Marriage of Souls

The Phalian raged inside the mind and heart of the newcomer, protesting such utter silliness. The body was nowhere near prepared to accept the power of souls into its midst. It was undernourished, underaged. Still, this young heart knew the charms, the words necessary to draw the Phalian in and keep her.

The boy looked up into the Archangel's eyes, his own reflecting shards of crystalline, prismatic light. "I want Shani O'Rhian alive."

"And what makes you think you are in a position to make such a. . .request?"

"I will be--" He searched for the word. If he spoke wrong, they would cast him down and it would be over. "--Soulbinder. I'll stay here and act as your second, just as Shani O'Rhian should have. If you let her live."

Michael shook his head. The boy cringed, his insides churning as metallic wings scraped against the fragile walls of his body. If he lost utter control, the--thing--inside him would kill him. His legs trembled as he struggled to remain on his feet. He sucked back a sobbing breath, hearing Michael's voice over the blood rushing in his ears. "If you are, as you say, Soulbinder, then there is no need for Shani O'Rhian to live."

"But she has a son." He fought to keep the desperation from rising to the surface of his mind. They would sense it and know him for a fraud. He drew everything, all the emotions screaming at him, into a tight ball and cradled it protectively in his heart. He'd risked everything, his life, coming here. It was a miracle he'd even gotten here in one piece. To fail now. . .

That was obviously not the correct answer. It made anger flash in Michael's bright eyes. "That. . .son of hers," he hissed malevolently, "is an abomination against the very order of the universe!" He advanced on the child, raging, "She has no idea what she has created! The child is the son of a creature more evil than she thinks!"

The child scrambled back. But he knew he couldn't let Shani O'Rhian's life slip through his fingers like this. He stood straight, unaware that the formless haze of the heavens around him gilded his form with a shimmering veil of pale, vague red light, exploiting the light of his very soul. "I don't want her to die!" His voice was too shrill for his liking.

"Michael." Gabriel approached from behind, staring at the boy. "There is only one Soulbinder."

"I know that!" he snapped dismissively. Then he knew what was being said. "Ah. He is correct, you know. The Phalian remains with one soul for the span of its mortal life. If Shani is, as you say, still alive, how did you get your hands on such power?"

"I. . ." How was he supposed to answer?! "I stole it." He said simply, clenching his fists and raising his eyes to meet the Archangel's, daring Michael to turn him into a pillar of salt.

Michael tsked, his mouth twisting into a half-smile. "Thou shalt not steal." After a long, breathless moment, Michael shifted restlessly, shrugging. "Very well. Shani will live."

The challenger stifled a loud, relieved sigh.

"Show our young warrior to his chambers." Michael motioned to Uriel, and then waved them both away.

The boy jerked to a halt, on the verge of disappearing from sight. He turned, his rainbow eyes blazing in accusation. "Swear it," he ordered suddenly.

Michael looked offended for a moment, and hurt. His mouth turned up in another enigmatic smirk before he said, "I swear she'll live."

The two figures that remained smiled thankfully. "You will see, Michael. She is not corrupted. You have done well not to finish her."

Michael raised an amused eyebrow. "You did not allow me to finish, Raphael. She will live--if she doesn't die in combat against me."

Silence hummed like the lilting tones of the angels' harps.





"Mom!" Sin walked through the museum the X-men called home, unimpressed by the subtle evidence of wealth on the gleaming surfaces and polished items scattered throughout the place. He'd been born with a silver spoon up his nose; stuff like this was ordinary.

His mother was yakking away at that 'Jean' woman somewhere in the mansion. When she got damn good and ready, she'd told him, they'd leave. Meanwhile, Sin wandered around, looking in on everyone who crossed his path. He listened to Bobby and Wolverine talking in the kitchen, Logan muttering that he didn't "much like the look of th' snot-nosed kid" Sin assumed was himself. He grinned, unconcerned with gaining Wolverine's favor, and went on. He saw Dr. McCoy murmuring to himself in his laboratory, scribbling notes in a notebook labeled "Legacy". He was bored out of his mind by the time he doubled back to the Rec Room and saw Jean and his mother on the couch, whispering to each other, and Remy and Rogue playing pool and cracking jokes. Sin stayed in the shadows of the hallway and eavesdropped. He didn't much care for the "Gambit" guy; Sin thought he was boring and arrogant. Obviously, Rogue didn't think so. She was grinning flirtatiously, half-serious in her playfulness. She was holding off, but attracted nonetheless. Even his own mother had changed in some subtle, exotic way when she'd come near him. The bitch. Just now, she laughed softly at something Jean said and insisted, "Of course not! It's a little more complicated. You have to promise me, Jean, that you won't tell Sin what I've told you about his father. He's not ready."

Sin's green eyes narrowed spitefully. Damn her. She'd spill all her secrets to these "friends" but she wouldn't even tell him about his own father.

One of these days, he was just going to take what he wanted.





"Where's John?" Shani walked from the mansion with Sin trailing behind, hoping to catch a glimpse of her devoted guardian. Devoted, my ass, she mused to herself. He's never around long enough to devote himself to anything. Glancing over her shoulder, she asked, "Sin, have you seen him?"

"Not since you and Jean disappeared into the lounge or whatever."

"The Rec Room. Hey, Jean!" She turned to shout at Phoenix, who was leaning against the porch railing, watching them leave. "I'll come back tomorrow and we can do something together."

"See ya later, then!"

Shani grinned and spoke more to herself than Sin. "Good. It's all settled. We're going. John can find his own way home."

When she turned again, Sin was sullenly regarding the bike. "Couldn't you have brought back the Jeep, or something?"

"I thought you liked the bike."

"Yeah, but you always make me ride behind when we go together." He grimaced and ran a hand through his hair. "Makes me look like a sissy."

"Aw, Sin, her gaze softened, he looked up hopefully. Then, she laughed. "Shut up and get on the back of the bike."





John raised his head, opening his eyes to the crucifix suspended high above the alter of the cathedral. The pale gold sheen that his body had taken on faded as he unclasped his hands and rose from his knees, crossing himself flawlessly.

Michael was acting too hastily. Probably because he didn't trust Shani. Because she was allied with no one, especially not with him, he was quick to condemn her. But John had seen Shani at work. She did far beyond her duty as the Soulbinder. She took command of the dead soul, of course, but she often lingered behind to console others. She became peace and laid siege to the hearts of the bereaved. She embodied hope and invaded the minds of the children. She placed resolve in the eyes of the cops investigating the murder of whoever had just died. She was supposed to be an angel of Death; she had made herself an angel of Mercy.

But she was naïve. She had taken it for granted that the father of her child was who she assumed he was; she'd taken it for granted that John was who he'd told her he was. She took it for granted that she understood the order of the Universe.

John sighed, drawing in a deep breath of the heavy, hushed air that cloaked the church in solemnity. He was stupid to leave them both alone like he had, but he hadn't been gone long. Even Shani couldn't get into trouble that fast.

When he dipped the fingers of his right hand, the one that had touched the Grail, into the font of holy water beside the doors, he watched with dawning horror as it turned to blood.

Shani wasn't the only one who was naive.





"Last call, Air Britain flight number 11982 to New York, New York, United States."

The man swore as he handed his ticket to the neurotically cheerful flight attendant, cursing whatever urge that had inspired him to buy a plane ticket and hunt down Shani O'Rhian in the first place. It was a possibility so slim as to be negligible that she would give a damn about the news he was bringing.

Still, he stood in the causeway of Heathrow airport, in the middle of a stopover in London, shifting the duffle bag on his shoulder and attempting to look like a tourist.

Ten to one that the bitch wasn't going to care that he had traveled around the world to deliver a simple message.

Damn her. She was the cause of all his sorrows, all of his present pain.

The blade of his katana clanged loudly against the floor as he threw his duffel bag down. Glancing up, he caught the flight attendant glaring suspiciously. Dredging up an innocent smile, he explained, "Rock climbing equipment."

She looked him over again, taking in the jeans and button-down shirt, tucked in but left open at the collar. Nice face. Handsome. She stopped when she got to the guileless amber eyes. Then she shrugged and went off down the aisle to help an elderly man stuff his carrying case into the overhead compartment. Probably just a college boy. No trouble at all.





"The boy is a fraud."

"Hmm?" Michael glanced up at Uriel stormed into the room.

"The boy," Uriel motioned irritably to the table top, which became mirror-like, reflecting the young warrior in his chambers. He was moaning, curled up in a miserable little ball on the floor, his skin emanating a sickly red-orange glow. "is a fake. A fraud."

Michael smiled benignly, nodding. "But he does have the Phalian. And he is a child."

"So?"

"I do not make it my habit to kill children randomly. Especially not powerful ones. If the Phalian kills him, she will either return to Shani and I can destroy her as planned or she will chose a new carrier and I still get to kill Shani. Either way, I win."

Uriel grinned. "A win-win situation. How admirable."

"Yeah."





Shani startled awake, shivering in the cold breeze from the window. At fifteen stories up, the wind speed was considerably higher than it was on the ground. She stumbled blindly from a toasty warm Queen-sized bed, complete with a green velvet canopy and hangings, reached stiff fingers up to grasp the window frame and pulled it down. Muttering to herself, she staggered back to bed, groping for the blankets. Cracking open an eye, she reached behind her, filling her hands with the down comforter.

A small scratching sound caught her attention in the silence and a small hiss followed. Shani's eyes opened reluctantly. She stared lazily at the ivory candles, set in an etched crystal candelabra, on her night stand. The flame at its tips danced, mocking her with its fluid motion and subtle power.

Shani was half-asleep again before she remembered that she didn't have candle holders, let alone candles, in her bedroom.

A wave of icy fear swept over Shani, totally incongruous with the sultry heat that suddenly filled the room. She opened her eyes to the sight to a room filled with candles, of which there were now hundreds. Or so it seemed. The mirrors paneling the walls refracted the light from one glass pane to another, magnifying the light and heat of the room a thousandfold. Sin's father blew out the match he'd used to light the last wick.

In a completely ridiculous reflex, Shani snatched the tangled blankets up to her chin. Mentally rolling her eyes, she dropped the sheets, crossed her arms over her chest, and glared.

He smiled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in an inhuman leer. "Shy, my love?"

"I'm not your love. What the hell are you doing here?"

A shadow passed over his eyes, changing them from their gleaming emerald tint to an impossibly lovely cobalt. "You knew I would come back. If not for you, then for my son. The first child I have had in centuries who was not sick and weak or inadequate. For all you have tried to shield him from me, Shani, you can't protect him from the evil inside." He moved closer, trailing his fingers up the wood of the carved bedpost.

"He's not like you." Her voice rose to a fever pitch, "He's my son. Mine. And you can't change what he is."

He laughed, finding her innocence charming. "Neither can you." He moved toward her, around the side of the bed, letting her feel his body heat.

Body heat. As Vlad the Impaler, he shouldn't have had any. A creeping feeling of doubt invaded her body and Shani started to move from the bed, realizing that such a position made her vulnerable, which he no doubt intended.

One elegant hand slammed down on her wrist, pulling her back to the middle of the bed. "Now, Shani, be reasonable. You knew I would come back."

She tried and failed to jerk her wrist from his grasp. "But I already gave you a child."

"Yes, you did. Sin--nice name, by the way--said he wouldn't mind having a little brother."

"When did you--" She watched numbly as he sat down beside her. While she spoke, he played his fingers along her skin, little caresses that felt like a firebrand. She tried to form the rest of the question, but his thumb rose to stroke the curve of her bottom lip. "--talk to him?"

"When I invited him to come with me."

Rage poured through her with the fine edge of a glass shard. She slapped his hands away, snarling, "Invited? You mean kidnapped, damn you."

"Oh, no. I invited him to come of his own free will. And he did. You see, all your denials to his questions have borne a deep resentment in him. He was curious to know about his father."

"Get out."

He ignored her, blithely forging ahead. "I do hope I measure up."

Shani slid from the other side of the bed, snatching up a pair of jeans folded on the dresser and pulling them on. Her voice dripped with regal scorn as she scoffed, "Any child would be thrilled to be Dracula's son."

"Is that who he is." He said it as though it were a lie of her own design. Like a psychiatrist humoring a clinically insane patient.

"He is who he wants to be, that's for damn sure." For once in her life, Shani doubted the conviction behind the words. Perhaps one could not fashion one's own destiny. Perhaps one was who one was, and they could no more deny their nature than they could alter the course of the stars. No more than she could ignore whatever malignant desire had forced her to lie with the man before her, whatever malevolent urges existed in Sin.

"I see you are beginning to understand."

Shani almost gagged on the next words out of her mouth. "Who are you?"

"Who did you think I was?"

Visions of old dreams spun through her mind like an old movie reel, the symbol of the Dragon, the faces of the Transylvania people as they looked upon the face of their lord, their prince, their Impaler. Vlad IV, Son of the Devil, sovereign of Wallachia. . .

"Mmmmm. No. But an excellent guess."

"But I--"

"Had dreams? Don't you know that those are most vulnerable to creatures like us? We are the masters. Dreams are the fantasy we make them."

Creatures like us. "You consider me an equal, then?"

He gave her a pitying look. "I did, once. Before you lost everything."

Everything. Such a generalization. She hadn't lost everything. Just her identity, the bulk of her power, and her son, if what he said was true.

Cocking an aristocratic eyebrow, he asked, "What's the matter, flatscan? Ya gonna cry?"

The accent and sarcasm belonged entirely to Victor Creed. "Who are you?"

"It's a secret. But I'll let you guess."

"You bastard! How dare you take my son!" Shani leaped for him, the rage stark in every line of her body.

He didn't move, not one shift in his elegant body betrayed him, he simply lifted his eyes to hers and impaled her with a look. No man who had once been mortal could look upon a woman with such utter enjoyment of human frailty. She slammed into him then, pushing him back into the cocoon of warmth and body scent that had been her bed. At the first contact of her skin, she felt the blood freeze in her veins, congealing into a thick, gelatinous goo that oozed into her heart like tar, rising in her throat. Her teeth cracked like plaster, her flesh peeling away from her skin in long, thin strips like someone had taken a cat-o'-nine-tails to her body. Shani couldn't scream, her larynx had already been mangled under the weight of the paste in her throat. Tears leaked from the corners of her untouched face, tears of blood that burned as they dripped along the ridges of her cheekbones, along the pale skin of her face, to fall like prayers on the pristine white shirt covering his chest.

This was pain, pain that only the wronged and punished can feel. This was the pain that squeezed the hearts of mothers who had just received telegrams that told of their sons' deaths on the battlefield. This was the misery of every person who watched the love of their life waste away under the onslaught of a terminal disease. This was the agony of every father who cried as they watched their ill-clothed and malnourished children die of hunger in the dirt of a third-world country . This was the torment of every woman who had ever delivered a still-born baby.

This was the reign of War, Pestilence, Famine, Death. He knew them well, and called them friends.





Shani slammed into the floor, her breath squeezing past her constricted throat. Everything was gone, the remnants of her dream fractured in the pulsating return of reality: Sin's father, the candles, her sanity.

Her head ached with the strain of reassembling her surroundings into some recognizable order. The mirrors rippled before her eyes like silver pools, throwing the moonlit furniture into garish relief. She made an clumsy grab for the white limned curve of the bedpost, galvanized by the absence of light and heat in the room. She swayed in the chill night wind from the open window. The floor pitched and rolled like the deck of a ship under her feet. Whether or not this room's sudden rebellion was a figment of her own imagination or a taunt from Sin's father, Shani had to get out.

She walked toward the door, shown like a gap in the continuity of the walls. The thing lurched in its setting. She fell heavily to her knees and crawled the rest of the way.

The hallway was still and calm in the bedlam that preceded it. Shani pressed her forehead to the cool parquet tile and swallowed back the bile rising in her mouth.

Sin's father was not human. He was not now, nor had he ever been, human. It had been her own mind who had labeled him as laughable as "Dracula". In truth, Vlad Dracula was a vicious warlord who had inspired the terror of a thousand peasants, what with his blood baths and forests of bodies. Count Dracula was an ideal, a fantasy born of the imagination of a fevered Irishman. A portrait of the human mind gone mad with power. Sin's father was not human. And perfectly sane. The dreams and the explanation her own mind had developed was her mind's way of fashioning the terrifying truth into something her conscience would almost accept. And Sin's father had played along.

She'd made it all up to make herself feel better about what she was doing, what was happening.

So how much of what she had seen, heard, and felt was real, and how much of it was just the sugary, glittering shell that had grown from her own desire to be able to face herself in the mirror?

'I invited him to come with me. . .and he did. . . ' Oh, God. Oh, God. Just a dream, still a dream. Just a dream, still a dream. Not real. Not possible. Sin could see what his father was. Sin was like her.

Oh, fuck.

"Sin? Sin Sin Sin Sin--" Calling his name, she lifted her body from the cold tiles stumbling, falling, bruising her knees again. She ran smack up against the door, striking her nose with a sharp crack. She groped madly for the knob and wrenched the door open.

Oh, God. Not a dream. Real. Possible.

Vanished.

The bed was rumpled, the pillow still bore the indentation from his head. She was staring at the bed, so recently and hastily vacated. Shani crumbled to the floor, pathetic little mews issuing from her throat.

Out of the corner of her eye, a shadow flickered in the pale half-light of the window. Her heart crashed against the underside of her ribs, hope skittering along her nerve endings.

Hope died like a mangy dog in a gas station parking lot with a tire track slicing across its belly and maggots crawling into its exposed body cavity. John blinked numbly at her from his stance at the window, staring at her like an abandoned child.

A subtle insanity cradled her brain for a harrowing moment in that eerily lit shrine to a boy who would likely never return. She felt like holding her breath until the world around her intensified into a sparkling array of confetti-colored bits and trying to take a picture of it.

John was there, pulling her into a tight embrace, offering her succor and salvation in a world where none existed. His heart beat heavily in his chest.

Heart?! What heart? Shani jerked away, staring up at him through a veil of hair that fell across her face, as though it were trying to protect her. She stared at him and he stared back, mutely answering the questions he saw in her face. "Get out."

"Shani, I--"

"Get out!" Nobody was who they said they were; it was worse than being raped. Rape only happened to your body, but it was a betrayal of every truth you ever held to be self-evident to live lies like these. "Just get out."

"Please, I'm not--"

Silver lightning flashed in a glittering arc as she hit him, breaking his cheekbone and jaw in quick succession. "I don't care! I don't care who you are or what you want! I--" A thought occurred to her, hauntingly possible. "Did you help him take my son?"

"No." She raised her fist, he ducked and threw his hands up over his head, "NO! I don't work for him, I lied. I was trying to protect you and Sin bu--"

"Then why didn't you stop him?! Jesus Christ!"

"Because I can't protect him when he doesn't want it!"

"Get out! Get out, get out, get out! Blood dripped in slow rivulets along the planes of his face, he was developing a prize-winning bruise on his jaw. Her eyes narrowed, the blue outer rings bordering the molten lava of the dark centers. They kaleidoscoped, shifting from purple to green to an ominous iridescent shade. Glass rattled in the window settings, mirrors trembled in gilt frames, wall paper rippled on the shuddering walls.

John took one look at her and ran for his immortal life, aware of how much pain and destruction she was capable of wreaking on the soul. Her duality, her abilities to bring both panacea and pain were what made her the Soulbinder, a valuable commodity to both sides of the Great War in heaven.

Shani waited until John's footsteps went silent before rising from the ground. Pulling a nylon duffel bag out of the closet, she tossed her wallet in, followed by the few meager possessions she'd had at the start of this whole debacle: jeans and t-shirts, a flannel shirt she'd forgotten to return to Logan. Stripping off the silk shirt she slept in, Shani changed into a pair of jeans she'd borrowed from Jean months ago and a Saints jersey she'd snaffled from Remy.

Nothing she wore or was taking with her was connected to Sin's father. In Sin's room, she took his favorite CD's, his favorite sweatshirt and pair of jeans, and a half-finished sketch of Rogue she found under his pillow--he must've been working on it when his father interrupted. From John's room, she threw a leather-bound journal and a star pendant into the duffel bag. These items, hidden in an otherwise empty drawer, seemed the most important to him.

Out of gratitude for the bullet he'd taken for Sin, she took these items. After tonight, John wouldn't have a chance to come back and get them.