and me, I find the sexual healing practices of the Celtic Druids are always an attention grabbing place to start…"

**Sinister Scribe**

After dinner, it was decided that Regin would walk them back to their car and get a lift with them back to her hotel. House noted that it was one of the more expensive places to stay in New Jersey and that Regin couldn't have been just _any_ university lecturer if she had enough money to throw around on that place. As far as he could tell at dinner, once he had gotten over his initial fight or flight response to her overpowering aura, she was an electrifying speaker. She had held even his attention for the full span, had exhibited no effort in carrying the conversation and had shared anecdotes that were both funny and showed the great variance of what she had done with her life.

She rarely spoke outright, but House had gleaned several pieces of information from their conversation over dinner, along with some observations of the woman herself. All in all, he was satisfied that Regin the Ruthless, was not inclined to be ruthless towards them.

For the moment anyway.

"Yeah, so Kinnon and I are standing with this guy half in the window and half out. Kinnon's got his taser aimed at the idiot and I flip on a torch, getting my first good look at him." House tuned back into the story Regin was regaling Cuddy with.

"So, this _moron_ is standing with one foot out the window, one foot in, plasma screen TV held like so," Regin held her arms straight and gripping an imaginary television at her hips, "and is completely stark bollock naked."

Cuddy chuckled and leant in closer to House. His arm was draped over her shoulders. Regin's eyes tracked the movement and something wistful flashed behind her eyes, but the emotion was gone as soon as House thought he'd seen it.

"By this point, Kinnon's been on his feet for fourteen hours, hasn't eaten in ten and just wants to crash. So he says to the guy 'right, my good sir, you're nicked' or words to that effect, 'drop the TV so I can arrest yer sorry arse'. So, the man thinks this over, looks at me, looks at Kinnon and doesnae move." House noted that Regin's Scottish accent slipped into a more slanged style the more relaxed she became around them. "Kinnon's like 'well?' and the guy's just standing there shaking his head. Now, Kinnon's not a patient man, so he takes a step forward and pulls on his threatening face. 'Drop the TV or else' he says." Regin smiled at the memory and worked herself up to the punch-line.

"The guy looks at me, looks at Kinnon, works up all his nerve and finally says; 'aye, but if drop this fucking TV not only have you got me on B&E, but destruction of property and indecent exposure as well.'"

Cuddy threw back her head and laughed and Regin shared in the smile. For some reason, House got the feeling that Regin didn't get to actually have a friendly _conversation_ like this very often.

"So, who's this Kinnon guy? You said he was a police detective?" Cuddy asked Regin and the taller woman's chin dipped once in a nod, her hands suddenly burying in the deep pockets of her red coat. Her shoulders hunched a little.

"Yeah, New Scotland Yard."

"How do you know him?"

"I consult on a few cases, I have degrees in Mythology and Occult as well as medicine. Kinnon deals with…odd cases. Officially I'm there to consult on the occult and 'Satan Worshipping' aspects of his murder cases." There was something in her voice, something that Cuddy wasn't sure that even Regin was aware of herself, that kept her from asking more.

Suddenly, Regin stopped, head lifting and spinning on one flip-flop to stare down the road.

It was well lit and empty. Cuddy and House stopped, half a dozen paces away. House's arm tightened over Cuddy's shoulders preventing her from stepping back towards the other woman.

"Regin…?"

"You need to go." It was softly spoken, nearly a whisper.

"What is it?"

"Just go." She hadn't turned back to them. She was still facing down the empty road, her big body tense as if ready to spring. Her head whipped to the side suddenly, peering down a dark alleyway. She flinched and twitched as if something was crawling under her skin. "You need to go. Right now."

"Whatever it is, we'll deal with it." House told her, though he hustled Cuddy behind him. She made a small disgruntled sound but otherwise did not try to get around him.

Yet.

Regin kicked off her flip-flops and reached inside her jacket. She drew out a gun the like of which House had never seen before. It was huge, bigger even than Dresden's hand cannon of a 44. It was nickel plated and had twin revolver barrels and chambers, one on top of the other both as long as her forearm. Regin slid her fingers around the pearl grip and her first and third fingers squeezed over a trigger each. She hefted the gun as if it weighed nothing, though it was clearly several pounds of weapon.

"Trust me, cat. You want nothing to do with this." Regin's voice had changed. Not so much deeper as more _powerful_. Her voice boomed along the street and echoed off buildings as if amplified. House felt it impact his skin. She turned on him, her eyes completely black, the white swallowed by the cold darkness there, only the tiniest spark of multi-coloured starlight showing. Cuddy's grip tightened on his arm.

"Now _go." _

House didn't have time to refute it before the first impact exploded Regin clean off her feet and sent her sailing over their heads to crash back down into the road, fifty yards away, tearing up concrete and asphalt like it was tissue paper with her impact.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4:**

House wasted no time in pushing Cuddy away from him and down the street towards Regin.

"Go and help her."

"But…"

"Go!" Even Cuddy wouldn't disobey that tone, so she turned and ran down the street, pausing only to kick off her shoes and sprint better without them. She bit her lip when she saw the ten metre long furrow in the road that had been caused by Regin slamming into it and dragging to a stop. Whatever had hit her hadn't just pummelled her, it had thrown her _into_ the asphalt. She stopped beside the taller woman, who lay prone on the street, amazingly, her gun still in one hand. Cuddy jumped back with a hiss of surprise when her black eyes snapped open and she jack-knifed upright into a sitting position.

"Okay, now I'm pissed." Regin rumbled, her voice echoing again. She gripped the hand Cuddy offered her and Cuddy had to brace herself against the weight of the other woman as she hauled her to her feet. Regin snorted once and shook herself like a dog wanting water out of its coat. She jerked the collar of her duster and looked down at her gun, checking it over for something. Cuddy wouldn't know, she preferred to have as little to do with firearms as possible. Regin glanced down at Cuddy and seemed to realise how delicate she looked. She shrugged out of her jacket and draped it over the smaller woman's shoulders. It engulfed Cuddy from neck to ankle and trailed along the ground besides. She staggered under the weight and the bulk of several very large and, in all probability, very illegal weapons snuggled within the thick hide.

Z "Hold this." Then Regin said something else in that foreign language and the coat's belt cinched tight at Cuddy's waist, effectively locking her into it. Regin cocked the gun with a double clicking of both hammers being pulled back.

"Um, what the hell is wrong with your coat?" Cuddy was trying, unsuccessfully, to get out of the heavy weight of it.

"Nothing." Regin yanked Cuddy behind her and then swung the gun up in front of her in a perfect fire-ready stance. "It's dragon hide, it just remembers being alive, that's all."

"Your coat is _alive?!"_ Cuddy redoubled her efforts to remove the thing and barely heard Regin's next words.

"Yes. Now shush." By this point, Regin had reached House, who was standing painfully still in the middle of the street. All senses to their full extension and finding…nothing.

"I can't see it." He gritted. "Or smell it, or even taste it. What the hell just hit you?" He could sense _something_ though, and it had his cat prowling back and forth in the cage in his mind. It wanted out. To protect its mate. To kill if necessary.

"Of course you can't see it. It is a _they_ and they're using some kind of veil. A powerful one if you can't smell or hear them either. Now do as I say, take the wee woman and get the hell out of dodge." She growled at him.

"Um…guys…?" Cuddy tried to cut in.

"That thing just broke the _street_ with your _face." _House was twitchy, he could feel it, them, whatever just beyond the range of his senses. "If it hits you again, you might not get up."

"Guys?" Cuddy touched House's arm to get his attention, but he barely acknowledged her in favour of arguing with Regin.

"I'm a lot tougher than _you_, Mister Moggy. So gather yourself and scamper, I've no desire to peel you off the street when they really get going." Regin was swinging that cannon of a gun back and forth, scanning the street for something none of them could see.

"Hey, you're in _my_ town now. It's not your job to deal with this crap."

"Hulloooo….?" Cuddy heaved a sigh and glanced behind her.

"Actually, it _is _my job…"

"GUYS!" Cuddy finally snapped at them. They both whirled on her.

"_What?" _

Cuddy fisted a hand in both their shirts and yanked. "Duck!" They all hit the street just in time to avoid the battered green dumpster that had been steadily levitating in the alleyway as it came roaring out and smashed into a parked car on the opposite side of the road.

Regin twisted to avoid landing on Cuddy. House twisted so he _did_ land on her and could shield her with his body and they all turned to see the car implode with the dumpster embedded into the now crumpled metal of the frame.

"Ugh…" Regin grumbled. "I _hate_ assassins." She rolled to her feet and scanned the area, her black eyes took in everything, even things that nothing else could see and she tried not to let her fangs show too much.

"How do you know it's aaaAAGH!"

House let out a hoarse yell as he was gripped by unseen hands and thrown into the air with preternatural strength. He flipped end over end and managed to twist to land on his feet. Cuddy rolled to a crouch and surged upwards, ready to fight, her intimidation factor dampened only slightly by her having to take the time to roll the sleeves of the duster back several times so she could actually bare her claws at anything.

Regin caught sight of it. Only briefly and out of the corner of her eye, but she still saw it. She swung her gun that way in time to see it streak towards Cuddy. She was several feet away, so was House, there was no time to get between it and the petite werecat.

But then, there were advantages to having a dragon for a coat.

Regin swung the gun up with a rolling of the muscles along her arms and took aim at Cuddy, then swung a couple of inches to the left. Whatever it was, slammed into Cuddy with enough force to shatter brick and mortar…and bounced off again. There was a rippling from the coat, a deafening roar and a flash fire of energy and something pale and dressed in black was sent tumbling across the street. Regin swung the gun round and the roar of the bullet leaving the first chamber was deafening. The figure lying on the street was sent airborne by the sheer force of the explosive round impacting his side. There was a high pitched squeal of pain and a splattering of pinkish blood over the street before the veil flickered and took hold once more.

Regin snarled in frustration and moved towards the spray of blood on the ground. Her foot hit something and she crouched, picking it up and letting her fingers move over it. She frowned, guessing as to what she was holding. Long, covered in material, torn at one end and wet, at the other end were…

"Ugh!" Regin jerked away and sent the invisible thing with a wet splat to the ground. The veil flickered once more as the rest of the energy left the limb and revealed a neatly severed arm lying on the street. Regin's features twisted in disgust and she wiped her hand on her shirt, pink gore streaking the white material. Ah well, the clothes were for the rubbish pile anyway.

Another roar shook the street and this time it came from a distinctly feline throat. Regin turned and blinked when she found herself looking at a fully incensed Ishaaran male.

She had read the archives, seen their villages from a distance, spoken with a few of their elders and even knew their language, but none of that had prepared her for the sheer magnificence of an Ishaaran protecting his mate.

House stood in front of Cuddy, claws like knives on his hands, silver hair a wild mane about his head, his skin a glowing metallic silver and his blue eyes burning out of his head like firing butane torches. His teeth were bared and he snarled another warning low and echoing that scraped over Regin's nerve endings uncomfortably. There was the slightest of scufflings on the concrete and then House was sent flying by a booming blow to his chest. He twisted in the air, but something had cracked in the attack and he only managed to get one arm and leg under him before smacking to the street. Cuddy clawed the air, teeth bared, eyes glowing and thoroughly pissed off. Her talons raked something and there was a sharp cry of pain and another splattering of blood onto the street, a hamburger sized piece of flesh hanging from Cuddy's hand before she gave a small 'ew!' and shook it off.

Regin ground her teeth. This was getting them nowhere. They couldn't fight what they couldn't see and Regin could already hear the sirens on their way.

She had promised Baba that she would try and not get arrested over here. She wasn't about to renege on it. She strode to Cuddy and handed her the gun.

"Hold this." Her voice was no longer her own, and for once, she didn't care. Cuddy took the gun from her, both arms straining under its weight, claws clumsy on the pearl grip. House limped back towards them, already having reset his ribs.

Regin took a few steps back from them and glanced this way and that on the street. They were on the edges of the road, one in the mouth of the alley, one crouched up on a gargoyle overhanging the street from one of the older buildings and another perched atop the wrecked car with the dumpster sticking out of it. She couldn't see them but she could damn well feel them.

"Cover your ears." She told House and Cuddy. Her hair roiled around her head as if tossed by a tempest's wind, but the air was still. She threw her arms up and her head back, fingers clawing and digging into the sky as if she wished to pull it down on her head. House caught her intention a second before his mate did, whether by instinct or knowledge, and clapped his hands over Cuddy's ears, crouching low and pulling her down with him.

Regin's roar was worse than deafening.

It made House and Cuddy's voices sound like a kitten's mewl compared to a dragon's bellow. The sound hit them like a solid wall of force, it blasted their hair back and tore at their clothing, windows rattled and shattered, metal buckled. It sounded like the scream of a horrified woman, the howl of a wolf, the yell of an enraged warrior, the hissing of an angry alligator and something like the sound of a T-Rex from the movies. Her shadow flared behind her, swarming across the street under the orange glow of the street lamp, hitting the side of the building and spidering up it like some awful black plague. It spread out and flared open as if given wings when Regin's voice reached its full blasting extension.

House gasped under the onslaught, his ears uncovered. For one horrible moment, every slight, every insult, every bad thing he had ever done rang through his consciousness like the thunderous clanging of the largest bell on the planet and then everything mercifully went silent as his eardrums burst in a hollow popping of silence that boomed in the aftermath of such noise with a bloom of pain. He glanced down the street in time to see the Roar tear into the magical veil protecting the assassins. His snarl was terrible and only felt rather than heard as the magic was forcibly ripped from them. Revealing the slim all black clad figures of three White Court Vampire assassins.

Finally, the deep water pressure of the Roar ceased and House and Cuddy could finally breathe without gasping. House staggered upwards, balance shot from his damaged ears. Cuddy gripped his arm, her mouth moving but he couldn't make out the words. A worried expression painted her face, when she lifted her hand to his neck under his ear and brought away fingers blushed with blood. She looked dazed and a little rattled, but otherwise okay. A flicker of movement caught his eye and House shouted, the noise silent to him, and dragged Cuddy behind him.

One of the vampires had surged off the gargoyle he had been crouching on and sprinted towards them. He brought up the ugly shape of an automatic weapon in front of him and his finger squeezed down on the trigger. House covered Cuddy's body with his own even as she struggled to pull him out of the way, but they needn't have bothered.

Regin appeared in front of them and there was another terrible vibration through House's body as she snarled at the vampire in a warning challenge. The muzzle of the gun flared and Regin staggered back a step when stars of purple blood exploded in front of her body. The bullets ripped into her and House watched in horror, ready to catch her body when she fell.

She didn't even miss a step.

She pounced on the vampire. Body slicing through the air like a thrown spear. Her arm swished to the side, like she was going to clothesline the vampire, his eyes widened and blood coughed from between white glowing lips when her arm slid cleanly through his body and the Kevlar armour that covered him. Ichor slid down Regin's tanned skin and dripped on the street, both hers and the vampire's. The halved vampire fell to the street, twitched once and died.

Regin flew at the next one, the one with the missing arm and plucked his head from his shoulders as House would pull a ripe cherry from a branch. Then she converged on the final leech, the one that saw sense and tried to run. He got two steps before Regin's greater power consumed him. She snatched him up off the ground with one hand and dragged him back towards House and Cuddy. High pitched burbling sounds returned to House. His ears itched terribly and he shook his head like he was trying to empty them of water before sound returned to his world with the struggling grunts of the vampire as he yanked ineffectually at Regin.

She looked…monstrous.

Purple blood oozed from her wounds, at least a dozen, arching up diagonally over her torso. She limped on one side, he guessed that one of the bullets had to have shattered her hip. Ragged slivers of flesh hung from the bloodied craters in her body, vampire blood splattered her skin and face. Her hair roiled about her head and House recognised a faint hissing coming from it rather than Regin. Her face was too sharp, a faintly vulpine countenance having overtaken it, fangs dripped from her mouth long and white. Every muscle stood out in stark relief. She held the vampire by the throat and threw him at House and Cuddy's feet.

"What is your business here?" Regin planted a bare foot on the vampire's chest and pressed him down onto the road. When he did nothing but glare at her she continued to press down until something popped wetly and he grunted in suppressed pain, his skin glowing a brighter white. Harry had told House that the White Court vampires glowed like this when they let their beasts out to play. The benefits were faster reflexes, inhuman speed in general, super-human strength, the whole gig. The price was a high one though. They had to feed the beast afterwards. House knew then that the vampire would not survive its fellows.

At least not completely in tact.

"What…is your business here?" Regin shook slightly. The barest discernible tremor in her limbs, but it was obvious that she was holding onto her control by a thread. Her hair continued to whip around her head and Cuddy had prudently put House between herself and it. He didn't mind, the hair freaked him out a little, but Cuddy hated snakes, no matter what form she was in.

"To kill the beasts." The vampire spat at her, pink blood frothing at the corner of his mouth. He squirmed under Regin's heel like a pinned bug.

"On orders from whom? The Hunters have an agreement with the House of Raith."

"Huh, I am Skavis and proud of it, kill me if you will, Village Eater, I do not fear you." He spat, a glob of bloodied saliva splattering against Regin's leg and this seemed to incense her beyond any battering and bullets that the leech could have called forth. She reached down, gripped him by the neck and hauled him to eye level. He was smaller than her, his toes barely scraped the ground. He kept his look of contempt pasted to his face, but his eyes darted to House and Cuddy, almost pleading with them. For a quick death if nothing else.

"You would do well to learn, Skavis." She snarled at him, her voice modulating between monster and human in a disconcerting range of sound. "Take this message back to your lord; the Hunters sign an alliance with the Ishaaran this night in blood." Her voice echoed with power, it made House and Cuddy's skin crawl and itch like thousands of insects scampered over their flesh. "They are under the protection of Hunter Regin the Ruthless, Scourge of the South, Shadow to the North, Village Eater and Guardian of the Burning Plains of Tarterus - and all her Moon-Blessed Sisters. You strike at me hence and you strike at the spear of the goddess herself. Remember this well, puny leechling and do not let me see your face again or both Furya and cat shall descend upon you and plunge you to the very depths of hell." She tossed him away from her like a rag of humanity and watched him stumble down the road.

"_**Run!"**_ She pointed at him and power shimmered in the air between them like a heat haze, lancing from her arm to the vampire. _**"Run back to your lords in their caves and their hovels. Run to them and know no rest until your message is delivered unto all your kind White, Red and Black alike. Deliver it by mouth, thief of fear. Deliver it with your blood, your sweat, your agonies and never know surcease. Your hunger shall grow until it is stronger even than your demon and you shall never know satiation. You are a wolf without teeth, a cat without claws, a hawk without speed. I take from you your hunting skills and strength. You are neutered and impotent. Your kind will not even summon vitriol enough to purge your from their ranks. You shall know only pity and disgust wherever you shall roam. This is my sentence to you. May you suffer until your immortality dies and Hades himself passes judgement at the darkening of the Universe Herself." **_

The vampire stared at her, wide eyed and horrified. He shook his head in sharp denial but then his body went rigid. His eyes pleaded with House and Cuddy, for what they didn't know, before he spun on one booted heel and sprinted down the street. He disappeared around the corner, running like the hounds of hell themselves had been loosed on him and pattered near silently off into the night.

Regin coughed and spat blood, sagging forward and catching herself on her knees. She panted roughly with great wheezing wet sounds coming from her throat, she suddenly sounded much larger than she was. Even her hair slunk forward and hung limp in her fatigue. Her limbs trembled ever so slightly.

"Are you…?" Cuddy edged forward, hesitant and unsure after what she had just witnessed. "Are you alright?" Her hand landed gently on the plane of Regin's shoulder and she flinched away from the touch as if burned.

"Don't!" She staggered and caught herself on a lamp post. Blood splattered over the metal, dripping down and pattering onto the street like rain. "Don't touch me right now." Her voice quieted and finally settled back into a hoarse human normal. She groaned and stretched her neck and Cuddy watched amazed as a twisted lump of metal slid from the pale flesh of her throat and plinked down onto the street below.

Regin was, literally, _sweating_ bullets.

"Is there anything we can do?"

Regin shook her head, not up to forming words. A tremor shook her again and Cuddy took another half step forward before her promise not to touch reasserted itself.

"Just go home. Sleep well and safe." Regin straightened, slowly, painfully. Another bullet fell from the mangled mess of her shoulder and bounced over the street. It steamed with the heat of her blood. She stretched her hand towards Cuddy and uttered a strange word, that sounded faintly Latin, Cuddy was spun as the coat roiled over her and leapt from her body to Regin's. Enfolding the taller woman in its leathery embrace. Regin hunched in on herself in the coat and staggered down the street.

"Hey, where you going? You can't just wander off. You've been shot." House hurried after her. He might have been a bastard but he was pretty sure that Regin had just saved his life and, more importantly, Cuddy's. He wasn't about to let her go off into some corner and die. At the very least, his sense of debt had to be assuaged first.

"Of that, I am painfully aware, fuzzy-britches." Regin coughed, another horrible wet sound and straightened further. Two more bullets scattered over the street and Regin sighed, inhaling deeply when her right lung re-inflated itself, no longer punctured. She was feeling better by the second. "Go home. That curse took a lot out of me and I don't have much time before I have to…replenish my energy." She cast a look at House. "Where's the nearest prison?" House blinked at the question and answered with the slightest stumble in his words. "Good, I'll see you both tomorrow."

With that, she disappeared down into the alleyway. There was a blast of wind and the shadows lengthened, stretching out and wrapping around her, tighter than her coat. With one final wink to them with an ebony eye, Regin disappeared to places even their night vision couldn't penetrate.

Silence echoed throughout the street.

Cuddy slid under House's arm and wiped the blood off his neck before leaning up and rubbing her face against his throat, inhaling his spicy scent. Little thrills of adrenaline coursed through her and, though neither of them had changed, the aftermath of the fight rang through their veins with barely constrained excitement. His hand splayed against her lower back and brought her closer, though his gaze remained focussed on peering into the dark of the alleyway for a moment longer. He turned to his mate and lead her down the street, eager to be away from the stench of dead vampire. Their bodies were already decomposing at an accelerated rate, they would most likely be lumps of goo by the time the police and their wailing sirens arrived.

"I was thinking." Cuddy stopped briefly to slip her feet back into her abandoned heels and then returned to his side, wrapping one arm around his chest and cuddling closer with her other hand resting over his heart. He had one brawny limb roped over her shoulders, tucking her in close. "It's time we had Harry over to lay some wards on the house, plus, I need to cook something for him. He doesn't eat enough."

House snorted, his usual reaction to the thought of sharing Cuddy with _any_ male, even in the strictest platonic sense and eyed the bullets on the street that had fallen from Regin as she had limped away.

"Yeah." He agreed slowly. "I'll call him tonight."

Cuddy hummed at him and he hurriedly led her away from the scene of the crime.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Interlude**

Regin materialised within the shadows of Riker's prison. She looked up at the wall, it was over thirty feet high, barbed wire spooled over the top of it and search lights swinging back and forth.

Maximum security.

Goodie.

Regin's tongue snaked over her dark lips, fangs glinting in the moonlight that reached her. Her sharp face lifted, she gathered herself and sprang. Her coat billowed at the apex of her leap, she soared over the top of the razor wire without so much as a hitch and sank down over the other side with a gentle spin. She landed in a crouch, red leather spilling around her like a pool of blood, and then she was off.

She melted along the wall line. Missing the search lights and the spans that the security cameras glared down on. The night was her friend, her ally and she found the door with little difficulty. She gripped the handle and murmured under her breath. The lock clanked with a whisper of magic and she was inside and on the prowl.

Hunger clawed at her. It always did but the beast was hungrier now. She had been fettered too long, wanted out, wanted to hunt. Regin stopped once, to regain a little control, catching her breath, one more bullet clattered to the concrete floor and spun away. Regin blinked at it, considered chasing after it, but didn't bother. Things like her had their own laws and she was hardly worried about forensics, her blood would probably burn the bullet beyond all recognition if it hadn't already. She licked her lips again.

She could smell them now. So many heart beats. Thundering in the dark. She could taste them. They knew she was hear. Prey always knows when it's being hunted. These ones especially, these baser creatures, to whom instinct and bloodshed was a way of life. Regin shivered, not from the cold, fear or even revulsion at what she was about to do, she had gotten past that a long time ago. She knew she was a monster, fighting that had long since become something she could no longer afford to do. The best she could hope for was to kill those that deserved to die. To serve up justice in the only way that mattered.

Blood for blood, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth…sufferance for sufferance.

Regin moved through the prison like a wraith. She melted through gates, they unlocked before her as if the metal itself quailed out of her way. Cameras shorted to snow when she passed. There would be no images of her hunting tonight. She found the separate wing, the one reserved for the most horrific. The one reserved for the sociopaths, the child rapists, the murderers and monsters that were even worse than she was. She slipped inside.

It was easy. After all, the point of prisons was to keep people _in, _wasn't it? Defending against a monster hunting inside the very walls had not occurred to the guards.

She could sense them. So close, so tasty. Little hearts beating. Thundering in her head, like the rising crescendo of orchestral music. It taunted her, a siren's call. They were moving now, awakened by her presence. They were quiet, in their beds, in their corners of their little cages. Like tiny birds cringing away from the cat's paw.

Anticipation shuddered through her hard enough to make her groan and she sank her fangs into her lip to try and remain in control for a few more moments. She would not massacre them, though they richly deserved it. To kill them all would make her no better than them and, though it was a thin line she walked, she would not cross it tonight.

She strolled along the row. The doors were solid steel, but that didn't stop their thoughts from leaking through. Dirty, bloody, horrible thoughts. This one had started with animals, getting off on their screams, then he had moved to women, his vision hazing red every time he had killed…and he had killed. Many times. More even than the police had guessed. So many bodies, buried on top of each other in the forest. Nothing but the trees to watch over them.

Regin marked him as her main course.

The door creaked back out of her way, bowed back out of the force of her will. She stepped inside, her eyes gleaming black fire, fangs dripping, claws curling. She filled the doorway, having to stoop to step inside to the tiny cell.

He was awake in the corner. Head lifting, scenting…he was afraid. A terrible smile curled her lips. Oh yes, he would do very well.

"What…what are you?" His voice was hoarse, like he had not used it in a long time.

Her red duster flopped heavily to the floor. Her bare feet stepped over the threshold of the door and her black eyes shot multicoloured sparks in the dark. Her hair began to tumble and writhe around her head. Her features became sharper in the chink of moonlight sliding through the barred window and an inhuman smile stretched her black lips, revealing long dripping fangs.

The door clanged behind her. The other inmates could hear little through the brick and mortar that entombed them. They could hear silence to start with and then a sudden, awful, horrified screaming that rent the night air and woke up every prisoner on the block. They huddled in their beds and knew that their demons had finally manifested and come for them. There were dull impacts, like that of a body striking the wall, horrible scraping screeching sounds, like that of fingernails clawing over a steel door. The screams turned to gurgling whimpers mixed with feral snarls, tearing sounds…the crunching of bones.

Finally all fell still once more and the door to the cell opened. Regin stepped out, rolling her head on her neck with a popping sound, blood painted one side of her face, dripped from her mouth, she smeared it away with one hand and lapped it from her clawed fingers with a long sweep of her tongue. She shut the cell door on the blood painted walls, the human bones littering the tiny room's floor and the scraps of his prison overalls draped with slivers of missed flesh over the bed and toilet.

Outside the cell she reached up on a stretch and flexed newly rejuvenated muscles. She sighed a relaxed sigh, donned her duster and then moved onto the next cell to see what else was on the menu for future hungers.

The first was an accountant. He had finally snapped and killed the peers in his office that had bullied him for years…Regin moved on, heard his sigh of relief.

The next one…insane. He truly could not help himself. He did not realise the difference between right and wrong…no…he did. That was the only thing he recognised…Regin pressed her hand to the door. Odd. He was so young, not yet sixteen, he had been tried as an adult though, sent to maximum security. What had he done…?

Regin unlocked the door and stepped inside. She tilted her head at the boy sitting in the middle of the bed. He was cross-legged, fists resting on his knees.

Calm.

He was built small. Slight and fragile looking, his face, what she could see of it, was almost pretty. His hair was pale blonde and cut short. Had he been put here so the others wouldn't attack him? In a prison like this, pretty young things were used for the worst kind of entertainment. There was something odd…something wrong. Regin stepped inside, closer to him, wary, she stood in the middle of the cell and then crouched down low so she was on his eye level.

"Have you come to kill me now?"

Regin blinked and rocked back. The beast receded, it needed Regin's reasoning for this puzzling prey…no, that wasn't the reason. The beast melted back because it didn't _want _this prey. A frown lowered Regin's features. What in the seven levels was going on here?

"No." Regin answered after a moment.

"Why not?"

He was painfully young. So delicate…Regin felt something shift inside her. Something ancient and powerful that she'd never felt before.

"Do I know you?" She asked him. "What is your name?"

"Riker."

"No, that's the name of the prison."

"And my name. they named me after it. The guards. I was left here when I was twelve and after I…went bad, they kept me here."

One thing Regin was certain of, the boy was not evil. She could smell that from a mile off. She needed to in order to feed. Whatever he was, he was neither human nor dangerous. Not to her at least.

"How did you go bad?"

"Killed people."

"What people?"

"Prisoners…a guard."

Regin felt the crime swim up from him and inhaled it just as smoothly. She frowned. The boy had killed, yes, he had killed from the worst offenders wing as well and then he had…the guard…Regin snarled. He had killed the guard for trying to molest him.

Something didn't add up here.

Regin edged closer. "Look at me."

He shook his head violently. "Nobody likes my eyes."

"I need to see." She insisted gently. "Look at me."

"Will you kill me if I do?" His tone was almost pleading.

"If you deserve it." She wasn't lying.

He lifted his head, their eyes met.

Regin shot backwards with a hiss, fangs bared, eyes black, she loomed in the doorway.

"Impossible!"

"Please." He was off the bed, reaching out to her. "Kill me, make it stop."

"I can't." Regin shook her head wildly. "I'm sorry but I can't."

Then she was gone. The door slammed behind her. She moved so quickly down the corridor that she blasted one of the gates from its steel hinges in her hurry. Lights imploded overhead with a showering of sparks and she slithered over the wall and out into the street with clawing desperate movements. It wasn't until she fled down the street, heart hammering in her chest and air desperate in her lungs that she realised what the feeling deep in her chest was.

Fear.

For the first time since she could remember, Regin Nast was afraid.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6:**

"Did you do this?"

Regin blinked as a newspaper was slapped down over her coffee and sent the cup skittering across the white linen. She hummed in the back of her throat in displeasure and looked up to the waiter. He hurried over and mopped up the spill, refilling her cup, pouring another two for her guests and disappearing all within a few seconds. You really can pay for good service.

Regin lifted the newspaper and unfolded it with exaggerated care. She scanned the headline and looked up at her guests for brunch.

House loomed over her, silver hair tousled, bike helmet in one hand, faded jeans and a band tee shirt straining over his broad chest. Regin noted to herself that he really was a fine figure of a man.

"Well?"

Even if his manners did leave something to be desired.

"Sit down. People are beginning to stare." Regin ordered him quietly and flipped to the article page that matched the headline.

"Do I look like I give a crap?"

"Sit." She looked up at him and her gaze smashed into his like a physical thing. _"Down." _

House sat before he'd fully processed what she'd been saying. The Voiced command had taken over his central nervous system briefly and made sure he'd done as he'd been told. Cuddy took the seat opposite Regin and looked briefly between her husband and the other woman. Her silver bracelet blinked merrily in the light of the restaurant and Regin pulled her eyes away from it and then folded the newspaper. She creased it neatly with her tapered fingers and put it levelly back on the table. She straightened the edge so that it was parallel to the tablemat. She folded her hands neatly in front of her face, met House's blazing blue eyes with calm starry black and spoke the last word he expected.

"Yes."

"We had an agreement…" He began furiously, leaning towards her with his teeth bared.

"We had nothing of the kind!" Regin snapped in a low tone. Her magic worked subtly and ensured they wouldn't be overheard. It was unlikely anyone would believe their conversation but front page news was front page news…and murder was murder. "I agreed not to harm you and yours. I doubt very much that you considered a rapist and a murderer someone you were willing to protect."

"Regin," Cuddy began, obviously trying to be the voice of reason, though Regin could feel the distrust coming off her in waves. Regin ignored it, she was more at ease with distrust and fear than she was with loyalty and companionship anyway. "Why would you do this?"

Regin reached for her coffee cup and clenched her hand into a fist halfway through the motion when she saw that she was trembling.

House was on the symptom in a heartbeat.

"What's wrong with you? Didn't you heal properly?"

"I'm…well and it's nothing that hasn't been wrong with me for as long as I can remember. I can handle it."

"Really? By doing shit like this? Sounds like you've got a real handle on the situation to me." He snapped, lifting the newspaper and shoving it to within inches of her face.

The snarl was out of Regin's throat before she could stop it. Her hand snapped around his wrist and twisted until he dropped the paper. House gasped in pain and arched, trying to prevent the shattering of the delicate bones in his wrist.

"Listen to me well, pussycat, every living thing has to eat another living thing, it is a constant and a law of the universe to deny that is stupidity. He meant less to me than the deer you hunt and gut in your forest. I had to feed or else the thing that required sustenance would be loosed upon this quaint little province of yours and you don't want to see carnage like that, believe me."

_Control yourself, child. He is not your enemy. _The familiar voice poured smooth and soothing through Regin's head and she tried to see it from that point of view, but he had to be made to understand.

_**No! I'm still hungry. Let's eat him and his mate. They will be tasty.**_

Regin's eyes blazed when she wrestled that speaker back into her cage and slammed the barred door shut. She'd already put up with more than enough from her last night.

"Regin…" Cuddy half reached across the table but stopped short, she didn't know what she could do. Regin had already demonstrated she was powerful beyond anything they had ever come up against but she seemed to be in control at the moment.

Just barely.

"The best I can do is chose where and when she feeds and I'm sure we all agree that the maximum security wing on death row is much better than a children's play park!" With one final wrench and another grunt of pain from House, she released him and sat back in her seat. Her chest heaved for a moment, her hair tumbled oddly over her shoulders and she reached up to smooth it into a knot at her nape with trembling fingers.

"It would do that…?" Cuddy asked and wondered if she had made the wrong decision in allowing Regin to stay here, for as short a stay as it may be. She had saved their lives, that was true, but another person was already dead because of her. Cuddy thought this over as she reached over and took House's wrist between her palms. She clasped him gently and pulled him closer. He shifted his seat so they could sit closer still.

"Not usually." Regin didn't, or wouldn't, look at her when she spoke. "Furya are only supposed to feed on the flesh of evil men." She swallowed hard and her black gaze dropped for an instant, then something so horrified, so guilt ridden passed over her face that it sent a shiver up Cuddy's spine. "But then, there's a reason they call me Village Eater."

Silence descended over the table for a moment and Regin seemed to finally get back into full control. She stretched her head on her neck until bones popped and then she drummed her nails on the table top and stared out the window.

"Who did you invite?"

Cuddy stiffened in her seat.

"What?" House asked, rolling his tender wrist around with a clicking from the bones. Any damage Regin might have inflicted was already healed and it was pointless holding it against her when she had only done it to make sure she had his full and undivided attention.

She could have ripped his arm off and beaten him to death with the soggy end and there would have been jack he could have done about it.

"Someone's using a tracking spell on you. I can smell him coming along the street. A wizard. You have to have something personal to track someone so it stands to reason he knows you." She looked levelly at them both, she did not want to be cornered again by another couple of supernaturals. Last night had left her control in rags and she still wasn't properly fed. She was more dangerous than usual right now. "So, who did you invite?"

"A friend of ours." Cuddy answered after a shared glance with House.

Regin blinked at her and stayed perfectly still for a long moment. She blew out a breath and released the clouding spell around them so the tracking spell could finally work properly. She felt the burning flare of the wizard's light change direction and head back towards the restaurant. They had been circling the block for the last ten minutes. She lifted her hand and gestured the waiter over.

"Firenze," she smiled dazzlingly at him and he grinned back, blushing furiously. "I have two more friends joining me for lunch, could you bring us some menus and more chairs please?"

"Yes, Miss Nast. Right away." The young man turned and hurried off to carry out Regin's bidding.

"Firenze?" House echoed quietly and looked over at Regin. "Seriously?"

She lifted on shoulder in a negligent shrug.

"There you are!"

"Harry!" Cuddy was out of her seat in a flash and embracing the tall lean figure of 'Harry'. Cuddy had a type apparently. Regin let her eyes trail over the wizard and the first thought that entered her head was 'yum'. He was tall, at eye level with her even in her heels, shaggy dark hair, sharp featured face, strong jaw and dark grey eyes so flinty they were almost black. He wore a magic scented duster and had a huge hockey bag slung over one shoulder. House even deigned to stand and shake hands with the wizard and if that wasn't a rousing character endorsement, then Regin didn't know what was.

She was brought out of her reverie when Cuddy turned and introduced them.

"Harry Dresden, this is Regin Nast. Regin, Harry."

Tension rippled the air as they both squared up to each other. Magic simmered between them and he did not seem overly surprised when Regin inhaled and swallowed the energies whole. It did little to assuage her hunger and she realised there was nothing else for it.

She was going to have to get laid.

Regin tried to distract herself by standing to greet Harry with an extended hand.

"Harry, I've heard quite a bit about you."

Harry's eyes widened a fraction when he realised exactly how tall she was. A common reaction. She was suddenly glad she had dressed to flatter herself today. She wore a black Armani blazer with three quarter length sleeves to show off her delicate wrists, a sinfully tight blood red pencil skirt barely reached her knees and showed off exactly how long her legs were, was offset by mesh fine fishnet stockings and spiked black stiletto heels. Rubies glittered at her throat, mixed expensively with black opals. Her hand slid into his and his grip was strong and warm, not as warm as her own furnace like body temperature right now, but delicious power coursed through him so close to the surface that Regin could almost taste it from here.

_**What about this one? He is unmated. Let's have him. He might not even break the first time around. **_

Regin blinked and shook her head once as if she had water in her ears. She opened her eyes again when Harry stepped closer and, bravely or stupidly, met her eyes with his own. He sucked in his breath, bracing himself for his Sight and…

Nothing happened.

"Soulgazes don't work on me, Dresden and it would drive you mad if you had seen what I am anyway." She swiped her thumb over his pulse, just to feel the vitality there and inhaled again. He smelled so good, she couldn't argue with the beast there.

"Right." He muttered, his gaze dropping to her mouth and then back up to her eyes. "Good to know."

"Can I have my hand back?"

"What?"

"My hand." Regin scored her nail gently over the sensitive skin between his thumb and fingers and delighted at the little shiver that went through him. "You need to let go."

"Right." Harry coughed, releasing her hand and stepping away. Cuddy looked at him oddly while he took of his duster and draped it over the back of his chair and took his seat. He ignored any attempts on Cuddy's part to give him a sly look by burying his face in the menu and checking out what was up for lunch.

"Regin, this is Sergeant Karin Murphy from Chicago PD." House gave a mocking bow and gestured to Karin with grandiose actions.

Regin blinked, the tiny blonde had _completely_ escaped her notice. "I'm sorry, I didn't see you behind Harry." Regin extended her hand and was barely given time to clasp Karin's much smaller one before it was whipped away.

"I'd noticed." Karin moved to sit as far away from Regin as possible and Regin flexed her hand to make sure she hadn't gotten frostbite from such an arctic reception before taking her seat as well.

Conversation moved, stilted at first, but a little easier after that. They ordered lunch, Harry and Regin taking the most and agreeing to share one of their platters. Regin spent most of her time nursing her vodka rocks and acting like she was participating in the conversation when she was really trying to get a handle on herself. Her nails drummed against the table, she could feel her pulse racing at her throat and she wanted nothing more than to leave the table and go hunting for a hunger satisfying meal that had nothing to do with food. She was a little worried that she hadn't noticed Karin at all. She was even closer to the edge than she'd thought if she'd allowed herself to get distracted by the admittedly distracting Mr Dresden.

Something cold and wet pressed against Regin's thigh and she shot backwards in her seat and up to her feet hard enough to send her chair clattering.

A huge wolfish head poked out from under the table cloth and massive jaws parted in a doggy grin.

"Mouse!" I told you to behave yourself!" Harry reached around the table and clasped the dog by the collar, dragging him back a few inches under the table. 'Mouse' ignored his master and shouldered his way out from under the table and up to Regin. She should have known this would happen, she had noticed the dog earlier but hadn't mentioned him because they happened to be in a high end restaurant that probably didn't even allow guide dogs.

"It's alright. He just surprised me." Regin righted her chair and took her seat again. "Aren't you a beautiful boy?" She smiled down at the dog and he immediately went into a fit of tail wagging so eager his whole body twisted with it…and that was a lot of dog's body to be twisting this way and that. "Can you smell my dog?" She gripped him around the head and rubbed him vigorously until his eyes rolled back with pleasure.

"You know, it's a sad state of affairs when your pooch gets more action than you, Dresden." House noted wryly and devoured a bread roll in three bites.

"Shut up, Snowball." Dresden muttered and looked on, more than a little jealous, at his dog. He was actually a lot more interested in the way Regin was leaning over and flashing a plentiful amount of cleavage to half the restaurant. Who knew you could get flying hearts on lingerie these days?

"Miss Nast?"

Regin lifted her head, still bent over the dog and smiled congenially at the manager of the restaurant. Lucas Cortez was a tall man, almost as tall as Dresden, but build more broadly with Greco features, thick black curling hair and an impeccably trimmed beard.

He also, Regin noted, smelled rather…_appetising_.

"Yes, Lucas." Regin straightened, still petting Mouse, who was firm in the decision that he had a new best friend for life.

"I'm very sorry to tell you this, but we cannot allow the animal to stay inside."

Harry opened his mouth to say that it was fine, they could go and eat elsewhere then. Mouse was family and if that meant missing out on his five star lunch that he couldn't afford anyway, well, that was just fine with him.

Regin beat him to it though.

"Now, Lucas, you and I both know that silly little rule is a little more flexible than everyone lets on." She stood in a sinuous flex of movement and placed her hand on his arm. Lucas glanced down at the contact but didn't pull away.

Who would?

"After all," Regin continued smoothly. "If you were going to evict poor well behaved Mouse here, then you'd have to jettison that disgusting rat like creature that is currently residing in the handbag of that insipid little twit over there, wouldn't you?" Regin glanced to the handbag in question and spotted the bulbous head of a Chihuahua poking out and yapping insistently at its mistress for food.

"True…" Lucas murmured. "What do you suggest?"

Regin's tongue slid over her full lower lip and she canted her hip until she was positive she had his full attention. "Well, how about we go up to your office before the food arrives for lunch and try and work something out?"

Lucas stepped back smoothly and gestured in front of him. "By all means."

Then they were gone, Regin strode through the restaurant like a queen leaving her court and Lucas shadowed her with a hand low on her back.

Harry watched her go until she disappeared and then turned back to the others.

"She's definitely a Furya."

"She admits freely to doing this. Said it was the best out of two rather shitty options." House held up the newspaper and Dresden scanned it quickly.

"Just bones?" He flipped to the article and read hurriedly, he had no idea how long Regin and Lucas would be 'discussing' what to do with Mouse. "Ew, she…ew." He glanced back at the way Regin had just gone. "Should I be going in and warning Lucas that he might be lunch?"

Cuddy shook her head rapidly. "Believe me, that's not the kind of hungry that Regin is right now." She sipped her water and rubbed at her flushed throat. House glanced at her and his eyes flared for a moment before he managed to rein himself in again. Now wasn't the time.

"What about here? Says the boy in the cell next to the victim is suspected of involvement, his cell door was open and trace of the victim's blood was on it, but he was just sitting there the next morning…'authorities still cannot explain how the victim was so thoroughly disposed of. A reliable informant tells this reporter that it would be impossible, even if the desire was strong enough, to consume that much human flesh given the time frame available'. That's just…wrong." Karin offered her professional opinion.

"We should try and talk to that kid. He might have seen something. Might help us figure out what the hell she's up to." Harry decided.

"I can try and use some of my contacts. See if we can get in to see him?" Karin offered.

"Hold on." Cuddy said suddenly. "Regin gave her word that she wasn't here to cause trouble and, yes, she's done this but he was a mass murdering psychopath. It said in there that the police still have no idea how many victims he might have stashed away somewhere."

"And now they never will." Karin told her sharply.

"The point _is,"_ Cuddy continued doggedly. "It's no great loss that he's dead. He was even sentenced to die by our own justice system. It's not like she just picked him at random and you said so yourself Harry. These Hunters are nasty, to we really want to be going around picking fights with creatures we know nothing about?"

"You suggest we let her get away with it?" Karin demanded.

"It's not a matter of 'letting' her do anything." House cut in. "Regin's obviously been around for a while and she's obviously figured out a way to function without hurting anyone innocent. That guy she…ate _deserved_ to die. Everyone's agreed on that one. I mean, can you say the same for your steak dinner last night?"

"It's not the same. You can't just go around flouting the law like that."

"Murph, Hunters are a law unto themselves. Not even the Council will touch them. In fact, I heard some rumours that the Hunters have policed the Council themselves a few times." Harry scrubbed a hand over his face. "I don't know what I could do to even try and stop this. She'd squash me like a bug."

"Well, I'm not going to help you."

Everyone looked at Cuddy in surprise at her adamant and complete refusal.

"She's not bad and she's not evil. I can feel it. I won't help you hurt her when she's already saved mine and my husband's life." Cuddy folded her arms over her chest and glared at Harry, daring him to say otherwise.

"Nobody can be above the law." Karin was equally as adamant.

"Yeah," House snorted and sipped from his beer. "Except for all those people that are."

There was a sudden noise.

A quiet lull took the restaurant as everybody paused to try and figure out what it was then conversation resumed in a mental shrug. House glanced at the back of the restaurant, from where he was certain the sound had issued, and considered investigating. Cuddy's hand landed gently on his arm and she shook her head subtly.

He let it go at that.

"So, what are we going to do?" Karin wanted to know.

"I guess all we can do. We'll talk to the kid in the jail. Keep an eye on Regin and hope she's as benevolent as Lisa believes she is." Harry shrugged and took a deep pull from his own beer.

"Sounds good to me." House lounged back in his seat. He was in agreement with Cuddy. If Regin had wanted to start a killing spree, there were a million and one other ways she could have done it without them ever knowing she was here. She'd already demonstrated she could get in and out of a prison without being detected, avoiding two werecats in a city the size of New Jersey probably wasn't that difficult in comparison.

"So, are you all finished talking about me?" Regin smiled brightly as she appeared and took her seat once more.

They were saved from awkward stuttering answers with the arrival of the food and Regin gave a happy hum of pleasure when she dug into her steak. "Never fails." She said jauntily. She looked…better. Her colour was higher on her sharp cheekbones, her eyes danced with energy and this time not the restless dangerous kind and she seemed infinitely more _relaxed._ Harry noticed that her lower lip was slightly swollen.

Like someone had bitten it.

"What does?" Cuddy asked a bit nervously, she hadn't wanted to be overheard discussing Regin.

"Someone leaves the table and the food comes." She smirked at them.

"Looks like it wasn't the only thing." House muttered and earned a sharp elbow in the ribs for his efforts. "Ow." He muttered to his wife.

Harry glanced up in time to see Lucas Cortez wander back onto the restaurant floor. Looking slightly dazed and very pleased with himself. He had scratch marks down the side of his jaw and neck. His eyes went wide when he realised what he had heard a few minutes ago he turned back to Regin who looked at them expectantly.

"Well, aren't you going to eat? It's good."

A little shocked, they dug into their meals. Except for Karin, who gazed levelly at Regin for a few moments more.

"Something I can help you with, Sergeant?" Regin's tone was easygoing enough but there was a slight edge to her voice. House already knew she didn't like to be stared at.

"No. it's just that your blazer's on inside out. That's all."

Regin looked down at herself and smirked in a self deprecating manner while Karin finally, daintily, ate.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7:**

Regin strode out into the foyer of the restaurant and stretched her arms up over her head in a languid full body un-kinking. Though she had to admit, it would take a lot more than a stretch or two to work out all her kinks. A smirk painted her lips as she passed her ticket over to the hostess to go and fetch her coat. She rubbed a palm over the back of her neck and felt a slight tingle down her spine, turning, she found herself under the scrutiny of the police woman. Regin sighed, despite her best people pleasing skills (yes, she _did_ have them when she chose to), the delightful Miss Murphy had put her thoroughly on the Naughty list and no amount of checking twice was changing that. Regin kicked one pointed toed stiletto across the other and lounged against the hostess' pulpit. She smiled, showing a lot of sharp teeth and received nothing but a flinty blue glare in return.

"Miss Murphy," Regin opened with, she knew the little woman hated being addressed as female rather than by rank, but Murphy had been nothing but rude to Regin all lunch and it was wearing her patience thin and spoiling her rather precious post coital glow. Regin didn't know if it was because Murphy knew that she had devoured that murdering git in Rikers or because she had offended her precious Catholic sensibilities by going off between drinks and main course to pull a nooner with the manager. Either way, she was fed up with it. "What can I do you for?"

"You can start by cutting the bullshit." Murphy folded her arms over her chest and Regin glanced over the top of the other woman's head to see Harry, Cuddy and House still deeply involved in a conversation with Lucas, who had fully turned on the charm when he had seen how much Regin liked the three of them. Good, she didn't want this disturbed, hopefully Karin would get this little self-righteous thing out of the way and then they could ignore each other for the rest of the time they were forced to spend together.

"And what 'bullshit' would that be?" Regin smiled at the hostess and allowed herself to be helped into her coat. Regin lifted a silver cigarette case and matching lighter from one pocket and strode towards the door, she didn't wait to see if Karin was following her, the woman was determined to have this out after all.

"That you're just a good woman trying to make the best out of a shitty situation. Murder is murder, no matter who the victim is." Karin followed her out into the chilled afternoon air. Lunch had lasted for several hours.

"Agreed." Regin said smoothly and sparked up one of her hand-rolled red smoke joints. Dark smoke gusted from her mouth and nose on the exhale and the rich scent of coffee and chocolate permeated the air. Regin eyed the joint and realised that at least Phury had been good for something. She felt the languor slide over her as the drug took effect and looked back down at Karin. The woman really was miniscule. How had Harry not sat on her by accident by now? She seemed shocked at Regin's quiet acquiescence.

"If you thought it was wrong, why the hell did you do it?"

"Oh, Miss Murphy…how young you are." Regin laughed gently and more smoke billowed around her.

"I'm not naïve…" Murphy began defensively but Regin steamrolled her, books could be written on how uninterested she was on what the good Karin Murphy thought was naïve and what wasn't.

"Yes, you are. To think that I don't know what I am. I _know_ that I'm a monster, my good little police sergeant. Never think for one moment of any given day that I could _not _be aware of that." Regin loomed over her. "I have committed atrocities that you can scarce imagine, I've hunted down creatures that would make your blood curdle and I've killed them without mercy and I've eaten more than one murdering bastard in my time and I did that because it is within the laws by which I live my life."

"Killing men because _you _judge they deserve it is _not _the law!" Karin hissed at her. Regin had to hand it to her, she wasn't backing down. She was probably used to going up against huge people like Harry and getting her way. She'd made a mistake though. Harry would put up with it because he liked her. Regin did not and would not.

"Mine is the oldest law, Karin." Regin said through her teeth. "My kind were created to enforce it for the Creator herself. You think your puny human prattlings can hope to compare to that kind of ruling?"

Karin did not back down and Regin began to wonder if this was determination or a special kind of stupidity.

"You should still pay for what you've done." She spoke through gritted teeth and Regin felt a very grudging respect rise for her. Like bile.

"I pay for it every day, but you're right, I should die for what I've done. The only problem is that nothing can kill me. Believe me, Karin Murphy," Regin lent enough power to the name to send Karin stumbling half a step back as she lent down and got right in her face, smoke hissed out from between her teeth and clouded Karin's face until she coughed. "If I thought that putting a gun to my head and pulling the trigger would end my existence, I'd let you do it."

Karin stepped back again, this time to check for the bluff that simply wasn't there.

"I haven't lied to you yet, Murphy." Regin noted quietly, tiredly. "I'm not about to start now."

"We okay?"

Harry appeared at their side and Regin lifted her cigarette and inhaled deeply again. Any trace of her good mood had up and evaporated and she arched a brow at Karin, who was looking at her with a disgusting mixture of revulsion and pity on her face.

"We're fine." She said quietly and then turned to go back to House and Cuddy who had noticed the tension between the two women but had chosen not to get involved. It hadn't come to blows and that was all that mattered to them. Cuddy drew Karin into conversation and House teased her mercilessly on being so small until the police sergeant laughed at them and allowed her mood to be improved.

Harry watched Regin watch them and the expression that came over her face was…_pained. _

She turned away from them and tossed one cigarette only to replace it with another and immediately light it. She jerked when a huge head butted against her thigh and looked down to see Mouse sitting next to her, grinning up at her in that imbecilic canine fashion. She smiled, a little wryly, and crouched down next to him, her arm wound around his neck and she leaned forward until their foreheads touched. Mouse grumbled and whimpered and she smiled and leant back, glancing at Harry.

"Is that so?"

Another grumble and a small 'uff'.

"Hmm, that _is_ interesting." Regin demurred, her dark eyes never leaving Harry until the wizard shifted uncomfortably.

"What?" He demanded warily.

"Mouse is worried about you." Regin straightened to her full height and blew a smoke ring at the sky.

"You can talk to my dog?"

"We're very distantly related." Regin smirked. "He's very intelligent."

"Yeah, can open his bag of kibble with one paw. Nice jacket by the way." Harry looked over her red scaled duster and Regin arched a brow. It was exactly the same cut as his except for a different colour and leather and he saw fit to mock her. No doubt he thought the colour was crass or something. Her coat rumbled a growl and Regin decided there was some fun to be had at the good wizard's expense.

"That and be concerned that you haven't had a mate in over four years." Regin huffed out another breath of smoke and looked back at Harry who had gone stock still. "Oh, you're blushing. That's adorable."

"I'm _not _adorable."

"Sure you are. Look, even your ears are red." Regin reached up and tweaked his ear, a genuine smile tugging at her lips. "Four years…" Her lips twitched.

"Hey, I've had better things to do than…"

"Than sex? Honey, you must have been doing it wrong." Regin turned away and her hand went up to her mouth to try and contain her mirth. She chuckled once. "Four years." A giggle escaped her. Then a laugh which slowly morphed into a full on cackle of hysterical amusement. She had to lean on a nearby post box with one hand and clutch her ribs with the other to stay on her feet. Harry's flush deepened and Regin laughed harder.

"Care to share the joke?" House asked, ambling over to them.

Regin shook her head, beyond words right now and Harry gave her a death glare that would have stopped Medusa herself. Regin guffawed.

"You know, you're not nearly as charming as you think you are." Harry said to her and she managed to regain a modicum of control.

"Of course I am." Regin managed between giggles and wiped at the tears spilling from her eyes she had been laughing that hard. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed from genuine amusement.

"Uh-huh." House hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans and rocked onto his toes. "Her ladyship wants to know what your plans are for tomorrow? She's determined to look after you and make sure your stay is 'pleasant'." House said the word with no small amount of distaste, to him, pleasant was tantamount to boring, a fate worse than death.

"Well, I was going to go for a walk then back to my hotel suite, raid the mini-bar and settle in for an Alan Rickman marathon on Pay-per-view tonight. Tomorrow is reserved for sleeping and going over my notes for Monday's lecture." Regin finished her cigarette and tossed it into a nearby trashcan with a flick of her fingers. Best not to give Karin the excuse she was waiting for to arrest her. She would never live it down if the charge that finally hauled her into the constabulary was a littering violation. She felt a little more languid now that she'd had some red smoke, the rich chocolate scent still clung to her, and now her sweet tooth needed satisfying. She rummaged in her pockets, extracting something long, thin and rainbow striped. "Ah-hah." She peeled the wrapper and sucked on the tube of candy.

Harry stared at her for a long moment. "What is that?"

"Rock. It's a Scottish sweetie. Fruit salad flavour. Want a lick?" Regin pulled the candy from her mouth with a small pop and held it out to Harry. The wizard looked a little taken aback but managed to shake his head. In his opinion, the candy had looked a lot better from between the pout of Regin's lips a second ago.

"So I can tell Lisa that you'd be available for her to tweak over your notes tomorrow?" House was oblivious, as usual, to the sexuality of any other woman. Now that he was mated, he could note that other females were aesthetically pleasing, but found them no more arousing than he would a piece of art. Pretty to look at but not something to lust after. Lisa was the same with other men. It was just that nothing compared to the bond they shared so why bother even wasting time looking?

"Mm-hmm, she's going to micromanage me isn't she?" Regin asked with a small grimace, checking to see that Cuddy hadn't heard her. Her tongue lapped over the tip of the stick of rock and she sucked it back into her mouth. She really was addicted to this stuff, but immortality came with a great health plan so she wasn't worried.

"Down to the very wording on your slideshow." House smirked at her.

"Why are you so happy about it?" Regin narrowed her eyes at him.

"Because, if she's fussing at you, I can get away with all kinds of naughty stuff." He bobbed his eyebrows at her and Regin just shook her head at him. He was nowhere near as wild as he liked to think he was, Lisa had him on a tight leash even if they both liked to pretend otherwise. "Call you tomorrow?"

"My mobile's never off." Regin shrugged and focused momentarily on removing the red swirling stripe of the candy with a few determined licks. It took House a moment to remember what mobile meant, but once he did, he turned to Harry.

"What about you, Not-Potter?"

"Well, I was gonna take Mouse for his evening constitutional and then find a holiday inn to book into." Harry was trying to reel Mouse back in on his leash. The huge dog was determined to stay glued to Regin's side though. It was odd, he was usually better behaved than most of the people that Harry knew, why he was being so stubborn today was beyond him.

"The missus has extended an invitation to our den of iniquity, if you so desire." House ruffled a hand through his hair and tried not to look as displeased as he felt about the notion. He liked Harry _and _Karin. As much as he could like anyone that wasn't his mate, he supposed, but the cat in him hated sharing his territory. Harry was thinking along similar lines.

"Yeah, and take up residence in the home of two _very _territorial werecats, uh-huh, no thanks." Harry subtly tried to yank Mouse back to his side again but Mouse simply parked it in the middle of the sidewalk and it was going to take a back-hoe to get him to go anywhere he didn't want to go now. "The Inn's fine."

"You're perfectly welcome to stay with me. The unused suite on my floor is a king size, I'm sure you and your sergeant will find it quite comfortable." Regin said between laps of the blue stripe on her candy cane. Harry dragged his eyes up from her mouth to meet hers and finally managed to process what she had just said.

"Your _floor?" _

"I like my privacy." Regin said defensively. "It was only a suggestion."

"No, thanks and, uh, Karin and I are not…" Harry glared at House when the other man snorted and grinned unrepentant for it. "Together."

"Oh, I thought that with…" Regin wafted a hand at Harry and then over to Murphy then trailed off. "Wow, open mouth, insert Jimmy Choo. I think I'll be off then. Before I create another social fox's paw." She grinned at them and turned to go.

With a yelp, Mouse was after her in a heartbeat. Harry quickly followed, being attached at the wrist and both he and Regin collided in the middle of the street. Mouse compounded matters by winding himself around their long legs until they were effectively tied together.

Regin huffed out a breath and tried not to over-balance while Harry dropped his duffel to prevent the same and didn't know what to do with himself.

"Want a hand?" House asked merrily, openly amused now

"If only to beat you with it." Harry growled and then tried to convince Mouse to reverse course. Mouse played dumb dog, sat down and panted at him. "Go on, Mouse, back around." Harry said through gritted teeth.

"What's going on?" Cuddy and Karin had wondered over and Cuddy was looking between Harry and Regin and the spectacle they created together. She rounded on her husband. "What did you do?!" She planted her hands on her hips.

"Me?!" House put a hand to his chest, brows shooting up, and would later admit that his 'innocent bystander' schtick needed work. "_I_ didn't do anything. Look at Cujo the Wonder Mutt if you want the culprit." House pointed at Mouse, who wagged his tail with a soft thump and then cocked his head as if confused. _His _innocent act needed no work at all.

"Murph, little help?" Harry entreated and Karin, who looked half amused and half exasperated rounded the trapped two to try and convince Mouse to budge. Harry twisted to follow her progress and wobbled precariously.

"Dresden!" Regin grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and was forced to drag him towards her until they were chest to chest so they both didn't fall. "This suit is Armani and I'm _not_ ruining it by falling on you." She gritted at him. Karin succeeded in dragging 'confused' Mouse a few inches around them. The leather leash constricted around their thighs and they were suddenly hip to hip.

"_WRONG WAY!" _They both yelled.

Regin, still holding on to Harry, they were too close now for her to do anything else, looked down at the space between their bodies. Or lack thereof. A smirk quirked her lips when she suddenly found the funny side of things and couldn't resist toying with him again.

"Tell me, Harry, that a blasting rod you've got there or are you just happy to see me?"

Harry glowered at her. "Any time now, Murph."

Karin rolled her eyes, pulling Mouse back the other way. Cuddy joined in when he grumbled and sat back down, neck stretched out and collar rumpled up about his ears, but unmoved. Cuddy blew out an annoyed breath and looked over her shoulder at her husband, who was leaning against the wall opposite, smiling at the passers by and unashamedly ogling Lisa's ass in the tight black jeans she was wearing.

"You could help." She pointed out.

"Nah, the view's much better from back here." House shrugged and her eyes narrowed at him in a 'I feel a headache coming on for the next week' manner. He huffed a sigh and moved around them. "Step aside, ladies, lateral thinker coming through." He batted Karin's hands out of the way and grabbed a hold of collar and leash. He found the clip attaching one to the other and unsnapped them. He handed the leash to Karin who began to unwind Regin and Harry and let go of Mouse. The dog's jaws parted in another grin and he dove forward at Regin, head diving into one of her pockets and snagging something long and shining from within. He yanked the chain out with a toss of his head and danced across the sidewalk with it. Regin saw that he had it and lunged for him, nearly succeeding in toppling both her and Harry off their feet. This time it was Harry's arm sliding around her waist that prevented the fall as he righted them.

"Hey, muttley, give it back!" Regin reached out the hand with the candy in it and waggled it enticingly while Karin worked on a particularly snarled section of the leash at their knees. "How about a trade, hmm? Rock for the coin? Come on…_Dresden, I'm gonna kill your dog." _She muttered to Harry through gritted teeth.

"There's a queue." He gritted back and glanced at what Mouse had a hold of that was so important. It was a heavy silver chain with a single disc hanging from it. The circle of metal spun this way and that and it was large enough for Harry to pick out the image of an archer on one side and a stag on the other.

The leash was finally worked free of them, Regin stepped forward to nab the chain from Mouse's teeth, but was caught in the back draft when he suddenly decided his true vocation in life was to impersonate a greyhound. She could only watch in infuriated surprise as Mouse pelted hell for leather down the street and disappeared around the corner. Without a moment's hesitation Regin reached down, grabbed the hem of her skirt in both hands and ripped it at the seam almost to the hip, then sprinted down the street and around the bend after him.

"Mouse! Come back!" Harry called uselessly and then snagged the leash from Murphy's outstretched hand. "See you later." He gasped and then took off after both Regin and Mouse.

Murphy waved at his retreating back and heaved a sigh before turning back to House and Cuddy.

"Help me get these bags into a cab?"

House, who was still snickering at the entire debacle winced when Cuddy elbowed him and then picked up both the bags. He hefted the duffel over his shoulder and even took Murphy's case from her.

"You think they'll be okay?" Cuddy looked after their departed friends and Murphy shrugged.

"You know how it is with Harry. He's not happy unless there's an inordinate amount of running involved in his daily routine. He'll catch up with me later."

"Yeah, if Regin doesn't catch up with him first." House noted and his eyes went innocently wide (slightly better than last time) at his wife's quelling look. "What?" Then he noticed how Murphy was pointedly _not_ turning around to look for Regin or, more importantly, Harry's return.

"Oh." He said, feeling stupid.

Cuddy looked at him with a slightly saddened expression over the top of Karin's head and linked arms with the smaller woman. She turned back to Murphy, pasted on a smile and tried to comfort her friend as best she could.

She knew, though, that when the walls caging you in were of your own making, there wasn't much anyone else could do for you.

**Sinister Scribe**

"Mooouuusse…" Regin drew the word out long and musical and peered into the trees. She had chased the bloody dog for five blocks and right into the park where she had first met House and Cuddy for dinner. The Bandstand restaurant was already in full swing at the opposite end of the park and she was in the landscaped statuary section, peering behind marble statues and into bushes looking for the hound from hell who had just filched an object of extraordinary power.

So pretty much an average evening for her.

The statuary was a long path walled in on both sides by massive hardwood trees and thick stone walls. The light was dim, what little light in the late afternoon could get in, and the statues themselves cast eerie shadows. Their colourless clothes and skins, their pupil-less eyes staring blankly…Regin shuddered. She had never liked statues, being turned into one once by an angry gorgon had kind of put her off for life.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are…" She sing-songed again, putting stoney thoughts from her mind, and parted a few leaves. He was definitely in this grotto, she could hear his heartbeat, but something about him was interfering with her ability to track him. Probably because he was magical too. She'd made him for a Chinese Temple dog the moment she'd seen him. "I'm not going to hurt you…much." She finished grimly. If he activated that drachma…well, it didn't really bear thinking about.

"He's here?" Harry slid to a stop in the grotto, breathing hard and folding forward to rest his hands on his knees. She had to admit she was impressed. For the entire chase he'd only been a hundred yards behind her. No ordinary human could keep up with a Hunter while she was on a trail…it bore thinking about…but later.

"Yes, his fuzzy hide is cowering in here somewhere." Regin raised her voice to make sure Mouse heard. As she predicted, he let out a low growl, but the layout of the statues had the sound echoing and bouncing in ways she couldn't predict so she was no closer to finding him in the shadows. She could see as well as an eagle in the daylight, better than that in the dark, but the wavering light of dusk always played hell with her vision that was somewhere between infrared and normal. Right now Harry was in perfect Technicolor when he stood in the pool of light, but when he stepped under the dappled shadow of an overhanging tree, his body heat leapt orange, yellow and red, his clothes green and blues and the cooler leather of his duster was a deep purple. Regin blinked and looked away. The dichotomy of the two spectrums intersecting was going to give her a headache if she wasn't careful.

"Come on." Harry stepped deeper into the grove. "Help me find him so I can get out of here."

Regin picked her way after him, experience as much as heightened senses making her shadow silent. Even her coat made no noise compared to his harsh breathing, the rustle of leather over leather and the crunch of leaf litter underfoot.

"You don't like me very much, do you?" Regin asked him.

"No, I like all the murderers I meet." Harry's words were clipped and Regin resigned herself. She probably shouldn't have teased him about his celibacy earlier.

"You are hardly one to talk, wizard." She told him coolly. "Death marks all who touch him."

"I kill only when I have to!" Harry wheeled on her and his eyes widened when he realised she was right behind him. He had assumed she was still at the mouth of the grove. He hadn't heard her approach.

"And to eat." Regin pointed out quietly. "In this respect, you and I are no different and that includes every other human one the planet…except for vegans. I don't trust the vegans." Regin added the quiet by-note and Harry smirked despite himself before remembering why they were arguing in the first place.

"I don't eat human beings." He shot back. She couldn't get around that one.

"I value a human life the same as I would that of a deer, a cow or a rabbit. Life is life, Harry. Only humans have the arrogance to assume that they are valued above all others. Ask your werecat friends. They view you no differently than cattle. After all, all herd beasts are the same." Regin spoke quietly but with conviction and Harry found himself without a defence. When she put it that way…no, she had killed a man. Okay, so he had been far from innocent but that didn't give the right for her to be Judge, Jury and Executioner to him…except…he'd already been convicted by a panel of his peers. Sentenced to death by lethal injection…was it better that his death had served some purpose other than to sooth the feelings of the grieving families of the victims?

"Not so easy to stay astride that high horse, is it?" She asked quietly. There was no censure in her voice. No accusation or venom. She seemed to be simply making conversation while looking for his dog…and that unnerved him most of all. They moved deeper into the grove, each of them scanning a side of the pathway, wending this way and that through the statues.

"Do you ever…?" Harry trailed off when he realised it was an incredibly personal question to ask.

"Feel guilt?" Regin finished for him. Far from offended. She shrugged. "To feel guilt over the perishing of my last meal would elevate him to the status of something worth feeling guilt over. He was not human Harry, he was as monstrous as I am. I would no more pity him than you did that steak you had for lunch." She heaved in a sigh. "No, I do not regret those I have devoured in order to keep my beast in check but…but I have killed many more and I can't close my eyes for seeing their faces nor sit in an empty room without hearing their screams. I do not feel guilt because I was doing my duty in killing them, I do believe that, but I can feel regret. I _regret_ that they had to die by my hand. I regret that there were so many and that there will be many more before I am done."

Regin stopped at the foot of one of the statues and she looked up at it with an odd expression on her face that Harry couldn't name. The statue was of a female archer. She stood tall and proud, bow drawn tight to her cheek, the copper bow and arrow weathered green by the elements, a stag standing ready to bound at her side, the plinth of the statue carved with ivy and ferns and a single named carved into the stone.

Artemis.

"Duty can allow us to do great things." Regin's hand extended to the plinth of the statue but stopped mere inches away, like she couldn't bring herself to touch it. Her hand dropped and she turned away. "It can also cover a multitude of sins." She traced her fingers over the rippling sides of the carved plinth and then over to the rougher hewn parts. A slight frown marred her brow.

"What?" Harry could no longer say that he disliked Regin, but he couldn't say he liked her either. At the very least he recognised that he hadn't the right to judge her, at the most, he was willing to hear her out.

"Earth and water." Regin murmured looking up at the statue again with a frown. Artemis didn't look back down at her, she just stared into the tree line at some unsuspecting quarry in the shadows.

At Harry's deeper frown she spoke absently.

"An oracle once spoke to me of earth and water. She said that my death would come to me three times and that earth and water would save me." She quirked her lips. "Cheerful, huh?"

"Was this…recently?" Harry scanned the lengthening shadows again. He didn't necessarily believe in prophecies, especially ones concerning people's deaths, too many of them were self fulfilling with too many variables.

"About four days ago now. The oracle in question happens to be my secretary at the university." Regin smirked and shrugged it off. "She's usually accurate, but death can't come to you three times."

Mouse suddenly exploded from the bushes, a great booming sound echoed through the grove and made every single one of Harry's muscles twitch in surprise like he'd had small electric shocks all over his body. It took him a full second to realise it had been a bark of warning and, by that time, Regin had crossed the distance between them and shoved him to the ground.

_Thud-thud-thud!_

Regin was on her feet with a snarl, a massive gun with twin barrels as long as her forearm in one hand and a Greek short sword in the other. Harry hadn't seen her draw them or knew what had happened, but he'd been in enough scrapes to recognise when to get the blasting rod out and ask questions later.

"Show yourselves!" Regin's voice filled the grove and echoed off statues and walls disconcertingly.

"But you were having such a nice chat with the wizard." Came a deep mocking baritone. "And I'm so eager to hear more of this prophecy." He added after a moment. Harry thought he saw a shifting shadow, but couldn't have been sure. He levelled his blasting rod at it and drew alongside Regin. He saw the three purple fletched arrow shafts sticking out of her body and gaped, the tip of his blasting rod dipping in surprise. She didn't even appear to notice the wounds. With a harsh snarl she yanked at him and shoved him behind her.

"Take your dog and leave, Dresden. This is not your fight."

"Listen to her, wizard. We might even let you live if you run now." Another voice echoed from the left and Harry swung that way.

"If you think I'm leaving you outnumbered your dumber than that coat your wearing." Harry muttered and flinched when the tail of said coat snapped out and whipped him on the thigh of its own volition.

"Don't insult the jacket." Regin gritted back, eyes fixed straight in front of her, irises expanding swallowing the whites of her eyes. "He's sensitive."

Neither Harry nor Mouse budged from their positions, Harry flanking Regin and Mouse planted in front of both of them, chain dangling from between massive teeth and snarling louder than a Harley Davidson with a throttle problem.

"So, Regin, you're slipping. Twenty years ago you'd have smelled me from a mile off."

"I was hoping to lure you in to be finally done with you, Achilles." Regin said in return. "I grow tired of your ugly face following me about."

"I'm _not_ ugly." Came the harsh reply, almost bellowed.

"Oh, come on Heel-boy, come out here and say that. If you're nice I might even rearrange your face so you're not quite so disgusting." Regin smirked and winced at the sting of the arrows buried into her flesh. They'd be barbed. Poisoned too. A powerful enough sedative to knock out any Hunter so the Walkers could feed from them…powerful enough if you didn't have a Furya's heart beating in place of a human one that was.

"That's it, I'm killing you here and now, prophecy or not." The sound of a sword unsheathing, boots hitting dirt in heavy steps.

"Big words, Achilles, come out here and I'll carve them into your back before I kill you. Again."

"Is it wise to be antagonising the guys that outnumber us?" Harry muttered to her. He had spotted at least three more questionable shadows in the undergrowth.

"I know what I'm doing." Regin panted. Her vision wavered a bit. Wow, this poison had a kick. She was stronger though. She blinked and shook it off.

Achilles, champion of the Greeks, warrior of immortal fame, stepped from the shadows in all his undead glory. He was obscenely tall, over seven feet, his shoulders were twice as broad as Harry's, rock hard muscle rippled over every inch of his god-like body and long golden hair tumbled down over his shoulders in a thick mane. It was only his eyes, glassy and grey, that belied his life-like appearance.

"Wait, Achilles as in…?" Harry looked sideways at Regin.

"Achilles as in servant of Agamemnon, friend to Odysseus and warrior of ruined Troy. Yes, _that_ Achilles." Regin gritted, her wounds burned, her vision was darkening at the edges. She waited for her hyper metabolism to kick in. To burn through the poison, but the beast obviously wasn't getting the message. Instead, it seemed oddly quiet.

"I'm going to enjoy killing you, Regin." Achilles grinned, his handsome face suddenly lifted into ugliness as his own blade was drawn, huge and barbed.

"Better warriors than you have tried and failed, honey." Regin drawled, her words slightly slurred. She was losing a lot of blood here.

With a bellowing war cry, Achilles charged. Neither Mouse or Harry were fast enough to react, the blow was so quick in coming. One second he'd been several yards away, the next the resounding ring of blade meeting blade clanged out through the grove. The guy was huge and beefy and bigger even than Regin, Harry wanted to help but he had his own problems to deal with, like two of the three shadows bouncing out of the trees and descending on him. He lifted his hand, the force rings there glinting in the last of the sunlight and unleashed his will. A tiny portion of the kinetic energy every time Harry's arm moved was saved in each ring and he hadn't used them in over a fortnight. The resulting wall of force caught the two descending zombie warriors and blasted them high and squealing over the trees. Harry swung around to deal with the next one through the simple and expedient means of clubbing him over the head with his blasting rod, with a grunt, the man fell.

Regin was not faring as well though.

She was bowed over backwards, teeth bared, sword arm locked at an odd angle and trying to prevent Achilles' blade from severing her carotid while her slim wrist was being crushed in the Greek Warrior's free hand. Mouse had his jaws clamped on Achilles ankle, chewing through the thick boot that no doubt protected the warrior's weakness better than Grecian sandals ever had. Harry levelled the blasting rod just as a bead of Regin's blood formed on the tip of Achilles' sword and slid over the metal. He opened his mouth to bellow the incantation to toast Achilles.

He never got the chance.

"HOLD!"

Everybody froze. Even Achilles and Regin, tough every muscle in their bodies still strained towards each other in their impasse.

"I said," the voice echoed and bellowed without effort. A shadowed hand gripped Achilles by the back of the neck and sent him tumbling across the grove to slap to a stop at the base of the Artemis statue. "HOLD!"

Regin collapsed to her knees, sword clattering against the cobble stones of the pathway, panting raggedly. Dark blood soaked the front of her jacket, one side of her skirt and spattered onto the paving. She'd already lost so much, she needed medical attention. Now.

"Hector." She gasped in greeting.

"Lady Regin." Another massively tall warrior inclined his head to her. He was as dark as Achilles was fair, scarred down over one eye. His hair was dark and curling, tied into a tight braid at his nape so it roped down over his back to his waist. His muscles bunched and rippled under his muscle tee and combat trousers he wore. He looked over at Harry and nodded once. "Dresden."

"I suppose you would be Hector as in the same Hector that…"

"Defender of the Trojan gates, heir to the throne." Hector rolled one shoulder and glared at the surrounding warriors.

"Nice to meet you, we'll be going now." Harry skirted forward and sidled under Regin's arm, he picked up her sword when it slipped from her bloodied fingers and stashed it inside his duster.

"No need. _We _shall leave." Hector's fierce dark eyes demanded obedience and all except Achilles disappeared back into the shadows.

"I take no orders from you!" Achilles spat at the ancient prince.

"Aye," Hector noted calmly. "You do." His hand swept out vicious and fast and sent Achilles to his knees before the lion of Greece could do anything about it. "Now be gone from my sight 'fore I tell your king what has transpired here!" Achilles looked like he wanted to argue, and he looked hungrily beyond Hector to Regin sagging in Harry's arms before snarling low and frustrated and disappearing.

Hector turned back to them and Harry shifted the blasting rod in his hand so that it was none-too-subtly aimed at Hector's chest. The warrior didn't seem intimidated in the slightest. He was focused more intently on Regin, instead. He reached out and tipped her chin up so she could meet his eyes.

"My apologies, Regin, for the pain you are to suffer." He turned to Harry then. "Remember, wizard. Earth and water."

Then he was gone.

Silence reigned in the grove and Harry looked around a little nervously. "Okay…what the hell just happened?" Mouse snuffed in agreement.

"They were, nngh," Regin torturously stood away from him, gripped an arrow shaft in one hand and tore if from her body with a plug of flesh and a painful wet _'shlupp!' _sound. Harry grimaced out of sympathy for her. She tossed it aside with a clatter. "Walkers…they're the enemies of the Hunters." _Shlupp!_ "We've been at war for millennia." _Shlupp!_ She looked at the arrowhead and frowned. It was shaped like a snake head with its mouth open and its tongue forking out to form a point. It was covered in Regin's blood and flesh. She lifted the arrow and sniffed it experimentally, swaying on her feet. "Huh, gorgon venom. That explains it."

"Explains what?" Harry asked.

Regin's only reply was to fall forward and land flat on her face.

Harry and Mouse shared a look and then down at Regin's unconscious form.

"Ah, crap."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8:**

House, in his leopard form, crawled painstakingly slowly through the long grass. His huge velvet paws moved silently in the dry stalks and his burning azure gaze was fixed unwaveringly on the young buck not five metres from him. His heart pounded deep in his chest, his whiskers twitched and he felt the thrill of anticipation roil through him but only the very tip of his tail was allowed to twitch. He must be stealthy.

He inched his way forward, skill and instinct allowing him to go unnoticed until he was practically under young stag's nose. He could hear its heartbeat, see the individual lashes on its big brown eyes and almost taste the rush of blood flowing through its body. He wasn't hunting to kill tonight, he was still well fed from the massive meal that Regin had paid for earlier on, but he did feel the urge to chase something. Besides, he preferred his meat cooked. Even when they did make a kill in the forest, they always brought it back and barbecued it. House crouched low, tail twitching, massive shoulders rolling, preparing for the pounce.

_ROWR!_

House would later tell himself that he hadn't squeaked in alarm when a black shadow bounced out of nowhere and tackled him to the ground. He was sent tumbling end over end, a familiar pair of black paws wrapped around him, and finally came to a rest with her firmly on top. She looked down at him with a feline smirk then peppered his face with licks and nips and feline kisses before bounding away again. House growled low, the buck was long gone, and made a show of wiping his face with one paw. A tail being batted into his nose tattered what little was left of his dignity though and he looked over at her with an exasperated sigh that was no less for being filled with indulgence.

Cuddy trotted about the small clearing in the meadow, prancing like a show pony and then dropped down into a play-bow like a dog might. Her tail flew up in the air and twitched back and forth in time with the wiggle she put into her rump.

If cats could arch brows, House was doing it then.

They were miles from the house. Deep in the wilderness of the forest. They had picked the property because the wild land went on beyond state lines in one direction and would allow them free rein for runs like this. They did it once a week or so. Usually on a Saturday night like this. They'd Change and run out into the woods, as far and as fast as they could. They'd hunt, play, chase each other like three month old cubs rather than prime killing machines, have wild sex, Change again and repeat the process until the wee hours before falling asleep under the stars and slowly winding their way back home the next morning.

He came back to himself when he realised the little wheezy coughing sound he could hear was her snickering at him. His ears twitched in annoyance and he bounded towards her. She immediately danced out of the way and swung her tail into his face to piss him off a little bit more. He growled again and wheeled for her. She might be the more agile and slightly faster in a sprint, but he had raw strength and staying power on his side. He swiped out a paw, tripped her and she rolled onto her back, he pounced on top of her without missing a beat and she huffed at him before hooking her back paws into his belly and flipping him over her head.

House grunted when he landed on his back and she crawled on top of him for the second time that night, not that cat or man was complaining, but it was getting a bit embarrassing having his ass handed to him by a girl.

She caught the gist of that last thought and growled a low warning at him, unsheathing the claws of one paw against his furry chest. House sighed and Changed, his frame shrinking back down to the lean lines of his human shape.

"Happy now?"

She tried to pin him in the house and he'd scampered from her with a playful yowl. Well, she had shredded his favourite Jack Daniels shirt with her claws just to gain better access for kissing his chest and he'd been piqued by it, he had to admit. So, he supposed, he deserved this.

She rumbled a pleased purr and settled down more firmly on top of him, not going anywhere apparently. He knew there was only one real way to try and wriggle back into her good books after a snub like earlier, so he set about earning his brownie points. His hands lifted, one going to an ear and gently massaging and the other going to her chin giving good long chin rubs right up her throat to her muzzle and back down again. Her purring got louder and he smirked at her. Tilting her head back, she ignored his smirk and shut her eyes in bliss at his ministrations. She rubbed herself against him, silky thick fur sliding over smooth naked skin and he sucked in a breath. He had no interest in cross-species relations with his wife, but that didn't mean that it didn't feel good to have her rub all over him in any shape.

"You know you're acting weird, don't you?" He asked her. Not that she could reply without a human tongue, but he had the feeling that she wasn't ready to reply yet anyway. "That's the real reason you wanted Harry and Bob out here. You trust Regin just fine. You want to pick their brains over this…_thing_ that's bugging you." It wasn't an accusation, little point in that when he already knew it was true, but he didn't work to hide his hurt over it either. A year ago, he would have slunk off on his own and sulked into a bottle of scotch over this but now…now he couldn't lose her and he wasn't letting _anything_ take her from him. Not even his own stupidity.

Her only reply was to grumble and turn her head into his stroking.

He wanted to say that it was okay. That she would tell him when she was ready, but he was impatient and he was curious. He _had _to know. He _had_ to understand.

Abruptly she lightened on him, silver light and dark mist announcing her Change and she lay across him in all her naked human glory, by the time she was finished, her hands were buried in her hair and her cheek was turned into the sweeping stroke of his thumb. It always amazed him the discrepancies in mass between forms, set his little scientific brain to boggling, but he pushed that away when she opened her mouth to speak.

"It's not that I don't want to tell you." She said at length, fingers toying with the steely hairs on his chest. "It's that I can't. I don't know what's making me act differently." She shrugged a little helplessly. "I don't want it to get between us."

"Well, there's nothing between us but sweat right now." He pointed out and got a smile from her, even if it was slightly saddened. He considered her a long moment and decided to air his theories.

"Do you think it's me?"

She looked up at him, eyes wide with surprise. Obviously it had never even occurred to her.

"I mean, I'm not…proper Ishaaran, could that be affecting you?"

"Gregory House!" She sat up so suddenly and so annoyed that he twitched in surprise. Her finger stabbed him in the chest to brutally get her point home. "Don't be an idiot. You're perfect Ishaaran," she gripped his shoulders and hauled him up so they were both sitting, her straddling him, "and don't you forget it." She kissed him hard on the lips and House smiled against her, knowing he was being distracted and allowing it to happen. What he did not allow to happen, however, was for her to spin away and off his lap before he'd had his fill.

And fill he intended to do.

She scrambled off him and made it all of two steps before he took her down. Grabbing her from behind and crushing her gently under him with low mock threatening growls in his throat. She giggled and squirmed, purely for effect since she was backing up towards him. He gripped her hips and flipped her over with a low rumble in his chest that vibrated through them both. She arched up against him, tangling her curvy legs around him and smirking wickedly at him when he hissed at the sensation. He seized her in a kiss and the smile soon disappeared when her eyes rolled back in pleasure. She clutched at his shoulders and they rolled their hips together. Teasing, taunting each other almost beyond endurance.

"How you want it?" He licked down her neck.

"Hard. Fast." She gasped keening when his tongue swirled around a pebbled nipple, his free hand toying with the other. "_Now!"_

"Hmm, I dunno, that was my favourite shirt…" He kissed his way down her body, pinning her down with one hand at her clavicle and holding onto her hip with the other so she didn't thrash out from under him.

Her only reply was a snarl and to dig her claws into his shoulders hard enough to make him wince.

"Ah, a compelling argument."

"Mm-_hmm."_ She agreed smugly, biting on his lower lip.

"As my lady wishes." He surged back up over her, taking her mouth in a deep drugging kiss and spearing into her core hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. Her back arched up, her claws raked down and she drew blood with her teeth on his much abused lip. He didn't care, he just growled into her and set into a muscle grinding rhythm that left her incapable of speech. Her only encouragements where the spurring claws on his back, her heels digging into his ass and the little mewling sounds that spilled from her mouth to his.

This was what he loved best. It was true, he loved her mind, the way she had an answer for him every time, the way he could rely on her to rein him in when he needed it and let him fly when he was supposed to, he loved how she was his and only his but this…this connection between them. Her yin to his yang, male to female, two halves of the whole, whatever you want to call it, he loved it when they were together like this because it was the only time he felt truly and utterly content. The rest of the world, all the annoyances, all the other thoughts, all the distractions just went away, and he was hers and she was his and that was just perfect.

_Perfect._

The word froze in his mind when she tore her mouth from his and screamed her pleasure feral into the night. He grinned down at her in satisfaction and bowed his back with a shout when he couldn't help but follow her.

In the aftermath, they lay panting. He felt like he'd been running for miles without break and he dropped down onto his elbows over her. She smiled in that blissed out post coital fashion of hers and toyed with his hair. Then tweaked his ears and scratched the scruff on his chin in a mockery of what he'd done for her a few moments ago. He smirked, skin darkening back to human normal after the silvery sheen their fucking had roused and she sighed a contented little sigh. Her legs loosening slightly about him so as to ease back on their vice like grip and her hands traced over the sculpted lean lines of his shoulders.

"That was good." She purred.

"Just good?" He arched a brow at her and she smirked.

"You made me wait."

"No, I made you chase me. Which was a nice change from it usually being the other way around." He nipped her ear in light reproach and she just laughed at him.

"Uh-huh, right. It's not my fault you can't resist me. I _am _one hot piece of tail."

"Hey, you already shackled me to you." He lifted his bracelet and waggled it at her so it caught the late evening light. The sun was just dipping below the tree line. She arched a brow at him and rolled him so he was under her and she was stretched over him again. "The least you could do is be at my beck and call for a bit."

"Not even if I was confined to a wheelchair, honey. Now," she kissed his nose and then sprang away from him to land several metres away. Dust devils flared at her silent landing and she crouched there, feral and beautiful. He rolled to his side and propped his weight on an elbow. She smelled of pine and lust, he licked his lips. "Chase me." She bounded again and by the time she landed once more it was on four fleet paws that carried her away from him with a mocking uplifted tail and a feline snicker wafting back on the wind.

House growled and the sound echoed with a thrum when the Change overtook him and deepened the bass with a huge snow leopard's vocal chords.

He galloped after her and smiled on the inside. It was going to be a long night but he was firmly okay with that.

**Sinister Scribe**

"Greg! Lisa!" Harry kicked the front door to the ranch house open and shuffled inside. It was difficult to do anything else when weighed down by two hundred pounds of unconscious female. Regin was a _lot_ heavier than she looked. He staggered along the hallway and Mouse skirted him, bounding up the stairs to look for House and Cuddy, but Harry already knew they weren't here. If they had been, they'd have heard the car he'd 'borrowed' in the city at the end of their mile long drive way.

Harry had forgotten how quiet the country was.

Freaked him out more than faeries did that was for sure.

"Damn it!" Harry hefted Regin into a more comfortable position for him to carry her and strode through the house to the sunny yellow kitchen. She moaned at the jostling but couldn't do much more. She'd lost so much blood already, it soaked them both, thick and hotter than anything else he'd ever felt come out of something alive. She had to be burning with power to be running this hot, which was probably why she was still alive.

Barely.

Harry reached the scarred pine table in the kitchen and knocked the fruit bowl on it to the floor along with anything else. He replaced it with Regin's stiffening limp form and wasted no time in ripping her shirt open to inspect the wounds properly, his tee shirt had long since been sacrificed to try and staunch the bleeding but it was soaked with so much blood that it made a wet splatting sound when it kit the floor. The wounds were relatively small, but gaping and ragged from where she had yanked the arrows out, blood pumped readily from them and Harry felt panic welling up. He was losing her. He felt no particular deep affection for her, but she'd gotten injured on his watch and, for him, that was enough to make sure she didn't die. He'd watched too many people die lately.

"Come on, Regin. I thought Furya were tough, huh?" He pulled her arms from her duster and then her shirt from her body, adding that to the compress, mopping away the blood. He stilled when something golden caught his eye. He frowned and leaned closer to inspect. It appeared to be a…seam, running down the middle of her chest, from right under her collar bone striping down over her sternum to the planed muscles of her stomach and almost to her navel. It took Harry a moment to realise that the tiny gold beading along the seam's length was stitches and he was looking at a scar.

A scar that had obviously nearly split her in half and still had the tiny golden thread in it as a reminder.

"You know, if you just wanted in my shirt, Dresden…y'only had tae ask…" Regin slurred, sounding drunk, but conscious, which was decidedly a good thing. He was hanging over her face in a heartbeat.

"Regin, stay with me!" He commanded her and her glassy obsidian eyes seemed to roll his way but that might just have been wishful thinking. "You said this was gorgon venom, do you remember?"

"Nasty stuff…" Her head lolled away from him and he snagged her chin, dragging her back towards him.

"What does it do? How does it work? Do you have an anti-venom?"

"Only thing that can…take down…"

"Regin." Harry shook her until her eyes opened again. "Stay with me. The only thing that can what?"

"Stop a Hunter…paralyses us…from outside…in." Regin grunted and lifted one arm before letting it fall back to the table with a clunk. Harry stared. A clunk? He lifted her hand to inspect the damage and found her skin too pale, too hard and too cold. Marble. She looked like she was being turned to stone.

"Oh shit." This wasn't like anything he'd every seen.

"Way to build confidence…Harry." She gasped and writhed suddenly on the table. She cried out once but then stifled it by sinking her sharp teeth into her lower lip hard enough to draw more blood.

"Hey, hey, stop that." Harry dug his thumb into the side of her jaw until she parted her lips again. "You've lost enough blood already. What do I do? Is there an anti-venom?"

Regin nodded sleepily and Harry dug his fingers into her wound until she gasped, dragged back to consciousness. It was a low and dirty thing to do, but he needed her attention. "Anti-venom, Regin! Pay attention!"

"Don't…carry it." She was panting now, pupils shrunk to pin pricks and her glassy eyes a sea of stars. Harry could now see the barest hint of silver in her left eye. A sliver of a crescent that was almost a complete circle. He shoved the detail away into the mental folder marked 'Regin' and turned back to the matter at hand.

"Why the hell not!?"

"It's never been…offered."

"Is there anything ELSE that might stop this?"

Another drunken shake of the head. Harry looked about desperately and wanted to howl in frustration. He didn't even know how to properly staunch the bleeding. He didn't know what had been hit and torn by the arrows but he suspected something important judging by the sheer volume of blood soaking her shirt.

"Uff!"

Harry's eyes landed on Mouse, the dog had been sniffing around the kitchen and he now pawed at something on the floor. Harry left Regin's side for a half second and snatched it up. He flipped over the note and read it while it shook in his hand.

_Harry, _

_If you're reading this then you've joined us for the night. We've gone for a run and we'll be back in time for breakfast. Pick a room and make yourself at home. _

_Lisa and Greg_

"Great!" Harry's hand ate the note and spat it onto the floor with a flick of his wrist. "That's just fucking great. Only supernatural doctor's in the freaking state and they're off getting their fuzzy little swerve on while one of their supposed friends bleeds to death!"

"Poison will suffocate me first." Regin pointed out slowly, finding it very difficult to breathe now. She was marbled right the way up to her shoulders and thighs. The stuff was spreading from the extremities inwards and Harry didn't even want to think about what was going to happen once it reached her internal organs.

"Not. Helping." Harry gritted at her and shoved his bloody hands through his hair. What to do? What the fuck was he supposed to do?

_Earth and water. _

Harry twitched when the words thrummed through him like a plucked guitar string. Of course. She was magic, Regin herself was a magical being, she worshipped the one of the nature goddesses, it would make sense that she would draw her power from that same nature. He slid his arms under her shoulders and knees and lifted her from the table again.

"Come on, we're going outside."

"Nnnngh!" Regin twisted in pain but made no more sound than that. It was difficult to hold her with her stiffened limbs but, somehow, Harry managed to get her outside. Mouse milled around them, whining in worried tones, no doubt blaming himself (he was a very clever dog after all) and looking to Harry with big pleading eyes for him to make it all better.

Harry hoped he could.

"Mouse, go and find Lisa." Harry spoke clearly to his dog having no doubt the animal would understand. "Lisa and Greg. Go and find them, they're in the woods."

Mouse turned to the woods, his tail flew up and he sniffed deep into his chest. He'd never been in a forest before, being an urban dog, but Harry was pretty sure that he'd manage it okay. With a gruff to Harry, Mouse flashed away into the trees, long legs devouring the distance. He'd find them in no time.

Not wishful thinking, Harry decided, just optimism.

"Okay, bear with me a minute, Regin." Regin could only give a whisper of a moan in return. She was slipping away fast. He had to hurry. He spun away from her and picked a likely spot in the yard. Going to the shed and bracing himself with one hand, he extended his right fist, the one with his force rings on it and sent up a brief prayer before unleashing one of them.

The shock was awful. The majority of the force was expelled down and into the lawn, gouging out a great chunk of earth and sending it skyward in a showering of dirt and pulverised earth, but the rest of it had no choice but to backlash through Harry's body and send him slamming backwards into the shed with enough force to crack the wood. He grunted and saw stars, but levelled his hand again and braced himself once more. The hole wasn't deep enough. It took three more tries and several bruises later for the blasting to be complete and Harry was left with muck everywhere and a three by seven by three shaped hollow in the ground. Harry was panting by the time he got over to it and dropped down at the side. He would have preferred to dig it by hand, all things considered some things are just easier the old fashioned way, but he didn't have the time and now he needed to fill it with water.

Which was tricky because magic and water were always difficult to mix. They were both to fluid to control with any great deal of ease. Harry thought furiously for a couple of minutes. It would take too long to fill the hole with water from the tap and he couldn't see a hose or handy waterfall nearby. Neither did he know how to make it rain torrentially either.

Then it came to him. He leant forward into the ground and dug his fingers into the earth. Closing his eyes he reached out, spreading his will like the root systems of the nearby trees, he reached down, further and further, deeper and darker into the earth until…there!

Harry shot back onto his haunches when the water bubbled up with a spluttering. The tiny geyser frothed and surged and rapidly filled the hole with water. Harry was already moving, keeping half a mind on his improvised water main. He shucked his duster from his bare shoulders (WHY did he always end up naked or close to it with these things?) and scooped Regin from the ground as gently as he could. He kicked off his shoes, hers had already gone missing somewhere, and carried her into the water. He sucked in a breath, the water was FREEZING, but waded in and crouched down until they were both submerged up to their necks. When the hole was full, Harry cut off the spell and tried not to shiver to violently because it made it difficult to hold Regin up. She had been trembling before he'd brought her into the icy water and Harry knew enough about injuries (usually his own) to know shock when he saw it.

Damn it, this wasn't going well.

"C-c-come on, Regin. Half naked guy right beside you." He shivered harder, his teeth clattering together. He was disheartened when he only got a lolling of her head against his shoulder in reply. She had stopped moaning softly a few minutes ago and that worried him more than he wanted. "Come on, work!" He rubbed at her arms, still stiff and cold, indistinguishable from stone. "Work" He hissed.

Blood puffed in small inky clouds from her wounds but…was that? He looked closer, yes, the bleeding seemed to have slowed somewhat, but then, that could just be because she had finally run out of blood to spill. Harry held onto her, cradling her head against his shoulder, shivering hard and desperately waiting for a miracle.

**Sinister Scribe**

House lifted his head, coming suddenly awake with no idea why. His first though was his mate, who he turned to in the dark burrow they were curled together in. A hollow under a fallen log, filled with comfortable springy moss and covered by a thicket it had just enough room for them both to twine their furry bodies around each other and fall asleep together in a tightly wound cosy knot. He looked her over with keen eyes and took in the way she was snuggled into his furry chest, tail almost under her nose and purring slightly with good whisker twitching dreams.

Then it hit him, she was too well lit.

Dawn? That didn't match up with his internal clock at all. He twisted his head to peer out of their den and into the forest. He could feel something out there. A cautious sniff revealed nothing he could identify and, while he briefly considered ignoring it and staying right where he comfortably was, curiosity had been a constant in his life long before he'd turned into a cat. He disentangled himself gently from her without waking her, gave a lick to her ear as a goodbye kiss and then prowled out into the night. He moved silent as a shadow, slinking through the dappled shades of night, blue eyes wide and glowing like lamps from his skull. His tail twitched, his nostrils flared and the soft ghostly light spilled on him from the left. Ears perked forward in interest, he crept closer and peered around a fern to identify what was glowing in his territory.

A stag.

No. He had to be wrong. Stags weren't that big. Eight feet at the shoulder, glossy silver hide shining like a fish's scales, soft brown eyes taking in the forest blandly as he nibbled daintily on a leaf and antlers as wide as tree branches reaching up and fingering out into the canopy over his head. He was magnificent. Almost as pretty as House, the leopard conceded and he lay down quieter than the mouse chewing loudly on a nut a few feet away from him.

He didn't know how long he stayed like that. Watching the great stag, but he felt no desire to pounce on it (for a start it was a lot bigger than him and those antlers looked a mite sharp) and so patiently waited for the change to come.

It happened soon enough. Light spilled down, bright and shining white from the full moon overhead. It filtered down through the trees and brushed over the stag's gleaming coat turning it into a conductor of the glow and making it shine like a second moon escaped to the ground. The animal lifted his head, antlers sweeping back along his shaggy neck and opened his mouth. The sound that came out was indescribable. Not overly loud, because House's sensitive cat ears were un-offended, but thrumming and piercing and compelling. It pushed into the very fibre of House's being in that one long bass note that slowly died away into the silence of deepest night once more.

House felt charged. What next?

Light hardened, glittered and swirled by the stag. The huge animal pranced on the spot in an excitement he couldn't contain and then House understood why. A girl appeared. The most beautiful girl House had ever seen was suddenly standing at the stag's side. She reached up and petted its nose gently until it stilled and nuzzled her. A greeting between the oldest of friends. House examined every detail of the newcomer. She was slim and willowy but not the coltish clumsiness that can sometimes afflict adolescents. She was gracefully built with long tawny hair tumbling down her back and braided into a neat plait somewhere between her shoulder blades. A woven silver band circled her head, a short white tunic was her only clothing, a quiver slung over her back and a short re-curved hunting bow in her hands. Her skin was swirled with henna-like tattoos of animals and plants over her hands, wrists, feet and ankles. Golden light spilled from every pore of her body and she was also nearly three metres tall.

She whirled on him then, so fast and so wild that not even House could keep up with the movement. The bow was strung, loosed and an arrow quivering between House's paws before he could even lay his ears back in alarm.

"You overstep your bounds, hunter, this stag is _not_ for you." The girl spoke with a booming voice that echoed power and made him want to cower. He straightened just to spite her. She could say whatever she liked. This was _his _territory.

A rush of steps, a coughing roar of challenge and a swooping shadow announced Lisa's presence with her usual subtlety. She landed with a pounce scant inches from the girl's feet, hackles up, tail bottle brushed and fangs bared. She drew herself to her full height and roared again, right at the girl's navel.

Which was as high as she reached.

The girl's eyes went wide with surprise. More over the sheer audacity of being challenged than any actual alarm.

House scrambled forward and put himself between his mate and the stag who looked like he was considering kitty kebab with those horns of his. He hustled his little wife back and out of the way and then Changed in a flash of light and a crunching of bones.

The girl frowned at him. "Ishaaran? You should know better than to challenge the Huntress herself." She stated imperiously and House drew himself up to his full height, all the way to her chest, but she still dwarfed him.

"I don't believe we've been introduced, I'm Greg House, this is my wife Lisa." He stuck his hand out and up in front of him and held his breath. She was either going to shake it or sheer it off. Power rolled off her the same way it did Regin only _more _so. She arched a brow at him.

"You really have no idea who I am, do you?" The girl sighed, she sounded exasperated more than anything else. "You are in the presence of a Goddess, mortal. Conduct yourself accordingly." Her eyes raked his naked form, expecting him to at least pretend modesty if nothing else.

House's only response was to plant his fist on his hips and paste a huge grin on his face that showed off as many teeth as possible. "Nice night." He noted.

"Sorry your…Royal…Her-ness." Lisa peered around her mate's shoulder. "But you would be the first Goddess we've met and we're a little rusty on the protocol." Not as diplomatic as she could have been but she was still pissed about her husband being shot at.

"He's not very polite." The goddess jerked a thumb at House who had both hands reaching back to keep Lisa behind him and himself between her and the snorting stag. His little wife werecat was not happy at the arrangement but there was little she could do about it.

"Trust me, this is positively congenial for him." Lisa cleared her throat and looked pointedly at him until he let her slide a few inches around him.

"I am Artemis."

House blinked at her. "Should we curtsey?" Cuddy elbowed him sharply in the ribs but Artemis just rolled her eyes.

"Never mind, I have business to attend to elsewhere. One of my children has gone and gotten herself into trouble. Again."

Lisa reached up and clapped a hand over House's mouth to prevent the inevitable teen pregnancy comment and he glared at her out the corner of his eye. She glared back.

"Odd little creatures." Artemis noted and swung up onto the stag's back. The silver beast spun on cloven hooves preparing to bound away. "This forest is yours to protect, wild ones, do not forget it." Artemis said over her shoulder and then, with a blaze of light, they were gone.

House yanked Cuddy's hand away from his mouth. "What was that for?"

"I just prefer you un-smoted, okay?" She turned and picked her way back the way they had come. "Come on, let's go back to bed."

His eyes trailed down her naked spine and a smirk quirked his lips.

"Yes, _ma'am_."

**Sinister Scribe**

Harry was so cold, and at risk of hypothermia by the time the first animal arrived that he didn't notice it for several moments. It was a red squirrel, very rare in these parts, it scattered its way down the trunk of one of the nearest trees and slinkied its way into the grass at the very edge of the forest, pausing to stare at him with tiny black beaded eyes. It cocked its head this way and that and then bounded a few strides closer. It was wary of Harry, that was obvious, but it kept coming. It moved in stops and starts until it was crouched at the very water's edge, well within reach from Harry.

Harry was the picture of nonplussed. Regin was limp in his arms, she had stopped bleeding and the encroachment of the petrifying of her flesh seemed to have stopped, but it wasn't receding and she wasn't healing.

The squirrel watched Harry, unblinking, for several long moments. So long he felt like shooing it away just so he didn't have to put up with the ogling but then it moved. It leant forward on its tiny hands, stretched out as far over the water as it could, opened its little mouth and _breathed. _

A tiny cloud of breath made of life spilled from the squirrel. It wafted over the water, causing tiny ripples to spread out under it and then slid between her lips.

For the first time in hours, Regin sucked in a whole complete breath. Her skin pulsed with light, her back arched, warmth suffused the pool for a flash fire moment and Harry could finally stop shivering but then it all dimmed. She went limp in his arms again, her skin dulled back to its icy pallor and the water plunged back to its icy temperature.

Harry resumed his shivering until he noticed something.

There were more of them.

Animals, not just squirrels either. They edged out of the forest, wary of the power they could feel from the wizard but drawn by the injured Hunter in a call they could not ignore. The squirrel was just the first but there was rabbits, scampering mice, slinking foxes, the hulking shape of a wolf, a boar snorting, feral cats, voles rats, bats, owls, nightingales, the pronged head of a stag and his doe.

Harry held himself very, very still.

Like all city-goers, the countryside freaked the hell out of him. The hell of wilderness more than most things. He gritted his teeth and resisted that caveman urge to light a fire and drive the animals back. It was unlikely that any of them would hurt him, in fact, they looked just about as terrified as he felt, but each on of them edged forward, watching him twice as warily as he watched them, stretched over the water and breathed for Regin.

She swallowed every time and Harry watched in stunned amazement. The marble over her flesh began to recede, soon the water was so filled with life that it was pleasantly warm, her wounds began to knit together until they were nothing but faint pink scars. She moaned once or twice, trying to rouse herself but apparently unable. Harry just held her up and tried not to pass out. He was deadly tired. Digging the hole, drawing up the water and staying on high alert for as long as he had was too much for even his stamina. He was flagging and fast.

Then the golden light spilled over him and he blearily looked up to see the most stunning creature he thought himself capable of imagining standing over him. She was sixteen years old if she was a day, gilded in golden light and a huge silver stag stood at her side.

"Hi." Harry said brightly as he was able. "Can I help you?"

"You're tired, wizard." Harry stiffened at her voice. She might have been young in body, but her voice was ancient and ageless all at the same time. She crouched down next to the pool and regarded him with soft golden eyes that were hard to look at. "But you have saved her life."

Harry looked down at Regin, floating over his half lying position in the water. Her wounds were healed, her head tucked under his chin her breathing deep and easy as if asleep.

"I had help." He was slurring a little himself now. Yeesh, he was so tired. He nodded a trifle drunkenly to the disappearing tail of the last fox as it slid away into the undergrowth.

"One last time, then I shall aid you myself." She stood and placed her hand on the arched neck of her stag. The animal daintily stepped forward, stretched his neck down to them and breathed over both of them. It wasn't like the other times with the smaller less glowing animals, it was a warm wash of summer air that soaked directly into him and filled him with light from the inside out. Both Harry and Regin gasped at the sensation, she never waking, him with stars bursting behind his eyes and then it was over. The night returned and he found himself back in the pool, panting, a limp, completely flesh once more Regin, floating in his arms.

Tender hands were pulling at him, directing him to lift Regin against his chest again, he sluiced them both out of the water. Moving without thought, content to have those small warm hands direct him. He was practically asleep on his feet. He moved to the house, up the back steps and into the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen and into the downstairs bathroom. The shower was turned on with a hiss and a blessed cloud of steam. His shoulders were slumped, his head hanging forward and Regin hung from his arms just as lissom as he. Her arms spread out towards the floor, throat exposed with her head tilted back like that but the pulse thumping strong and steady in the hollow of her throat.

Even her hair seemed unconscious.

Hands helped him undress Regin, her clothes were filthy and she needed to be clean now, it was explained to him. Again, the hands removed his jeans, shorts and socks and helped him under the hot spray. He moaned in delight. This was _heaven. _

The hands were back, washing Regin first, telling him just to hold her up. Him next, every inch of his body was gently cleaned, even his hair washed and rinsed and then he was pulled from the shower. A towel tied at his hips, one wrapped around Regin and then he was led from the bathroom, up the stairs and into one of the guest bedrooms. He put Regin down on the bed, having to crawl over it on his knees to get to the middle and made to move off again before the hands came back, a gentle voice in his ear.

Lie down, it said, rest, he deserved it now.

Harry felt it was inappropriate to sleep in the same bed as Regin but it was hard to argue with the thick warm duvet being lowered over them both, the gentle hand stroking his hair and, he knew, doing the same to Regin, with his head sinking into the pillow. He would move in a minute, he decided. Once the voice wasn't there to argue he'd find a separate bed and…and…

Artemis smiled a small smile when sleep took the wizard. She stroked his hair one last time and then moved to Regin. As usual, as with every time she looked down upon this Hunter of hers, she felt an ache in her Immortal chest. She suffered much this one, and through no fault of her own. If only she knew…but it was not Artemis' place to interfere, not even in the business of her own disciples.

"Sleep well, Regin." Artemis glanced at Harry. "For once, let someone close enough to know you a little."

With one final look, the Goddess left.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9:**

Harry awoke slowly to the sound of…_birdsong?_ His dark eyes cracked open and he peered about his tiny bedroom that was…no longer his tiny bedroom in his basement apartment in Chicago but a grand guest bedroom with en suite and large airy bay windows in a rambling farmhouse in New Jersey. Harry scrubbed a hand over his face and let a small smile curl his lips. He felt great. Energy buzzed through his veins, power swirled low in his body and he felt like he could leap tall buildings in a single bound. That had been the best nights sleep he'd had in years. The comforter was heavy across his bare chest and he was pleasantly warm. He felt no immediate urge to leap out of bed, not being on a case had its benefits. In fact, all he wanted to do was snuggle back down under the duvet, bury his face back into the sweet shampoo smelling hair coiling over his shoulder and chest and…hold up.

Harry looked down and jerked in surprise hard enough to dislodge the _other_ person in the bed from sleeping over his chest.

Regin gave a small groan of annoyance, her head transferring easily from his arm to the plush pillows piled at the head of the bed. She squirmed a little and rolled onto her back, the towel still wrapped around her gaping to reveal more of that golden seam scar of hers and her face turning so that it was gently gilded in the dawn light.

The events of the night before came flooding back to Harry and he immediately wriggled cautiously closer to her to check out her wounds. Being careful to preserve her modesty and prevent his chronic embarrassment, Harry peeled the towel away a couple of inches so he could see the lowest of the arrow wounds. They were completely healed, only a faint silvering of the skin revealed they'd ever been there and Harry mused that they'd probably be gone by late afternoon at the most. He'd have to get Lisa or Greg to confirm, but she looked to be A-okay.

Then he saw the tattoos. Arching up on an elbow, Harry loomed over Regin and looked closer. They were amazing and must have been covered by some heavy duty make-up for them to go unnoticed. They struck across her left eye like the slashing claw marks of some beast. Two arrows pointing down over her brow, across her shuttered eye and over the sweep of her cheekbone, flanking a spear thrusting up from her cheek over her brow and onto her forehead. The detail and shimmering colours of the ink in her skin announced them to be magical, no mundane craft could produce such stunning quality. One arrow was barbed and wicked looking, its shaft thorned, the fletches ragged and the steel head carved cruelly. The spear was long carved with wood with a chiselled stone head and decorated with beads and the silver triple moon aspect of the Goddess. The last arrow was made of bone, the fletches the wing feathers of a crow, the head a beast's tooth and skulls tied to the end.

A tattoo of threes. The triple threat.

"What the hell did he do to my yard?!"

Harry jumped guiltily at the familiar yell from downstairs. The backdoor slammed, Lisa's answering murmur could be heard, then the clicking of claws and the bounding of Mouse coming up the stairs. Harry threw back the quilt, double checked to make sure Regin was still asleep. He got halfway to the door before snapping his fingers and running back to the bed to snag his own towel from it. He cinched it around his hips, opened the bedroom door, nearly tripped over Mouse and ran smack into House's chest. Harry might have been bigger by a few inches, but he was definitely more solidly built. Harry staggered back and nearly dropped the towel but impressively regained it.

"Dresden!" House threw his hand over his shoulder and gestured to the rest of the House. He wore nothing save a pair of hastily buttoned jeans and a fierce expression. "What the hell?"

"Shut up!" Harry growled at him and hustled him back along the corridor. "She's still sleeping it off."

House frowned and then his eyes widened. He looked around Harry and then sniffed before laughing.

"Regin's in there?" House pointed and then laughed again. "Dresden, you _dawg_!"

"I didn't sleep with her!" Harry rolled his eyes and ran his hand through his hair, belatedly realising it was without glove. He didn't know where it had gone. "Well, actually yes, I did, but that was ALL!"

"Duh, I'm messing with you, dude." House brushed it off. "I can smell you didn't do the nasty with the Nast but that still leaves what happened to my yard? And why your dog yanked me out of a very comfortable nap this morning and chased me all the way back here?"

"Mouse chased you? You? The big scary Uber-cat?"

"It's called hyperbole, idiot." House sniffed at him and Mouse thumped his tail against the floor with a doggy grin before going to the door and pawing at it. Harry opened it without a second thought and Mouse promptly jumped up onto the bed and curled up next to Regin. Her hand rested on one massive paw and Mouse dropped off to sleep without further preamble. The run through the forest had exhausted him.

"Listen, I'm nearly naked, I'm showing off my scars and I'm starving. Can I get some clothes and explain over breakfast?"

House looked at Regin on the bed and cocked his head. Harry could tell that he was extending his senses to monitor Regin from afar then he blinked and nodded. "Sure. She's not dying, we can take five." House ambled to the nearest airing closet. Being a werecat meant that one had to keep a ready supply of handily available and, if necessary, disposable clothing. So there was plenty to go around.

"Harry, you a sweats or a jeans man?" House threw open the door and began to rummage.

**Sinister Scribe**

"But she's okay now?" Lisa asked, halfway through sliding eggs from the pan onto House's plate. House reached up and took hold of her wrist, shimmying the pan until the rest of his breakfast joined his plate and then he could dig in with impunity.

Harry nodded and glanced around the immaculate kitchen. Last night it had been trashed with blood, stuff all over the floor from the table they were eating off of now, a dented back door from where Harry had kicked it and tracked mud and water from when he'd come in after healing Regin. Someone had obviously pulled a clean up, in the bathroom too by the sounds of things. Harry could only guess at the mysterious third party and her silver stag from the night before. Though she hadn't struck him as the domestic type.

"I mean, she hasn't woken up yet, but she seems okay now."

"Maybe I should go up and check on her." Cuddy looked down at House and leant her hip against his shoulder, he wrapped his free arm around her legs and shook his head.

"Eat first. She's fine."

"Hmm." Cuddy didn't sound entirely convinced but sat down to her own plate of breakfast anyway. Harry ate a lot, magic required burning a lot of energy, but these two put him to shame. Lisa alone could suck back at least twice what he could in one sitting and Greg easily took three or four times that. For example, the both of them were on their second helping of the biggest plate of eggs, bacon, toast and sausages that Harry had ever seen and would probably be hungry again within the hour.

"So, did we really meet a Goddess last night?" She asked the table at large. They had both exchanged stories of the previous night's events (a heavily censored one for Harry from Lisa) and realised they had something in common.

Artemis.

"Dunno. Never met a Goddess before to tell you but…" He nodded slowly. "She definitely seemed powerful enough to be one."

"And she stripped you nekkid!" House smirked at Harry, mocking gently. He crowed with laughter when Harry's ears turned red. "The only immortal that's jailbait and you pick her up. Figures, Dresden."

"Shut up." Harry muttered into his toast and Lisa just rolled her eyes.

"If she really was THE Artemis then she was a lot older than sixteen." She looked Harry over and was quiet for several moments before asking gently. "How about you? You okay?"

"I feel great." Harry shrugged and smiled at Lisa's arched brow. "Really. I feel fantastic. I've had a good night's sleep, am no longer naked," he swept his arm down to indicate his borrowed jeans, tee shirt and recovered black leather glove, "and I've just had a good hot meal. What more could a guy want?"

"Hmm." Lisa said again and glanced out into the hallway and towards the stairs. She fidgeted with the rolled back cuff of House's shirt that was the only thing she was wearing. "I'm going to get dressed then I'm going to check on Regin and you two are going to do the dishes."

"But…" Harry and House started at the same time and were quelled by a glare that stopped both of them in their tracks. She turned and left calling over her shoulder as she did so. "Make sure you phone Karin, Harry. She'll want to know where you are."

Harry sighed and eyed the pile of dishes.

"Well, wave your magic wand." House sat back in his chair and wiped imaginary fluff from his tee shirt.

"Doesn't work that way, mogget, and you know it. Washing or drying?"

House just sighed.

**Sinister Scribe**

"_No! Please, I'll be good, I promise." Tears tracked down her face as Regin's small thirteen year old body twisted on the stone alter. "I won't be bad anymore. I'll do as I'm told!" _

_When pleading didn't work, she fought, fiercely and without holding back as she had been taught. She kicked, punched bit and scratched. She went wild with terror bucking and snarling like one possessed but she was only a child. Small for her age and there were many of them. She could not see their faces in the hoods. Their dark hands held her down, chaining her to the cold stone under her naked back. She screamed, roared, sobbed. She would not go up. She would die fighting or live, those were her only options._

_The moon rose high, golden and fat overhead. A Hunter's moon. They were in the middle of the clearing in a dark forest, the trees rising like claws to clutch at the starry sky overhead._

_The chanting began, low and thrumming rising in pitch and frequency until it was unbearable to listen to. Regin didn't care. She twisted savagely in her bonds, hard enough to snap the delicate bones in one of her wrists. The pain was lost in her savage anger at being trapped so. Fear fuelled her fury, her teeth were bared and humanity receded from her gaze until one of the hooded figures appeared at her side, trying to hold her down and prevent her from hurting herself further. Regin lunged, twisting in the bonds, head snapping forward and teeth sinking into the unprotected flesh of the hood's hand. Ancient Greek curses filled the air as the hood tried to pull their hand away. Regin did not relinquish her hold. _

_Blood filled her mouth, but she didn't let go. She shook her head like a dog worrying a bone, tearing great chunks of human meat away with her teeth. _

_Others surged forward the chant never broken. One of them tore her head away and slammed it down against the alter hard enough to stun her into going limp for a split second and the rest of them were on her in that thunderous heartbeat. They pinned her down one at each hand and foot and another climbed onto the alter, standing straddling Regin's slim body. The huge wicked curve of a dagger caught the moonlight and Regin redoubled her efforts if at all possible. _

_There was the grating sound of metal manacles being yanked forcibly from their moorings in the alter and worked free. _

_The chanting filled the clearing, welled into Regin's mind and threatened to drive her fully mad but she still didn't give in. _

_She would NOT go quietly. _

_The deathblow came quickly. In the same instant the chanting reached its crescendo and stopped dead, the knife-wielder dropped to their knees crushingly on Regin's stomach and brought the blade down in one perfect fluid motion. It sank to the hilt into Regin's chest, right through her sternum with a sickening crack. _

_Regin thought she would have screamed. That she should have, but she couldn't. All the air had been forced from her lungs and she was incapable of drawing in more. The knife crunched down, sawing through the cartilage holding her ribs together. Blood spurted splashing over dark robes and Regin's face. She could do nothing, she was helpless, she couldn't even fight anymore. Her chest was cracked open like it was a jacket being unzipped, from her sternum almost down to her navel. Her lungs were shoved aside as the knife-wielder reached into her chest._

_Regin managed a gurgling gasp of denial that sounded something like the dregs of water swirling out the bottom of a sink and down a drain. _

_Regin's head turned away, she couldn't watch anymore, she went somewhere else. Somewhere inside her head where this wasn't happening. _

_She was aware of an urn being brought, she could hear a drumbeat…no heartbeat from within the clay pot but she paid it no mind. It was as if it was happening to someone else a very long way away. Tears slid down her face sideways and over her nose, pooling on the stone beneath her. _

_Then, there in the trees, a familiar silhouette. The coat, the hat and the cane. Regin moved as little as she was able. She lifted her arm, the robed figures no longer holding her down, she reached out with her bloodied little fingers. She didn't have the strength to call, but she mouthed the same word, the same name, over and over again, reaching out desperately __**willing**__ her to hear, to come and save her. _

_Regin was brought back to her body with the intolerable cruelty of her heart being grabbed by another person and forcibly ripped from her body. _

"_BABA!"_

Regin shot upright, hand flying out in front of her, cold sweat pouring over her skin. Her lungs heaved in her chest as if she'd run a marathon and hands closed over her shoulders.

"No! No! Get OFF me!" Regin struggled, weak and uncoordinated but she fought because it was the only thing she could do.

"Regin, it was a nightmare!" She was being yelled at but Regin, still trapped in the night terror, didn't understand.

"No!" She lunged feebly, still trying to get away.

"It was a nightmare, it wasn't real." A face swam over Regin, looking vaguely familiar. "It was a dream, Regin. You're okay now. Breathe. Just breathe."

Regin obeyed, because it seemed like a sensible idea, and sucked some much needed air into her lungs. She felt the memory recede and the present reassert itself. The dark alter in the forest faded and the well lit bedroom replaced it. Everything ached. Regin rubbed at her golden scar and then scrubbed the tears from her face. Regin was on a bed, bent forward with Cuddy…

"What are you doing?"

Cuddy pulled away.

"Hugging you. Always helps after I have a nightmare. Um…sorry?"

Regin blinked. "It's just that no one's ever…" Regin trailed off before she opened her mouth and revealed just how pathetic she really was. "You just surprised me, that's all."

Cuddy looked at her for a long moment and then nodded. "Okay." She busied herself with sorting Regin's towel so modesty was preserved (not that Regin had any but it broke the awkward moment somewhat). "You want to tell me what it was about?"

Regin was quiet a long moment. She'd never told anyone about the dream. She didn't usually dream, in fact, this was the only one she ever had over and over and over again. Quite frankly, she didn't need the Freudian analysis that would come with it. She knew she was fucked up, she didn't need her dream to tell her that…but neither did she want to be rude to Cuddy. She liked the little werecat. It was nice to meet someone who had no idea who you were, no preconceived notions about you.

"You remember being born, Lisa?"

"No." Cuddy frowned but Regin didn't see it she was toying with her hands. 

"Well, let's just say that you're all the luckier for it."

"Oh." Cuddy didn't really know what to say to that. She changed the subject instead. "Well, on the bright side, your wounds are completely healed."

Regin looked down at the skin in question that didn't bare so much as a line. She ran her finger over it. "He saved me." Her tone was quiet.

"Gee, I'll pass on the jubilant thanks." Cuddy deadpanned. "You don't sound very pleased."

"You'll have to excuse me if I'm not." Regin turned slowly, painfully, and slid her feet down to the floor. She ignored Cuddy's frown and scrutinised her hands instead. Focusing on breathing and not passing out on the floor. She knew Cuddy was staring at her, didn't know what the other woman was seeing and didn't particularly want to turn around and see it for herself.

Cuddy looked at Regin and finally saw it. Why she liked Regin so much. Why she felt such empathy for her. It was her pain. Cuddy could see it now. Regin was in pain, she didn't know how or why, maybe it was the dark thing that moved behind her eyes, the beast in her that constantly wanted loose, but whatever it was, it pained Regin. Constantly, always, without surcease, day in and day out until the day she died and…Cuddy was beginning to understand how horrific that was.

Regin had said so herself. She was a true immortal. She wasn't just going to lie down and die one day, not even if she wanted to. All she had was to trudge through day after day, bleeding from everywhere with no chance of it stopping.

Regin bowed forward, head falling into her hands and it seemed to be the only thing holding her together.

Cuddy felt the familiar sensation of looking on at someone she could not help and did the only thing she could. She sat down beside Regin on the bed and rested her hand on the other woman's shoulder.

For a long time, Regin didn't move. She just sat there, holding her head and breathing, trying to get over the missed opportunity of peace. Possibly the only one she was ever going to have. After a long moment, though, she moved. Her hand turned, laying over Cuddy's on her bare shoulder. Cuddy turned her fingers and offered a small connection to humanity with a squeeze of her fingers.

And Regin clung to her.

**Sinister Scribe**

"Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh…no. Yeah…I suppose, technically…here he is now. Bye." House yanked the phone from his ear and thrust it at Harry. "It's Murphy, rather you than me." With a clap to the shoulder and those comforting words, House disappeared along the hallway and into the living room. A second later there was the sound of a heavy werecat flopping onto the leather couch and the television blaring to life.

"Murph." Harry spoke into the old rotary phone's handset. It had a better chance of not breaking when he spoke into it so House had dug it out of a cupboard somewhere for him to use.

"You were in bed with her?"

Harry frowned at the handset.

"Good morning to you too, Murph. Yeah. I'm fine too by the way."

"Explain." Her tone was steely and Harry was more than a little confused and quite a lot pissed off by it. "Well?"

"Well what?" He demanded suddenly. "She was shot, Murphy. Poisoned too. She nearly _died. _I had to heal her and to do that I had to come to the only supernatural doctors I know, unfortunately they were out and I had to heal her myself."

"Doesn't explain why you were sharing sheet space with a woman you were morally outraged with a few hours ago, Dresden. I know she's pretty but that's a pretty quick turn around, even for a cleavage like that."

Harry jerked back as if struck and took the phone away from his ear so as to properly glare at it. The line literally crackled with his anger.

"Murphy, I say this to you with every possible affection I can muster right now. You, are _full of shit!"_ Harry slammed the phone down and his chest heaved. He clenched his fists until his knuckles cracked and fought the urge to smash something with a fireball.

"Harry? You okay?"

Harry jerked to look up onto the stairs and saw Cuddy carefully following Regin slowly down the stairs. Regin moved stiffly, but didn't look to be in any danger of falling over. She was wearing a borrowed band tee shirt knotted at her midriff to show off a tanned swatch of skin, borrowed faded jeans hung low on her hips and she had to hitch them up at the foot of the stairs. Harry ignored the interested little heat signals that were arrowing through him with a grind of his jaw and jerked a nod.

"I'm fine."

"Uh-_huh."_ Cuddy arched a brow at him.

"I think it's time I was heading." Harry stalked to the coat rack at the door and slung his duster on. He looked over at Regin, who stretched her arm out so her own coat could surge along it and wrap tightly around her almost frail looking frame. Though she did seem to be recovering before his eyes. She was already standing straighter, her colour getting better. After a moment's hesitation he directed his next to Regin. "You need a ride back to the city, I think we still have that cab that we borrowed."

"We?" Regin frowned. Genuinely not recalling for a moment. Last night was still fuzzy for the most part. "Uh, sure, that's great." She hedged and pulled her duster on.

"Righty then." Harry whistled for Mouse, they said their goodbyes and headed off. Anger still low and boiling in Harry's belly. He rolled his head on his neck and tried not to let it show, but Regin looked at him oddly and he had the sense that she, at least, knew exactly what was going on with him.

He brushed it off and headed for the car. He had the feeling the sooner he got away from her, the better he'd feel.

**Sinister Scribe**

"This is your hotel?" Harry did not crane his neck this way and that to take in the sheer opulence of the place but he sure as hell wanted to. Looked like the kind of high end establishment that Thomas would be more comfortable in and made Harry feel like he was always five minutes from being thrown out. Regin didn't answer him because she was of the opinion that the question was a stupid one. She settled for sweeping through the lobby like she owned the place and heading for the express elevator that led straight to the penthouse suites. Mouse clicked along happily at her side and Harry had the feeling that he had a traitor in his midst. She pulled out her key card and swiped it to call the elevator and stilled as something occurred to her.

"Uh…do you want a drink?"

Harry blinked at her.

"I think it's the least I can offer after you…helped me out last night." She didn't look to be comfortable with admitting that he had saved her skin…with a little help from a Goddess…which he still hadn't told her about yet. At his hesitation she added. "You don't have to if you don't want to. It was just a thought." The doors for the elevator opened and Mouse whined at her, sitting down on the polished floors and pawing at her leg.

"Ah, not for you, poochie." Regin leant down and petted the dog affectionately. "Single malt is not for doggies." She grinned at him and stroked him one last time for good measure. Straightening, she looked back up at Harry and backed into the elevator. "Well, I probably won't see you again, Harry so…it's been a slice." She waved at him as the doors shut and Harry found himself waving back, slightly bemused and turned to go.

"Uff!" Mouse bounded forwards as the doors closed their last few inches and slipped into the car with Regin at the last instant. Harry cursed and lunged for him but the doors clipped shut before he could get a hand between them to stop it. He thumped the doors once and cursed again, a little more fluidly this time.

"I'm going to _kill_ that dog!"

**Sinister Scribe**

Harry burst out of the emergency stairwell and into the hallway of the penthouse suite. He had just pounded his way up ten flights of stairs because the damn security guard didn't believe that his dumb dog had decided to go up in the world to the penthouse section. However, where there is a wizard there is a way and Harry was going to get Mouse back, to make a new rug with his misbegotten hide if nothing else. He stopped and planted his hands on his thighs, panting for a few minutes. He was in good shape, his profession involved an inordinate amount of running and he did it in his spare time too just so he could outstrip the bad guys in the sprinting stakes when it counted.

A familiar whine sounded along with a couple of scratches and Harry looked up to find Mouse parked outside a door of the _Windjammer _suite, looking up at the cream door forlornly and pawing at the door hard enough to rattle it in its frame.

"Right, come here." Harry staggered forward and grabbed Mouse by his trailing leash. "We are going to get my stuff, we are going to check into a motel and I'm going to remind myself why I ever rescued your fuzzy butt from the flaming monkey-shit demon."

The door opened, Harry looked up and found himself rooted to the spot.

It was Regin and…_wow. _

She'd obviously been in the shower because her hair was wet, her face scrubbed clean and she was wearing nothing save for a long black silky something. It wasn't that the cut to it was daring or raunchy, it had a scooped neckline and the hem trailed along the carpet after her. It was just that it was almost transparent…and she wasn't wearing anything underneath it.

"Oh, it's you." She made to shut the door without a further word and then seemed to hesitate. "You need a water or something? I really don't want to have to deal with you passing out on the floor."

He wanted to tell her to go to hell, but his mouth was suddenly dry as dust. "Sure." He croaked and straightened back to his full height. "Water would be great."

"Come in then." She hid her sigh well, but it was there.

Mouse bounded over the threshold and trotted about the massive suite.

"Have a seat." Regin waved negligently at the full three-piece suite that dominated the lounge area. A massive plasma screen television was on to one of the music channels and the doors to the bedroom were open to reveal a California King-size freshly made and opulent. Regin moved to the mini-bar that wasn't quite so mini in a suite of this size and extracted a bottle of water and a glass. She moved to the table, clunked the glass down onto the marble surface and poured him a water with a gurgle. She capped the bottle and promptly spun away from him, moving to the large leather topped desk in the back of the suite by the panoramic glass windows, taking her seat and scanning the notes spread across the desk, before wriggling the mouse to her laptop and beginning to type at lightening speed.

"Thanks." Harry muttered wryly, realising he was about to be ignored and didn't take his seat. Mouse wasted no time in planting himself at Regin's side. She broke her typing with one hand long enough to pet him on the head once and then turned her full attention back to her computer. Harry drained his water and decided he'd intruded on Regin's 'hospitality' for long enough. Oh, if Murph could see them now, she wouldn't be so damn worried about Harry's dick doing the thinking for him. It was a wry smile that tugged at his lips and he moved to snag Mouse away from his crushing on Regin.

"Bye." She barely glanced up at him.

"Bye." He had to admit, he was a little puzzled by her. He didn't understand how cold she was being, from what he had seen of her so far, she was a genuinely warm person. Sure she had some baggage going on, but didn't they all? What the hell did it matter though? After tonight he was probably never gong to see her again. He stalked across the suite, Mouse trailing forlorn at his side looking back at Regin when his master didn't. He reached the door and was opening it when Regin's voice halted him.

"Harry."

He turned to see her gliding across the suite. He'd never really understood using that term for somebody moving before but it seemed that Regin could genuinely pull of perfectly fluid motion. She stopped a metre or so from him and appeared to gather her words before speaking to him.

"About last night.." She began.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about ending up in the same bed with you. After all the healing and stuff I just crashed." He smiled and shrugged, hoping she'd leave it alone.

"No, it's not that it's that…by Hunter law, you saved my life, I owe you."

He shrugged. "Forget it. I'm doing a special trial this week. First damsel rescued from distress is free."

"It's not that either. I'm an enforcer of the law and, while it might not be laws you understand or necessarily respect, if _I _don't respect them then my ability to enforce them is damaged."

Harry rocked back on his heels. "Oh." He was catching on now. "So this is some 'my life is yours until I save you in return' kind of deal?"

"Something like that." Regin tilted her head to one side. "But more specific. You have the opportunity to take something from me. Anything you want, and I have to give it." She spread her hands and shrugged.

Harry blinked and looked about the suite searching for inspiration. "Got any nice key chains?"

Regin sighed and rubbed at her temple. "It can't be trivial Harry. It's supposed to be a fair exchange. The friends of the Hunters are not supposed to go unrewarded."

"Okay…how about a car? What kind of car do you drive?"

"Harry…" Regin felt the edge of a growl creep into her voice and she turned to follow him as he strode back into the apartment.

"Any timeshares in the Caribbean?" Harry glanced about the suite, he had no idea why these things happened to him. He couldn't even save somebody's life anymore without getting into trouble.

"Harry!" Regin caught his attention and finally had him swinging around to face her.

They shared a look for a moment and then she spoke slowly and clearly as if he was particularly dim.

"Why don't you just take what we both know you want?"

Then her hands went up to the straps of her gown, slid them from her shoulders and the entire sheer garment rippled down her body to the floor. She stepped from it, completely naked and not in the least bit bothered by it.

Harry's brows shot up and he swallowed hard.

Now what?


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10:**

Karin swung open the car door of the cab and levered herself out into the parking lot.

"Ya sure ya wanna get out here, miss?" The cabbie twisted around in his seat to look at her.

"Here's fine." She smiled at him in a per functionary manner and handed over his fare. He was mollified by her instructions to keep the change. Turning back to the huge imposing building towering over her against the grey New Jersey sky line, she knew that here was anything but 'fine'. Riker's prison, maximum security, and home of one Prisoner BK-43924. Or, just Riker Little. Murphy passed through the massive steel plated doors and security checks with speedy ease. Being a fellow cop helped a great deal with that and she finally met up with Franklin, her contact who had gotten her in past all the red tape to interview the boy.

"Thanks for doing this, Franklin."

"Don't thank me yet, Tiny." Franklin sniffed, leading her to the maximum security interviewing room. "Listen, I'm putting both our necks on the line just letting you in to see him. The boy doesn't take well to people. We'll be in there with you but that's no guarantee that…" Franklin shook his head and Murphy jumped in before he could change his mind.

"I'm willing to take the risk. I really need to talk to him."

"And why is that exactly?"

"SI business." Murphy's line was well practiced and had the usual desired effect. Nobody really wanted to get involved in SI, not even the people that worked there most of the time.

Franklin grunted and the doors buzzed one last time, letting them into the interrogation room. Murphy took her seat and expected Franklin to do the same, instead though, the grizzled detective unhitched his gun from its holster, flipped the safety off and held it at a fire ready position but pointed down at the floor.

"That really necessary?" Murphy trusted Franklin, but this seemed a little paranoid even for him.

"You'll understand when you see him." Was Franklin's only reply.

Murphy raised one brow and shrugged one shoulder. She'd come up against psychos before and they'd yet to get the better of her. She settled into her seat, deliberately calming the nerves roiling in her stomach, and listened to the distant buzzing of the prisoner being brought in. there were shouts of warning along the corridor to let the other guards know that a prisoner was being moved and Karin's brows shot up when Little Riker finally came into view…along with his entourage.

He wore the neon orange jumpsuit of all Riker inmates, even in the smallest size, it engulfed his slight frame. He seemed painfully thin, gaunt cheeked and starved looking. Karin glanced at Franklin but he just grunted and jerked his chin towards Little Riker, indicating she'd better keep an eye on him. Karin turned back and listened to the chains clinking as she counted off Riker's shackles. He had a set around his ankles, connected to his waist, which was in turn connected to his wrist cuffs and up to a collar around his neck so he had to move in a stunted shuffling gait. As if that weren't enough, four officers held poles attached to the collar around his neck, moving in tandem and using the staffs to keep him equidistant from all of the guards. A black hood covered his head and Karin frowned. She hadn't seen anything like this outside news reels of Gitmo.

Riker was led into the interrogation room and sat down on the chair bolted to the floor. His ankle cuffs were attached to the chair's legs, his wrists and elbows to the chair arms and the collar was finally attached to the back of the chair itself. The four guards nodded to Franklin, unhitched their polls from the collar and filed out of the room. Franklin edged around the slim form of Riker, who looked tragically small in the massive metal chair he was shackled to, keeping his gun levelled at his head at all times and finally reached out with one snapping motion of his hand and whipped the hood from the boy's head.

Riker winced at the bright light suddenly assaulting him and tried to cringe away from it with a reptilian hiss from between his teeth. He blinked rapidly and stared about the room. He couldn't move much given his restraints, but he didn't settle until he had ascertained that it was only Karin and Franklin in the room with him. He looked directly at Karin and spoke in a small polite voice.

"Hello."

Karin couldn't reply, she was too busy staring at Riker. That face…the hands, the expression, the way his lips moved and those _eyes._

Karin sat forward, quite unaware she was doing so and scrutinised the boy with wide eyed amazement.

"Holy God…"

**Sinister Scribe**

"Regin…" Harry swallowed hard, tongue tracing over dry lips, his eyes dipping down over her body and then hauling back up again with an effort. "Regin, what are you doing?"

"I can understand how you might not recognise it, it having been so long for you, but I think you'll catch on pretty quickly in a few seconds." Her eyes roved over him, hungrily, and she prowled towards him with a wicked intent. Mouse made himself scarce and Harry backed away, shaking his head even as other parts of him were firmly saluting the proposition.

"We can't."

"I assure you, we can." She was close enough to touch now and Harry clenched his fists at his side. Her fingers found the collar of his duster and she dragged it down over his shoulders until it caught on his elbows.

"We shouldn't, then." He tried to catch her hands and stop her insistent fingers from divesting him of all dignity and clothing. Well, really more clothing, he had the feeling that his dignity had left the room along with Mouse. His breath caught when she snagged one of his wrists, licked at his fingers and then sucked one of them into the molten cavern of her mouth. She was _burning_. He must have felt freezing in comparison to her, but she didn't seem to mind in the least.

"Relax, Harry. I'll make it good for you." She stepped up close to him, rubbing her entire body against his and he made a small whimpering sound in the back of his throat. She was like nothing he'd ever felt before. He didn't know if he even liked her all that much, but she was stunningly beautiful, exotically tall enough to fit him perfectly without making him feel like a lanky oaf and the chemistry that flared so readily between them was undeniable. "Good for both of us."

"You don't want to do this." His voice was shuddering with the effort to hold back. No red blooded male could have a woman like Regin Nast squirming against him, hormones full throttle, and not feel something, but he knew this was a debt she felt she had to pay and Harry just didn't operate like that.

"Part of me does." She was panting now, he didn't doubt her. Her eyes were glassy, her lips swollen and her colour high on those sharp cheekbones of hers. Everything male in him snarled with the urge to drop the morals along with his pants and have a _very _good time with what was being freely offered.

"But most of you doesn't." He gripped her wrists but she didn't, or couldn't, stop rubbing herself against him and it was doing nothing for his composure and not enough for his raging hard on. "Jesus," he cursed a little more, "what else can I take from you?"

"Why not this, wizard? Am I so repulsive?"

"You know I don't think that…" He gritted. "But I don't screw around with strangers and I barely know you. No matter how you operate, I don't do it that way."

"Rumour has it you don't do it at all." She toppled him to the floor. It was like talking to two women, Harry noted as his back hit the floor, the rational Regin, who had no real desire to bed a man she didn't know all that well and the other wilder part of her that was all for instant gratification and no regrets in the morning. It was the second half that straddled him and seized his mouth in a kiss, tongue thrusting inside and painting his teeth, tasting the roof of his mouth, tangling with his tongue. He reached up and anchored a hand in her hair, fully intending to pull her away, to try and talk her out of it again, but her hair itself snaked around his fingers and hand and gripped him back tightly. He had the feeling he was fast becoming a man ensnared.

With a helpless groan, he flipped them both over, pinning her to the carpet and grinding down into her with his hips. She spilled tiny little growling noises of pleasure into his mouth and gasped up at the ceiling when he broke the kiss.

"I don't sleep around." She panted the words out, breathy and rushed.

"Hmm?" Harry was a little busy with wrapping his tongue around one of her flushed spiking nipples and sucking from her until her back arched and her claws unsheathed into the thick hide of his duster.

"Yesterday, in the restaurant, I've known Lucas for years." She had to speak around the ragged panting in her chest. Harry might have a wicked mouth but he could do good things with it, that was for sure. "I don't sleep around. I like to know who I'm bedding." She flipped him then, with a shove at his shoulders and twisting her hips until she was on top again. She rolled her hips down against him and they both moaned at the contact. His jeans would be stained from her, but he really didn't care at this point. "Just like you." She panted against his mouth in biting little kisses then and Harry's hands clasped her shoulder drawing her away, an idea occurring to him.

"Information." He gasped.

She stared at him, panting eyes sparkling with white and rainbow sparks, swirling like a vortex in her head.

"You said yourself, it has to be valuable. Hunters value their privacy more than anything, tell me about yourself. I want information for saving you."

Regin thought this over. Slowly, her brain was still predominantly trying to get into Harry's pants. Finally she started to nod and then, suddenly, flipped.

Her eyes flashed. Bright white light spilled from them as they sparked into negatives of themselves, the black irises becoming white, the sparkling white stars becoming black versions of themselves. Her fangs bared and she slammed him down into the floor.

"_**No."**_

The snarl was low and horrific and Regin moaned once, shutting her eyes and shivering violently. Harry went very still under her, recognising that being in any way threatening right now was probably a very bad idea. She gulped in air and shivered once more, slowly lifting her head and opening her eyes once more. When she did, she was Regin again, eyes back to normal. Well, as normal as night sky eyes could be, he supposed.

"Sorry." She murmured. "Good idea though." She didn't sound like she entirely agreed with that.

"Fantastic." Harry agreed deadpan and scrubbed a hand over his face. Regin stood up and away from him. He was really wishing he'd kept his mouth shut right about now, but what was done was done and…oh god, she was getting dressed now. Not in that teasing flimsy thing either, but in the jeans and tee she'd borrowed from House. He hauled himself up off the floor and she handed him a scotch. This time he didn't refuse and downed the burning liquid in one. She poured him another and he sipped it this time. The last thing he needed was for them both to get drunk and decide that knowing each other in any way other than the biblical sense was a waste of time. The strains of sex still echoed about the room but they both had silent agreement to ignore it as best they could. Regin seemed to be taking it worse than Harry, her fingers were white knuckled around the Scotch bottle's neck and her hand trembled when she lifted the tumbler to her lips. She didn't even look entirely all there yet.

"So," she poured herself another drink. "What do you want to know?"

She tossed the abandoned gown over the back of the couch and flopped down onto the massive suite. He shrugged off the duster, deciding that if she could ignore the very telling bulge still tightening his jeans then so could he.

"What can you tell me?"

"Just ask me, Harry."

"Where were you born?"

Regin sat back against the couch further and seemed surprised that he would ask such a personal question.

"I don't know."

He frowned at her but decided to ask another question rather than push the last. "Okay, you say you're an immortal. How old are you?"

"Don't know that either." He arched a brow at her and she sipped more whisky before going on to explain as best she could. "I'm at least sixty years old, possibly as old as seventy five. The first memory I have is of my heart being ripped out and replaced with something monstrous. Everything before that…" She trailed off and shook her head. Even as Harry rocked back in shock at her words, Regin remained unperturbed, as if reciting facts from a text she had learned a long time ago.

"Is that where the…?" Harry gestured at his chest and traced a line down over his sternum.

She nodded. "It's the only scar I have. Everything else heals." She drank more and he knew she wouldn't get drunk from it. It would take a helluva lot more than human whisky to get a Hunter drunk. "I was around about fourteen or fifteen years old before…the ritual and then I reached physical maturity in a matter of weeks afterwards. Can you imagine that I was once small for my age?" She smiled then at him and Harry found himself smiling back. He was beginning to get the feeling, that under all the questionable moral coding, the blatant sexuality and the scars, that there was a decent person in the cage with the beast. He had the feeling that he could be Regin's friend. He was wary of it, because women and friendship (with the exception of Murph and even that was rocky right now) was not something Harry did well.

"So you remember nothing before that at all?"

"That's why it's difficult for me to tell you anything about myself before then."

Harry thought about that a moment and drank more himself. Holy shit.

"What was the ritual?" For a long moment, Regin looked like she didn't want to answer, but finally she nodded and told him what she remembered of the night in the forest. It was precious little, she recited only what she knew to be fact but most of it had been blocked by her child like fear of what had been going on. To preserve the tattered remains of her sanity if nothing else.

"I don't really remember anything with great clarity until afterwards. Most of it's like a dream but…I do remember them dying. The hoods. She wasn't in time to stop them from doing it to me but…she damn well made sure they paid for it." Regin had dispensed with the glass altogether and was cradling the whisky bottle against her knee. She picked at the label with one long thumbnail.

"Who?"

"Baba." Regin murmured the name almost reverently. "Well, that's not really her name. In fact, she'd probably kill anyone else who dared call her that. Her real name is Elizaveta Yaga. She's the Alphem of the Hunters."

"Alphem?" Harry shrugged at her.

"Alpha female, Head Hunter, second only to Artemis herself. Mother to us all and…the woman that raised me."

"You're close." It wasn't a question but she nodded anyway.

"Family."

"What's it like, being a Hunter?"

"For me, or for the rest of them?"

"There's a difference?"

"Very." Regin snorted with self deprecation. "Other Hunters are…as many and as varied as the ways that man worships any god in any given religion. There are the faithful who are devout and unflinching in their worship, following all doctrines to the letter, there are those who view the following as a career who have lives entirely separate from Hunting that what goes bump in the night, there are those that would use it to their own ends, to punish those they felt were not their equal." Here Regin's tone lowered to something a little less than malicious. "And, of course, there are those who are so zealous in their faith that all around them is corrupt and must be…punished." Regin stared into space for a long moment, her fingers rubbing at her sternum, over the golden scar that had nearly split her in two all those years ago. Then she shook herself from it with a rapid blinking of her dark eyes.

"And for me…for me it's a tightrope walk. To defend those that would fear me if they only knew I existed, those that I must, conversely, feed upon if I am to stay sane and survive…to stay one step ahead of my sisters. Some of whom only see the abomination inside me and wish to _purge_ it from their ranks." She lifted one shoulder in a negligent shrug. "Keeps things interesting in the very least."

Harry swirled his drink in his glass and thought that over for a minute. She was lying. Maybe not to him and probably not intentionally but she was definitely lying to herself. This blasé attitude towards whether or not she was accepted by the Hunters was mostly smoke, he was thinking. They were the only family she had and, by her own admission, most of them treated her as a pariah. Harry would bet a month's pay that the only reason she had survived as long as she had was sheer bloody mindedness and the fact that she was the favoured of the 'Alphem'.

"You feel alone, don't you?"

"Yes."

Harry looked up at her, surprised, and found her staring into his eyes unflinchingly. He hadn't expected her to answer, in fact, he had expected her to deflect and change the subject completely.

"I'm compelled to speak the truth, wizard." She was almost whispering, her voice quavering slightly, but not from fear or sadness but…anger.

"What else do you feel?"

"Trapped. Enraged. Insulted. Tortured." She looked like she wanted to stop but the words dropped from her mouth and Harry was too enthralled to release her from the contract of his unknowing words. "Loathing. Disgust. Putrid. Dirty. Crowded. Suffocated…" She surged to her feet, looking like she'd rather hurl herself from the window than continue speaking. Harry was up to meet her head on, gripping her shoulders and stopping her. Her chest heaved and her eyes had turned wild. "Unnatural." She finally whispered. "I should not be."

She wrestled herself from his grip and spun away, hand going to her face to cover her eyes and smear down over her features.

"You okay?" Harry spoke to her back.

"Never."

Harry felt an answering pang in his chest and reached out to comfort her automatically. His hand landed on her shoulder and he felt her tense. He remembered what this was like. He remembered when he had lost Susan. The trauma of aching for her, the self destructive spiral that it sent him spinning through. The mad urge to make everyone else hurt just as much as he did and, most of all, the aching feeling of being so desolately alone.

It was that which made him turn Regin back to him. Tug her forward so she tipped against him and wrapped his arms around her.

She stiffened further in his encompassing grip but there was no sex to it. No demands from her or of her. She just had to accept it for what it was and that…was a novel concept for Regin.

"I know that feeling sometimes." His voice rumbled through her and she buried her face against the collar of his tee shirt, arms creeping around him, she held tightly to his waist and didn't answer him.

She didn't have to.

"This is a little weird, isn't it?" She could hear his smile. His hand was doing a pleasant thing rubbing up and down her spine and even the beast was stunned into silence at a gesture of…_kindness_ directed at them.

"Talking to a Furya empowered by a Goddess, Harry. Weird is what I do."

He snorted at that. "Yeah, but…five minutes ago…"

"That was five minutes ago." Her words were muffled against his chest but she couldn't quite bring herself to pull away from him. Not yet anyway. "Entire worlds have changed in less time."

"Know something I don't?"

"I'll maybe tell you the story sometime."

Harry was about to look down at her and tell her she couldn't leave him like that when a strident hammering battered on the door.

Regin jumped away from him guiltily as if ready to deny that she had actually had a human connection. He caught her hand before she completely pulled away though, and squeezed it lightly. A flash of a grin back and a tightening of her fingers was all he was guiltily afforded before she made her way across the room and pulled a knife from her lower back. Harry frowned, that hadn't been there a minute ago…she opened the door a fraction, knife held over her head as she lent against the doorjamb, ready to lash down on whoever was on the other side if they weren't the Avon lady…or maybe if they _were_ the Avon lady.

"Oh, it's you." Regin stepped back and the door was kicked open with a clattering violent motion.

"Where is he?" Murphy strode into the room, looking slightly less than polite and more than a little harried.

"Good evening to you too." Regin murmured and spirited the knife away. Literally. It disappeared in a shimmer from her hand in a motion even Harry couldn't follow.

"I'm right here, Murph." Harry was still pissed at her.

"You shouldn't be here. Not with her." Murphy's hand lashed out behind her, finger extended in righteous indignation and punched right into the hard muscles of Regin's stomach. Both Muprh and Regin looked down at the finger that Murphy was assaulting Regin with. Regin arched one brow and folded her arms over her chest.

"I believe Harry has a say in that, no?" Regin countered but Murphy couldn't back down.

"I know exactly what you're up to and I'm not going to let it happen." Murphy turned on her, practically snarling.

"And what would that be?" Regin sighed out, looking supreme in her boredom.

"Murphy, back off." Harry spoke quietly but there was a thread of steel in his voice. Steel that Murphy never got to see, let alone have directed at her.

"Listen to your friend, Karin. Don't start something you can't finish." Regin agreed with him.

"I'm not afraid of you."

"Well, that just speaks to your stupidity, but I was actually referring to the rift you're widening between yourself and Harry. I'm not here to help you deepen it and I shall be _upset_ should you attempt to use me in such a way."

For the briefest of moments, Regin's eyes flashed white and Harry stiffened across the room. Ready to reach out and yank Murphy back and out the way, but as quickly as he had seen it, the beast was gone. Submerged once more like a crocodile in a river.

Heat scored Murphy's cheeks under her freckles but she ignored it and yanked something out of her inner jacket pocket.

"I'm not talking about that either."

"Maybe you should be." Regin countered. She hoped the little policewoman was getting one hell of a crick in her neck from craning back to see up to Regin's face. She was _not_ feeling particularly charitable this evening. She was confused and out of sorts as well as bone tired. The night was far from over and she had an awful premonition that it was about to get a lot worse for her.

"Shut up. The real reason you're here has nothing to do with the hospital, or talks about the birth of medicine or whatever bullshit that you've spun to my friends." The subtle emphasis on the last was not missed by Regin but her only reply this time was to blink. "The real reason is all to do with him, isn't it?" Murphy yanked the photograph out of the envelope and shoved up under Regin's nose. The Hunter jerked back as if slapped when she focused on the image.

"What were you doing there?" Shadows trailed across the room. Eyes flashed between black and white for a crazy kaleidoscope of seconds.

"What's the matter? Pissed that a mere mortal figured it out?"

Rage rolled off Regin in pulsing waves. She snatched Murphy by the wrist that held the photo and hauled upwards until Murphy's feet barely touched the floor.

"_**You haven't seen my anger yet." **_

"Regin!" Harry closed the distance between them and pulled Murphy away, pushing her behind his back and standing as a shield between the two women. "Someone mind explaining to me what the hell is going on here?!"

Regin turned away and put her hand over her eyes, still flashing between black and white. She heaved in air like she was suffocating and shook all over. Blood seeped from where her claws had cut into her palm in her clenched fist.

"Here." Murphy reached around him and pushed the eight by ten glossy into his hand. It was a mug shot of a young man. Shrunken and small with a haunted face standing in too big convict orange fatigues and an expression on his face that was completely devoid of any kind of emotion.

But it wasn't the lack of humanity shown to such a kid that had Harry staring at the photograph. It was the kid's face, most glaringly, his eyes.

Murphy's voice could barely contain her smug revulsion for Regin when she next spoke.

"The family resemblance is rather uncanny wouldn't you say?"

Regin turned back to them, her hand over her mouth as if to hold something in and her big black eyes, thickly lashed and unique upon the planet…almost identical to those lifeless eyes staring out of the photograph of one Riker Little.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Chapter 11:**_

_House lounged back on the massive bed that he and his mate shared and watched the slink of her spin as she moved about the room. She was readying herself for work. He could feel the excitement coming from her. She was jonesed about the speech that Regin was going to give today. Yet another feather in her cap as a kick ass dean of medicine. He had to admit, she was good at her job. Despite his brash teasing to the contrary. She caught the tail of that last thought and turned to him with a sunny smile before going back to choosing her shirt from the walk in wardrobe, holding it against her body and eyeing her reflection in the full length mirror in the doorway. She pursed her lips and mulled it over. _

"_The red one." _

_She looked aver at him and arched a brow. _

_He shrugged one shoulder and folded his arms behind his head. "Well, you won't come back to bed and I might as well have something_ to keep me going between now and lunch." 

"Oh, lunch, you think?" She was switching the shirt though. "Don't know if I'll have time." 

"Make time." His voice was a low growl and she knew he was fully capable of just throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out of the hospital when he felt she needed a break. Whether it be for sex or food or just to get away from the building for a while. It wouldn't be the first time either. 

That donor never had come back…

"Maybe." It wouldn't do to let him get to cocky (though some would argue that it was a bit late for that). He knew that she wasn't above making it impossible to get to her, their connection allowing her to guess his every move before he implemented it and stay one step ahead. House grumbled often about this unfair advantage and Cuddy simply smiled sweetly and continued to use it shamelessly whenever she felt the need. If nothing else, she'd never get any work done if she didn't. she knew he was gearing up to say something, something that he wasn't sure how she'd react to and that was the why of the banter. He was putting it off until he had to. She looked over at him on the bed, their massive bed that they rarely slept in, with the covers strewn low over his lean hips and the long lines of him sleek and tempting. Her tongue smoothed over her lower lip and her pupils dilated. 

He sensed the change in her and was crawling across the bed towards her before she even thought to say something to stop him. Her feet pulled her towards him until they met halfway and his arms slid around her waist. He nuzzled at her belly, kissed his way up the valley between her breasts and purred at her gasp when his tongue rode up over her throat. 

"Greg…" She felt like she could barely breathe, her fingers clutching at his wide shoulders. He was taller than her, even while kneeling on the bed. She was nearly completely dressed, in her skirt and half buttoned shirt, and he was completely naked…which somehow made it all the better. 

He sat back on his heels on the mattress, his fingers inching her skirt up over her legs and his lips teasing hers in nipping, tempting kisses. He tugged at her hips and it was all the encouragement she needed to clamber onto his lap and straddle him with a little appreciative growl. She nibbled on his lip and sucked on his tongue, rotating her hips against the hard brand of his erection pressed firmly against her until he groaned. 

She could feel that he still wanted to talk to her though. She broke the kiss and felt him realise why. He stroked her hair affectionately as his eyes roved over her face.

"What is it?" She cupped his face, thumb scraping at his stubble. She saw him screw up his courage. He'd never say it, but she knew his biggest fear was that she was going to leave him. She'd told him over and over, shown him again and again, that she not only couldn't go anywhere without him, but had zero desire to do so. He didn't want to drive her away…but at the same time he had to know the answer to whatever was bugging him. 

"Just say it." She urged him. 

"Why aren't you pregnant?" 

Her brows flew up. Okay, that was the last thing she had expected him to say. Maybe something along the lines that he needed space from her or that he didn't like her cooking or something…but the fact that he hadn't knocked her up? 

"Uh…" A quick brain Google revealed no related documents to this conversation so she stalled for a second. "You want kids?" 

"I know you do." 

"That's not an answer." She shifted on his lap, twining her arms around his neck when he thought she was about to leave him. She toyed with the short hair at the nape of his neck and tilted her head at him. 

"You want them. They would make you happy. I want you to be happy." 

Still a non-answer, she noted.

"I'm happy with you." She tilted her head, a little irritated that he didn't get it that she was NOT going anywhere. Not now, not ever.

"It's just that…we've been playing touch-tummies MULTIPLE times a day for over a year and…" He shook his head. "What if…I'm not compatible with you that way? I mean, it's possible that…"

"My great-grandmother started off human, as I recently found out, she had eight cubs, kids, progeny, whatever." She rolled her eyes and gestured with her free hand. "But…" 

"Say it." He demanded instantly. 

"Ishaaran can only reproduce if one; they're mated and two: both partners want children. It's a naturally occurring defence mechanism. Ishaaran children don't survive without the magic of both parents to sustain them through their first change." 

"So if one of us were to die…" His chest constricted at the mere thought and he tugged her closer instinctively. Not happening. Not while he was here to protect her from it, his beast snarled in agreement and he felt marginally soothed when a similar feeling rang along her connection to him. 

"We'd all die. Unless my parents were there to foster." She swallowed hard past a lump in her throat just thinking about it. She would be lying to say that she had never imagined what kind of children they would make together, but if he didn't want them then he didn't. Nothing she could say or do would change that and she wasn't about to let it get between them. He loved her and she him and that was plenty to keep her satisfied. More than satisfied. There were days when she was so damn euphoric it was sickening. "What made you think of this?" 

"My dad's dying." 

This time, when she shifted, it was to pull away. She left him kneeling on the bed and strode about the room a moment. She folded her arms across her chest and tried to hold what she was feeling to herself. It chimed along their connection and he saw the fiery red of her anger bloom in his mind as easily as he could see the sun rising out the window. 

Cuddy did not like his parents. She had tried. He had felt it, she had tried much more than he had upon meeting her triplet brothers who thought he wasn't good enough for her (a few well placed punches punctuated with an ass-handing to had settled that disagreement), but she just couldn't bring herself to do it. His father had abused him as a child, she knew it because he knew it, and his mother, to a lesser extent, because she had let it happen. Every time Cuddy spoke to them, which was incredibly rarely, her claws unsheathed to the extent that his mother had asked him why his girlfriend held herself with her hands behind her back so often. In Cuddy's mind, they weren't his parents, they were just people that had hurt her mate and that usually carried a death sentence. She lapped the room a couple of times with angry strides and then circled back to him. Pulling him into a hug so that he could lay his head against her chest. 

His chest felt so leaden though that he didn't make any of the number of lewd comments that sprang to mind. He wouldn't be sorry to see the guy go, they'd never been close in any way, but it would hurt his mom and, somehow, knowing it was coming felt like some kind of betrayal to her. 

"How do you know?" 

"Heard it in his voice when we last spoke. Same way I can smell cancer now." 

She stroked his back. 

"I don't want to be him." His arms were tight around her waist so she couldn't pull back to meet his eyes so she settled for continuing to stroke his back. 

"You won't be. You don't have it in you." 

"I hurt _you_ often enough." His voice was bitter and she struggled for what to say for a moment. 

"And I you. You think I don't still regret taking your leg?"

This time it was him that pulled back to look at her. 

"You gave it back to me." He shook his head not understanding her.

"Exactly." She cupped his face in her hands and tipped her forehead down against his until they were nose to nose. "You gave me a life, Greg. Saved me from myself. I'm grateful, I'm happy and I love you. Get used to it." She ordered him with finality. 

"So…it's possible?" His fingers slipped inside the half buttoned hem of her shirt and swirled over her stomach. She squirmed a little at the tickle and dropped a kiss on his lips, nipping him a little with her teeth to remind him of his place. 

"When you're ready. Very." 

"So…" His smile returned to its former wicked proportions. "You wouldn't be adverse to testing that theory?" He tugged her back towards the bed, back towards him. 

Her reply was to lean on his shoulders and pin him to the mattress with a wicked smile of her own as her lips captured his.

**$inister $cribe**

Regin avoided the crush of humanity bustling about the hospital main entrance and meandered down a side alley in between the towering red brick buildings. She pulled her silver cigarette case and lighter from her pocket and paused briefly to spark up. She inhaled deeply of the coffee/chocolate smoke and savoured her first hit of the day. She had a few minutes to kill before she had to make her way down to the lecture hall, so she just let her feet lead the way. 

She had to admit that American hospitals struck her as slightly odd. Especially this one. It was all slick lines, polished and filled with the best of the best. Which was all very nice and glamorous, but they wouldn't even touch you if you weren't covered with bloody insurance. Regin snorted. The NHS might not be as pretty, but they damn well saved as many lives as they could due to the simple fact that patients were viewed as fellow human beings rather than capitol gain. Regin huffed a great plume of smoke out of her nose and looked very much like the animal her red duster had come from in that moment. Not to mention that this hospital was just a place of work and learning. At home, in Dundee Royal Infirmary, where Regin had earned her internship some fifty years ago, the place was like a living, breathing city microcosm. There were shops, houses nearby, it's own travel network, hell, its own travel _agents_. 

Which Regin had never really seen the point of, but she supposed that some people leaving a hospital just had to get as far away and as quickly as they could. 

Her heels clipped softly on the paving stones underneath. 

Inevitably, her thoughts swung back to the night before. Her hand dipped into the pocket of her duster and she removed the folded photograph. She gazed down at the face staring back at her with eyes that mirrored her own. 

What were the chances, really, that he had nothing to do with her?

Regin snorted and dropped her cigarette, snuffing it out with a scrape of her shoe. 

Astronomical. 

At the very least. She glanced up at the sky. It seemed to be that her main problem was that she didn't believe in the Gods and they hated her for it. 

Oh, sure, she _knew_ about the Gods. Had spent her entire adult life and most of her childhood fighting a war on their whim, but that didn't mean that she believed IN them. Ah, no, that was reserved for those that hadn't been royally fucked over by life as much as Regin had. She couldn't afford faith. Not when nobody afforded her any. 

She lit another cigarette. 

What about him though? Had he suffered? Had he deserved it? Who was he to her? Was he ANYTHING to her?

Too many fucking questions.

Speaking of questions…Dresden. 

Regin's lips twisted to the side in a kind of embarrassed grimace. She wondered how he and Murphy were doing after her little temper tantrum last night. 

Okay, so calling setting fire to Murphy's shirt and then teleporting both her and Dresden into the nearest wild body of water at his request that she extinguish it a tantrum, might be a stretch but the little bit had caught her off guard and she'd already been a mess beforehand. This weekend had not been an easy one and she was still nowhere near back to full strength. If a pack of Walkers happened upon her right this minute, she doubted she'd be able to live through it. 

At least not without dying a couple of times before her regenerative powers kicked in. 

Regin scowled at her own black thoughts and stuffed the photo back into her pocket. She lifted her head and frowned when she found herself in the middle of a construction site. She glanced this way and that, momentarily confused as to where she had turned wrong until she remembered Lisa mentioning something about…a new wing being added to the hospital? Something like that. It was still under construction, but, if she remembered the map of the campus correctly…the lecture hall was just on the other side of that huge pile of rubble over there. 

Regin flicked the end of her cigarette into the fine white dust that seemed to coat construction sites across the world and made a beeline for the faint blocky silhouette that rose out from behind the masses of piled bricks between her and it. Her coat billowed and snapped behind her, catching at her legs and hips and…

Regin whirled, hand lashing out and striking at…

Nothing?

She frowned. Something had just touched her waist. Grabbing at her hip as if trying to get attention. She had been sure of it…but there was nothing there. Not on any of the planes that Regin could see, the layers of worlds over worlds, and Regin could see a damn lot of them with both her Hunter and Furya abilities mixed in together. She bared her teeth and whirled again with another brush up against her. Her sword leapt into her hand and lashed through empty air. 

Everything in her body tensed. Muscles bunching taut, nerves stretching out, senses screaming at her that _something_ was there even though every factual evidence she could gather argued otherwise. She growled and spun once more when something tugged at her coattail. 

"Show yourself!" Her voice boomed with no effort on her part. It echoed of the bricks, mortar and steel support beams that had already been constructed. There was the faintest of sounds behind her and Regin spun with the grace of a dancer, lightening fast and with the power of a Goddess ringing along her arm and the blade that acted as an extension of it. 

Only to grind to a halt that almost screeched in the air a scant millimetre from House's throat. 

"No need to shout." He told her calmly. Standing in his usual uniform of jeans, band tee shirt and blazer. His silvery hair was rumpled and his thumbs hooked casually into his pockets. 

The blade was spirited away quickly and silently, but Regin didn't relax. More like couldn't relax, actually. Her eyes bounced around the site, taking in every single detail. 

"That wasn't you?" She knew it wasn't. 

"Me what?" House frowned at her. 

"You didn't see anyone here?" She knew he hadn't. 

"Just you chasing your tail." House smirked at her and she arched an imperious eyebrow at him. His grin only widened. 

"Something's…not right." She finally settled on. 

"Said the immortal." House snarked. 

"Semi-immortal." Regin pointed at him. "Wouldn't go casting stones about the weirdy factor, if I were you." She ground her teeth and shoved her hands in her pockets to keep herself from turning and batting at the air behind her. She tried to tell herself that there was nothing there but that didn't work. In Regin's many and varied experience, there was _always_ something there. Her hand clenched to a fist and then relaxed abruptly at the touch of the photograph in her pocket. She decided to ponder that later. 

Like when she didn't have ghost hands tugging at her coat and skirt. 

What were they, lecherous poltergeists? 

Yeesh, just her luck. 

"You really can't feel anything?" Regin demanded of House and he shook his head in the negative. 

"'Fraid not, but Lisa doesn't like coming down here. Says it gives her the creeps." 

"Really?" Interesting. 

"Well, she actually said 'heebidie-jeebidies' but I was trying to go for some of that infamous feline dignity that everyone keeps harping on about." House shrugged a shoulder and rolled his eyes as if this idea was absurd. 

Regin quirked her lips in a tight smile and then preceded House towards the bricks and the lecture hall beyond. As they walked into the shadow of the dark stone Regin tensed even more, if it were at all possible. A darkening sense of foreboding chilled her to her bones and she felt the beast inside flex in response to the threat that even it couldn't identify. Regin was troubled, if it was enough to stir Tisphone, then it was bad news on the Biblical scale. She swallowed in a suddenly dry mouth and tried to think of a plausible and less end-of -world-or-New-Jersey-at-the-least type scenario. 

She was a little more than unnerved when she could come up with nothing. 

"You know, we really should get a move one. Trust me when I say that Cuddy can be an animal when you make her wait." The accompanying lecherous grin was turned from adolescently insulting to kind of oddly endearing when one could hear the obvious affection in his tone. 

"You're so cute when you're trying to be a rebel." Regin noted with a sharp grin and clopped out of the building site as fast as she could. She could already hear Cuddy giving her introduction speech about Regin and her series of lectures. She lengthened her stride in order to get there in time to make her grand entrance. She threw open the heavy oak doors, drew her coat off and tossed it over House's head so that he had to catch it or drown in it and power-housed right onto centre stage just as Cuddy finished saying her name. 

Four hundred plus heads turned from regarding the striking figure of Lisa Cuddy and gaped in unison at the stunning _presence_ that Regin so easily commanded at will. 

"Good morning, ladies and germs," her voice echoed out across the lecture hall, effortlessly projected and amplified by the sheer power in her and the startlingly good acoustics in the hall. She winked at Cuddy as the smaller woman made a sharp exit stage left, strode to the podium and lounged against it with one elbow bracing her body in an exaggerated S curve. She grinned at them like she might eat them alive and threw herself into her performance. 

"You know, a funny thing happened on the way here this morning…" 

**$inister $cribe**

Cuddy watched Regin enthralled. 

The woman could _talk. _

She had been going strong for over two hours now and not once had her audience so much as even twitched in boredom or glanced at their watches. She almost reminded Cuddy of one of those truly electrifying stand up comedians. The way she stalked back and forth across the stage. She wasn't lecturing them she was showing them, with every tilt of her head, choice of word and flare of her expressive hands. Regin had said that she didn't like to be stared at, but it wasn't showing here in the least. The only thing that she was better at than her apparently instant and word perfect recall of hundreds of medical texts, journals, quotes and hearsay, was the snappy and dry wit with which she delivered it.

Cuddy had to admit that a lot of the attention she was garnering probably had a lot to do with the way she was dressed. A bright orange silk shirt with an open collar and a black knotted scarf drew attention to the long curve of her neck and the sharp features of her face. Couple that with the dark swirling skirt that was slit nearly to the hip on the left side showing a _lot_ of Regin's five mile long legs whenever she moved, and the knee high tiger print stiletto heeled boots and you definitely had a woman worth staring at. 

Cuddy might even admit to feeling the tiniest bit jealous…she jerked in surprise when House leant over and abruptly lapped her neck from the collar of her shirt right up to the shell of her ear. She squirmed a little, grinning and pushing him away with a mock glare for his efforts. He pouted at her but hugged his arm, that was slung casually over the back of her seat, a little closer around her shoulders. His message was clear. Nothing to be jealous of in his opinion and his was the only one that mattered or else. They were sequestered in the back of the hall, right up in the dimly lit corner with a few empty seats on all sides of them. Not many med students had been willing to risk House's wrath at getting too close to Cuddy. 

His territoriality was apparently now part of some kind of hazing ritual on campus. Cuddy would occasionally be subjected to young idiotic boys coming on to her in increasingly ridiculous and blatant fashions in the hope of inciting (and surviving, it was the second bit that earned them street cred) House's ire. It had all come to a head last summer when one of the particularly determined offenders had mysteriously been dropped out of a second floor window. 

He had been fine (relatively) and had fully recovered (eventually). No charges had been pressed or limbs removed. 

Though her rampant admirers had certainly dwindled to almost insulting proportions after that and a severe 'discussion' with House, that had involved several labour intensive hours in bed, on the floor and pinned against a wall, had ensured that no more med students became damaged due to his temper.

House kept her in the warm shadow of his body even as he scribbled notes on his legal pad with his free hand. It was truly novel to see House impressed by someone but Regin was apparently a bigger useless information geek than he was and, having been alive for so long, had found some use for said useless information. He was currently sketching out a diagram of an Ancient Egyptian tool and technique that Regin had drawn, with chalk, freehand and from memory, on the blackboard she had insisted upon. She didn't do printouts apparently. 

A door opened somewhere but Cuddy paid it no mind, tilting her head at the odd pincer-spoon thing that Regin was drawing and then the accompanying method for removing barbed arrows with it that sounded wholly disgusting, agonising and morbidly fascinating. House continued his notes and Regin continued her diagram until it was finished , turned back to her audience and froze. 

Cuddy frowned. 

It happened only for the barest of instants, but there had been a split second when Regin had looked very, very, surprised. 

One might even say shocked. 

She coughed suddenly, hard and then strode to the podium set out for her, lifting the bottle of water waiting there, that she hadn't touched in the entire time that she had been talking and drinking deeply from it. She rested against the podium and spoke again to her audience, all the while restlessly tapping her long nails against the hardwood of the podium with an odd staccato rhythm. 

"Well, guys, I'm afraid my voice is finally giving out. Oh, don't look too relieved you will be lured back into my clutches after lunch and some lozenges for me." Regin quirked a smile, nails still drumming, at odds with her serene expression. "Back here in an hour and we start off with ancient Chinese acupuncture in the earliest of surgeries and ants heads used in stitches. Now, on that appetising image, I think I'll take a couple of questions and then we can all go. Yeah, you with the weird hair…" 

House stiffened suddenly beside her, head snapping up and around to stare at Regin. Or more accurately, at her hand, which still danced against the podium with that odd rhythm drumming. 

"G…E…T…O…U…T…N…O…W…" House murmured under his breath. 

Cuddy noticed Regin glance up at the back, right at the back of the lecture hall to where they were sitting then her tapping changed and House sat forward. Gaze intent. 

"R…U…N." He swallowed. "Run, run, run." 

House grabbed Cuddy by the arm and had her up and out of the chair before she fully registered what he was about. He steered her onto the stairs at the side of the chairs and turned her up to the nearest exit towards the back of the hall only to find his way blocked by the biggest guy he had ever seen. 

He loomed over House, two steps up, taking up ninety percent of House's vision right at that moment. He was at least seven feet tall, had darkly curling hair that was tied back in a tight braid and electric yellow eyes that pinned him like the gaze of an eagle. He was dressed in a white tee shirt that clearly showed every paving slab sized muscle the guy had, faded Levis and a battered biker jacket.

Deadly power rolled off him in waves and he carried the air of a man with which one did not fuck as easily as he wore the dark leather of his jacket and when he spoke, House pushed Cuddy behind him and bared his teeth. 

"I have come for Regin, stand aside." 


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12:**

House kept his teeth bared at the stranger even as his mind raced on what to do. Any other time, he would have just stood aside, taken his mate with him and let the havoc play out. There was no way he could take on this guy. For a start he was huge and secondly he smelled like he weighed in a little heavier on the power-stakes than even Regin did. Which was saying something. However, he liked Regin, and there was an entire throng of med students still milling out of the hall and he was NOT letting this creep hurt his mate, his friend or any of the idiots bumbling around like sheep down there.

"I will ask you one more time, cat." The guy's voice rumbled like thunder in the distance. "Move. Aside."

A low growl emanated from House's chest before he could stop it. His claws lengthened and his teeth got a little too big for a human mouth. His cat snarled and rattled at the bars of the cage that he kept it locked in. House did not _like_ being told what to do in his own territory.

"No need." A shadow loomed over the guy's shoulder and a dark clawed hand fisted in the collar of his jacket. "I'm right here."

_WHOOSH!_

The man disappeared from right in front of them. It took House a second to realise it, but he finally figured out that Regin had just picked him up, all seven feet and what must have been over three hundred pounds of solid muscle, and thrown him over her shoulder. Straight out the open doors at the top of the stairs and down the corridor beyond so fast that there had been a gusting back draft left in his wake that washed over House and Cuddy like the howling wind left after a speeding train.

"Make sure the students leave unharmed. I'll take care of this." Regin's voice was colder than House had ever heard it and there was a drawn out hiss as she drew a short sword from apparently nowhere and disappeared through the door at the top of the stairs in a flicker of movement, silent as a wraith.

House turned to see Cuddy already frowning down at the twenty or thirty students still left in the hall. They were all very quiet and heading quietly and calmly for the exit. A glazed look of contentment on their faces. The scent of magic permeated the room like too much perfume and it didn't take a genius to figure out that Regin had done something to the crowd to make sure she could disappear without being noticed and they would all leave as docile as a bunch of little lambs.

"They're fine." Cuddy moved past House and up the stairs. "Come on, she might need our help."

**$inister $cribe**

Regin sprinted along the corridor, sword drawn and her mind already calculating how fast and hard she'd have to take him down in order to survive this. A Hunter could take on a Walker, one on one and perhaps survive, at the very least, they would fight until they no longer could. Their respective Gods had made sure that each was the exact equal of the other. The only problem with that was that Walkers tended to travel in packs and Hunters were a purely solitary species unless desperate times called for them to gather together.

If Hector had brought friends…she had to move this out of here. Too many people, too many innocent by-standers that could get hurt in a fight that had nothing to do with them.

This was against the rules!

There was one hard and fast rule in this war and it was that you could tear each other to shreds in all the back alleys and deserted plains of the planet but you could NOT do it in front of humans.

Neither side wanted to deal with the fall out that would follow if humans ever discovered they existed. They wanted to kill each other, not be wiped out by the mortals that paraded about this planet under the misconception that they owned the place.

Regin caught up with Hector just as he slid to a graceless halt and tried to regain his feet. Her first sweep of her blade had aimed for removing his head from his neck, but he ducked to the side and she removed his long tail of braided hair instead. It flopped to the floor like a coiled snake and they both glanced at it. Hector scowled at her and Regin grinned back at him like a hungry shark. She decided not to kill him right here, too much mess and too much explaining to the locals to do. She flipped her sword in her hand and crashed the pommel into his stomach when he half rose hard enough to hear ribs crack and all the air rush from his cavernous lungs on a soundless bellow. She always forgot how damn huge these guys were up close like this. She was a big woman, but they were always bigger.

"Regin…"

Regin cut off his words with a knee to the face and rounded off with a left hook to the cheekbone that split the skin and crunched bone.

"Regin." Hector rolled across the corridor and then up into a crouch. She said nothing. She didn't reply to the likes of him. Hunter killing undead scum. He stank of death, of the lord he served, of Hades who had cursed all her kind to the entrapment of their duty. To forever walk the boundaries between the wilds and the tamed. Between the living and the dead. He who had lied to his Walkers and told them only consuming the soul of a Hunter would regain them the paradise that He himself had ejected them from. Her sword flashed, leather and white cloth were sliced with a silent whisper and he snarled in pain, falling back against the window. Blood splattered against the glass, thick and almost purple. Regin ignored the fact that it looked so similar to her own rather than silvery white, like the other Hunters.

"Die." Regin launched herself at him, sword high, prepared to separate his head from his neck. One of the few ways to send him back to Tarterus. She couldn't actually kill him, it was impossible to kill one already dead, but she could tear him apart and then wait for him to reassemble himself in the Pit with the help of his Lord.

"Regin!" Hector's hand moved impossibly fast. Engulfing hers over the hilt of her sword and stopping it cold in the air. Her body swung forward on his arm and slapped into his chest which was as solid as a brick wall. He rushed forward and slammed her into the wall hard enough to crush plaster to powder and indent the bricks with a crumpling of mortar. Her head cracked against the stone and she saw stars for an instant before blinking and seeing twin suns burning into her eyes. It took her a moment to realise they were his eyes. Electrified yellow ringed with fiery orange. Not grey and lifeless like the other Walkers'. "Will you stop for an instant? I don't wish to fight you."

"Too bad, corpse-boy." Regin's head crashed forward into his nose. More dark blood flew though she couldn't tell if it was his or hers. "Fighting's all you and I can do."

"If that's what it takes." Hector held up her sword, the one she hadn't even realised he had taken from her. He gripped the blade in the palm of one massive hand and then folded his thumb and fingers together. It snapped. No creaking, no bending, it just snapped.

Like a twig.

Regin swallowed but brought her fists up anyway. If she had to tear him apart with her bare hands then she would do it.

"That's what it takes, you death-worshipping fuck." She hoped she sounded more defiant than she felt. He was strong. Stronger than any other Walker she'd ever come across and she'd sent more than a few back to their master in hell. She didn't know if she could win this one and she was the strongest of all the Hunters. If he could beat her…then her sisters didn't stand a chance. Regin's jaw clenched. She'd just have to beat him then. This was war, not the time to be getting an attack of the nerves.

"_**Kestrel**_." She intoned the name softly, but it boomed along the corridor. She felt the power that she'd invoked slam up through her body, that tiny fire that so often held the beast back, concentrated on that single effort for all eternity, blazed as bright as a nova. Her skin flashed a glittering white, brighter than a full moon, she slid forward like a ghost, no longer just a physical being and placed her palm on Hector's chest. His yellow eyes widened in pained recognition an instant before the impact registered on the physical plane.

_THOOM!_

Hector was blown backwards so fast that the glass in the window didn't just shatter, it was pulverised, reduced to glittering powder. He soared through the air, his chest caved in with a smouldering glowing white palm print right over his shrivelled dead heart and his mouth open in a silent scream of agony. He smashed into one of the steel beams that latticed the construction site. He bounced down to earth, hitting nearly everything on the way down and finally crumpled to the ground face first and broken.

"Regin, holy shit." House stared at her. Just when he thought he had her figured out, she went and did shit like this.

Regin turned her head, slowly, and looked over at her friends but it wasn't really her. Black starry night eyes had been replaced by gleaming orbs of the purest white silver. White energy engulfed her, her hair billowed around her head as if tossed by a wind that wasn't there, the vestige of a dress swung about her frame, swirling and floating, her face flickered between her own sharp features and a stranger's much softer countenance seemingly fighting to occupy the same space. It was like looking at two people, two women, trying to occupy the same space. Neither of them quite all there and yet not quite not there either.

A tiny movement registered in the strange dual being's senses and she turned her head. Hector's massive shoulders hunched and then slumped back to the ground. He should be necrotising right now, not getting back to his feet. Obviously she hadn't hit him hard enough.

"Regin, are you okay?" Cuddy stepped forward, cautiously reaching out a hand.

Regin turned to acknowledge her and step back away from her all at the same time. The other being followed suit a half second later in a eye burning second image.

"It would be best if you didn't touch me right now." Her voice was different too. Two different tones, Regin's raw power contralto and a more musical lilting tone. Even two different accents, strong Greco against mixed Scots. She turned back to look out the glassless window. Hector was staggering to his feet, clumsily pulling off his jacket and then agonisingly resetting his crumpled ribs. Regin was suddenly on the windowsill, without moving in any kind of regular fashion. She was just suddenly there, as if moved by some giant unseen hand and placed there. "Hmm, he still moves." Regin's lips did not move and the voice was not hers but still the words echoed along the corridor.

House gripped Cuddy's shoulder and he dragged her a few steps back, shifting to put himself between her and it. He wasn't sure what was going on, he did trust Regin but…maybe not all of her.

Regin glanced at them, though the other face remained in profile.

"Back in a bit." She smirked then and dropped out of the window.

**$inister $cribe**

Hector painfully clambered to his feet. He grunted with effort at the pain every move earned him. He had not known she could do that. He had not known any of them could do that. He knew that the others could wield their celestial weapons with an ease that she herself had never mastered, whether that was because of what she was or just a quirk of her being he didn't know, but that was the first time that he had EVER seen a Hunter call forth her Handmaiden to such an extent. They had been occupying the same space at the same time and that was impossible whether you were a scientist, a magician or a God.

He glanced up in time to see her drop gracefully from the window she had just punched him through, and what a punch, he was impressed despite himself. She had grown so much since he had first seen her…

Then she was there in front of him and his breath stilled in his chest.

"You are not welcome here." Her voices swirled and echoed like a physical thing about him. Constricting at his chest and filling his head.

"I must be here." He gasped as he reset yet another rib. She had very nearly shattered him. Had he not been Ursan, she would have surely destroyed him with that single blow. Which was a terrifying prospect no matter how immortal you were.

The Handmaiden's head tilted to the side and Regin's followed a mere breath after. It was disconcerting and difficult to look at but Hector couldn't pull his eyes away. He had told his brothers that he would speak to her, that she was their best hope of resolving this. It had to work, it could only work with her.

"Why?" They both demanded, though their tones different. Regin's genuinely curious and the Handmaiden's contemptuous. At least he could always rely on Regin to remain constant in her pursuit of knowledge. There was a reason the woman had eight degrees.

"I wish to talk." He coughed blood and spat it away. One of his ribs had punctured a lung. He hated it when that happened.

"Your kind do not talk!" The Handmaiden, Kestrel, boomed at him. "You know only how to kill."

"About what?" Regin finally spoke, over Kestrel, her demand for silence for the other that shared her body unspoken but definitely heard by the other. The white light dimmed somewhat, Kestrel's features became less distinct and Regin's countenance slipped to the fore.

"About this war that we are locked in, despite any wishes on our own part to be free of it."

"A Walker wishing peace. Now that's a good one." Regin's grin was feral. "Tell me another, I never realised you were funny, Hector."

"I'm not joking. There is a chance for peace. Only a fool would turn that away." He tried to remain calm, but three thousand years of fighting had grated on him, wearing on him constantly until he felt he had nothing left. These past few years, seeing Regin, seeing the change she had brought about in his foe, it had birthed hope in him and he didn't know if he could stand to see it extinguished. "Don't tell me you've never wished for it to end. That the fact you've been dragged into this war of the gods to be their pawn, to watch your friends and family die when they themselves suffer nothing. Do not tell me that you have never wished for that to end."

"I won't tell you then." Her tone was flippant and she was prowling, trying to get around to attack him from the side, he turned slowly to keep her in his view. She was still trying to kill him, but not with the blind hatred of a few moments before. He suspected now that it was more force of habit that had her hands flexing into claws and her eyes tracking his weak spots, eyes, stomach and throat.

"There may be a way for that to happen." His ribs were already knitting back together. Soon he would be able to stand to his full height again. "But you have to be willing to hear me out. Listen to what I have to say and accept some things you might not be comfortable with."

Regin was watching him, those eyes of hers black again but the whites were still bright shining silver.

"Speak then."

"You will listen?"

"For the time being, but speak carefully. This truce lasts only for as long as my patience does." This time it was Kestrel that spoke and Hector bowed his head. He had done well if even she was willing to hear him, but then, she had been on the first wave of the Hunter's invasion of the Underworld. She had seen first hand what the Gods had wrought on them, how their mistakes had caused suffering to their followers. She knew what he felt, even if Regin did not.

"Not all Walkers are alike." He began slowly.

"Impossible. You were all cursed the same." Regin snapped at him, frowning. All Walkers were undead, all of them without pulses or heartbeats or remorse. They fed on the flesh of the living and the souls of Hunters. It was what gave them strength. Without it they couldn't survive.

"True, but we all have the same choice. We can chose to give in, or we can chose to forebear."

Regin stopped prowling. Stopped glowing. Stopped everything.

"What do you mean?" Her voice was her own again, her eyes starry without a trace of silver. She had pushed Kestrel away in favour of hearing him out.

"We can chose not to feed. On humans or Hunters." He slowly straightened to his full height again and looked down at her. "We can live without it."

"Poor choice of words, dead-boy." Regin snorted.

"You doubt me?"

"My mortal enemy? Gee, why would I ever doubt you?" She widened her eyes in mock innocence and he felt amusement war with exasperation in his chest.

"You must believe me."

"I _must _do nothing. Your kind have been killing my kind for millennia. Why the sudden change of dead shrivelled up heart, hmm? Why do you think I'll listen to you?"

"Because you are different, Regin." He stepped forward and she stepped back. "You know what it's like to be a monster and you know how hard it is just to get through the day without giving in. You know what it is to be shunned by those that would walk on the side of right even as you struggle to do the same. You are more like us than you are like them."

Regin shook her head wildly.

"I am NOTHING like a Walker. I have SEEN what you have done to my kind. Do you think I've forgotten Isabel, Jana, Larissa, Caroline and all the countless others that have been captured, abused and finally devoured by those you call brother? You think ANY of us have forgotten?"

"Those men are no longer my brothers. We are as different as night to day. You know I'm telling you the truth, even if your head doesn't want to believe it your heart knows it."

"My heart has six chambers and was carved from the heart of the worst monster in existence. You'll excuse me if I have less reason to trust it than I do you." She sneered at him. She shook her head again. "Besides, you can't live without feeding from us, or from humans. It's a compulsion. Without it you necrotise and go back to the Pit."

"Really? Then why haven't I even tried to bite you? Or any of the number of humans weak and easy pickings in this hospital. I'm not devouring anyone and nor am I rotting away so…what does that leave us? Think with that scientific mind of yours."

Her jaw worked to the side and she looked like she'd rather not say.

"Well?" He prompted her insistently.

"A third option." Was finally pried from her.

"Which could be?"

Her mouth worked a moment more before she finally ground out. "There may be a choice involved." She scowled at him. "So what do you feed on, if not innocent souls and human flesh?"

"Don't know about you, but I'm particularly fond of a good fillet steak." Regin blinked at him. "I'm especially partial to corn-fed Iowa beef." He stepped closer to her again and this time she did not retreat. He reached out slowly, so as not to make her flinch away, and ran his finger along her forearm and the back of her hand, right down her fingers until he could lace his with hers. "That, and good old fashioned human contact."

"No devouring of souls whole, not tearing bodies apart in bloody bites, no living death…none of that?" His hand was still tangled with hers and she couldn't ignore what Tisiphone was telling her. Kestrel was sullenly silent, once more holding her counterpart back, but the beast was speaking around her bonds. He wasn't lying, nor as he evil, nor did he stink of death like other Walkers. She hadn't noticed it before because he had always been mingled with them during their skirmishes…no, this couldn't be true. He was lying he had to be, because if he wasn't lying then that left only one other alternative…

"How could the Hunters not know about you? About those that forebear?"

"They do." He was staring into her. Not looking at her or meeting her gaze but looking right into her. Beyond Kestrel and her ancient calm, beyond Tisiphone and her wild snarling and right down to her very core, until there was only Regin. She swallowed hard. No one had ever looked at her like that.

"Then why have I never heard of you and your…friends before?"

"Because you've been lied to."

Regin stiffened. She tried to pull her hand away from his but his grip tightened.

"What are you…?"

"They've lied to you about everything. The reason this war started, who started it in the first place, why you're fighting and even who you're fighting. Everything they've taught you is a _lie." _

"LIAR!"

Regin's hand tore free of his and her claws unsheathed, raking across his chest. Her left fist came up in a savage uppercut and her knee smashed into his groin practically simultaneously. He staggered back and she seized her chance. She flew at him in a picture perfect tackle, her shoulder slamming into his sternum, all her weight and momentum focused on that one point of contact that sent them barrelling back into a pyramid of breeze blocks. They tumbled down on them in a rain of clattering rubble. Regin batted one aside and was caught off guard when she was grabbed around the waist and hauled off her feet in a vice like grip.

"I do not want to hurt you, Regin. Please, listen to reason."

"You're a lying snakey bastard and I was stupid to even let you open your mouth, you scum sucking piece of rat-shit!" Her elbow slammed backwards and smashed his nose again. He grunted and his grip slackened but did not loosen her. She kicked off a metal beam hard enough to warp it out of shape and sent them careening into the opposite pillar of steel. The crack to Hector's head was hard enough to have him release her completely and she whirled on him, claws to their full extension, fangs bared and began to gleefully rip into him. She raked his chest more. Savaged his shirt and ripped at skin and muscle until blood splashed liberally all over them until…she stopped, chest heaving and staring at him.

"You won't fight." She accused him.

He was a bloodied mess, she'd torn him to ribbons. His shirt simply no longer existed, blood cascaded from the wounds she'd inflicted, a glowing white hand print still shone over his heart surrounded by. Regin looked closer at the design. It was bears. Four bears walking in a circle over his heart. Her hand print in the middle of them, causing a faint glow to spread through the dark green faintly Celtic looking ink work.

"I won't harm you, it's not who I am." Blood trickled from his mouth as he spoke. He was already healing but…Regin looked down at her hands, long talons curling and wicked, stained in blood to the elbow. She stepped back from him, horrified, and then the screams started. Distant at first, but growing in a horrifying wailing oppression of sound that echoed inward at her from all sides. All the people she'd ever hurt, all those she'd ever killed or tortured, amplified and multiplied until she couldn't hear anything else.

She had done wrong and now Tisiphone was going to punish her for it.

She began to shake. Tremors at first but then harsher jerking spasms that shook her entire body until she crashed to her knees and then slumped onto her back, siezing in an agony so terrible she couldn't even scream with it. Her eyes flashed back and forth white, black, white and then black again. Back and forth, back and forth until it was almost impossible to discern the difference between the two negatives of each other.

"No, no, no, NO!" Hector fell to her side. "Tisiphone, let her be, you monster. She didn't know!" He was almost completely healed by now, but his blood still splattered down onto her in fine droplets. He gripped her shoulders and lifted her quaking body until he cradled her. His eyes were wide and his hand hovered over her, not knowing what to do. How to stop this. Finally his hand closed over her throat. "One last chance, beast, release her or I will take her where you have no hold over her." A calm had settled over him, his eyes bored into Regin's until they flashed white and held that way.

"**She is mine!"**

It was Regin's voice, powerful and snarling, and her lips that moved but it wasn't Regin that spoke. There was nothing of Regin in that furious white and black starred gaze.

"Then I shall take her from you." Hector growled and his hand tightened around Regin's slim neck. She choked. He bore down on her even as the beast gained control of her limbs and began to fight him. Claws tore at his arms once more, muscle and sinew being sliced but healing almost as soon as it had been cut. He had just touched Regin's soul, when he had gripped her hand he had brushed up against that light and it had filled him to the point where he felt he could take no more. She had been completely unaware but that did not change the fact that she had given him more power in sharing such a thing with him than he could ever had hoped to have just by taking it.

He watched Tisiphone suffer. The thing whose heart beat frantically in Regin's chest. The monster inside the woman. He regretted that Regin would feel pain from this later, but there was a certain kind of pleasure to be had from suffocating it.

Tisiphone opened Regin's mouth wide, trying desperately to draw air into lungs that should never have been hers. Hector hung on grimly. She was fading fast. He could hear her heartbeat stuttering, slowing. Her flapping arms became even less coordinated as asphyxia took hold, her vision began to dim to black and red and finally, finally…she stopped.

Stopped struggling. Stopped breathing. Stopped living.

A faint whistling sound was Hector's only clue that he was in danger before the hardwood staff slammed into the back of his skull and sent him sprawling. He rolled back to his feet in time to see the wizard from the other night standing over Regin with a short rune-carved staff levelled squarely at Hector's chest.

"FUEGO!" A blast of fire as thick as Hector's arm slammed towards him and very nearly punched clean through his body. Hector glanced over at Regin's limp form, left on her side, eyes staring a glassy black which no longer sparked colours. Hector dodged another slash of fire through the air and then Traced away, in the way of his kind, to a place even the wizard couldn't reach him.

Harry turned back to Regin and saw Murphy hovering over the much larger woman, slipping her small fingers under the black scarf at her throat. Cuddy and House sprinted onto the scene and took it all in at a glance.

"What's wrong with Regin?" Cuddy demanded, kneeling at her side.

"Nothing." Murphy said flatly. "Not anymore at least." She looked back up at the rest of them.

"She's dead."


	13. Chapter 13

_**Chapter 13**_

_Regin's eyes fluttered and she blinked rapidly at the bright golden light overhead. Her hand raised and shielded her eyes so that she could see more clearly. A vanilla coloured sky dotted with puffy golden clouds arced overhead. Tall blowing stalks of grain swished all around her and she lay on a silky kind of blanket under her. She sat up slowly, cautiously, her head and shoulders above the wheat she scanned her surroundings and her breath caught. _

_It was beautiful. _

_Rolling pasturelands of golden wheat, green grass and grazing animals dotted here and there. Purple hued hills rose over the horizon, a shining river snaked through the valley and the only building within miles was a small white marble temple. _

"_Definitely not in Kansas anymore." Regin murmured as she rose cautiously to her feet. She nearly fell again when she realised she was talking to herself. Not to Kestrel, not to Tisiphone but just to herself. They were gone. For the first time in her memory, she was alone in her head. _

_Her breath caught and her hands fisted in the sweeping cream gown she wore. She opened tear glazed eyes to realise that it was a traditional Greek chignon. It was held together with leather straps and swept right down the length of her long body and over the swaying wheat around her. _

_Then she realised where she was. She was in Elysium. _

_Paradise._

_Regin swallowed past the lump of emotion in her throat. She didn't know what she felt, it was too large and too powerful for her to immediately identify. Part of it was sorrow. She had finally found a way to die and she would never see Baba again, nor Madeline or Abigail, but a much larger part of it was relief. She was relieved to have finally found peace. _

_But this shouldn't have happened. No matter what else she might have been, part of her was still a Hunter. A race that was at war with the God of Death himself. He wasn't about to let one of them just amble into paradise. _

_A shadow moved out the corner of Regin's eye and she whirled, hand reaching for a weapon that wasn't there, fists clenching and reaching for a strength that didn't answer. Regin swallowed hard. She was finally alone, without Kestrel or Tisiphone with only the weakling strength of a human woman to aid her. _

_Translation; she was fucked. _

_Regin looked down at the beast that stood before her. It was large and a darker gold than the vault of the sky overhead. It's yellow gold eyes regarded her with a secret knowledge and its tail slunk lazily back and forth behind it. _

_It was a leopard. _

_A big one._

_Regin stayed very, very, still. What did humans do when confronted with a beastie that could rend them limb from limb with a flick of its paw? Oh, yeah, humans carried guns. Regin didn't look away from the beast to check, but she had a strong suspicion that her double barrelled gun wasn't hidden away within the folds of her dress. She held the leopard's gaze so long that her eyes watered but she didn't dare blink. _

_Come with me._

Regin jumped at the silky voice that echoed around her. Not in her head as she was used to, but from everywhere. She swallowed hard and watched the leopard turn from her, prowling down the hill towards the temple. Regin weighed her options and bit her lip. The leopard glanced back at her and flicked an ear in a feline expression of an arched brow. Regin moved after it, glad to see that she hadn't lost her grace along with her strength. She guessed that she had been born with it. She meandered after the big cat right down to the steps of the temple and glanced down at it. 

_Inside. _It blinked at her with those big liquid golden eyes. 

Regin looked up at the dark doorway of the temple. "What's in there?" Regin turned back to look at the cat and saw that it was gone. "Oh, fabulous, a spirit guide. Those guys _always_ bugger off as soon as you have a question." She grumbled and fisted her skirts in one hand, bare feet padding over the cool marble as she moved into the temple. 

"I _hate_ spirit quests." She muttered and disappeared into the dark doorway. 

**$inister $cribe**

"Come on, Regin!" House pounded Regin's chest with his fist. She lay on her back, eyes glassy and staring sightlessly at the sky overhead. Her dark lips had a blue tinge and she was growing cold. House wouldn't stop though. "Come ON!" His fist slammed down hard enough to crack something in her chest. 

Cuddy bent over Regin, pressed her lips to her mouth and breathed for her. 

No response. 

"Guys, I don't think she's coming back." Karin hesitated. 

"Shut up, Karin." Cuddy breathed for Regin again. 

"Dresden, can you do something?" House had his hands planted on Regin's chest, his entire body heaving in the effort of each compression. He was the only one strong enough to force her ribs inward. 

"I can't raise the dead, House." Harry snapped, tunnelling his fingers through his hair and making it stick up everywhere. "Well, I can but then she'd be a zombie and you really don't want a zombie as powerful as her running around in…"

"Lightening, Harry! Can you call down lightening?" Cuddy panted, didn't matter how strong you were, breathing for two is hard work.

"Swap over with Karin." House told her, throwing himself into another set of compressions. 

"But I…" Karin started. 

"Do it." Cuddy yanked Murphy down beside her. "A life is a life." 

Murphy took over her share of the CPR. 

"Lightening…I'll try." Harry drew out his staff and planted it on the ground in front of him. His eyes shut and he frowned fiercely. House and Cuddy felt the swelling whirl of magic and it drew down towards him from everywhere like the swirl of water down a plughole. Ozone built, the hairs on the back of their necks stood on end, goosebumps washed over their flesh and icy fingers drew down their spines. 

Whatever this was, it wasn't Harry's doing.

"Harry…?" Cuddy shifted to her feet uneasily. 

"I hear it." Harry gave up on his lightening rod trick and turned to the source of the sound. It wasn't entirely physical, most of it was magical. Karin heard a drumming sound getting louder and louder and louder while she continued to breathe for Regin. House and Cuddy heard that but they heard the thrumming throttling sound of magical energies trailing in the wake of whatever was rushing towards them like a labouring engine carrying too much weight. 

To Harry, it was deafening. He winced and clapped a hand to the side of his head, blood began to trickle from his nose and eyes, he fell to one knee. To him, it sounded like screaming. A god awful howl of grief and rage hurtling towards him like a freight train with a nuke strapped to its back. He knew trouble when he heard it and this Trouble was about to wipe them out. He was sure of it.

"We should get out of here. Whatever's coming it's--"

What happened next was just that side of too fast for everyone to properly track. 

Karin saw exactly nothing, Harry caught the barest impression of what went on and even House and Cuddy weren't entirely sure how things came about exactly but they saw enough for a good guess. 

Reality itself ripped open. A tear in the air was slashed with a rending of silvery claws. A bellowing scream of rage split the air like a clap of thunder and was punctuated by a crashing fork of lightening that burst the ground and sent House, Cuddy, Harry and Murphy flying. House crashed into the pile of bricks that Regin and Hector had been busy destroying earlier. Cuddy bounced on the ground and managed to narrowly avoid trying to saw herself in half on a by standing steel support beam. Harry was sent skidding several yards, his magic reinforced duster protecting him and Murphy clattered into a wall, fell to the ground and lay terribly still. 

House recovered first, Cuddy a close second, they both looked over to check on each other and then moved as one to protect Regin, Murphy and Harry from the new threat. They planted themselves between the new comer and Regin's body, claws unsheathing, eyes lighting and teeth bared. Twin snarls rumbled through the work site and did an excellent job of hiding their surprise. 

Meryl Streep was screaming at them. 

She stood about three metres away, eyes spilling silver light and a howl of torn rage pouring from her. She was dressed in an expensive looking black shirt and pants, a matching fedora canted at an angle over her silver hair that curled down over one eye. A zebra skin was wrapped over her shoulders, billowing and snapping in a wind that wasn't there and she held a long ebony cane in one hand like it was a sword she could slash them in half with. 

She glared at them so hard that Cuddy actually felt the burn of it on her skin. Her eyes dropped to Regin's lifeless body and she screamed again. It was a piercing shrieking sound, more like that of a falling eagle than the sound that any woman could make. 

"What have you done?!" The words hit them like a physical thing and staggered them back several steps. "You've killed her! How?! WHY!?" The last was such an awful roar that the sonic blast nearly caused them to trip over Regin's body. 

"We didn't- -"

"SILENCE!" She roared. "You have murdered a Hunter and there is only one penalty for that." A whirl of movement had her flipping her cane, a flash of white and it was unsheathed into a thin lethally sharp looking blade, it sang through the air with a warbling sound that grated over the nerves. "Die." She hissed and surged towards them. She didn't run or even walk but seemed to move entirely under a force of her own. Riding the swell of her rage like a leaf on the wind. The sword arced back through the air. 

House saw it, knew he couldn't stop it and knew it was going to kill him. The best he could hope to do was save his mate. He threw himself sideways, shoved Lisa out of harms way and met her eyes with his, knowing it would be the last time he did it. 

The blade came down.

**$inister $cribe**

"Hello?" Regin blinked several times to adjust her eyes to the light in the dim temple. Dishes of oil flamed and supplied dim illumination but it wasn't nearly as much as Hollywood liked to make out in their 'accurately' portrayed sets. Her gown swished over cold marble and her bare feet padded near soundlessly. 

"Anyone here?" Her voice echoed and she moved deeper into the cold marble building. She reached the deepest part and found herself in a pool of light. Looking up revealed it to be a skylight rather than divine intervention and Regin turned back to more closely scrutinise her surroundings. Twin divans framed a table laden with food, torches lined the walls illuminating the intricately detailed tapestries there, a bowl of wine stood for cleansing hands before eating and the drapes in the windows billowed softly in the warm sweetly scented breeze. 

"I'm here."

"SHEEZUS!" Regin whirled and punched out in one move, her reactions the same as ever. Her fist was engulfed easily in a much larger one and she gave a small squeak of alarm at the easy strength in the grip. He could crush her hand with a flexing of his fingers. She looked up and up and up and into the sun coloured eyes of Hector of Troy. 

"Oh shit." She muttered. 

"Don't be afraid." He told her smoothly. He turned her hand in his, cradling it gently in his palm and rubbing his thumb in small circles over her skin. Regin swallowed with an audible gulp her eyes skating down over him. He wore…well, it would be easier to say that he wasn't wearing. The only clothing he had was a linen kilt tied at one hip the rest of him was all acres of taut tanned man-flesh, thick curling hair and eyes she could drown in. 

Fear wasn't her main reaction she had to admit. 

Enemy, enemy, enemy, MORTAL enemy.

"Of you?" She said to cover, clearing her throat once to bring it down to her regular octave. "Not bloody likely." 

Hector smiled down at her with a knowing smile and Regin had the distinct feeling that she wasn't fooling anyone. Not even herself. 

"Where am I?" 

"My territory, in Elysium." He tugged her with him to the nearest plushly cushioned divan. He folded himself down onto it and it must have been huge because it didn't even groan under his weight. Which was impressive because he must have weighed close to a muscle-bound three hundred pounds. She sat down next to him and tried not to shift uncomfortably. 

"Your territory…I thought the only way you could get into Elysium again was to…" Regin trailed off and her eyes flew to his. "Kill a Hunter. That's why I'm here. You killed me and now you're going to…" Regin swallowed hard. 

"Now I'm going to talk to you." Hector plucked a grape from the bunch overflowing one of the golden bowls on the table and held it to her lips. She had little choice but to take it from him or wear it. The fruit burst in her mouth and she couldn't help but moan in pleasure at the taste, her eyes fluttered closed for a long moment and when she opened them again she found Hector regarding her with a fierce intensity. "I have never lost my lands in Elysium as the Walkers have done. They lost them the first time they fed on an innocent soul. When one commits murder, one steals from the god of Death himself and…well, my Lord is not known for his patience and understanding. Walkers must gain the soul of a Hunter in payment for re-entry back into Paradise." He offered her another grape and the temptation was too great to resist. She knew that Yaga would beat her bloody for this, eating from a Walker's hand like a favoured pet but…well, she was dead, the only thing worse than that was being alive. 

"You really hate living that much?" 

Regin drew back as if struck. "You can hear inside my head?" 

"You think very loud. I imagine you have to most of the time. Just to hear yourself." 

"Yeah…not used to the quiet." Regin touched the side of her head. "It's a little eerie actually." She looked at her hands and clenched them into fists. "And weak." 

"It won't last." She looked back up at him. 

"You're not permanently dead. I have the power to bring you here but I cannot keep you here. Your blood is too strong." His thumb swirled over her hand again and she belatedly realised that he had never let go of her. "You should feel the power of it, you've never known anything else but it's like…it's like touching lightening and trying to hold it in your bare hand. You're magnificent." 

Regin opened her mouth to respond and found she didn't know how, she ducked her head and looked away. 

"Monsters are _not_ magnificent." 

"You really believe you're a monster?" He ducked down so he could see her eyes. 

"I eat people. Even you don't do that and _you're_ a zombie." She blinked in surprise when he threw back his head and laughed. It was a sound she could spend a long time listening to. 

"Ah, Regin," his hand raised and stroked down the side of her face. "You are wasted on your kind. They hate and fear you where you should be cherished for your sacrifice. No one should have to carry your burden and it is selfish of them to make you." 

"Make me what?" Regin frowned at him. "The people who did this to me," she touched the golden scar on her chest, "are all dead. Yaga killed them herself." 

"Yes. She did." Hector agreed easily. Too easily. There was something going on behind those star bright eyes of his. Something she couldn't discern. "But you are still not a monster. Parts of you are monstrous, yes, but not you yourself. I knew that from the first time that I saw you." 

"The first time you saw me I was trying to beat you to death with something large and dense. I believe it was Achilles." 

"That was not the first time we met." Hector continued to touch her. He seemed unable to pull himself away. 

"Yes it was, I remember, Yaga and I were burning out a nest of ghouls and you and your crew turned up and- -"

"They are _not_ my 'crew'." Hector told her firmly. "And the first time I met you, you were six years old. You had fallen and skinned your knee. You were sitting by the side of the road, just outside Stonehaven, trying not to cry." 

"Stonehaven, that's just outside Aberdeen, I've never been there." Regin frowned at him. What kind of trick was this?

"Yes, you have, you were born about fifty miles north of Aberdeen in a small Pagan community. You were raised there until Yaga saw fit to leave to begin your training at four." 

"No, Walker, the first time Yaga met me was that night in the forest. I was fourteen years old, roughly."

"Then why do you have a Scottish accent? You were raised all over the world. You never stayed any one place long enough to pick up the accent, why a Celtic brogue?" Regin opened her mouth to reply but then clapped it shut when she found she didn't know.

"How do you know so much about me?" She asked instead.

"I don't know why. I knew the instant you were born. I travelled to that village that very night, watched you take your first breath." He smiled broadly. "You never cried, you just watched everyone with your big night sky eyes." 

"You saw my mother?" Regin's hand tightened on his. Yaga had raised her, to all intents and purposes, the Alphem of the Hunters was her mother, but Regin knew that something important about herself was tied to her birth mother. She couldn't say how or why, she just knew. 

"Yes. You look very much like her. Different eyes though." 

Regin gasped, doubling over, something had just yanked hard behind her heart. Like a rope tied to her sternum that was being drawn taut. 

"What's happening?" 

"You're immortal, remember? I could hold you here for a while, but now your body is pulling you back." Hector gripped her by the shoulders and drew her into his chest. The glowing handprint that still shimmered from his chest was buffeted on both sides by their booming hearts. His lips moved against her ear as he spoke. "We're tied together, you and I. You're old enough now, ready to accept this, we need to find out why. I'll find you on the other side. Tell no one about us. They won't let you know if they find out."

Regin couldn't breathe, she was being torn in two directions. He was holding her here but everything else was pulling her back towards the land of the living. She gasped under the strain of it. 

"Riker is important. You must protect him from the harm that is coming. Above all else." Thunder rumbled outside. Regin could hear the wind picking up.

"What does that mean?" Regin had to shout to be heard over the building storm outside.

"I'm going to let you go now." 

"No." Regin tightened her hold on him. "I don't want to go." 

"I know, I wish I could keep you here. I wish I could take this burden from you, but I can't. Not yet." He drew her away so he could meet her eyes. Daylight clashed with night and she clung to his shoulders. A wind gusted in through the temple doors, tearing at the drapery, guttering the torches out, sending the food crashing to the floor. The light overhead seemed to get brighter and brighter until she had to squint against it. "I will though. Someday, somehow, I will stop your suffering. I _will_ see you again." Then he kissed her.

A Walker kissing a Hunter. Two opposites in nature connecting and clashing, breaking laws and tearing down rules written by the Gods themselves and neither of them gave a damn. 

Regin clung to him, kissed him back, felt the power between them wash higher and higher like a rising tide. The light grew brighter, as bright as a newborn star, she shut her eyes against it. It seared her skin and burnt everything away. The temple crumbled around her, falling to ashes, Hector was torn from her and she cried out at the loss. 

She was falling, down or up she didn't know, spinning through the light that seared her from all sides. She crashed back into her body like she had swan dived off the top of a sky scraper and the last sound she heard from Elysium was the coughing yell of an enraged leopard. 

**$inister $cribe**

Cuddy screamed when the sword came down over her mate's head. She saw it swinging down, arcing towards his neck, unable to do anything because he had pushed her clean off her feet to keep her from harm. She felt pain rip her when she looked into his eyes and knew he was about to die and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. She loved him so much she ached with it and now he was being taken away from her. Rage screamed through her on the heels of anguish and her bones began to melt, skin misting away and dark mist twisting over her form in the Change. 

The blade whistled. 

The wind howled. 

Lightening struck.

A meteor hit. 

One second Meryl Streep on steroids is trying to decapitate Cuddy's mate, the next she's hit from behind by a prop from Armageddon. The impact of her hitting the ground measured a two point five on the richter scale, the force of the blow dug a furrow in the concrete twenty metres long and three deep, a mushroom cloud of dust billowed into the air, the sonic boom arrived last on the heels of a draconic roar.

Everything rushed back to real time. 

House landed on his stomach with a grunt, Cuddy hit the floor on her back mid change and the sounds of clashing Titans tore the air. 

There was an explosive meaty thud of what Cuddy guessed was a punch being landed and another figure was thrown out of the trench that the meteor had created. She flew backwards through the air, spread her arms, the wind howled in answer, halting her in the sky and lowering her slowly to the ground between Cuddy and the trench. Cuddy turned to see even as the Change continued to warp her into her cat form and she felt shock rock through her. Two goddesses in one week must be a personal record for any mortal. 

The new comer was…well, there weren't really words. She was beautiful, stunningly so. Her features would have looked at home in any of Michael Angelo's master pieces, snowy white hair was curled perfectly around her heart shaped face, full mulberry lips were pulled back over sharp white teeth in a fierce snarl and blazing violet eyes were rimmed with crimson. Cuddy belatedly realised her clothes, some of the most expensive brands on the planet and a long grey coat that billowed and snapped on the waves of the power rolling off her.

"Odette, what the HELL do you think you're doing?!" Meryl dragged herself out of the trench, her clothes were ripped, silver hair dishevelled, blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and her hat was missing. 

"Stopping you from making me kill you, Yaga. You know the laws." Odette spoke with a cultured French accent with old world tones that were musical to listen to.

"They killed Regin. The laws state that I can wipe them from the Universe if I so desire." Meryl/Yaga/whoever roared.

"Two werecats, a wizard and a mortal, they're not capable of killing Regin. As far as we know, nothing is!" Odette spoke back in a measured tone but fury sparked in her eyes like a live wire. 

"You over step your bounds, Warden." Yaga levelled her sword at Odette. "Stand aside."

"Do you _really_ want to play that game with me?" Odette's voice lowered an octave. Cuddy growled nervously. Her hackles were on end as if electrified. Power was swirling through the air like a riptide and she felt like she was in danger of getting sucked in and never getting out again. 

"You stand in my way. If you will not move I shall go through you." Yaga levelled the blade at her eyes and swung it out behind her in preparation to strike. 

"You don't stand a chance in hell." Odette warned her. 

"Odette?" Harry finally managed to drag himself to his feet. It took Cuddy a moment to realise that barely five seconds had passed since this entire debacle had begun. "Odette Vicerienne?" 

"Yes?" Odette barely glanced at him. She was too busy dealing with Yaga's rush. Harry didn't see it and Cuddy barely caught the movement but to Odette, she had all the time in the world. 

Yaga's blade swung down towards Odette's perfect face, intent on splitting her straight down the middle. Even Yaga didn't see the Frenchwoman move. She was halted mid air, so jarring that she swung forward and bounced off the flat of her blade. She twisted awkwardly over the pommel and was forced to let go or break her wrist. She fell to the ground and looked up to see Odette towering over her, one arm extended, the blade gripped in one fist, blood dripping from between her fingers. 

"You're beginning to irritate me, old woman." Odette reached down and wrapped her free hand around Yaga's throat, dragging her up off the floor and hoisting her overhead. "If you make me call a meeting of the Races to send you to trial, if you make me go through all the diplomatic bullshit and politics that comes with that and if you make me bloody this shirt I will be _extremely _annoyed." 

Yaga gripped Odette's wrist and struggled to be free. She was strong, the most powerful Hunter -bar Regin- yet she couldn't budge Odette's grip an inch. She kicked out blindly with one foot and got lucky. Her toes smashed into Odette's sternum and succeeded in winding her for a second. She let go on reflex, Yaga dropped to the ground, caught her blade that Odette had also dropped and slashed viciously sideways, she would have gutted the Warden had she not been hit from behind by nearly three hundred pounds of very angry werecat. 

Cuddy's fangs sank into the meat of Yaga's arm and sent them both reeling across the ground. Yaga backhanded her and sent her tumbling, pounced back to her feet and rushed Odette fasted than anyone could track. 

Odette caught her as easily as she had the first time around but this time the ringing clash of enchanted steel meeting enchanted steel rang out through the site. White energy flashed, thunder boomed overhead and the two immortal women went to work on each other. 

The fight didn't happen like it does in Hollywood films. The majority of it was too fast for anyone who can't move above the speed of sound to see. Blades whirled and whistled though the air, sonic booms punctuating every jarring clash. The magic fallout of the two powers smashing together caused the suck and pull of weather systems being turned inside out. Clouds formed out of nowhere, thunderheads mashing together, thunder booming, lightening flashing. The earth cracked more than once and the steel beams forming the skeleton of the new ward began to hum ominously. 

Cuddy, who had shifted back to her human shape staggered to House through the howling winds 

"We've got to stop them!" She screamed to be heard. "They're going to tear this place apart!"

"Any ideas on how?!" House bellowed back.

"_**STOP!"**_

Nothing dared disobey that voice. The wind dropped, lightening ceased, thunder grumbled away to nothing and the clouds swirled apart to allow the sun to shoulder through once more. 

House and Cuddy looked over to see who else had turned up to try and destroy their territory. What they saw floored them. 

"Isn't she supposed to be dead?" Cuddy asked hollowly. 

"Last I checked, she was."

Regin stood between Yaga and Odette. Both women ground to a halt on opposite sides of her, blades on a mirrored swing to separate heads from necks and pressed against Regin's throat hard enough to draw a bead of dark purplish blood, one at her jugular the other at her spine. If Odette and Yaga had been lesser swordswomen by any fraction, then Regin would have found herself dead a second time in the same afternoon. 

"Now, excuse me if I am mistaken," Regin began looking between the two women intent on murdering each other, "but last I checked the Hunters and the Warden of the World were on good terms. Anyone care to explain _why_ we're throwing mutual hissy fits?!" 

Yaga lowered her blade and sheathed it with a slightly sullen motion. Odette lowered her white rapier but did not sheathe it. The Hunters were dangerous at the best of times, and Regin most of all. 

"She started it."

"I most certainly did not!" Odette snapped and this time did sheathe her blade realising Regin wasn't about to get violent. "Besides, this can wait, the mortal was a victim of your Alphem's temper." Odette turned and everyone followed her gaze to see Harry bent over Murphy his voice broken. 

"Karin…?" 


End file.
