Between

By Amelia L. Rodgers
©2003-2004 all rights reserved
For Nydawi
And as always to Ed, in gratitude for everything

a UFO story (with references to Turn of a Card, and sequel to Inner Child)

'-- Killing us-killing us, slaughter!' She said in the ancient language, 'Soon there will be none of us left, human scum, we are dying, dying in masses, and Straker, Straker is doing this, does he not see what is happening? Does he not care that we struggle to live? Is this the end then, to our kind? We can never live among them, they are mass murderers! Our time is over, mother!' Finished, exhausted, and seriously wounded, he sobbed, but it came out as hard won gasps.

'No, don't, just rest, rest my son, do not waste the sacred language on him. Just drink this.' She raised the spun glass vial to his mouth.

But a wretched spasm overtook the boy, a mere boy of fifteen autumns, and one last trickle of blood escaped from his mouth. She knew that his heartbeat was silenced before she laid her fingers gently against his throat. I have had to bear these slaughters for longer than I can remember, and now my own flesh and blood. There is only one way to deal with a murdering bastard. I am coming, Straker. Await me. She turned her opaque eyes to the rising sun, and made a vow. A single cry, tinged with revenge, coming from the deepest part of the English woods, where the three crashed UFO craft lie under tons of mud and earth.

AWAIT ME!

A startled jay heard, and swooped up through the branches, leaving a scattering of ill-fated mid-autumn leaves on the dewy grass, his song of territorial claim interrupted, and he flew in the direction of Gloucestershire.

* * *

Some hours later, in the garden of Silkwood manor, not far from the alcove filled with lavender bushes which was her husband's favorite place to sit and read, do that thing that he resisted called relax, or just smell the fresh air, Claire Straker broke apart a freshly baked peanut butter cookie and handed one to the little girl beside her. Anne took it in delight, and coaxed one of the resident squirrels to come further near.

The squirrel flipped and expanded his tail, bounced in a semicircle, bounced again, stopped, stood on his hind paws, sniffed the air, ran off, ran back, and then with a final sweep of his most impressive tail he came up, slithered up through the freshly mown grass like he had scales, not fur, and pounced on the out-held cookie, then sat back on his haunches to have breakfast.

Claire settled into a different position on the black and white blanket, picked a twig off her ankle- length plaid skirt and smiled, digging in the picnic basket to get sandwiches and chilled milk. She paused for a moment, looking at the elaborately carved wooden bench with its scrolled wrought iron back and sides. It was Edward's, and seemed saddened that it no longer bore his weight. Anne Newhall giggled, summoning Claire from her absurd thoughts.

"Why does he do all that before he eats?"

"That? Oh all that is the floorshow. He performs for his breakfast, not like the lazier squirrels who just come up and take it without offering us something in return. At least that's what Edward tells me, when Edward feeds him from that bench over there. Which judging by that squirrel's stomach, is often." Claire sighed and instantly regretted it.

"When is Commander Ed coming home?" Anne said, accepting the peanut butter and grape jam sandwich Claire handed her

"I don't know, sweetie, there's a problem at work, and he needs to get it straightened out. He'll be back soon." Claire wondered whom she was trying to convince. She closed her eyes for a moment, envisioning a protective white light around her husband, and then went on with the business of giving her daughter lunch. Frances was coming toward them with a basket and little Alec in one arm. Trouble in size six court shoes, moaned Claire to herself. Frances always seemed to baby-sit her too when Edward wasn't around. Claire was well aware that when the Silkwood gardener saw Frances coming, he always hid, shovels, new plants and all. One could only put up with so much of a woman a third of your weight and height but five times your mouth, telling you how to plant roses when you'd been doing it all your life.

"You're feeding that vermin my prize-winning peanut butter cookies? Do you know I got a blue ribbon for that recipe? You're wasting it on those chattering criminals?" Frances demanded to know. One of the squirrels, who had been nibbling at a cookie, stood up on hind paws and studied Frances for a nanosecond, and then scrambled up the nearest Hawthorne tree with the cookie wedged securely in its mouth, clearly indignant.

"He likes them." Anne said simply, and Claire grinned at her.

"Did you bring us something else, Frances?"

"I have some nice baked fish for you, instead of that dreadful stuff you're feeding your daughter. I've got nothing more to do than cook with Stanley gone so long, he's got a sick parishioner he's giving last rites to." Frances unwrapped the fish sandwiches, and Anne wrinkled her nose at them, holding on to her preferable peanut butter and jam one tightly. Claire concealed a grin.

"I'm sorry someone's sick, Frances." she replied, thinking that if she were forced to eat the sandwiches, she'd be the next one needing last rites.

"Oh, this person he is fussing over is no more closer to death than Anne is. She is ninety, that old biddy, and just wants him there because he is good looking."

"You're jealous of a ninety-year old woman?" laughed Claire. Frances glowered at her.

"Jealousy is a sin in the Lord's eyes, Claire Straker."

"So, in other words, yes, you are." grinned Claire. "Sit with us."

"I have the baby to look after, or have you forgotten that blasted Australian decided to run off with Miriam and get married without telling us? Hawaii. Of all places to go on his honeymoon. Disgusting." Frances sat gingerly, trying to be ladylike and discovering it wasn't possible, finally plopped down as best she could on the blanket, which she inspected for dirt and anything crawling, and then set down a surly looking Alec junior, who chewed without teeth on his pacifier, and then started crawling off at a surprisingly rapid pace. Claire managed to catch him and set him in the other direction.

"Miriam has some Hawaiian blood, and wanted to do some sketching there. Besides, Edward was disappointed that Alec married in secret. Alec claims he just wanted Edward to have some time to spend with Anne and I, but I think once he got to Hawaii, he had a rethink and regretted it. Not that Edward didn't get sweet revenge."

Frances unthinkingly broke a cookie in four pieces and thrust one at a nearby squirrel. Claire had to bite her lip so she wouldn't react.

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Edward wired the hotel concierge a lot of money to short sheet Alec's bed, turn off the hot water in their shower and to have a Hawaiian band play music outside their suite at one am in the morning for an entire week, complete with ukuleles and drums and hula dancing guys in grass skirts." Claire chuckled. "I heard from Miriam this morning, she couldn't stop laughing, and she said Alec knew right away who did it. And that they had to pay the band more than Edward did to get them to go away finally!"

Frances gawked. "Oh my." she said.

"Auntie Frances, do you know when Commander Ed is coming home?"

"I'm afraid not, dear. I don't even know when Stanley will get here. Why do you persist in calling Edward that? He's going to be your father, dear. You should start calling him Daddy."

"Frances, she can call him whatever she likes." Claire said, clearly not appreciating Frances' interference.

"If I do, he might die like Mummie. The bad men will get him and cut him open too."

"Oh sweetie, is that why? Oh my poor thing. No, we won't let that happen, I promise." Claire assured her, trying to conceal her own fears.

"Then why isn't he home?" Anne asked plaintively. Claire and Frances exchanged looks, but had no easy response ready.

* * *

Ed Straker rubbed his eyes. He knew they were bloodshot, all right. They stung terribly. He could not remember when he had slept, or what it had been like. He glanced over at where Alec usually sat. The Australian was not there. Why was he indulging in the thought of Alec, when there was serious business at hand? I'm getting soft, damn it. Ed put him out of his mind, leaned against the edge of his desk, and concentrated on the sheaf of papers beneath the cellophane cover with the Shado logo on it.

"What am I supposed to make of this, Captain Carlin?" Ed asked, slamming it on his desktop, after reading it for what had to be the third time.

Carlin rubbed his forehead, which had more than his usual smattering of creases these days, to match the graying hair. The other two Shado pilots standing at attention next to him looked suitably grim.

"Sir, all I can tell you is what is in that report. Dr. Nicols cleared me. Dr. Constantine cleared me. Dr. Niger cleared me. Dr. Harrison cleared me. Cleared the lot of us. I keep telling you, we pick up a UFO on radar. It comes right into our field of vision. I hit the fire button. Nothing happens. The report on SkyOne indicates absolutely nothing is wrong with it. The same for SkyTwo, and SkyThree. Something is blocking our ability to defend ourselves. The aliens have to have come up with some-"

"Yes, yes, the other two pilots on your squad just told me the same exact story. Only the UFOs they were chasing have vanished. If the aliens do have some weapon preventing our attack, then why haven't they appeared anywhere? There have been no reports of any bodies being mutilated, no homes in that area being damaged. I don't like it. I want answers. UFOs just don't disappear like that, not without a reason. You and the other two pilots are grounded until we get to the bottom of this. I'm not convinced it isn't pilot error."

"Grounded? Do you think that's wise, Commander? That leaves just three pilots in rotation in case we have a new UFO sighting."

"Are you actually questioning my orders now, Carlin? I want a new report. I want it on my desk in an hour. You leave anything out, and that'll be grounds for court martial. Do I make myself understood?"

"Commander, I can write the report again until I am blue in the face. It won't change the facts or the content. Are we dismissed, Sir." Carlin asked, not doing a good job of concealing his anger.

"In an hour, Carlin. Dismissed." Ed said without looking at him. Carlin and the others did an about face and almost ran into a serene looking Millicent Nichols, who was carrying another file folder. She was dressed in a black linen blouse decorated by an American Indian turquoise necklace, and a long skirt in various shades of blues, and her usual laced boots. She studied Ed, who had picked up the report again, dropped into his chair and was reading it. She reached over and hit the button that shut the door, and it obediently whirred closed, as if it didn't want to share in Carlin's fate.

"Any change in their stress patterns, Nichols?" Ed asked curtly, reaching for a Styrofoam cup a third full of cold coffee from the night before, and wincing at the taste, but swallowing it in a stoic manner. He moved the chair to and fro on its base as he read.

"This report says subject nine points above normal stress rating, extreme anxiety, traces of neurosis, decision making erratic, not sleeping, not eating, fearful. Isn't cooperating with therapeutic measures I recommended at all." Millie said.

"Carlin. Short on pilots or not, he's out for at least two months. He was being unreasonable, questioning my commands. I figured he was hiding something from me."

"You recommend two months of medical leave?"

"Definitely. I won't have anyone in that shape working here, you know that." Ed had closed the report, picked up his obelisk prism and was studying it, then he set it down, placed a hand on his back for a moment, as if it hurt him. Millie placed the report in front of him, and opened it to the last page, where a blank awaited his signature.

"Two months is what I happen to have recommended. I'll need your authorization. Sign it please, Ed."

Ed scribbled his signature on it, stood up and rummaged through a collection of maps, retrieving the one he wanted, and he bent over his desk wearily, rolling it out flat, and picking up a pen he favored.

"Have some fresh coffee and some aspirin brought in to me, would you, Nicols? I intend to go over the map for the area the UFOs were in again, maybe I'll see something I missed the first time."

"You have a choice. Your car or my truck."

Ed was running a hand through his hair as he studied the map, his mouth pulled into a line that she might have drawn there with a protractor, it was so precise, she noticed. Now he looked up, bewilderment, pain and lack of sleep etched on the fine features. "What?"

Millie picked up the report he'd signed for her, and turned it to the first page. "Read." She stabbed the page with a short, unpainted nail that was the worst for wear from her many craft projects.

Ed glanced down at the report. His impassive, nothing's wrong with me although I haven't slept for days look broke down like soggy corn flakes in milk.

Psychological assessment report.

Dr. Millicent Nichols

Subject: Ed Straker

"Why you dirty little- Look, Millicent, I have a crisis on my hands, and I can't just-"

"Leave Shado? Colonel Lake already is in the cafeteria, and she's taking over, Ed. I had her wait there for us. Car or truck, Ed Straker? You're going home. Two months. I'm pulling rank. I'm head of the psychiatric section of medical centre, and now it's my turn to push you around, Commander. So what's it to be? We almost lost you a week ago, and now you're back to behaving like an idiot. You've been working longer than your allotted shifts for almost a week now. You haven't eaten. I have spies in the cafeteria, Ed. I have spies everywhere. Car or truck?"

They had a staring contest. Ed Straker lost, and lost miserably.

"Truck. I don't think I'm up to driving back to Silkwood right now."

"Good. Come on," she grinned, picking up her prized report and tucking it under an arm so he wouldn't try and whiteout his signature.

* * *

"You're not saying much, Ed." Millie pointed out.

"I'm just tired."

"Is that the only reason?"

"Why are shrinks that way? Why do they ask questions they already know the answers to?"

"That's the only recourse we have when our clients are as stubborn as somebody I know."

"She was having nightmares. Claire and I took her in our bed with us, and kept her there all night. Millicent, am I doing the right thing, wanting her? After how Kamala turned out? Maybe I'm simply adding to her misery."

"Is that what you believe?"

"Claire's going to be furious with me. I haven't called her. When this crisis came up, I left, and I promised to keep in touch, and I didn't. I wouldn't blame her if she threw me out of my own house. Next month is our anniversary. Already my marriage is threatened. On top of everything else, I've dumped the responsibility of little Anne on her shoulders alone. What's wrong with me? Perhaps I just don't deserve the pleasures of the white picket fence, and the roaring fireplace, and the coffee waiting for me when I get home. The comfort of a wing chair, the gold chenille throw on my lap, with the smells of baking floating on the air from the kitchen. The touch of her hand, waiting for her voice. The music of that voice. Her smile. Her perfume drowning out my worry, the feel of her lips closing over mine. All gone. Lost."

"I think worrying she is going to divorce you is a bit premature, Ed."

"I went to Anne's house, Millicent. I tried to sense what her life had been like, so I could try and get things back to normal for her, as I had suggested to you and you agreed I should do. Pictures of her and her father were everywhere. Dolls. Lace. Drawings that Anne had done, and that her mother had taped up on the refrigerator. Her toys. Books. Did you know she is fond of fairy tales? I wound up reading one story to her twice before she fell asleep. About a changeling. Fairy substituting a fairy child for a human one. We brought all her belongings home, to the last hair ribbon and have put them into storage, until the expansion of Silkwood manor is complete, and she can have her own suite, with a playroom. The construction people told me it'll take another week or so. I don't pay them those Godforsaken amounts just to have them toss Molly a ball. I got home one day, and that's what they were doing. The rabbits were gathered around the window, wanting to go outside and play too. I'm having a pen built, with wire on all four sides, so that nothing can get at them, and they can run around in the garden. Claire is afraid a fox or something will get at them without some protection. My God, Millicent. If Claire ever left me, something in me, deep inside, would die. I had forgotten what it was like to know I was loved. I guess now Alec has that. He deserves it. I was just looking forward to putting on the old penguin suit and playing best man again. Hawaii seems so far away. We could have all flown out there if it was just a matter of pleasing Miriam. I wanted to take part in his happiness."

"You mustn't think he did it to hurt you, Ed. He really did want you to have time to bond with Anne."

"Yes, yes. I suppose."

"But the damage is done already." she said, sensing the loneliness in his tone, and knowing that was part of his erratic mood.

"No, no. I just miss him, that's all. He more than deserves a life of his own, without being concerned about me. His absence is just unexpected, that's all. Millicent, can you stop for a bit? I want to get something from the shops. See that gift shop with the green and white striped awning? Tracey's. That's one of Claire's favorites. Pull into the car park there, would you?"

Millicent shrieked the tyres into a turn, and settled the truck into the space closest to the shop he wanted.

Ed unbuckled his seat belt.

"I'm not quite sure what Caroline Constantine was complaining about. You're a competent driver. You coming in with me?"

"Of course."

They exited the blue truck, and as they opened the door, a bell rang with a cheerful melody. However the clerk on duty was anything but. He wasn't one Ed recognized, so he must have been filling in that Sunday. He was laden with two chins and a negative attitude, and while the shop itself was bright and inviting, he seemed out of place there, like a scorpion among ladybugs.

"I'm just locking up, so if you want anything, it'll have to be quick," he growled.

"I plan to be quick." Ed said, choosing a trolley, and disappeared down an aisle, with Millie following behind like an eager puppy. Ed floated down the aisle rapidly, creating a marching beat with his black ankle boot heels on the parquet floors, giving everything on the shelves a look over, and Millie nearly crashed into him like a human fender bender when he came to an abrupt stop. His hand reached out and snatched up a gold chain adorned with tiny pink and white pearls, bits of nacre, and multicoloured glass beads which all led to a large, luminous oval medallion of a standing fairy laser etched into a crystal. Ed held it to the light, and it changed color as he moved it.

He dropped it into the trolley, and then continued on. Within moments he'd found a silver ring that had a large oval lavender cabochon jade stone surrounded by ten smaller, faceted amethysts for Claire.

"All right. These, please. In gift boxes. Was that quick enough?" Ed gave the man a smile as authentic as the alligator belt the clerk wore to hold up his black cord trousers. He pushed the trolley back with its companions.

"Right then. Sixty pounds. I don't take cheques. Cash or credit only."

Ed dug inside his jacket, came out with his wallet. He frowned, fidgeted.

"Millicent, uh-"

"Something wrong?"

"I seem to not have any cash, and my credit cards are still home on the night table. Could I get a loan?" he said, as embarrassed as a parish priest with his fly unzipped at the lectern.

Millicent grinned, and took out her wallet, and paid the clerk. He gave Ed a sour look, counted out change, and then hastily wrapped the packages. Ed gave him an exaggerated cheery wave as they left, only to have it returned by the man flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and pulling down on the door curtain.

"Missed his calling, that fellow. Should work in a mortuary, it's probably the only place he's likely to be appreciated by his customers. Sorry about the money, Millicent. I'll write out a cheque for you soon as we get back home to Silkwood Manor. Will you stay for dinner? It's getting around that time." Ed checked his Swiss Certina wristwatch.

"I'll just put it on your tab, Ed. And dinner sounds wonderful." she opened the passenger door for him, and he climbed up easily, the shopping bag on his arm.

"That is if I have a home to come back to." Ed added, once Millie had pulled away from the lot and gotten back on the road.

"I think you will. Why don't you stretch back and try and get some sleep? We have a couple hours drive before we get to Tetbury." Millie worked the lever that pushed the seat back, and Ed gave a little surprised gasp as it went backward, him with it. He collected his wits again, never fond of the unexpected, and shook his head obstinately.

"No. Your radio work?"

"Sure. Put on anything you like."

Ed twirled the dial until he located a light jazz station, then he settled back, clutching at the bag like a lovers' hand. Millie watched his progress now and then in the driving mirror. She grinned with satisfaction when the pale cobalt eyes closed, and the breathing rhythm became deep and regular with sleep. She reached in back when a light changed to red, and retrieved a blue chenille throw, and settled it around his waist, covering his legs. She started up again when the light made the transformation to green, and switched off the radio. She snuck a look at him. One of the important shrink rules was you never became fond of your client. She snickered to herself.

That was the first one she'd broken, like Godzilla sitting on a shoji paper screen, when she'd first encountered the sleeping beauty next to her after his nervous breakdown which had followed Kamala's death. She grinned to herself. Boy he was a looker. Juicy as a peach. Work, Millie. One Ed Straker needed to be returned safely and securely to his family. She was United Parcel Service for souls, she was, she thought with a grin the size of England. They sometimes got lost in the red tape of life, or wrapped up imperfectly by their handlers and lost their way, but she always brought them to where they needed to go. And the gentle, sweet soul next to her got lost more than most. She chuckled when he began to snore lightly in REM sleep. He might have been made in the image of God and looked like he was an angel, but he snored like the devil!

* * *

"Is there anything further I can get for you, Sir?"

"Nothing further thanks, Harold."

"Well then me and the missus are off to a movie show."

"I haven't been to a film in ages. Enjoy! Wait, Harold."

"Sir?" he said expectantly. "Oh no, Sir, I couldn't."

The man chuckled and pressed several pound notes into his hand of liberal denominations.

"Of course you can, it's all in the fingers, try squeezing them over the money. Now off with you, wouldn't want the missus coming after you with a rolling pin for being tardy."

"Thank you, Sir. God bless you, Sir."

"She has, on many an occasion."

"Goodnight again, Sir."

The butler, a redheaded gent in his middle thirties with eyes the color of burnt mushrooms, whistled the tune to Strawberry Fields forever as he got into his battered sedan. His wife finished powdering a nose that had cost more money to repair than the car did, and fluffed her blond curls which were better suited to someone half her age.

"Thought for a while he was going to keep you over the weekend, that old loon."

"I have worked for twenty years for that old loon, he gave me the chance to be schooled in the business with the best of them, and a packet tonight, so hush."

"Oh come on, Harold, you know he's a fruitcake. Does he ever even entertain in that house of his? Does he ever go anywhere? No. Talks to the local wildlife like he's an escapee from a Disney film."

"Oh start up the car." the butler said in disgust.

* * *

Lord Peregrine, or Perry to a handful of friends, drew back the gold damask curtains, watching the car drive away through the Tudor windows with a bud of a smile growing on his lips. He smoothed his shock of white hair which crowned his liver-spotted skull like a mist of clouds. A maize cat that had been napping near the marble fireplace awoke then languidly lapped her fur, then cocked her head to look at him, and meowed.

"It isn't a crime to have married the wrong woman, Valiant. Harold's a good person. Well, I think I'll take my brandy and my Agatha Christie out into the garden. I'd take you but you'd only disturb my bird friends. There's chopped salmon for you in the kitchen, and a bowl of milk. Don't give me that look." Perry allowed the curtains to fall back into place, and reached for his ivory handled cane. Hanging it on his wrist, he tucked his leather bound book under an arm, and reached for the one vice he still had. The telephone shrilled at him. He set down the cane, and picked up the telephone, which was still the dial type. As a matter of fact, the entire manor house, including it's occupant, seemed to have eluded technology, and Perry preferred it that way.

"Sherring House. May I help you?"

A voice that Ed Straker would have recognized right away answered.

"I want to talk to the old man. This is Daniel Straker."

"May I ask what this is in reference to?"

"I'll tell you what this is in reference to. That old bastard stole my house."

"I stole nothing, Sir. I took back what was rightfully mine. And having no need for a home of that size, I have given her to the English Heritage people. There was a great deal of history in that castle, and you utterly destroyed it. It chilled my heart to see the damage you had done. Mind you, most of you nouveau riche Americans have no respect for true elegance, you'd substitute a fine claret for beer and wear plastic instead of tweeds. You have no idea what destruction and heartbreak you caused the inhabitants-" Perry stopped, pursed his lips. "This conversation is at an end, Sir."

"Like hell it is. I'll make your life a misery."

"Do not threaten me, Sir. Believe me, you do not know what you are dealing with. Now this matter is at an end. Ring me again, and you shall find yourself dealing with the police." Perry hung up, taking his hand away from the receiver as though it had infected him. His eyes were alive with miniature fireworks.

"What a sad world it is, Valiant, with people in it such as he, that value nothing more than gold. His son has my sympathy. I should like to see his son, you know. To see how accurate I was all those years ago. I should like it very much indeed. Tomorrow morning we shall drive into Tetbury, to Silkwood Manor." Perry clapped his hands in pleasure. " Now off with you, have your supper. I need to see what happens to Hercule in the next chapter, silly little Belgian chap." he chuckled. "And yes, Valiant, I may be older than the stone King Arthur withdrew Excalibur from, but I do remember how to drive."

The cat meowed in mockery, not buying any of it, and trotted off.

"All right, you grouchy old feline I shall call for a taxi if it makes you feel better." chuckled Perry, and headed toward his garden, to his favourite bench. A bird whisked down in a flurry of urgency and chirped in his direction.

"Oh my, is it as bad as all that, oh good heavens, oh my stars, may the Goddess rest his soul. I will take care of it, there is no need for bloodshed to meet bloodshed, and she should know that above everyone else in the between. You stay there, I shall put fresh water and seed in the bowls, you look spent, you beautiful little thing. So I really am to see Edward Straker, in the flesh and not from the few photographs in the newspapers then? I look forward to tomorrow, little friend. Wait there for me."

The bird tucked its ash wings against itself like a crocheted shawl as the old man set down his book and brandy and headed to the French doors, back inside the kitchen. Valiant watched the bird through the scrolled glass and licked his chops, and Perry tut tutted at it as he went about his chores of providing food for his friend.

* * *

"Look, Doctor Claire, someone's coming. Doctor Millie's truck. But today is not tea party day." Anne said. Claire had been idly watching her foster daughter color in her favorite colouring book, eyes heavy lidded, her mood as dark as twilight. Now she looked up and fear struck her like a splinter of unfettered emotion, drawing fresh blood. If anything had happened to Edward on a mission, it normally would have been Alec bringing her the somber news. Now that he was in Hawaii, it made sense that Millie would have been selected. She stood up, body numb, but legs somehow moving underneath the tweed skirt, moving toward the truck as it passed through the elaborate gates. It pulled to a stop several feet from her in the brick driveway, and she cried out joyously when she recognized the figure securely buckled into the passenger seat, and she watched him get out after unsnapping it, looking more forlorn than usual.

"Edward! Edward!" she screeched. Ed turned, and the stars that were obediently checking in for the night seemed to have lost their way only to wind up in his sea-mist eyes. They met one another's bodies, hard, and he brought her tightly against him, kissing her as if they'd been separate for an eternity instead of a string of days.

"You feel so good. I was scared you wouldn't take me back. You know how things get at work, sweetheart."

"Edward, you were just trying to prove you were up to the job after everything that happened. I understand. It's just that I was afraid you'd been killed."

"Well, if that ever happens, stick a GPS unit in my coffin so I can find heaven." he joked, trying to be lighthearted, but overcome with relief that there was no anger in her expression, just worry.

"Edward Straker you stop that right now. I need you a hell of a lot more than heaven does. Oh, you look terrible. When did you last eat? Or sleep?" She stroked fine hairs which had somehow escaped the perfect helmet he usually combed it into.

"I'll have something to eat. You smell of peanut butter. I think I'm getting turned on and hungry at the same time."

"Quit being silly, and we'll get dinner started right away. Frances is inside, making something or other. Come and say hello to your daughter. She's been worried about you, you know. She's still having nightmares and feelings of abandonment, Edward."

"Yes, Millicent said that was normal." Ed closed his fingers like a clamp over his wife, and walked with her toward Anne, smiling. "Hiya there, Princess."

"Are you okay, Commander Ed? You look sick."

"I'm just a bit tired, sweetie. What are you colouring there? Give me a hug?"

The little girl got up and offered Ed a hug which was less than one that a child gave a favoured parent, and Ed drew his lips into that look of sad displeasure, then shot a expression of concern in Millie's direction. Millie came forward, patted his shoulder, and reached over and chose a peanut butter cookie that had somehow been overlooked by the squirrels. Frances finally appeared with a large pot in her oven mitt clad hands. Ed never failed to be amused by the fact she cooked in a neat apron, a long knit skirt, frilled blouse and her ever present string of pearls with its cameo clasp like an escapee from a forties movie..

"Hello Frances. Angel not home yet?"

"No, but it was about time you got home, Edward. I have lamb stew for dinner for all of us."

"We'll eat out, then check into a hotel. I have a craving for deep dish pizza. Oh, Claire, do you have any money on you? I owe Millicent sixty pounds."

"Good grief, Edward, for what?" Claire chuckled, beginning to feel more like herself, and stuffing her hand into her jumper pocket, coming up with rolled bills.

"Services rendered." snickered Millie. "I pulled rank on him and brought him home. For two months. He even signed it."

"You tricked me into signing that thing, and you know it." Ed retorted, genuinely angry. Claire grinned.

"If you were sensible and came home and rested once in a while, she wouldn't have to trick you. Two months sounds wonderful, and what is this about a hotel?"

"Just for once I want to wake up to birdsong, not the racket of a jackhammer, and that damn dog barking its fleas off. We'll get a suite at a nearby hotel. Or a cottage. Doesn't matter which. I'll get out my golf clubs and play eighteen holes. I haven't played for quite a while. We'll go shopping afterwards, see the sights."

"The swans won't be thrilled to hear you're coming back." grinned Claire, holding his hand to her cheek. He narrowed his eyes at her, concealing his amusement.

"After that remark, I shouldn't give you this."

"Edward, are you spending money on me again?" she asked hopefully, he noticed.

"Fine, I'll find another wife to spoil." He handed her the gift wrapped package and she reluctantly took herself away from his touch, accepting it but she didn't move far from his side. "I have something for you too, sweetie." Ed smiled at Anne. Millie watched carefully.

The child looked delighted and wasted no time ripping open the floral design wrapping, in contrast to Claire, who gently peeled away the tape, saved the bright velveteen bow, and folded the striped paper. Ed grinned at her habit and rose at least a foot in height from the happy look in her mocha brown eyes alone.

"Edward, it's gorgeous, oh, it's so lovely, I adore it!" she said, slipping it on her middle finger next to her wedding ring and showing it to Frances, whose expression and wrinkled nose seemed to indicate it was much too tiny a prize.

"Not too big a stone then, darling? I always worry about that with you, and your preference for delicate pieces." he confessed, with a meaningful look at Frances, and got a kiss from Claire as a response.

"It's perfect, unlike you." she chuckled. He looked pleased with himself, and then turned his attention to his daughter, who was staring at her medallion, open mouthed in awe.

"Don't you like it, Anne? I thought with your admiration for faeries and all-"

"Is she alive inside there?"

"I don't believe so, it's just a portrait." he assured her, with an impish grin that made him look like he might be one of the tiny beings himself, Claire thought. He took it and hung it around her neck, noting her blond braids, which he figured was the work of Frances, since they were braided so tight it made his head spin looking at them. One buttercup coloured tendril had escaped and was gasping for autumn air, he noticed with a chuckle.

"It's so pretty, Daddy!" she said, spellbound by it. Ed's grin turned to a look of astonishment at finally hearing the much longed for term, and transformed yet again into unexpected tears, which he hid by turning toward Claire, who looked just as stunned, but reached for, and guarded Ed's hand.

"Well, we better get packed, it's getting late." he said.

"What about my stew?" Frances said, exasperated.

Ed pointed to Molly who was rolling around in the grass, all but howling a aria from Aida to get herself petted, and he bent over and rubbed the dog's expanse of yellow belly that resembled an oversized egg yolk for a couple minutes, resulting in one happy pooch and a active tail. He knew Molly missed Alec as much as he did. Then he put one arm around both of his women, and headed back to the manor, a spring in his step, with Millie grinning at Frances' exasperation and Molly barking and bouncing around, with irritated rabbits still gathered in the paladian window, watching the scene solemnly, vowing revenge for being ignored. Ed spotted them, and suddenly feared for his golf bag.

* * *

Ed emerged from the bathroom after a leisurely shower plus two cups of sweetened and creamed coffee getting acquainted with his stomach. He was wearing a wool sweater in tan hues that looked like an exhibition of knitting techniques, a gift from Frances, and a rarely worn pair of black jeans that fit him like dew going steady with a rose. The outfit was completed with his usual ankle boots in charcoal. Claire buckled his matching alligator belt for him, leaning in, and made a show of sniffing him. He produced his signature slight smile like a rabbit from a top hat.

"I'm all packed, sweetheart. You smell and look like paradise dipped in chocolate, by the way."

"Is that good?" he pretended to wonder, having made liberal use of his Bronnley soap scented with tangerines and lemons from Spain, or so the label had said. He liked to have reading material while scrubbing up, he thought with a silent chuckle.

"That's good. Edward, uh-- we ought to take Frances with us, don't give me that look, you know she misses Angel."

"We're already taking Millicent. I suppose if you insist, but I was hoping to make this weekend a prelude to our anniversary, like a trailer to a Harlington-Straker film. Just the two of us."

"Look at it this way, they can be Anne's nannies so we can be alone. Come on, Edward. Every time I look at her I get plagued with guilt. I don't want to leave her by herself. She may seem like a brick wall in a pearl choker, but she's frail when he isn't around. We can get Ian to oversee the construction work."

"All right. It's getting late, I don't want to get plagued with traffic. You go get her ready, and I'll pack the rest of my things. I already have my golf bag in the great hall. At least I think I do, unless it is now lapine dental floss. I have the distinct feeling I am not going to get a Christmas card from the rabbits, judging from their attitude when I came in."

"You committed an offense worthy of the electric chair by not petting them first." she smiled. She was dressed in a forest green paisley blouse and ankle length black skirt with lace up black boots, with his mother's pendant around her neck, and some sweet fragrance he didn't recognize, probably the influence of Miriam. He reached out and took his time kissing her. She didn't object.

"Have I said lately that I love you, Mrs. Straker?" he asked softly when they parted reluctantly, like a piece of paper torn off a pad.

"Not like that! You keep that up and we'll have to march upstairs so I can play doctor."

"Go on." he chuckled, and departed. She sighed, wondered for the millionth time how she had gotten so lucky, and followed after him to retrieve Frances, whom she found in the kitchen, wiping glassware that had already been washed.

* * *

Thousands of miles away from Silkwood Manor, the newlywed Freemans had more on their minds than getting crystal glassware spotlessly clean.

"What's the matter, babe?"

"I'll tell you what's the matter. If I get saddled with one more of those sickly sweet gardenia and orchid leis like a damn work horse in a field, and hear that music one more time, I'm going to scream so loud, they'll hear me in Sydney." Alec Freeman complained, digging his newly browned toes in the sand, and digging his fork into scrambled eggs. The beachfront hotel he and the new Mrs. Miriam Freeman were at had a volcano crater of amenities. One was being served breakfast at the outdoor café overlooking the ocean. For the first week, other than being short sheeted and woken up in the morning in his hotel cottage by a five piece band complete with male hula dancers in traditional grass skirts, and being out several hundred dollars for paying them to disappear, and vowing eternal revenge on the culprit Ed, it had been bliss. Now, all he looked at when he beheld the island paradise was a tourist trap complete with little cocktails with cheap tiny umbrellas in them, garnished by pineapple. Hotel staff that expected to be richly tipped every time they looked in your direction and smiled with oversized teeth at you. Miriam smiled at him, set her sketchpad and box of pastel chalk in her lap, and twirled her gold opal engagement and plain gold wedding rings. She was dressed in a low cut black and red diamond print dress done in silk by some local designer. She watched his loud enough to stop traffic lime green and white Hawaiian short sleeved shirt billow in and out with the plumeria scented breeze. He'd stopped chewing, and had thrown his hotel logo linen napkin down on the table. He snapped in the direction of the waiter, who hurried over.

"I want a real drink. Whiskey. Make it a double. Then disappear, you watching me is making me nervous." Alec produced a brand new twenty dollar bill, (Christ almighty, the new American pinkish money was horrid. Yes, it was harder to counterfeit, but Alec had seen gays in Soho packaged more conservative than that) and pushed it in the waiter's brown hands. He scurried away sideways like a sand crab. Alec looked down at his denim shorts dejectedly and shoved his feet back into his sandals.

"Alec, babe, look out at the water. Tell me what you see." Miriam placed her sketchpad and pastel chalk in her straw tote bag.

"Saltwater."

"I'll tell you what I see. The white wave crests are Ed Straker's hair, and the sparkling cerulean blue waters are his eyes."

Alec looked at Miriam worriedly.

"Anything you need to tell me?"

"No, you moron, I'm not hopelessly dreaming about Ed the way your first bamboo stick of a brain wife Yetunde did. You're my man. I just have a feeling something's wrong with him. Or is about to be wrong with him. He is going to desperately need you. Call it woman's intuition, cause Claire and I have bushel loads of it. I know you miss him and when you're upset, I'm upset. That's what marriage is about."

The waiter came with the whisky and set it down on the table. Miriam picked it up and emptied it out on the sand.

"Is something wrong, Mrs. Freeman?" the waiter inquired, privately thinking with a body like that she was wasted on the elderly fellow with the weird accent.

"Yeah. We are checking out. Have the front desk make up our bill, and order a cab to be waiting for us outside pronto, we'll be headed to the airport."

"No problem, Ma'am."

"One other thing."

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"You look at my breasts one more time and I'll cut out your undersized genitals with my melon fork and send them to your mother. That plain enough for you?"

The waiter gulped, nodded, and ran off and Alec grinned broadly.

"I love the hell out of you, Mrs. Freeman." he said, getting up as she did, and kissing her.

"If you do, for the love of Pete, take that awful shirt off." she chuckled.

"And I love you too, Mr. Freeman. Lots and lots." Miriam slipped the strap of her tote bag on her arm.

"This shirt, not a chance, I intend to buy at least five like it in the most garish colours I can get at the airport as presents for Ed, and make the saddest face in the world if he doesn't try one on. Guilt works well with him. He'll do it."

Miriam guffawed, and they headed off, hand in hand, after Alec dumped his lei in the nearest rubbish can.

* * *

Three hours later, Miriam was in a cramped seat on a small private plane full of female tourists, trying to quell an attack of hysterical laughter, as Alec frantically punched in the telephone number of Ed Straker on his mobile.

Ed happened to be bent over the mahogany check in counter in the quaint lobby of the Sly Red Fox Hotel, signing the register, with Claire and Anne and Millicent in the hotel gift shop, chatting with the shopkeeper there. His mobile shrilled at him as if in disapproval of his being in public without protection. A mechanical Alec Freeman with buttons, he mused.

"Excuse me a moment," he said to the manager on duty, with a look in the direction of the gift shop. They were coming out the door, laden with shopping bags. If it was Shado business, he knew it would disappoint them. He flipped the secure phone open after taking it out of an inside pocket of his tab suede bomber style jacket.

"Straker." Ed's face became animated when he heard the caller's voice. " Alec, hi, didn't expect - what on earth is that awful singing. What? You're where? Strike?"

Ed listened for a while and then started to laugh so loud several sedate looking couples in tweeds reading their mystery novels in front of the fireplace shot him disapproving looks. Unlike the manager, who was set to worship at Ed's feet, since Ed had booked the largest, most secure, and most expensive suite in the entire hotel.

"I see, but why are you coming home early? In trouble? No, no, I'm fine. All right. Yes. No, I'm at the Sly Red Fox Hotel, with Claire, Anne, and Dr. Nichols. Nichols insisted I take some time off from the studio. We tried to bring Frances with us, but Angel is with a dying parishioner, and he's away, and Frances refused to come, she intends to wait for him. Ian is on a buying trip for me, so I left Frances at Silkwood to take charge of the rabbits and the construction work. Other than the endless breaks for tea and crustless sandwiches, and tossing a ball to that dog Molly of yours, things are going well with it. No, Alec, I swear, no Alec, I wasn't accompanied. Yes, I know, Alec, yes, yes, yes I have it with me. Look I need to hang up now, rescue my credit card from Claire and the others, and get checked in, grab some sleep. I have an early tee off time tomorrow morning, they have an excellent golf course nearby. Sly Old Fox Hotel, yes, yes, Westonburt. Goodbye, Alec, and give my love to Miriam."

Ed finished signing, allowed the bellhop to take the luggage and his golf bag, and reached for Claire's arm. She looked worried as he figured she would.

"It wasn't the studio, darling. It was Alec, he's on his way back. He and Miriam decided to cut their honeymoon close to the scalp. You'll never guess where he called me from."

Claire visibly relaxed as they followed the bellhop to the lift, as Anne held on to Claire's other hand, her face as bright as the Gloucestershire moon. She was taking in everything, from the amused look on her new father's face, to the beige and pale gold silk wallpaper in an rococo pattern, to the gold gilt framed pictures on the walls, showing off the signed photographs of noted previous visitors with various titles before and after their signatures. When they arrived at their suite Ed tipped the bellhop, requested coffees, milk and apple pie be brought up in a few moments, tossed his jacket aside, and dropped into a red plush couch when the bellhop closed the door behind him.

"Pie?" Millie snickered. "You polished off two slices of pizza at that restaurant we stopped at."

Ed laced his fingers behind his neck, leaned back, stretched out his slender frame.

"Two and a half. Besides, they make great pie in the restaurant here. So how huge a chunk did you ladies cut away from my bank account?"

Claire had been peeling off her peacoat and Anne's faux fur one, and she bent down to help Ed take off his boots as Anne skipped around with a newly bought pink plushie bear from the gift shop, looking at everything. Ed watched her, his eyes as serene as a Gaelic ballad played on a harp.

"You like it here, sweetie?" he asked.

"Look, Daddy, Mummie bought me bear!"

"Very attractive fellow. Oh no," he cried in consternation.

"What?" Claire said, alarmed.

"I didn't order any pie for the bear!"

The women rolled their eyes but Anne giggled and climbed up on Ed's lap as he offered an exaggerated ooof.

"So finish what you were telling us, Edward." Claire said, having accomplished taking off his boots.

"Oh. That. Well," he said, wiggling his toes encased in the argyle socks, "It seems there was a strike among the pilots in the airline Alec and Miriam had booked to get home, so their planes were grounded. All the other airlines were full up even on standby because of it. Finally they cashed in their tickets and managed to get on a privately chartered plane, and it was even headed back to Heathrow with just a fueling stop or two."

"So what is so funny about that?" Millie wanted to know.

"It happened to be chartered by a bunch of Don Ho fans going home, all oversexed elderly women from his British fan club. Alec described being slobbered over, felt up, and forced to sing all his Hawaiian songs along with them. I could hear them in the background, along with Miriam's unmistakable horse laugh. Alec says he may never be able to look at tiny bubbles again." Ed grinned. The women started giggling. There was a knock at the door, and Millie answered it. A butler's tray was rolled in with their food, and a silver coffee set, and a silver salver of milk for Anne. Millie took the opportunity to tip the smiling woman who brought it, and she was about to go out when Anne stopped her.

"Daddy forgot to order pie for bear."

"Oh dear. That is a tragedy, Mr. Straker. We at Sly Fox Hotel make it a practice to please all our customers. I shall attend to it at once. You will forgive us for this oversight, won't you?"

Ed cleared his throat, and harrumphed in the manner that a rich grizzy might, were it capable of speech. Claire grinned at him.

"Certainly, certainly, just don't let it happen again." he growled. The woman concealed a smile, nodded and went out.

They were all sitting around, listening to the crackling and snapping and popping of the marble fireplace, and the rattle of gold forks against gold edged white porcelain plates as they contentedly ate their pie, when the knock sounded again. This time the woman held a tray with a single gold dessert plate, and a tiny fork which Ed suspected had been originally designed to spear olives from a jar. On the plate was a tiny sliver of pie. Beside it was a teacup of milk. Beside that, a handwritten place card with BEAR on it. And next to that, a small container of honey. Ed made a mental note to make sure his tip to the woman before they left the hotel was as generous as her spirit. He was still chuckling softly about it as he was curled up to Claire in bed that night, and fell asleep with a crescent smile on his face. Outside, looking in through the bedroom window, a ash winged bird watched with interest, as he perched on a nearby tree branch.

An elderly pensioner guest coming up the winding mellow stone path leading to the hotel after his customary evening walk with his bird fancier wife suddenly stopped, and lifted his Leica binoculars hurriedly.

"Helen, what is that bird? There, on the topmost branch of that birch tree."

His wife raised her own binoculars.

"Heavens. Doesn't fit anything I know. Damned nuisance Ellie isn't with us, she'd-"

The bird darted into the cool autumn night, and in mid-flight its ash wings became transparent, and gleaming as Swarovski faceted crystals. Then it flashed so brightly she had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment. A nanosecond, a hopelessly high pitched whistling noise evaporating in the cool air, and then she opened her eyes, and the bird thing was gone. Vanished. No bird flew at that speed.

"Did you SEE that?" she said excitedly. Her husband, not given to fancy, lowered the lenses.

"No." he said. "No," he said again, more firmly. And he led her into the hotel.

* * *

And here's Straker a hundred and fifty yards from the sixth hole, well under par, playing the game of a lifetime out here at Saint Andrews, wowing the crowds, astonishing the experts. Little known golfer, came up from behind the top fifty, making Woods look like a raw amateur, invoking memories of Hogan and Palmer and now only three holes away from the grand prize and fame. Straker's addressing the ball, wind light and northerly, manicured lie, look at that superb control of Straker's, folks, this is going to be a spectacular shot, this reporter can feel it in his bones, and he swings-

"Daddy, I'm thirsty." Anne declared.

Ed waved a sad and fond farewell to his departed fantasy, slowly lowered the titanium head seven iron, and thanked the God of golf he hadn't made the shot yet. With the club tucked under an arm, he crossed to his wheeled golf cart, and opened the cooler with a disapproving look at Claire and Millie, who were walking along, chattering like crazed monkeys over some woman's apparel catalogue. Ed gave Anne the chilled soda, kissed her on the forehead, and went back to his ball.

Ed's grievance hadn't been lost on Claire and Millie. Not that I care at the moment, Claire was thinking. You marry a man, and you think you know everything about him. Then he drags you out of bed at five am in the morning because he has a damn early tee off time. He isn't the only one that's teed off. We could have hired an electric cart at the club, but no, Mr. Fresh air and exercise makes us walk all this damn way! She glowered at Ed for about three and a half seconds of unadulterated hate. The crisp wind was trying to take a lock of his silver hair for a souvenir, and he was wearing his beige sports windcheater with blue piping and matching beige pants and t-shirt, his feet in those horrible spiked things. He was surrounded with grass and hills and trees as far as the eye could see, the kind of picture postcard you sent home while on holiday. His face was as animated as a theatre marquee, and he seemed content. If only she could cure him of his obsession with hitting the stupid little ball around, it might have been a nice walk, even if her feet were falling off. Besides, all the times he hit the ball into what he described with a four letter word, otherwise known as a water trap, made for free amusement, as did the scowls that followed her giggling at him, scowls that melted the Swiss Alps. And little Anne adored him, she could have easily asked one of them for a soda, and she most certainly wasn't thirsty, having consumed three sodas in the last five minutes. She just wanted his attention. Her and the rest of the women in the United Kingdom. Claire smiled, and looked at her wedding ring.

Well folks, the momentary delay is over, and our man is addressing the ball again, this swing is going to be sweeter than orange marmalade, this is the one the sports experts will be talking about for years to come-any other player would have had his will and determination momentum crushed like a soda can by that setback, but not Straker, world-class father and golfer, and he swings, there's a great whoosh, and the club is at the top of the arc-

"Edward, stop!! Don't move, don't move!"

Ed heard the voice in his head cease, which had sounded suspiciously like Bill Murray, now that he had time to give it some thought. By the time he had actually frozen as if he'd spent a week in the tundra in his knickers, he had killed Claire messily with his seven iron, buried the body and was mentally going through his mental Rolodex for possible alibis.

"Claire, sweetheart, dear, I am playing the best game of my life today, six under par, okay, sure, admittedly minus a water and a sand trap here and there, and that one gopher with a skull fracture on the fourth hole. So this second interruption of my shot better be backed up with a tangible, justifiable reason. Because it would be easy enough to kill and bury you and Millicent out here without anyone being the wiser."

Ed ignored his daughter's big blue eyes, and Millie's snicker at this statement, and waited.

"Edward, lower the club, slowly, real slowly." instructed Claire.

Ed did, and when it was on a level with his shoulder, he looked at it. On the end of it, perched near the very expensive titanium head of the club was a bird.. Size of a bird that had eaten well in all the finest aviary restaurants, he mused. But it wasn't entirely black, there was gray and some other unexpected colours in the feathers, and it was moving back and forth on the shank of the club, back and forth repeatedly as if deciding something, perfectly balanced, without a care in the world. Ed had the pained thought it had come for revenge from all the swans he had sent to convalescent homes, and he wondered if he should grab everyone and make a run for it. Its bright onyx eyes seemed intelligent and devoid of such a motivation.

"Well now, that's interesting. Hello there, fellow. Was my swing so bad you decided for my own good to stop my game?"

"Birdie!" Anne cried with pleasure, and giggled.

It dashed off his club and flew around him in a tight, perfect circle, and he fought the inclination to wave it off. Then to his astonishment, it landed on his shoulder, bent and pecked at the fabric of his windcheater with an unnervingly sharp beak Ed thought, pulling like he figured a worm might have taken sanctuary in it. Then it fluttered its wings and flew around him effortlessly in that 360 again, reminding him of why he'd wanted to fly in the first place, and it flew a short distance from him, paused, and flew back, and settled on his shoulder again, looking at him intently.

"Well, I'll be, I've never seen anything like that before in all my years. You've made a friend, Commander Ed." Millie chuckled.

"Someone's trained tame bird?" Claire wondered, equally astonished, but something was gnawing at her and it wasn't a bird.

Ed was silent, bird and human eyes appraising one another like a diamond before it was to be cut and faceted.

"Lassie come home, Timmy fell into the well." Ed said thoughtfully.

"Okay, all this walking has snapped a few of your brain synapses, Edward. What on earth are you talking about?"

"I think it wants me to go home. Call me insane if you will, but I have this sense that it's talking to me."

"Home," Anne nodded.

"Let's go home Edward." Claire said. "I have a funny feeling now too. I don't know why. We need to be home."

Ed nodded, raised his head, hearing something. The bird heard it as well and swooped in that direction. Then he saw two men on an electric golf cart, talking and laughing, not really paying attention to much. Ed started walking toward it, then he broke into a full run, which seemed an inherited skill with the golf shoes, Claire thought, wondering what he was up to, and in the next breath, she screamed soundlessly and Millie had gone whiter than Ed's hair.

The golf cart shuddered to a full stop when Ed stepped deliberately in its path.

"Cor, are you dotty or something? Didn't you see us coming, lad? You could have gotten yourself as flat as a week's opened bottle of a pub's finest!" the older man said.

"I need your cart. Now. I have to get my family home. There's an emergency."

"Too bloody right, wanting to pinch it, are you, what do ye take us for, fools? Not on your life, you crazed Yank."

Ed reached in his pocket and drew out everything he had in his wallet, tapped it, and waited. Their eyes took on the dimensions of Ed's monogrammed golf balls.

"All right then, why didn't you say so, you know how to drive one of these babies, do you?" the man said, as he and his somewhat inebriated comrade got out. Ed could practically read the label on his breath. He signaled to Claire and the others, got them aboard with his golf bag, and took the controls.

"Hey what about us, then? It's a long way back to the club, Yank."

"You two look virile enough to run the entire way," Ed lied, winning their smug agreement, and started up the motor, and zipped off, with Claire bouncing and saying something about how she now was sorry for complaining how far he had made them walk, when how he drove them was a lot more painful. Millie held on for dear life, Anne in Ed's lap just giggled excitedly.

A quick look told Ed that the bird had stayed long enough to make sure Ed continued, and then flew off at a speed Ed was sure that his school days had taught him that birds couldn't clock in.

He was going home because of a bird. A damn tame bird. The Audubon society would probably name a cuckoo after him now.

Maybe Millie was right. Maybe he did need medical leave. How the hell was he going to explain to Alec what he didn't fully understand himself?

Yet deep in him, that instinctive knack for hunches which had saved him more than once, told him no. He wasn't insane, it was the voice of instinct. And it didn't sound like Bill Murray, Ed thought.

Pity about not sinking that last ball with the satisifying plop sound at the ninth hole that was as good as that first mouthful of Frances' home made gooey chocolate brownies, he thought further. It was turning out to be the best nine holes of my life.

Following the bird might turn out to be a wild goose, no, bird chase, but of the two fantasies, Straker as a golf pro or friend of rescue bird, the bird one was by far the more believable.

But winning the last hole would have been so sweet. Or tweet.

Ed grinned briefly, making Claire suspicious. Then his mouth pulled into the determined line she knew so well, and with one hand on the steering wheel, he pulled out his mobile phone and handed it to her meaningfully.

"Call Silkwood Manor," he said.

* * *

All of them were following the bellhop to the car like beads on a string, when Ed turned in mid-stride, stopped his contented humming of some Beatle tune he never remembered the words to, (something about bathroom windows?) and noticed Claire was gone. The inevitable frown made its acquaintance with him again, and he put his arm a little closer around Anne. He'd enjoyed himself, a state of mind so foreign to him that he half expected to have to take boring travel slides to show Alec and suffer culture shock, and now this. Claire not being there brought his thoughts sharply back to the fact that he'd foolishly chosen not to be accompanied by a guard.

Out in the open car park, fired from a concealed niche, possibly well up in one of the numerous trees, one well-placed bullet would have ridden the world of Ed Straker. That was a risk he'd been willing to take from the moment he sat in the chair in his office for the first time. In his darkest moments, and with Alec pounding questions at him like waves pounding the seashore, he'd come close to admitting that maybe a bullet sometimes sounded pretty damn good. Pretty damn good, when you thought about it, he thought. When everything came to haunt you in the middle of the night, when your only companions to make small talk with were guilt, fear, conscience, and grief.

Grief. Dear God, it swallowed you whole, and unlike Jonah's whale, never spit you out. But Claire? Anne? Millicent? God, Claire, he thought. He had a chilling vision of him being the reason for possibly seeing Claire's bloodied, bent body, and his world skewed like a Picasso. He took a deep, relieved breath of the warm autumn air, and expelled it, when he saw her hurrying up to him. Shado security was already on his back about he and Alec living in the same place, no matter how much Silkwood Manor's security made Fort Knox seem like it was built from gingerbread, and guarded by a marzipan man. It was a bit like the heirs to the king's throne sharing the same gilded carriage on walkabout (wheelabout?) and the commission didn't appreciate it. But then they could win the lottery and complain the bank didn't open until Monday.

Always the same damnable reminders that he wasn't John Average, with his wife, and adopted daughter, and family friend, away for a relaxing weekend. Alec would be coming back soon, and Ed decided that the heated lecture he was in for was well deserved. However intoxicating the holiday was, now he needed to turn sober and clean. For a few horrible moments he believed his rare, enforced (God that conniving Nichols, and he hadn't seen it coming, that in itself meant she was right) break with standard procedure had taken another, lost him a woman who was not only his wife, (God, eight years, had it really been eight years?) but his friend. He told himself with an underlying sadness that he needed to be alert. The idyllic scene was an illusion. Somewhere on the map of life there were alien dragons, and he'd seen more victims of those beasts than he could ever count with any accuracy. Mutilated bodies. Men. Women. Children. Even animals, when the interstellar bastards couldn't get anything else. He remembered a case when it appeared they'd mindlessly experimented with using animal organs, first in humans. He'd seen the results, the bodies of civilians. One young man, half alive, half dead, begging him for death - my merciful bullet through his heart, no, he couldn't think of it. Memories seared unwanted into his consciousness like a branding iron. With the warmth of both his daughter's innocent smile (an innocence he would never have again) and the sunshine enchanting him, it took an effort to snap back. He took his now steely cerulean blue eyes away from his daughter's powder blue ones, and looked into Claire's mocha ones.

"Claire." he said in reluctant reprimand as she gave a delighted Anne a little bag.

"I know, I know. But I had to get you something in the shop before we went home. I went and got everyone some candy and Anne one of those little travel puzzles for the ride home, and I saw it."

"We should be going, we have quite a drive ahead of us." he replied, but he smiled a hair's breadth. He couldn't help it. She was a lot like the season, all tans, and browns and greens, full of peacefulness and warmth, but latent with the promise of winter, ready to be somber at a moment's notice. She took something shiny out of her goodie bag and pinned it onto his brown cord jacket lapel. He chuckled. It was a little silver cup shaped tie pin with best golfer etched on it. Millicent snickered behind him as he leaned forward and kissed Claire, and tapped it as if the award was nothing less than his due. Of course, he thought, the swans might have asked for a recount.

"No comments from the peanut gallery, Nichols." he said, handsomely tipping the bellboy when he'd finished putting the luggage and Ed's golf bags (the game of a lifetime, the crowd on its feet ) into the car for them, and getting double change in a toothy grin. "Okay, all aboard the Straker express. This is your conduct-"

He harumphed, smiled, and went on driving. After a while, he started humming that damn tune he could never recall the words to. One of McCartney's. Or was it the other fellow? He guided the Range Rover into a tight turn, headed in the direction of the Cotwolds and nearer home. Home. The most beautiful word in the English language, Ed believed, sneaking a look at all of them. Home.

He finally had a home.

* * *

Unnoticed, overhead the bird circled in satisfaction as Ed did so, and then dashed away with that uncanny speed as if called to an appointment. And elsewhere, Lord Peregrine, in a mood as bright as the daisy in his knitted Fair Isle vest buttonhole, steadily made his way through a damp corridor, making footprints with his brogues, and dots with his cane tip in dust that hadn't been touched in over forty years. He was wearing his gold cufflinks with P.S. on them, (Hugh always did say I was an unnecessary postscript, he thought merrily) walking slowly but steadily, singing a Beatles tune, surprisingly on key.

. . . She came in through the bathroom window, protected by a silver spoon, but now she sucks her thumb and wanders by the banks of her own lagoon . . .

"Ed, can I have a word, please?"

Ed was slamming the car door closed after finally getting home, now he nodded over at his senior gardener. For as long as he had originally inherited the manor and surrounding property, he'd had his mother's gardener, Geoffrey, but the old man had passed on, leaving the business to his son, who now stood in front of him, scowling. Ed tried to remember, had he forgotten to pay him or something? The younger man was usually cheerful, but was far from it now.

"I'll be right with you, sweetheart," Ed called to Claire, and she nodded and went off with Ann, Millie, and a stunned Julia, all set to the theme music of Molly's excited barking. Ed felt something was missing, and he realised the construction people had deserted their posts. The silence was certainly blessed, but something didn't seem right. He'd passed his father's Rolls Royce in the driveway, and made up his mind to ask him if he knew why. He'd seen Angel's battered sedan too, so no doubt Frances would be relieved Angel was home. If this kept up, he'd have to get the building staff to extend the car park area. His garage was already full.

"What's wrong Geoffrey?"

"I'll tell you what's wrong. I quit."

Ed was genuinely startled as the man strode off.

"Tell me why, for heaven's sake-" Ed protested.

Any reply the gardener would have made was lost in an ear numbing assault of noise, as the security alarms went off. Ed made his way back to the car in a huddled dash, and opened the car door. He pulled his Glock from the glove box.

"Ed, you shouldn't be out in the open-" someone was insisting, and Ed was doing his usual expert act of ignoring sound advice. Then suddenly all the air was knocked from his body, and Ed felt himself be slammed down into the mass of flowerbed that circled the gravel car park. He spit out grass, plus the last remains of a pansy, and began fighting with everything in him, until he heard the assailant's voice.

"Will you cut it out? It's me, for Christ's sake." Alec said, sounding pleased to be holding Ed down. Well, only just, thought Alec. Ed wasn't the type that stayed down for long.

"Get the hell off me, damn it! Silkwood may be under attack!"

"Right, and that's why you were standing in the middle of the yard, advertising yourself like some beauty queen for a head or heart shot, you idiot."

"Why didn't you stay in Hawaii and out of my hair? I have to get to the house, Claire-"

"Come on, I'll cover you, and don't worry, Mir is already inside by now, getting everyone in the safe room."

"Alec, you're a fat Australian pain in the arse. If you broke one of my bones, consider yourself sacked." Ed said, sounding glad Alec was there. He retrieved his dropped Glock.

"Fine, just get up and come with me to safety and you can give me sevrence pay. Why are you limping?"

"Why am I limping? Because I think you sprained my ankle, you overzealous idiot of a male amazon. Any idea of what's going on?"

"Clueless as you all your life." Alec said, grinning happily as Ed hobbled painfully toward the house, and shot Alec a look as hard as the Cotswold stone.

"Oh shut up and get me inside. How long have you been here? I don't see your car."

"Outside the gates you love so much. Mir and I heard the perimeter alarms go off, and didn't bother with asking nicely to be let in, we climbed over like crazed monkeys, and the first thing I see is you, looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights."

"Rabbits don't carry automatic Glocks full of 9 millimeter slugs, Alec, I think I have a slight advantage there." Ed said, tightening his grip on the butt of his gun as Alec got him into the house just in time to see the steel slats rise up on the windows in the Great Hall, again allowing the afternoon sun in. Daniel was standing there, being ignored by Mir, who was in turn fighting off an unhappy Claire. She'd been prevented from going and searching for her husband. Mir let her go, kissed Alec on the cheek as an reward for a job well done.

"Edward, oh thank God he found you. Why are you limping? Oh God, I'll get my medical bag."

"I'm limping because this wildebeest fed me a mouthful of wildflowers by tossing me down to the ground, and injured my leg doing it. Report." Ed said, forgetting for the moment she was his wife.

"Area is clear, they found an intruder out in the garden, near the pond. We're safe, Edward. Haversham has him. Ian is scared out of his wits in the safe room with Millie and your daughter. You can go interrogate the bad guy later, I want to look at that ankle before it swells too badly." "I have other plans. Where is he? How the hell did he get on my property without the cameras picking him up? I want to see him. Now."

"Your security team has him in the library," Mir informed him, looking like a woman who had found a priceless diamond on her doorstep. Alec grinned at her. She was having way too much fun. Hell, he was having way too much fun.

"Good," Ed said briskly, and hobbled in that direction, bringing a rolling of the eyes from Claire, who marched alongside him. Alec shrugged, looking innocent.

"Ed," Daniel said.

"Not now, Dad," Ed said coldly, without sparing him a look back. Angel came out of the library, looking shaken. "You okay, Stanley?" Ed asked, formally using his friend's Christian name in his present Shado mode.

"Not at all hurt, Q-tip, son, God is good. I'm afraid I was napping in the library, Frances went off to some rose growers meeting or something after she nagged and fed me. Alarms woke me and the bunnies up, I'm afraid they made a hole or two in my garments while I napped, the cunning little critters. Good to see you, Alec."

"You too. Just like old times, huh? Jump into the fox hole until the all-clear." Alec chuckled. Angel grinned, still brushing off his cassock.

"You have your wars mixed up, but yes, it was a bit of fun, wasn't it." the cleric chuckled.

Ed nodded his approval, and flanked by excited rabbits, he entered the library like Moses bringing the ten commandments to God's chosen, or so Angel mused, as he followed him in, curious to see who would have tampered with the peace of Q-tip's home.

"Who are you?" Ed Straker said, his voice like volcanic lava. The elderly man had been sipping at a glass of water, with a blood- thirsty looking senior security guard behind him, brandishing a rifle. He looked up, and stared. He sank back against the wing chair he'd been seated in. Judging by how his clothes, which fit him poorly, were rumpled, Ed guessed he'd been searched and his belongings searched as well. His cane and his wristwatch and a ring with some sort of crest on it were on the table in front of him.

"No weapons, Sir, and the items register neutral," the guard said. He seemed more agitated than his prisoner.

"He just showed up suddenly, looking into the pond water, just suddenly was there. I swear it, Sir."

"You can leave now, Haversham. I'll want a full report by this evening." Ed nodded. The guard, who was ex-Shado, and had a personal friendship with Ed, obeyed.

"Bless your heart! Bless your heart!" Peregrine muttered, looking fondly at Ed.

"I asked you a question. You had better answer it. Or by God, I'll beat the answer out of you myself!" Ed seethed. Claire opened her mouth, and then shut it. The frail man in the fair isle vest and tweed trousers, dusty brogues and dotted bow tie didn't exactly look like a terrorist to her. He looked more like someone's favourite great-grandfather. But when Edward was angry, and from his posture and expression, in pain, it wasn't the time to try and talk sense into her husband, she knew.

"You have your mother Rosemary's temper. Mercy me, you're so much like her. So much. You're as handsome a man as she was beautiful a woman. So many years ago. So many. You have no idea how much of a pleasure it is, to see that I was right. So many years, and yet you could easily pass for forty in a good light. Edward Straker, as I live and breathe. I must paint you again. I must. Watercolour, I think." the man was saying, awed.

"Watercolor? You paint?" Miriam said in astonishment. Ed gave her a look as if he'd like to do something fatal to her with a pallet knife for fraternizing with the enemy, and she shut up quickly.

"From time to time yes." the man smiled. "I am Peregrine Falcon. My friends call me Perry. My full name is Lord Peregrine Falcon Sherring, but Valiant thinks my title far too stuffy." he chuckled. "Valiant is my live-in stray cat."

"Good Lord! Lord Sherring, I didn't recognize you, dressed casually like that. Q-tip, I know this man, he wouldn't hurt a soul." Angel exclaimed.

"Sherring?" a voice growled. Ed swiveled to see his Dad pop up out of nowhere like a deraged jack-in-the box, and scowled.

"Oh dear. You'd be the elder Straker," Perry said. "I'm afraid he is the one who threatened me on the telephone yesterday." Daniel lunged toward Perry, and Ed caught him, hard, surprising the father with the strength hidden in his son's frail frame.

"That filthy son of a bitch cheated me out of the castle! Why do you think he is here? Probably to do the same thing to you, Ed! Haven't you got a brain in your head? I'll tear him apart!"

"That's enough, Dad. Miriam, take my father into the kitchen and give him something to drink. Cool his head off."

"ED!" Daniel yelled.

"That's ENOUGH," Ed said, not needing to even raise his voice as his father had done. Mir deftly pulled Daniel out of there, with Angel following, plucking rabbit fur off his surplice as the bunnies hopped affectionately around his feet. Alec watched her for a moment and then looked at Ed.

"Why do you always handle him with kid gloves? I would have punched him in the nose to shut him up." Alec remarked.

"That's why I chose your wife to handle it, and not you." Ed limped, suddenly weary, over to a chair across from Perry, and Perry looked on, worried.

"You must allow your wife to look after that leg, Edward," Perry commented gently.

"Who are you, why do you claim to have known my mother, and how did you get here? I'm not a patient man, so I advise you to tell me fast."

"Stanley will vouch for me, I have contributed to Saint Stephens, even attended church there now and again when I am in London, although I live in Stroud at Sherring House. I am Lord Sherring. I sometimes use my mother's maiden name of Silkwood. I helped build this very place you live in, Edward. I know every nook and cranny of it, like every wing and feather on my birds. I sit in the house of lords, I inherited my title from my rather unreliable late elder brother when he died, and chose to be a life peer, being labour as I most certainly am. I was born Peregrine Falcon Silkwood, as my dear mother loved the birds and trees that occupy Westonbirt arboretum. I rented this place to your own mother and to Lawrence Malone, and I allowed her to buy it, when I saw how much she loved it. Silkwood is very special, Edward. I grew old here. Are you aware of how much history is in each stone and brick and nail of this place? It was a Gilbertine abbey once, and I had it rebuilt to suit me. I didn't know coming here on foot through one of the three underground tunnels would cause so much commotion. I was glad to see you are having the pond taken care of, perhaps you know of the wells also. I'm afraid that her American Larry Malone made crude changes to everything when your mother died. I was so sorry to hear of her passing. You moved in about nine or ten years ago, isn't that correct? You must have been quite stunned to see the painting I did of you." Perry smiled.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Alec, get on the telephone and see if his story checks out. There was nothing in Lawrence's will that indicated this place was a monastery once, he told me almost nothing about it."

"It should have gone to you as soon as Rose died, Edward. It was her home. Not his. I daresay he saw it as a property, nothing more. The way your unfortunate father-" Perry winced suddenly and looked around him for a moment. "The way your father saw Castle Sherring, my family seat. I gave her to England, not to him. That man who claimed to sell it to him stole my papers and several other things when he worked briefly for me as a bricklayer. He is an odious con artist, and what he did to your father is most unpleasant, but not at all attributed to me." Perry said, as Alec punched numbers into the library telephone, and had conversations with various people.

"If it means anything to you, I believe you," Claire said.

Perry smiled at her. "You have a gentle heart, I see. Do you think I could have some tea?"

"That's up to my husband," she answered reluctantly.

"Tea is all right," Ed said. "I could use some coffee myself. Let's take it in the new conservatory I had built, and get some more questions answered."

"I shall answer all your questions, provided you do something for me in return." Perry said calmly.

"Now look here, Lord so-and-so, you're an intruder as far as I am concerned, and in no position to bargain with me for anything!" Ed snapped.

Claire winced.

Perry was not put off. "You sit and allow your wife to look at your leg. Heavens, Edward, why go about in pain to atone for some sin you think you've committed that doesn't exist? Now I understand perfectly, no man wants the sanctity of his house invaded by anything on two feet, and you're unsettled by it. Silkwood is safer than you know. This place is a place of magic. Now have yourself looked after. Even sparrows know when to rest. You have been driving a long time. The birds tell me these things. Birds tell us everything. All animals do. It is merely sitting and listening to them that makes us wise. I have great admiration for Mr. Freeman there, looking after you as he does."

"Finally someone appreciates me," Alec said, hanging up the telephone, and looking meaningfully at Ed. Mir bit down a grin.

"Well?" Ed barked.

"He's who he says he is, Ed. I'm having Ford do a double check, but our acquaintances at Number 10 Downing street assured me that he is Lord Sherring, member of the Royal Society for the Protection of birds, and a known member of the local aristocracy, albeit one of the many with a rather dotty reputation. Seems he is the local Dr. Dolittle when it comes to animals, especially wildlife around here."

"Believe me, some people in Parliament, especially the conservatives, could learn a great deal from a raven or a sparrow, Alec." Perry winked at him. Alec chuckled, found himself liking the old man in spite of himself.

"Fine, fine." Ed stood up too quickly, and instantly regretted it, letting out a cry that surprised even him.

Claire went into commando mode, and pushed him back down into his chair. Perry raised an eyebrow inquisitively.

"Damn it, Edward," Claire growled like a bed might squeak, fighting tears.

"Damn it, Claire," Ed growled, like a wounded animal might.

"I swear to God, Alec, sit on him if he as much moves."

"It'll be a pleasure." Alec said, standing with folded arms above Ed in a menacing fashion. Was that fear Alec saw in Ed's eyes? Alec grinned.

"I'm going to get my bag, I'll be right back." Claire trotted off.

"Beautiful woman, your wife. Sending her and Mr. Alec here to an early grave, are you? Rose would say some things about you never changed, and she'd be right."

"Sending me to an early grave," Ed muttered softly, eyes distant with memory.

"Rose said that to you. When you were disobedient. When you'd get fever, but would refuse to stay in bed, and as a result would get even more unwell. She told me many stories of you. Of your accomplishments at Yale, of your ambitions to fly, of how she yearned to see you again when you left for war."

"I wish with all my heart that I could see her again." Ed said suddenly, and then, acutely aware he had let his guard down, he leaned forward and picked up Perry's belongings, and passed them to Perry. Perry accepted them, but as Ed moved his hand away, Perry suddenly caught it, and held it in his own bony one. Ed looked startled, blinked several times, and then pulled away. It all happened too quickly for Alec to stop it, and he cursed himself for trusting the man too easily.

"Ed, are you all right?"

"Yeah, ankle throbs like hell, but I'm fine."

"What did you just do to him?"

"Rose told me if I ever saw him before she did, to give him her love, and I just did. I wouldn't hurt him either, Alec. He is as precious to me as he is to you. She couldn't have sent him anyone finer to look after him than you. The Lord taketh away, and then he giveth."

"If you think his mother sent me to that bed he was wasting away in when I went to Thailand to see my own mate, you're more daft than you have a reputation for being."

"Did you ever think that you're his guardian faerie?" Perry said earnestly. Ed chuckled at the consternation in Alec's expression, he couldn't help it. Then all three men were frozen by a far off scream, followed by sobbing. Ed sprang up, his agony forgotten, and Alec followed him out. Perry, for the moment forgotten, grabbed his walking cane and went after them at a steady if slow pace. All the commotion was taking place outside, they soon found. Anne was sobbing, and Daniel was staring at her.

"Anne, sweetheart what's wrong?" Ed said, crouching down and holding her.

"Birdie! He killed our pretty birdie!"

"What?" Ed said, not understanding.

"Oh for pete's sake, Ed, she got riled up over nothing. Some damn bird was pestering me, and I picked up a rubber band from the construction plans your so-called expert crew had lying around, they quit today, you know, just walked off, wouldn't listen to me, anyway, I killed the damn thing with a makeshift slingshot. Probably had rabies or something." Daniel said. "Kid doesn't understand rabies and started screaming."

"You bastard. That bird was out on the course with us this morning." Claire seethed, bending in tears over something still in the grass. "It was tame, it landed on Edward's club, and was communicating with him." Ed stood up and went over. A shiver went through him. It was unmistakably the same bird. He gently touched its breast, but it was already stiffening with cold.

He rose, and confronted Daniel.

"You killed it in front of Anne?" he asked quietly.

"I didn't ask for her to see it, how was I supposed to know she was playing outside?"

"Anne, tell me what happened."

"I told him it was our birdie! Ours! And it didn't like him for what he did to the flowers! And he killed it."

"Ed, if you're going to raise that kid, you better teach her mann-" Ed drew back and slapped Daniel across the face, his eyes blazing. Alec had to make a giant effort not to cheer, but the sharp crack of Ed's hand across his father's cheek had sounded like music and tasted sweeter than whiskey. Daniel looked like he'd been struck by a lorry, not his son. Come to think of it, Ed was as tough as one.

"Ed, if you hadn't done that, I was going to," Millie said. Ed looked back at her. He'd never seen her angry. Now he had. Ed turned back to Anne and hugged her, allowing her to cry against him, stroking her back, acutely aware that she had seen far too much for a child's eyes to ever see. First her own mother being murdered. Now a helpless bird.

"I'm sorry, honey. I really am."

"I know Daddy. I know," Anne said, in a touching effort to be brave for him, he knew. He let her go, and smoothed her hair down lovingly. Claire came over, gave Daniel a poisonous look, and led Anne away, comforting her, sensing Ed wasn't through with his father. Millie followed her. Angel came toddling out to see what had happened, his tea cup still in his hand.

"Give the creature to me," Perry said suddenly.

Ed looked up at Perry.

"It's gone."

"Nothing in life is ever gone, Edward. Especially not the people and things we love. Give her to me."

Something in Perry's face caused Ed to gently cup the bird's body in both hands and place it in Perry's. Blood caked the monstrous wound Daniel's stone had caused. Perry disappeared into the house with it. Ed watched him go. Without turning around, Ed addressed his father. "I think you better leave Dad. I don't know what you did here, but somehow I suspect you are why my gardener up and quit, and why my construction employees are not here either, and at the moment I am tired and not in the mood for your excuses. So just go. And if you threaten Lord Sherring again, I'll be the first one to recommend he put you in jail."

"Ed, you've always been headstrong, but listen to me," Daniel protested.

"Wait, what do you mean the construction people are gone? Q-tip what are you talking about?"

"They left, Angel. The work was almost done, but they left."

"But this morning I was talking with them, and they were all as cheerful as larks, and strong as bulls, joking about pinching Molly as their mascot. I was tired in mind and spirit when I drove back here after a parishioner of mine died last night, and after I fed the rabbits for Cupcake, Daniel said that he'd supervise the workers for me. I took over for Frances, who was doing it when I came. She said that they were doing a fine job, that everything looked wonderful, but she had to go. So I told her I was fine, I'd put off my nap until you came home. Your father came and said to nap, that he'd take over, what in God's hallowed name happened after I fell asleep in the library?"

"Don't worry about it Angel," Alec said.

"I gave Frances my word that nothing would go wrong. My word is my bond, Alec."

"Angel, everything's fine, I will handle it," Ed said, half turning toward him. He narrowed his eyes, seeing something past Angel. Claire came out with her kit.

"Edward, come in, let me look at your leg. Anne's upstairs, a bit quieter now, looking after the bunnies so that Daniel doesn't hurt them too, she told me. And Perry took the bird in, to see if he could help it. Poor fellow doesn't quite realize it's dead, I guess. Poor little thing, somehow it followed us all the way here."

"What?" Alec asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, Alec," Ed said distractedly, and then started walking past them, toward the garden area at the back of the manor to see what Daniel had done.

"Damn that man, he shouldn't be walking on that leg! Alec, did you have to jump on him that hard? You're as bad as he is!" Claire complained. Angel, still a little upset and bewildered, chuckled at her.

"Hey, is that the thanks I get for saving his worthless neck and coming all the way out here because Mir thought something was wrong when I could be getting a suntan?" Alec complained. Mir chuckled at him. None of them saw Daniel follow them, with a desperate look on his face.

"He's full of it, Claire, he hated Hawaii. But wait until you see what he brough-" Mir was saying.

"MY GOD MY GOD MY GOD" Ed yelled. They all went white and ran to locate Ed. He was on his knees, clearly in shock. He was kneeling in the little alcove where he often sat to relax and read and sometimes have lunch, among the lavender bushes and other flowers that his mother had planted, on his favourite antique scrolled iron and wood bench. Right in the midst of the vast garden. His favourite place to feed the squirrels. Only now, the bench was rubble. Crushed and flattened beyond recognition, reduced to a bent hunk of iron and ruined wood. The bushes had been ripped out, the flowers had been crushed. The wooden arch was destroyed. Flowers as far as the eye could see were smashed, and in many cases uprooted. Flat, dull stones had partially replaced the once gorgeous flowers, bright azalea, pansies, roses, bluebells hyacinth and his mother's cherished lavender. Yew bushes were flattened. Hunks of earth were scattered about. An oak tree that had once let sunlight filter through its branches, now had several branches sawn off. The entire garden looked like a rape victim.

"What the hell did you do?" Angel said angrily. "You loathsome piece of excrement, what the hell did you do this to Q-tip, your own son for?"

"Do what? I did him a favour. This place was overrun, it's ancient, it needed moder-"

"You ordered this. That's why Geoffrey left. He must have found this, making his rounds. You ordered this, my God, you ordered this. Why did the construction team leave, Dad? How did you manage to get them-" Ed's voice broke, and he looked away, shut his eyes, praying that maybe when he opened them, the destruction might not be there. He got up with Claire's help, and he opened his eyes. It was there. It had felt like losing her all over again, seeing her favourite spot gone. He looked at his father with all the hatred that welled up in his soul. "I should take my hands and squeeze the life out of you, you bastard. You did this. Why, Dad? Why? Because you lost something, and couldn't stand to see anyone else have anything? Were you trying to make some kind of a point? Do you hate me that much? Do you still see mother in me?" Ed rose shakily, with a stunned Claire's help. Mir found her voice now, and stared at the offender.

"To get back at her, isn't it, Danny? All you talked about was finding your son, the one that was rightfully yours. And so you do. But it wasn't enough for you. You still hated the part of him that was Rosemary, because she was your brother's wife and not yours. And when Malone and Rosemary sent you away, wouldn't tell you about Ed, and when later Malone refused to tell you what hospital Ed was in, you vowed to get even. And now you have. You've destroyed Ed in the process. You make me sick, and whatever you have coming to you, you deserve." Miriam said, and turned around and left, not wanting them to see her cry.

"She cared about you, Daniel Straker. She's probably the only one in the whole world that still did, besides Ed. But now, you haven't got anyone. I hope you're satisfied," Alec said.

"No, damn it no, the construction people did this, and I told them to go! I didn't know how to tell you-"

"God damn you, they had specific orders never to come anywhere near this garden, and to the man, they agreed. What did you tell them, Dad? That you were in charge? Did it feel good, was it a thrill to go over my head, Dad?"

"No, I'm telling you-"

"He's lying, Mr. Straker."

Ed turned to see Geoffrey.

"Tell me," Ed said quietly, glad for truth at last.

"I was late in getting here this morning, my lorry broke down, so I took a taxi in. They were in the middle of it, when I came and was horrified by what you'd done. They told me it was on your orders, that your father had said you were tired of it, that it was trite and old fashioned, and that you'd changed your mind, according to him, about the rule not to touch it. I told them all to leave for ever doing something as drastic as that without first confirming it with you. I'm afraid I lost my temper, but my father has looked after this property's garden for years, every leaf, every tree, every flower, and that foul bastard of a man-" he pointed straight at Daniel, "did this. When I confronted him with it, he said you'd ordered it. But I was foolish, Sir. I was so despondent about it that I started to believe it. So I quit. I should have told you. I should have known you'd have respect for this place. My anger got the best of me, and made me forget. My father said that you looked after him well when your mother died, and that you provided anything he needed, that you respected this land. I'm sorry. Look at me, crying like a schoolboy, I haven't cried this much since father died. How can I make it up to you, sir? I came back, because I felt I couldn't go without telling you off, and now I see you were innocent of the whole business. How can I make it up to you, sir? My father is turning in his grave because of this."

"Geoffrey, will you stay on? And help me put it right?"

"Yes thank you, sir, God bless you, sir. You just watch, it'll be good as new." With that, the young man hurried away.

"You disgusting little-" Angel said, and flung his tea full in Daniel's face, just as Miriam and Millie were coming back out. Millie gawked at the sight, having been told by a crying Mir what had happened. She took a long look at Ed, and knew instantly that he was damaged emotionally just as bad as the garden was damaged. All her work for nothing.

"How dare you!" Daniel cried, enraged.

"Filthy common beggar. This is my doing, you've made me hurt Q- tip. I trusted you, and went to sleep grooming the rabbits, when I should have kept my promise to my wife, and made sure the construction people did Silkwood up proper. You tricked me, and no man does that to Stanley Mitchell Brisby without paying the price. Defend yourself sir. I'm going to teach you a lesson you won't soon forget."

"That's preposterous!" laughed Daniel.

"Angel," Ed said softly. "He isn't worth it."

"He has a debt to repay me. I'm Australian, by almighty God. No one hurts the people we care for, tricks us and walks free." With that, the normally cheerful, peaceful cleric punched Daniel, a blow hard enough to knock him off his feet, and jumped on him, ready for more. Claire shut her eyes, then opened one, secretly cheering him on. Alec looked on, pleased as punch. Mir just grinned.

Millie put her hands on her hips, trying to look as though she disapproved, and failing. She noticed Ed did not stop it either.

Daniel and Angel were well into it, each punching the daylights out of one another, the cleric more than holding his own, despite his age and bouts with arthritis and being half Daniel's size. Adrenalin, anger and Angel was a nasty mix, Ed thought. Ed sighed, and bent and pulled an agitated Angel off a momentarily stunned Daniel. Daniel took a wild swing at Angel as Angel was lifted, and Angel naturally easily ducked it, being the veteran of many a pub fight. For the moment, he'd forgotten just who was peeling him off Daniel. As he ducked, Daniel's punch connected, hard.

On Ed's jaw.

Ed collapsed into a neat puddle of unconscious Commander, a steady trickle of blood coming from his mouth. Claire screamed, Millie gasped, Mir shrieked, Angel gulped, and Alec roared like he was a female dragon in labour. It took him all of five seconds to lift Daniel into the air, and throw him across the yard, into a bunch of uprooted lavender bushes, and pummel him like Alec was trying to compete with Mohammed Ali. Mir made a flying leap, and unsuccessfully pried her husband off Daniel, while a desperate Claire examined her own husband, and yelled at Alec, but he ignored her.

To add to the insanity, Frances Brisby walked in.

"What on earth happened here?" she wailed. Angel was beside Alec, telling him Daniel was his business.

"And what right do you have to beat his brains out?" Angel demanded.

"He hit ED!" Alec yelled like Angel was the stupidest man in the world for even asking.

"Alec, Alec, stop, before you kill him!" Mir screeched at Alec, trying to pull the bear of a husband off an unconscious Daniel when she would have loved to kill him herself.

"Killing him is what I bloody well planned to do," Alec yelled at her.

"ALEC! Edward's out cold, and I don't know how badly hurt he is! Bring my husband inside, NOW!" Claire said at the top of her lungs. That fact, that Ed was apparently napping peacefully, (if you overlooked the blood, which with its hard contrast to his fair skin was hard to do) but might be seriously hurt was finally what got through to Alec, and he came over, and gently carried Ed toward the house along with his guilt, with Claire looking on worriedly. Angel spit into Daniel's face, then got up, turned and looked into a stern Frances Brisby's eyes.

"Stanley Mitchell Brisby! I warned you about getting into these things like you are-"

"Frances, my dearest love, SHUT UP. And make us some tea. After this afternoon's hell, we're going to need it!" Frances was so shocked, she didn't even mention Angel's rapidly swelling and blackening right eye, or the rabbit fur on his now filthy surplice and cassock, and automatically walked with him to the manor, and headed straight for the teakettle.

* * *

Ed Straker's first thought at awakening was where the hell am I? His second was that the ceiling of the bedroom needed wiping. Some dustbunnies were having a business convention on the light fixture. No, they were having a convention in his head.

"Welcome back to the world, Mr. Straker." Claire said quietly. Ed fought back the nausea.

"Two questions. Three. Did my father knock me out, and did he actually tear up the grounds, and is Angel still alive?" Ed groaned, moving himself into a sitting position. For the first time he noticed Alec, leaning against a door, looking grim." I don't care what happened to my father." Ed added.

"Ed, there will be enough time for all that later. I'm afraid you got a phone call while you were knocked out."

"I'm waiting, Alec." Ed felt his chest become tight.

"Someone is filing court papers to take Anne away from you."

"He doesn't have a stick of butter's chance in hell to pull it off."

"Edward, he's gone and found himself a partner to dig up dirt to throw at you in the American tabloids. He had someone print up the account of your adultery as grounds for divorce, claiming you aren't fit to be a father."

Ed's heart sank. The press, whether a rag not worth the paper it was printed on, or a established source like The Times, could be both heaven to a man in his position, or a hell Dante never came close to defining.

"Claire, bigger people have tried to-" he began, eyes narrowing in defiance.

"Mary Rutland." Alec said, like issuing a curse.

Ed groaned loudly, and lie back on the pillow. He uttered a four letter word which he was rarely liberal with, and closed his eyes, his fingers drawn up to pinch the bridge of his nose. When he opened them, a glass of water and a tidy blue pill were being held out at him by his wife.

"Were you in the Boy Scouts or something? Always prepared?" He accepted both, swallowed them down, handed the empty glass back. His head and jaw were ringing like Big Ben at the hour and there was a dull stinging somewhere on his head. She poured him more chilled water.

"Ha ha. Very funny. How do you feel? Besides the migraine moving in, that is."

"For the first time I'm regretting I was born into a well-to-do Bostonian family. If I was born into the Mob, for instance, I wouldn't have this little problem called Mary Rutland. I'll say this for her, she doesn't give up easily." Ed looked around, got up, swung his lean legs from underneath the thermal blanket and stood on his feet, admiring his white cotton blend gown with the Mayland Hospital logo on it. Alec had to steady him as he got into a robe. He accepted the second glass of water and sipped it gratefully, trying to collect his thoughts. There was a light tap on the door, and then it opened, letting in the every day clatter of hospital going about its business. Captain Keith Ford exposed his face two seconds later, reminding Ed of a dog who had just relieved itself on his master's prized armchair, and was suddenly aware his cute little face and adorable little bark wasn't quite going to get him out of it this time. It didn't help that both Alec and Claire stared at the intruder with all the welcome they'd give Adolf Hitler.

"Sir, sorry to interrupt, but Carlin's found something, Sir. Some kind of phenomenon, and two UFO's. The incident containment team is out there now with the mobiles, I thought you'd want to be kept info-"

Ed had already put down the glass, and was getting clothes out of the wardrobe. Mayland was a second home to him. Claire sighed, feeling drained of life.

"Give me fifteen minutes to take a quick shower and get dressed, and then have my car brought around. I'll want maps to the area and a detailed, concise report on what you already have. Move, Ford. What are you waiting for? Christmas?"

"Yes, sir. I mean no, sir. I mean yes, sir, right away, then." Ford vanished.

"I guess the fact you have been unconscious with a severe conscussion for nearly a week, and missed our honeymoon, and took ten years off my life expectancy from worrying about you doesn't matter. You only started coming around this morning, by the grace of God escaped any swelling of the brain, which is what I feared most, and was stable enough to be taken off your I.V.'s You hit your head when you fell, Edward. It required three stitches. Now you're going to pop off in the field like some animated hero in anime when the bruising on your jaw isn't even healed. I swear, Edward, losing Anne won't matter, because you won't be around long enough to be her father anyway. Your brain will be mush if you're hurt again, and I'm beginning not to give a damn about you anymore Edward." Claire lied in a flat tone and walked toward the door.

Alec grimaced.

Ed, truly stung, called softly, "Claire."

Without turning around so that her tears would be concealed, and prefaced by a guilty sigh, she said, "I'm going to get some medical gear. I'll meet you at the car, Commander," she told him, placing mocking emphasis on that word, " If you're going to kill yourself, your wife might as well be there with you to hold your hand.."

Ed watched the door swing back in place as she left, a little more reassured, but his heart never seemed as empty as it did in that moment. He locked eyes with Alec, but Alec only slipped into the bathroom, condemning him without a word, and started the taps going for him. Ed sighed. He threw down a working outfit of jumper, jumpsuit, underwear and jacket, and stripped down to his skin, and got into the shower.

And ignored the fact that his guts were revolving like laundry in the spin dry cycle, and that his legs seemed to have forgotten what they were for and that if there was a contest for nausea, he'd be brandishing a loving cup.

However, when he emerged from the room, he appeared to be Commander Straker again.

Appeared being the defining word in the matter.

If Alec noticed that Ed was uncharacteristically twisting his wedding band, he didn't say anything to him regarding that tell-tale fact.

* * *

Peregrine Falcon was kneeling on a foam cushion, dressed in cords, an old shirt more suited to polishing silverware than to be sported by a Lord vain as he about appearance, (appearances at all costs! He chuckled to himself) and proper wellies, toiling in the middle of the afternoon, pulling weeds like the security of the United Kingdom depended on a neat row of azaleas. He had a portable radio nearby, listening to a play on Radio 4. The hero of the piece had just mucked about with his best friend's bride, and was off to amend his sins at war. Some historical piece or something, but it was company since he couldn't find any preferred Beatle tunes on the other channels. Valiant had been gone for more than a day, probably doing shameful things to the neighbourhood's more attractive female cats, and no doubt would be back when the rascal got hungry enough and meowed about his conquests between gulps of potted shrimp.

That morning, he'd called Mayland yet again, and had been relieved to find out that Rosemary's little boy was showing signs of awakening. God was good. Not that it had been the first time the wicked little thing had managed to collect bruises as though they were winter wildflowers. Not Edward Straker. Not from the stories Rosemary had told him. Children were so precarious! Now the fair boy had grown into a man, and was three times as prone to knock himself about. Perry chuckled. Something rushed back and forth, dashed over a low bush and made urgent squeals at him. Perry stopped, listened to the young fox, looked appalled and nodded.

"I'll go at once. Oh dear, this is the most miserable news, isn't it?"

The young animal dashed away, clearly no time for a response. The first raindrops descended on Perry as he got up stiffly, leaning on his stick for leverage, and by the time he was halfway to the house he was soaking wet. He'd gotten the key to the French doors out, and was calling to his butler, when he heard an awful cry, and it sounded alarmingly nearby. If a demon was losing his grip on a soul, and it had a voice, it would sound like that. Perry wasn't all that much a superstitious man, but he crossed himself. Harold was coming up, visible behind the door, with freshly ironed linen draped over his arm. He was turning the latch to let Lord Perry in. But Perry didn't see him. Something thrust itself through a hedge, bloodied, and losing its life, something barely recognizable and it caterwauled at its owner. Perry shakily crumbled down, down on his knees, looking at it, wanting with all his heart to turn away, and dispel the horror of his sight, but he kept looking, his hands moving slowly toward it. Harold saw the old man fall, and nearly took the door off it's hinges, much too easily, thinking the man was having a heart attack. Then there was a final, almost apologetic shriek, and the object Perry was now cradling jerked once, and lie still, still and cold, and lost.

"Oh Valiant. Valiant, old friend. I am so sorry. I am-" Perry bent over the dead cat, sobbing. The sight of it quite astonished Harold. Not knowing what to do, he looked down. And he saw the bit of bent wire that had been used to jimmy the French doors open. There were scratches all around the lock. Bloody amateur, hadn't even bothered to kick it aside, or perhaps it was a boast. How he had overlooked it, he didn't know. But how could this have happened? The security chap had been there that very morning to test the alarm system. Not the usual one, of course-but-oh damn all. He'd been fooled.

"Sir, I know how you felt about that animal, belonging to your late wife and all, but there's something far worse here, sir." Harold

"My wee little cat. My Valiant. Someone's poisoned him. I thought he'd been up to mischief, Harold. Why would anyone want to harm him?" Perry lowered the cat down as gently as if it had been his own son.

"Sir Perry, we need to ring the police straightaway. Your home's been broken into."

No Lord walked back into the stately home with his butler's help, only a bent and utterly destroyed, and lonely old man.

He'd quite forgotten, in the pain of his sorrow, to warn his friend Ed Straker not to enter the Between.

* * *

"We shouldn't be all that far from the area now, according to Ford's map." Ed said. Claire sat wrapped in silence next to him in the SHADO car, her medical kit at her feet. He waited for a moment. Nothing.

"So it's the silent treatment, is it? I'm used to the ploy by now. Mary used it frequently," he said icily.

Nothing.

"Damn it, Claire, you're my wife, talk to me."

"You want a conversation, Edward? Fine. Why don't I tell you how I spent my anniversary? Seven years married to you, and I had hoped we could go dining and dancing. I spent it studying films from the MRI I did of your skull. Wondering if your brain would swell from your injuries. Shining a light in your unseeing pupils. Wondering if you'd wake up, and if you did would you know me. Wondering how I could stay in a marriage much longer where my husband doesn't bother to look after himself."

"You asking for a divorce, Claire? Because I won't fight you if you are."

"Do you think that is what this is about?"

"Isn't it? Or is it about beating up on me because you don't happen to like the way I do my job?"

"Did anything I said when we took our marriage vows sink into that brain of yours?"

"Anything you said? We've been driving for two damn hours and you didn't say a word to me!" he yelled at her.

"What am I supposed to say? Darling, go ahead, it's okay if you get your brains pummeled around? It's okay if you're unconscious for days and then when the duty bell rings you jump up mindlessly like a prizefighter with his senses dazed by all the times he went down?"

"What do you know about my being down, Claire? What do you care? I was an idiot to think that finally I had found someone to share my heart with. You'll just walk away. You're just another of my victims, my magnificent failures at having a marriage. At having a damn wife who understands-who under-" his voice trickled into a matching silence. "So walk if you want to. Go ahead."

She sighed, and laid her hand on his shoulder for a moment.

"Edward. You're so sure this is the end that you've buried us already. All I'm asking is that you try to take care of yourself. I'm not asking you to walk away from what's inside you. I'm just asking you to pay attention to what you have, and might lose, if you aren't careful. I understand what this means to you. I'm just asking you to understand that I'm terrified of not waking up next to you. And hell will freeze over before I ever agree to a divorce, so don't give me the crap about my being your victim. I'm not blind, Edward. I have two perfectly good brown eyes which work. I knew this marriage would be a challenge. I knew that all my life would be a question of do I kiss this jerk, or do I throttle him? Just don't expect me to let you off easy when you go skipping off to face danger. Don't expect me to call you a hero and applaud. To the rest of the world, you're the guy who stands between the aliens and all of us being sausage stuffing for their casings. To me, you're just the guy who can open the damn spaghetti sauce jar when it's too tight."

"You married me for that?"

"What else are you good for?"

"I'll tell after this is over. I'll show you. I promise." he said urgently.

"Yeah right, promises promises from the guy in the jumpsuit. I've heard them all."

He laughed softly, almost dizzy with relief.

"Claire?"

"I don't want to hear it."

"I love you."

"Deaf as well as stupid, huh? I told you I didn't want to hear it." she insisted, looking through the window as London sped by, tears in her eyes.

"Claire." he said, infinitely gently. She felt her heart go through a series of jumps like a circus pony.

"Now what do you want?"

"Don't ever leave me." he spat out, obviously brimming with emotion.

"Do you have to go and get serious on me?"

"I mean it. Promise me." His eyes turned away from the road for a flicker of a second to look at her.

"I promised you seven years ago, Straker. Marriage vows, it's called. Short term memory problems, huh? It's all the times you hit that damn he - EDWARD!" she screamed.

There was something in the road, no, hovering above it, a woman, body semi-transparent, lit from within with something more than moonlight. Then there was a hole. In space. It wasn't possible, but there it was, and it was filled with what looked like shimmering liquid and it threatened to swallow the car whole. Ed yanked the steering wheel sharply to the right, and the vehicle shot off-road and slammed into a tree. Ed was thrown against his body harness, and the force of it knocked his arms onto the steering wheel, activating his horn. Dazed, he turned to ask his wife if she had seen it too.

Slumped against the shattered side window, her dark hair clumped with blood, she was unable to answer. His screams for help were blotted out by the insistent din of the stuck car horn. Then something grasped him greedily, and he knew nothing else.

* * *

"Where the hell is Ed?" Alec asked almost two hours later, watching the SHADO teams run around like crazed foxes trying to elude hounds, going about the business of securing the incident site. "He wasn't supposed to be all that far behind me, damn it. Neither he nor Claire are answering their mobiles or the car phone. That man surpasses the odds of getting in trouble on a daily basis. FORD! Ford come here. Ford, where did you get your common sense? Out of a crisps packet as a bonus prize? The Commander was unconscious, and you could have at least given him some time to get back on his feet before you came running in there with that report."

"I was doing my duty, you know that, Sir. I was under orders from Captain Carlin. He thinks that this phenomenon is what was playing havoc with the Interceptor's electrical gear. If I hadn't have told Straker right away he would have had me shot."

"You're lucky I don't turn over your skinny arse to the aliens, Ford. Bugger duty. He was badly hurt." Alec said, looking at the unearthly fence of kaleidoscopic light that burst and snapped and crackled for at least a mile in either direction. The teams had uprooted three UFO's from a pit of bog, their alien pilots long dead, all equipment ransacked. It worried Alec. It gave Alec a first class headache. Headaches weren't his department. Headaches were Ed's department.

"Yes, sir. I was worried over him, Sir. After all he is the Commander, Sir." Ford looked like a snowman in an incinerator. Miriam smiled at him encouragingly. He didn't seem to notice.

"Yes, and probably now a dead one, since you just had to bring him out here. Are the teams done with clearing the UFO crash site?" Alec Freeman wondered, rubbing his hands together to warm them. Miriam handed him a coffee, but he shook his head and pulled a flask out of a pocket. He started to unscrew the top, but hesitated. On the bottle in Old English font was engraved to A.F. from S.O.B. It was a joke gift from Ed on one of Alec's birthdays inspired by the title which Alec often gave Straker during their arguments. Alec sighed, tightened the stopper, shoved it back in a pocket and took the coffee. "I'm fucking freezing out here. What do our lab boys say that thing is? Ford, quit standing there like a whipped whelp, and take a mobile out and find the Commander's car. Have his transponder signal activated. If Ed's gotten himself into trouble again, he's going to be in trouble with me. Move it, Keith!"

"But Sir, Commander Straker's orders, all the mobiles are designated for-"

"MOVE IT!"

Ford vanished like a rabbit headed for shelter in an magician's hat.

"He really was worried about Ed, babe." Mir scolded Alec.

"What are they saying this damn thing is? We're probably standing around here getting our cells fried by the radiation in that thing. We've cordoned off the local villagers, and we've managed to keep the police away, dotted the i's and crossed the t's, but that thing is probably warping our bodies. Damn alien playtoy. My Aussie balls are probably shriveling as we speak."

She grinned at him and took a sip of her own coffee before she answered. Even in the parkas and other cold weather gear, the steaming liquid didn't seem to be helping anyone much.

"Not according to the SHADO geeks. No radiation. Some kind of magnetic field. They haven't stopped doing tests on it, but my gut says this is what stopped the Interceptor attack on those flying saucers of yours, all three of them. Not pilot error. Ed is going to owe Carlin an apology."

"If Ed is still alive to apologize after being gone for two hours."

"He was with Claire, he can't get that skinny ass into much trouble with her." Mir tried to convince herself.

"Did you hear her in hospital? She was beginning to piss me off By the time they got into the car together they weren't talking to one another. I wasn't much help to him. I was too pissed at him risking his neck again, right after he'd been hurt."

"I wasn't there, babe. I came when you called me on the mobile. You told me they had a fight."

"Oh. Yeah. I forgot you were still at Silkwood."

"I was checking on Angel and Frances, and trying to find Daniel."

"Oh, believe me, I want to be the one to find Daniel. I got a call from Perry's butler on the way here. We exchanged phone numbers when he left. Someone poisoned his cat, and burgled Sherring House, and his butler thinks it was Danny who did it. Police just finally left the house, and Perry's beside himself with grief. What the hell got into that bastard, tearing up Ed's garden like a scene out of a Joan Crawford melodrama, and now killing off an old man's cat? I'm telling you, I sensed that man was a slimeball from the moment I laid eyes on him."

"Babe, he thinks he's lost everything. The garden just reminded him of Rosemary and her old man. Of Malone. Malone wouldn't let him see Rosemary. I didn't think Danny ever got to see Silk Wood, but before he left, he told me he had. He told me Malone brought him into the garden, they fought, and he threw him out. He felt lost. He's gone, and he promised not to come back."

"Lost? Do you know how devastated Ed is? The garden reminded him of his mother, more than anything else on that property did. So I suppose you're trying to tell me that if Danny couldn't have Rosemary, and couldn't get at Malone, that he got at the garden? Do you know how sick that is? How much of a nutter that makes him?"

"Babe, when my husband beat me, I lost the baby I was carrying. And nobody, nobody, not my own parents, would believe a word against him. Not him. He was the almighty fucking creator in their eyes. But nothing I ever did was ever good enough for him. I was his punching bag. I know what it's like to be desperate. It eats at you. It takes away everything good in you. It makes you crazy, babe."

"If you LET it, yes, Mir. Danny had everything. He had Ed back. Ed, like the Puritanical idiot that he is, gave him another chance. And Danny trashed it and the grounds. Upset Anne. Then he beat up Stanley. So any attempt on your part to make me understand why he'd pull out Ed's heart and then kill some damn cat is a waste of time. Ed can never make that garden whole again. Some of those plants were growing there for a longer time than Ed's been alive. Now it's all gone."

"I understand Danny. I don't agree with him. And I don't forgive a man twice. Come on. Let's go see if Ford's found out anything about Ed. I'm worried about Claire and that big stupid friend of yours myself."

* * *

What Keith Ford found was a smashed bronze SHADO car with a badly injured Claire Straker, who was rushed to hospital and Ed Straker gone missing. Alec had every spare man and woman looking for him. In the meantime, the SHADO scientists had continued to investigate the phenomenon. Then two weeks of sheer hell later, it died, like a fading ember in a fireplace. Gone, as bafflingly as it had appeared. They searched the woods for days. They didn't find a thing. Most alarmingly, Alec didn't find Ed Straker

Miriam Freeman knew that she couldn't ease Alec's pain during those days, in which Christmas came and went, and that cut her like a knife.

If they both had been able to intercept a conversation during that second hellish week in a small rented cottage in bath, Alec might have heard hated voices. But he'd not wanted to hear any voice other than Ed's. And when he listened for it, there was only a cold silence.

"You're doing the best you can, babe. You know what he's like. If there's any way out of trouble, he'll find it or blaze a path through it of his own. You know that."

"I know that I'm warming my rear end in a chair I'm not fit to sit in. Mir, what if we don't find him? What if the aliens took him? What if this is it? What if he finally ran out of luck?"

"You're not giving him enough credit. Now shut up. I'm getting you some breakfast. Where are you going?"

"To see how Claire is doing. That's where he'd want me to be," Alec said.

* * *

"Can you imagine Ed wanting to put a child through all that again, just for publicity. His partner shot his little girl named Kamala to death. Jack, I don't believe for a minute that she was threatening Ed's life. I think Alec had some sort of accident, maybe he was drunk, Ed covered for him, he would, Alec drinking, he's getting on in years now, he drinks heavily, you know, Alec always did, he often tried to get Ed to drink." Mary Straker was saying, while Alec was sitting miles away by the bedside of a sleeping Claire Straker at Mayland Hospital.

"What? Oh, yeah. "

"We can't let his lawyers stop us. They may have stopped my book, but they can't ignore his cheating on me. We need to give some statement to the press, Jack. We have to get Anne, we have to, if only to stop him from ruining her life like he did mine. He let his son die. He did. And up until my Dad passed away, left me with the house and all the bills, even my Dad didn't believe me when I used to tell him that."

Jack Newhall stared out the window of his rented cottage, trying to drown out his sorrows and the endless ranting of the blonde woman behind him. He shook the glass of whiskey he was holding, listened to the ice rattle. She was talking about accidents. All she ever did was talk. Jack, does this look good on me, Jack, you don't think I'm ugly, do you? Jack, they gossip about me, Jack, we should do this, Jack, they say this about me, Jack, they stare at me, they just think I wanted to make money with that book, they just don't understand what I went through with Ed. It was Ed this and Ed that. She was obsessed with him. She had moods like a woman with the curse, only hers never stopped. If he'd ever met a woman begging for an accident it was her. Well, she'd meet with one soon enough as soon as he got Anne, and the house and trust that came with her. A little accident. His brother had been a problem that way. His damn almighty pure brother, who got everything that was good in life. Well, when he had agreed to go on that fishing trip with him, for once he had gotten the longer stick, even if he had to cheat a little.

It had been surprisingly easy. Being with him secretly on the boat, overturning the extra petrol can to make sure of things, jumping overboard, and setting the boat on fire. Nobody had known he'd burnt his brother to a crisp. The insurance money had only gone so far to pay his gambling debts, and to keep him waist high in the kind of women that reminded him he was still a man, even if they did expect to be paid for the service. This woman next to him was dried up, like a brittle leaf, and full of herself. Their sex had been okay, nothing to write home to mother about, but plentiful. But she knew plenty of dirt, dirt on Straker, and that was what he needed. Had written a book on him, he owned one, read it cover to cover. Straker was a righteous, handsome bastard. Just like his brother. Maybe he could talk her into getting cash out of Straker if he didn't get Anne. He was always a silver tongued bastard, a charmer. He had charmed Mary Straker. Mary, the snake. Snake had a double tongue on her, but more importantly she was his meal ticket. He turned his attention back on her and feigned interest in what she was saying since she was paying for the cottage. Quaint little cottage. God, he hated England. It was so damned dainty. It made him want to purge himself.

" . . . thirty years ago, or was it forty, Ed never changes, he stays so handsome, he's gotten the odd crease, but look at me, I'm practically a wrinkly, it isn't like it is for men, men age so well. I'm thinking about botox, you know. I made a decent amount of money off the book before he took it away from me, before he ruined everything, that awful man Vale stabbing me, so awful. I have my legs and my breasts still, don't I, darling. Oh Jack, those horrible years after father dying, having to pay his bills, settling the estate. People whispering about me, saying I was just after Ed's money, he's terribly rich now, married to that American woman. Can you believe she made a scene in the bookstore like that?"

The telephone rang, and he was grateful for it as it shut up her endless complaining and whinging.

"Hello? Yes it is. How did you get this number What? Now look-we haven't violated-here? Well, I'll want my lawyer present. Money? Look, it's just like you to think you can buy Anne Newhall eight million pounds? Are you daft. No, no, don't hang up. I'll listen, but mind you, my lawyer will be here, you understand? All right, goodbye."

"Who was that?"

"Speak of the devil. Straker."

"Ed?" she said, bewildered. "How did he find us?"

"Had us followed. Clever bastard, your Straker. Harvey told me he would be."

"God, Jack, it's those damn military types of his, his pals, it frightens me, what if they have this place bugged already? I need a drink."

"Oh will you shut up for God's sake?"

"Jack, how can you talk that way to me?" she moaned.

"He offered us money. Money to forget about Anne, a lot of it."

"Why that arrogant bastard, if he thinks that I-"

"Eight million pounds."

"What?"

"He said no one knows where he is, that he went missing and he has the money in cash. He sold some stocks or something. He wants what is rightfully his. I have to get on the phone to Harvey, have him witness it. He wants us to sign Anne away to him."

"Jack, it's a trap, I know it is!"

"Bitch, will you listen to yourself? You've been telling me for months he uses money and power and prestige to get what he wants. He wants the girl. Why wouldn't this be on the up and up? You don't want your cut, that's fine with me. You can get out."

"Jack, stop it! You don't really care about the girl do you?"

"Oh come off it. Neither do you. Drink up, Mary. This is the answer to all our problems. Four million pounds each. " he shoved a glass into her hand and poured her a whisky, let the ice drop into it with the tongs. "He can have the damn kid. Who needs her trust now? Four million pounds."

"Four million!" she exclaimed, beginning to get excited. "Is he really coming here? I have to fix my hair! "

"You'd put out for him if he curled his finger, wouldn't you?" Jack said, hating her more. "If he wanted someone on the side besides that brunette of his."

"Oh don't be crude. I hate it when you're crude." Mary drank down the whiskey and vanished into the bedroom. Jack laughed and began dialing his lawyer.

* * *

"I'm sorry, I really am. I just don't remember too much about the accident. I know I was with him-"

"Ed." Alec told her, fighting his distaste and an urge to scream at her.

"Ed. The man you say is my husband. I'm sorry, I know you are worried about him. So am I, I'm worried about him too, Mr. Freeman. "

"Claire, please call me Alec. Look, I know this is difficult for you. The doctors said you have retrograde amnesia from your head trauma, that you might not remember anything for a while, that you might not remember anything ever. But please. Ed's been missing almost a month now. All we have to go on is what you remember. Please try to go back to that day."

"Alec, I told you. I was talking to him, I remember that, and then something scared me, and I had this awful pain, and then I woke up here. I really am sorry."

"You're sorry? Ed's gone, do you understand that?" Alec growled. Claire backed away, reacting to him and looking pleadingly at Mir.

"Alec," Mir warned, putting a restraining hand on Alec's shoulder, but he stepped away from her and bent over Claire in her bed.

"Think, damn you!" he demanded. Claire frowned.

"Alec, please. I don't remember. We were talking. He's got silver hair, his eyes were sad, he was worried about something. I was trying to comfort him, joking with him, I think. He was being so serious."

"You were talking about leaving him. You'd just had your seventh year of marriage with him, and you-"

"Seven years? But the photos you've showed me of him, he's a stranger. I feel something toward him, I don't know what it is. Protective maybe. I'm worried too. But I can't help you."

"You remembered the thing you saw. The phenomenon."

"I thought it was some kind of alien attack. Aliens. So strange. I remembered Shado. Millicent, Millie, she thinks it's because we may have been discussing it just before the accident. Your Ed is connected with it, isn't he? He got called away. He wanted me there."

"You were barely talking to him. Why the hell did you have to snap at him like that? We both know how he is. We both know how important this job is to him. You decided you had to have a row with him."

"Alec, I barely reme-"

"Well, you have nothing to worry about now, because if the aliens put that thing out there as a net to trap him in-" Alec said angrily, and then his mobile rang. "Freeman. Oh, Perry, it's you. No, nothing. Look, I can't talk to you now. I can't. Claire? Fine. She still doesn't remember much. Doesn't remember Ed. Look, I have to go now. No, I have to go now, I have no time to listen to your stories about fairies!" Alec flipped the mobile closed.

"Alec, maybe you should listen to him," Mir said.

"For heavens' sake Mir, he's still not over that cat of his. He never was quite right in the head. Kept telling me that Ed was trapped in that phenomenon, that it was a world between the worlds. Referred to it as the Between. Look, he's just a nutter. I like him, Mir, I just-"

"Alec, did you even bother to read the G6 Keith did on him?"

"Miriam, Ed is gone. Do you think I care about that old man right now? Sure I feel sorry for him and-"

"Alec, when he was a young man, he vanished for two years. Two years. Scotland Yard looked everywhere for him. Then one day, he just came back, without explanation. He never told anyone where he was. I asked him about it, Alec. He said to me he was in the Between. That he met his wife there. That she fell in love with him, and taught him to understand animals and how to transform into one. That she died, in childbirth, because -" Mir looked uncomfortable. Alec stood there, impatient, and she reluctantly continued. "That she died and lost their child because she was not human. She was a faerie. "

"I told you that man was a nutter!"

"Alec, will you listen? Would anyone believe you if you told them there are aliens who steal body parts for harvesting, for pity's sake? Is it so far fetched to believe in elves and fairies? Babe, won't you listen for once?"

"Ed wouldn't listen to this daft garbage, and neither will I."

"He said that cat, Valiant, wasn't a cat. That it was his wife, reborn. Reincarnated."

"Mir, has everyone around me hit their head and gone bonkers, including you?"

"Alec, it's Lord Peregrine you're talking about isn't it? there's something about him. Something magical. He came to see me with Miriam and Millie not long after I woke up, and brought me some roses," Claire said. "He made me drink some tea he made from bark. I expected it to taste terrible, but it was actually delicious. He told me it was better than any medicine they could give me here. He hoped to help bring back my memory, he said Ed would need me soon."

"Ed's gone, right now, that's all I can think about. In a matter of days, the courts are going to decide Anne's fate. Who do you think they'll give her to with Ed gone, and you not even remembering what she looks like? You tell me who they'll give her to. No, I'll tell you. Jack Newhall and Mary Straker."

Alec turned and went out the door without another word. Mir sighed and followed him out. Claire watched the door swing closed again, suddenly feeling very lonely. She reached into the night table drawer and took out a folder of photographs and other objects they had given her to try and stir her memory. One drew her eye. A man with perfectly aligned features, beautifully boned, looking straight at the camera, almost defiant, not wanting to be photographed, blue eyes like twin icicles, wearing an immaculate cream high collared suit. They had told her this man was her husband. So hard, so hard to take in. She could remember so little about him. She could remember everything about him. How long could she lie? But it was better this way, wasn't it? Wasn't it? She could feel the ghosts of Ryan and her father and brother glaring at her. My little girl, a coward. No, Dad, you have to understand, I can't take it anymore. She held the photograph tightly to her, and let the tears fall.

* * *

Edward Straker watched her numbly without knowing how he could see her, but did not understand or care. Through a mist he felt a presence so close to him that it seemed like flesh over bone. The elder man broke away from his scarred, redheaded companion, and approached the bushes. His face was calm at first. Calm like the cold in the air before the storm bursts through the darkening skies. Ed felt himself reach up his hand, his mouth forming a smile.

"Here. I'm here," he said. Like a mother comforting a child, and perhaps that was not far from a truth that had gone unspoken between them for so many years. Years that meant nothing in the Between.

* * *

"EDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!" the scream burst out of Alec Freeman.

"Babe, don't do this to yourself." Miriam said softly.

"'Alec, no, you haven't lost me? Don't you see? Why can't you see? I'm right here, Alec." Hysteria rose in his soul when Mir tried to pull Alec away. Ed half stumbled, half crawled through the woods, leaves and bog staining his skin and usually pristine clothes, until he was only inches, a heartbeat away from a man he'd been pulled away from.

"No, Mir, don't take him away, no, please, no, don't, I'm here, he needs me, what's wrong with you?" Ed cried.

"He's dead, Mir, oh bloody hell, he's really dead."

"He can't be," Alec insisted, the lie torn out of his throat.

"Alec please come on," Mir pleaded.

"No" came the retort, numbly. "There's nothing, now, don't you understand?"

"Nothing left?" Mir said, squeezing his shoulder, but he didn't feel it.

"Nothing, don't you see?" Alec repeated. "Are you blind? He's GONE," Alec wailed, tearing at her heart. There was a painful silence, and Alec continued. "Nothing matters."'

"Alec please, you'll get sick, you haven't touched a bite for days, please babe"

"No, I'm good as dead now."

"Damn it, babe, I'm your wife." Mir forced anger into her voice.

"He's gone," Alec whispered, and that in itself frightened her. This bear of a man never whispered, he roared as was his due.

"And you know the worst thing, Mir?"

Mir knew what he would say, but she answered despite of it. "What, babe?"

"I never told him how much I loved him. I'll never see those eyes, or hear that resounding voice ever again. Sometimes mean as a dingo. sometimes sleepy as a koala. Hard as rock, Mir he was. Nobody like him in this miserable world, love. Nothing. Nobody. Gone. The door is Shut. Gone He was all I had, do you understand now, sheila, he was all, all. Everything imaginable, a reason to live, keep an eye on him, because as brilliant as he was, he didn't have a brain in that blond head."

"I know. Babe," she said, and meant it.

"Gone."

"Babe, you have me."

"Mir, Mir, love. It isn't enough, and I've always been grateful that you knew it."

"I know. I know it. You're so precious to me. But I know it."

"But babe, you have to say goodbye."

"NEVER, never, I can't I can't I can't - "

"Alec, oh my Alec, I'd do anything to drag that man back for you, I learned to love him too, you know why?"

"No."

"Because he loved you, Alec."

"God, GOD GOD!"

"-- and you can't live this way," she was saying.

"I never heard him say it, you know, we were beyond brothers, beyond mates."

"Alec, he wouldn't want this."

"DAMN you, girl!"

"You know I am right. You KNOW! You can't go on not eating, just drinking. You have to live, for him."

"Damn you for saying that," Alec's voice took on an echo of its usual roar. Then it became silent and soft again.

"But yes, I know."

"Alec, come on, babe."

"For him, you understand? For nobody or nothing else in this dismal world, but HIM, for Edward Straker, my mate."

"I know." And she did, and loved him for it. The way she had loved Danny, and look at what he'd done. Sometimes you didn't own the things you loved. He'd never be owned by anyone.

But Ed. She could live with that, as long as he kept breathing.

"All right. But Mir?"

"Yes"

"I won't enjoy it. I won't be me, you understand."

"I know."

"I'll be going through the motions all my blasted years left to me," he sobbed against her shoulder. How she loved him. From the day he'd flattened her like a car tyre would rolling over a hat because she had pulled her pistol out, threatening his Straker. Like Claire (oh as if she believed a word that woman said, she knew Claire hadn't forgotten even the freckle on Straker's buttock, for heaven's sake, amnesia, my ass!), she had said I do to both men, no matter if they knew it or not. She had not looked back.

"I know babe, I know."

Alec was turning, his shoulders slumped, then he stopped and pounded at the bushes, and let out ear splitting screams of words.

"ED! DAMN YOU ED! YOU LEFT ME!"

"Alec please," Mir said, trying to pull him away. It would have been easier to uproot a tree with a plastic shovel.

Edward Straker was reaching now, touching his friend, but nothing registered on Alec's face, not through the mist. Ed sobbed.

"NO! ALEC! you can't think that, no you musn't think that. I can't make you HEAR Noooooooo ALEC don't GO!" Ed screamed so loudly, it seemed certain that St. Paul's would crumble to the ground.

Alec and Mir were already at the Shado car.

"I NEED YOU oh GOD ALECCCCCCCC! I need you!" Ed yelled until his throat grew raw.

The doors of the Shado car folded down, like the sides of a crypt, and sealed in Ed Straker, not Alec and Mir. He sank in a heap, and cried like a tiny, abandoned boy as the car pulled away, jerking all the joy out of his heart. Claire had deserted him, he had asked for that because he was forced to put his job first, but Alec? Not Alec. He couldn't let himself believe it. But nothing else was left in the world to believe in.

Something not seen by human eyes closed in over him, casting unimaginable colours reflected in his crystal eyes as it lifted him up. A face he knew. A voice spoke to him, but he hardly cared. He was beyond feeling, and he would have welcomed death, when before, he had outwitted it so many times, jumped out of its reach. And then it moved, one unearthly finger singed with blue light, and duty, branded upon his very soul, made him turn that way.

And he froze.

* * *

Mary Straker dug through her purse and got out a clipping of Ed Straker. He was at some film premiere benefiting his Straker Foundation, and the photo of him had originally included his brunette wife, Dr. Claire Straker. She'd neatly tore the woman out, and now looked at it. Jack had talked to his lawyer and now was waiting impatiently for Straker to show up. She beamed at the clipping and put it back into her purse.

"Finally I will get what is coming to me. Four million pounds. I won't need you anymore then. I won't need Jack either, will I? I can get surgery, find someone, there are other men in the world you know. I can sell off that awful house, with the memories of father in it. What has he ever done for me, Ed? He always took your part. Took your part, more than his own daughter. You took everything away from me, didn't you? Phillip, you killed him, and you tried to suggest that I wanted that. But I wanted you, and you wanted me. You forced me to do this, don't you see? I had to get along in the world somehow, didn't I? I wasn't going to try and make it in the world like everyone else, I was made for better things than that. Otherwise I never would have left Phillip for you. Now you'll give me what I'm due. And maybe your son will rest easier. Four million poun-"

The sound of Jack opening the door interrupted her, and she took a final nervous look in the glass, arranging her hair. Jack didn't pay enough attention to her, but maybe when he saw Ed, and the way Ed looked at her, even after the divorce, maybe he'd be jealous. She began to walk toward the door, setting a mournful look on her face. She'd always been able to manipulate Ed. Maybe she could squeeze something else out of him. He always did have that damn sense of duty. She'd remind him that she was the mother of Johnnie. That should do it, she thought. And it would be good to see his face, see what he looked like as he paid up what he rightfully owed her. In his innermost heart, no matter what he'd said about her, he still loved her. That was what Jack didn't understand.

"What the-" she heard Jack Newhall say. And then four impossibly loud cracks. She pushed the door open in a panic, and a man turned toward her, gun in his hand. She screamed, seeing Jack Newhall's bloodied body with his eyes staring at nothing. Then one by one she felt the bullets strike her, white hot, tearing into her soft flesh, the pain indescribable, and she felt herself falling, the blood dampening her yellow wool dress. She looked up at him, as he raised the gun a final time for a last shot, his features cold and hard. His features were blurred now. The final bullet struck her in the belly, her body jerked once, but she clung to life, hating even then, trying to form a scream with her mouth, and failing.

"Straker-remember the name of Straker. A name you never deserved to have. Nobody crosses me. Nobody. You won't be any trouble to anyone anymore Mary. Did you really think you'd get a penny out of me? I've screwed up so many things, Mary. I'm not screwing this up. I need to make everything right, for everyone. Anne doesn't belong to you. I'm taking back what is rightfully Straker's. Are you suffering? They say a shot in the gut is the worse ever. " He pulled out the American tabloid clipping from a pocket, and dropped it on the floor. He paused, pocketed the Glock, spit on her face, turned and went out the door.

She was barely alive a few seconds later when Harvey came rushing through the open door, his eyes wide with horror seeing his client Jack's body. Blood bubbled from her lips.

"I told the bastard! I told him not to mess with Straker! Not to push him over the edge by trying to take the kid! I covered for the brother, damn it, but that wasn't enough for him. I told him! But he didn't listen to me," he yelled. He grabbed her, but she was beyond feeling any more pain. "Straker did this, didn't he? Didn't he? " Harvey looked around him in anxiety as if he expected Ed to pop up again like a child's wind-up toy out of a tin box..

"----Straker" she gasped. "Ed--No-help-" her eyes rolled back into her head.

Then she was as inanimate and spent as the bullets that had pierced into her flesh, with a rictus on her features.

"Shit-shitttttttt"-he muttered, and grabbed the phone barely able to dial the triple nines. But alarmed neighbours had already called the police, as he could hear the sirens split the new years eve night.

* * *

Minutes gave birth to hours and hours begat days. Winter was a child clutching at its toes and crying for its absent mother. Ed Straker was nowhere to be found. That fact was on everyone's mind like a shroud. Then came Spring.

In Silk Wood manor, the rabbits explored the mostly empty house in an irritated mood. Ian huddled in the garage, polishing Ed's Bentley as if that act alone would bring Ed Straker back and make everything right again. Geoffrey, the gardener, gently laid a young yew bush into the ground. Frances and Angel had scurried away with Anne to a friend's home to buy time, so that the agency wouldn't take her just yet. Millicent had gone with them, trying without success to stop the girl's crying for her father. Mir tried to get Alec Freeman to eat, but he just single-handedly put whisky executive's children through university with his drinking. Ford sat at his station in Shado, trying to remember what sleep was like, and dreading it every time Alec entered Control, because he didn't have anything good to report. He could feel Alec's eyes bore into him like a jackhammer in cement. Claire Straker got well enough to go back to a home that looked like something out of a glossy magazine. She wandered in and out of the rooms, and played endless games of rummy with a quiet Lord Peregrine. In one of her endless explorations, she left the master bedroom open.

The rabbits soon took advantage of that fact. They chewed with evil intent on Ed's sheepskin slippers (the same slippers Alec had ordered especially for Ed at considerable cost) and dotted the quilt on the oak four poster bed with their calling cards . But that too soon became a bore. There had to be something better than that.

It was then that they discovered that the damp had gotten into the oak panel on the wall, and they chewed at it. It was the equivalent of the obelisk in the movie 2001 a Space Odyssey. It was the ultimate bunny revenge. Rabbit had discovered how to defeat mankind. Bring the house down. Literally.

* * *

Then Keith Ford's telephone rang and he joyfully scribbled down facts and figures into his notebook. This occurred when he was in the woods that surrounded the area where the Commander's car had given up the ghost after being on intimate terms with the tree. By now, he knew how many leaves were on that tree. Shado were combing the area, looking for anything they could find. It was obvious something bad had happened to Straker. They just didn't know what. Ford hung up with a whoop, and started running toward where Mir was doing her bit to get Alec to eat something. Alec by now was so full of alcohol he was a human incendiary device, she feared. She saw Ford running up to them, like an affectionate collie, his tongue hanging out.

"Sir! They have someone resembling the Commander, found him wandering around several miles from here and-aach"

Alec had grabbed Keith by his anorak, and Keith's heels were a good half inch raised off the leaf strewn ground. Mir had to grin. It was the first glimmer of hope they'd had. She hurried to the Shado car, and started it up. She didn't get many opportunities to get behind the wheel, and there was no question of who was driving this time. It was Straker, after all. Ed Straker, and Straker defied the inevitable as regularly as kids ate sugary cereals. How could she have been as stupid as to think he'd do something as common as die? He was Straker. Damn cute, too and that didn't hurt.

"WHERE?" Alec bellowed, music to her ears.

Keith pushed the notebook toward Alec, like a mouse offering a hungry cat a menu, in the hopes it might be spared if it had another choice to pick from. Alec dropped Keith, grabbed the notebook, and headed for the car.

"Merritt Hospital," Keith muttered weakly, once he had enough air back to do so. With Alec in his current mood, aliens seemed friendly. He watched Alec hop in the car, the wing doors close down, and he took a few exhausted steps in the direction of the mobile. He heard a screech, and looked up to see that Mir was backing up to make a turn. The back of the sleek Shado car was moving. Coming in a straight line.

At HIM.

He dived, and rolled out of harm's way just as it came to a point where seconds ago he had been standing. He stopped, coughed up a mouthful of leaves. He stared resentfully at Carlin, who had volunteered to be part of the search team.

"Need a hand, Keith?" Carlin asked with a grin the size of SkyOne.

"No thanks. I think your team can stop for tea." he said breathlessly.

"Right. Sounds good. What about you?" Peter asked as Keith got up, brushing leaves and twigs off of himself.

"I'm going to the mobile to have myself a proper nervous breakdown." Keith explained.

* * *

"I don't care what condition your patient is in, Doctor. I'm here to arrest him on suspicion of murder." the police official said. "It took me a long time to find him, but find him I did."

"But we don't even know who he is for certain! And he's suffering from dehydration, soft tissue bruising, broken fingers, numerous cuts and contusions, and shock. I must protest."

"Protest all you want. We know who he is all right. He is Ed Straker, you see. And we have reason to believe he murdered Jack Newhall a week ago. As well as murdering his ex-wife Mary Rutland."

"But he isn't well!"

"I have authorisation to bring him to the prison hospital, Doctor. We'll patch him up enough to stand on his own at the Old Bailey. Now which room is he in?"

"Ed Straker? The film executive? You say he murdered someone?" the doctor said desperately, wondering where the hell Ford was. Ford had assured him that Straker's partner was on the way. Now this man was about to haul his prize patient into a gaol cell. And unless he wanted to share it with Ed, there was little he could do.

"Murdered his ex wife, and spit on her either before or afterward. That was only one of his mistakes. We should have positive identification on the murderer's DNA soon from the saliva. If it matches Straker's, we're putting him away. We have a newspaper clipping and have a workable partial off of it. We have a witness, one Harvey Onitt, counselor for the deceased, that swears that the last word out of Mary Straker's mouth was an accusation that it was he that put the five 9mm bullets into her and Newhall from a German automatic Glock. We haven't found the murder weapon as yet, but I assure you Straker had plenty of motive to silence the two of them."

"Mary Straker. Good Lord. Didn't she write some book on him some time back?"

"Right then. Enough small talk, Doctor. Where is he?"

"Look Superintendent Cannon, if it is Straker, this hospital owes him something, his Foundation provides us with funding for our children's orthopedic and MRI unit. He's entitled to counsel. I'm not letting you in there-"

The police inspector caught the doctor's unconscious look toward a door labeled 550, and headed for it, followed by his grim female partner. Inside, three patients looked up from having a tasteless national health service supper on their bedtrays. On a fourth bed, a man looked listlessly out the window, his food untouched, long cold. He looked like God Himself had beaten him down.

"Edward Straker?" the woman partner said ominously.

Ed slowly turned toward her as if he was underwater, some mariner forever lost in the deep blue sea.

"Yes." he admitted, his voice dull and slurred from the pain medication. He had an IV line inserted in one hand.

"Mr. Edward Straker, I am arresting you on suspicion of murdering Mr. Jack Newhall and Mary Rutland. You shall be provided with counsel. Do you have anything to say?"

"I don't understand," Ed responded after a considerable length of time. The other patients looked on, grateful to have this bit of drama as a alternative to frozen peas and miniscule bites of ham courtesy of the goverment.

"So it's to be a plea of insanity, is it? It won't work, Straker. Officer Fine, take him."

"I will protest this, Superintendent! The man isn't capable of tying his own shoes at the moment!" the doctor sputtered.

"We'll want all his clothes as a matter of fact. His shoes too."

"Well, you're out of luck, they are in laundry." the doctor folded his arms.

Ed looked on without comprehension, a pathetically vulnerable looking figure in his flimsy cotton gown. The doctor gently put a blanket over Ed's shoulders.

"I'm so sorry." he said, from the heart. Ed from somewhere deep within him managed a smile of gratitude in response to the doctor's genuine compassion.

"I'll be all right." Ed said, hanging on the IV pole with his unfettered hand like a dying animal clinging to a feather.

Then he collapsed.

* * *

Alec's SHADO car pulled into the hospital lot just as the prison ambulance pulled away with an unconscious Ed Straker on a stretcher inside it, its siren wailing their melody of doom. Alec didn't even look in that direction. But as he got inside the hospital lobby, his heart sank. In the newspaper rack outside the gift shop, the tabloid had in large font STRAKER and NEWHALL FOUND SHOT TO DEATH Authorities seeking film exec, believed to have gone missing.

"Shit." Alec said in disbelief, and headed for the doctor's office. He knew as soon as he saw his face that disaster had given way to true apocalypse.

* * *

Back in Gloucestershire some time later, Lord Peregrine Sherring Falcon watched the item be loaded into the delivery lorry.

"That's that, then, Sir. Sorry to see it go."

"Ed needs it more than I do, Harold. Can you call a cab for me?"

The butler nodded and took out a mobile and placed the call, then spoke to Perry again as the lorry driver was paid and everything was secured. Perry watched it drive off.

"Are you going again to Silk Wood Manor?" Harold asked him.

"I'm afraid I must. I'm needed there. Secrets have to be whispered aloud now. Everything is coming together after such a long time." Perry said sadly. "Ed has such anguish ahead."

"Sir, do you believe he killed them? The entire neighbourhood has been talking about it."

"Ed would only murder to protect himself and the people he loves, Harold. He didn't do it."

"Do you think he will be cleared then?"

"It's only a matter of time. The only problem is that time can be very severe indeed when you're torn from the safety you've always known. Harold, I think I will pick some wildflowers for Mrs. Straker."

"Is she still not remembering anything?"

"That's what she claims."

"You sound as if you have doubts," Harold said to his boss.

"I believe in my heart it's not the bump on her head preventing her from being where she should be, but guilt and pain. Come Harold, let's wait inside. This January chill is not good for my old bones."

"Must you sell Sherring House?"

"It is much too big for me, without my Valiant. Be assured I shall keep you on, where ever I may settle. I hope to find somewhere where I can be of service to Rosemary's son."

"Rosemary Straker? That woman you painted under the name of P. Falcon? Mr. Straker's mother?"

"So very long ago." Perry mused.

"You loved her, didn't you, Sir."

Perry just smiled and put a hand briefly on Harold's shoulder.

"Edward's father loved her more," he said.

* * *

In a four star hotel tucked away like a secret in a pocket, in a side street of London, in a spotless suite, a man put down a Waterman fountain pen and a personal note to a Mr. Ed Straker, the last words he'd ever write, and picked up a gun he had acquired in a dirty alley of Soho from a man dirtier than it was. Pounds had crossed hands, and now it was his. His hand shaking, he loaded it with bullets. Pounds got a desperate man everything.

Except Ed Straker.

Or his mother.

One bullet, two, three.

It took only one to implant itself into his forehead, with a flourish of sound, blood bursting out of it, like a belly bursting out of trousers. Blood spurted everywhere, even onto a glossy catalogue tucked into a welcome basket full of other expensive little gifts. Compliments of the management. On the catalog it said Extravangances by Evan. But the word Evan was blotted out by blood.

The housekeeper screamed when she opened the door.

* * *

Weeks later

Ed Straker, seated at his Shado desk in the bowels of the earth, with steel surrounding him, was scrutinizing the copies of the murder report and the coroner's report on Daniel's body. The one sentence on the report in front of him. The DNA of the saliva on Mary Rutland. Every once in a while, something would cross the edge of his mind. Reality. Something he was sure he didn't want to look at too closely. The long buried Daniel Cross had left him a note that explained everything and nothing. Sure, the DNA from the saliva on the body had cleared Ed Straker of all suspicion that it was he who had killed Mary Rutland and her newest, and most repulsive, what was the word? Acquaintance? Daniel had committed suicide. Sorry, it said. Wanted what you had, it said. Rot in hell, Ed said, and put the reports in the vapouriser, and waited until it was gone. But that damned thought kept lingering. His office doors opened. He didn't look up. He signed another report.

"Fresh coffee, Ed. You know, Carlin is still walking around in a daze because you apologized to him."

"Is he, Colonel Freeman? The apology was merited, and necessary. A phenomenon we'll never understand caused those ships to malfunction, not pilot error. Where's the report on the upgrades on the Interceptors?"

"You had a few lumps on your head, Ed, but I never thought I'd see the day you'd forget what my name was." Alec Freeman muttered, setting down the cup of sweet and light coffee. If Ed knew the bravado was just that, bravado, he didn't show it. He'd been like that. All through the tests on him, which he'd passed, every last one of them. Magnetic phenomenon, something for the boffins to worry about, not him. Screwed up the Shado equipment, and even had crashed UFO's. Bodies had been recovered, but too desiccated to tell them a thing. Daniel had put a bullet in his head, Mary was out of Ed's life for good, and the cheap hood she'd run into to help her take little Anne away from him was gone with her. They'd believed it was Ed, Daniel had taken Ed's clothing, used his voice, worn a wig. They'd found everything in his car, the police had told Alec. All of it. He'd killed them to try and win back his son.

Judging from the steely look on Ed's face, all it had done was pushed his son away further.

"Fine, Commander, play your games. But I'm on duty now. Time to go home." Alec reminded him. Alec was frantic, had been frantic, because something had changed in Ed. But as far as the Shado shrinks and medics were concerned, he checked out. Well, bully for them, but Ed hadn't passed the Freeman test yet. Alec might have been a fucking alien for all the warmth Ed showed toward him. And it wasn't the usual facade the younger man displayed. It was not the veneer of command, that even Alec in his weak moments realised was necessary. It was genuine ice. They always had called Ed the man of ice. Alec had always denied it. Now, for the first time, he was beginning to wonder.

Ed's large, blue, expressive eyes were fixed on him, set off by the immaculately combed silver hair, and he hadn't noticed it, lost in his private thoughts. Was there something there? A pleading? It was like trying to read a brick wall.

"All yours, Colonel. See you in the morning. Good night."

Yeah, that too was weird. Ed never stayed, now he came from and went home like clockwork. No more Ed go home. Ed went home. And behaved even in a more bizarre fashion there. This man wasn't Ed Straker.

But the scariest thing was, even that hope wasn't based on anything but a need to disbelieve that his friend would cut him off the way you'd refuse a dying man a glass of water.

It was Ed Straker, commander of Shado.

It just wasn't Ed

"Ed, we need to talk." Alec found himself saying, no, insisting as Ed straightened the folders and adjusted his pens. Alec was about to help Ed with his jacket, but Straker moved away just in time like Alec's touch might give him leprosy. Still in movement, he turned toward Alec as the doors opened.

"In the morning." Ed said, and was gone.

Alec plummeted into the still warm chair, and his heart plummeted with him.

* * *

"Perry, this is wonderful," Claire smiled, looking at the wrought iron and cherrywood bench. Geoffrey and his band of fellow gardeners had worked diligently to restore the gardens of Silk Wood Manor back to their perfection. The only thing that had been missing was Edward's favourite bench, from which he'd once spoiled the squirrels with pecans, and peanuts and macadamia nuts, and walnuts.

But that was before, the thought came to her, and she pushed it away, This was no time to think about such things as your husband turning into someone you didn't know. Oh, when your little girl came home from her private school, acting like all the security men and women around her, including Mir, was the most natural thing in the world, your husband would smile and extend his arms, and lift her high into the air, and seem to live on her laughter alone. But when she would disappear afterwards, to do her lessons, the smile would dissolve like a soap bottle. And his expression would be tighter than an armadillo.

And sometimes you knew why. It wasn't every wife that pretended not to know her husband. But couldn't he see that she had punished herself every day of her life for that? My God, how much guilt could she stand? How could she love him, and yet watch him go and face death everyday? It had taken a long time to remember she had made her vows with her eyes wide open. Work was part of him. Anything less, and he would not be the extraordinary man he was. How had she ever gotten to the point where throwing it all away was easier than doing what she had sworn to do, love him until time ended. How had she ever gotten so selfish? If she suffered every time he walked away, what was the matter with her when she didn't know he suffered even more in the process of doing it? Now he'd locked that heart away. From her, from even Alec. She would have to put an end to this. She pretended to chuckle at what Perry was saying, but with Anne overnighting at Angel's and Frances' home, she had already decided what she would do.

"-two benches, you understand, identical, I had them made for Silk Wood Manor, handcrafted, by, well, someone who knew wood and iron, and could make magic out of them. Perhaps the very faeries and elves that occupy these gardens even now."

"Perry, I swear I don't know if you really believe all those stories you tell Anne, but I know she loves them. I'm so glad you accepted my offer to stay with us."

"That solemn young man of yours hasn't said if he objects, Claire." Perry said, giving her something of a sad smile.

"I'll beat sense into Edward. He doesn't scare me," Claire folded her arms.

Perry chuckled in a strange way, kissed her on the cheek, and headed off to the rooms he cheerfully shared with Ian, for their nightly telly watching and discussions of same. Claire looked up at the crescent moon. The sky was almost black, but there wasn't much of a wind, and no stars were to be seen. Behind her, someone gave a gasp. She twirled around in her robe and long nightgown.

Ed was there, staring at it.

She suddenly realised just why all the stars were gone.

Because all of them were hiding in his blue eyes.

"Surprised?"

"I shouldn't be, around Lord Falcon. I take it he came up with the bench? I saw him go by, and wished him a good night." Ed replied. He was in his silk robe and pajamas, the wind easily tossing the moon coloured strands of his hair around. It was falling in a fringe the way he had once worn it. Now, he generally combed it back. Tonight, he looked his age, and yet he didn't look it at all. Perhaps it was the lateness of the night, but he looked at once the oldest and yet the newest figure in the garden. Impassive as one of the pale marble statues that held birdseed and water for the birds.

"He had two made, he had one in storage at Sherring House and he's given it to us Edward, isn't it wonderful? Now you haven't lost anything at all. The garden is what it always was. Nothing's changed, has it?"

Ed went and gingerly sat on the edge of the bench, hands thrust into the pockets of his robe, looking more like a drawing on parchment some Italian artist had left behind than a real flesh and blood man.

"I wouldn't go that far, Claire. I have something I need to talk to you about," he said, looking not at her, but at the crescent moon. She jumped up and sat next to him, and took his arm. He looked at her coldly.

"Edward, no, not yet, there's something I have to talk to you about. Will you please listen? No, really listen."

"Go on." For all the emotion in his voice, he might have given an order to have her shot.

Tears sprang into her eyes,

"I was terrible, Edward, I lied. I lied because I couldn't stand to lose you, because I couldn't watch you walk away anymore, I thought if I pretended to not remember you, it might be doing all of us a favour. But I couldn't leave you. I love you, Edward, I love you with everything that's in me, and I stopped thinking about how you felt, to maybe lose me and Anne because a long time ago you chose duty before yourself."

"It's cold, Claire. I have to get up early in the morning. Please just cut to the chase, will you?"

"Edward, darling, can we go on, go on with our marriage, can we just admit that I was a fool, can you just find it in your heart to forgive me?" she sobbed. She let go of his arm and put her hand on his face. It was like caressing a glacier.

As if he was removing a repulsive leech that was sucking away his life's blood, Ed carefully but firmly pried her hand away. Then he looked into her eyes.

"Can I forgive you? Is that what you wanted to tell me?" he said, words like a rattlesnake about to strike. Claire couldn't help it, she drew back as if he might strike her. She had never been afraid of him, not even when he had threatened her long before they had fallen in love. But now, God forgive her, she was afraid of him, as impossible as that might have seemed. The gesture wasn't lost on him, she knew, and instantly regretted it.

"Edward," she said,

"No, Spencer, no," Ed replied, and stood up.

"Dear God, Edward, please, you can't mean this. It isn't in your heart not to-"

"I had something to tell you, Spencer. Oh yes, yes, you're the forgetting type. Well I haven't forgotten. But I will. I want a divorce, so you better get yourself a lawyer. And don't think for a moment that you'll get custody of my Anne. Good night."

She watched him walk away, and the evening cold crept into her heart like a crow, and perched there, motionless. But then two ghosts rolled in, and reminded her she was a Spencer, and what's more she was a Straker.

* * *

"You know, bringing me home early isn't going to thrill the ice king." Alec grumbled. Mir grinned at him as they got out of their car and crossed cozily, arm in arm, toward their cottage on Ed's property.

"You big twit, you've lost faith in Ed, and you wonder why he's acting so funny? He needs you more now than he ever did. And he isn't the ice king, I've heard those disgusting people call him names, and he doesn't deserve them, babe, and he never will. Besides, Ginny was happy to fill in for you."

"I feel like tossing him around like a soccer ball or some damn sheep, knock some sense into him." Alec grumbled again, but she knew he was listening to her.

"So do it, babe. It's the last thing he'd be expecting."

"If you hadn't noticed, I like my job at Shado."

"Oh I see, my big tall Australian is a coward, huh? Scared of Eddie Straker," she mocked.

Alec growled.

"Oh really? Scared? I'll show you scared." and he stomped off, toward Silk Wood Manor. Mir squealed happily and followed him closely behind, almost running into him when he stopped to make sure she was coming with him.

Scared?

Him? Alec Freeman?

Of Ed Straker?

Bullshit!

Okay, maybe a little, he told himself, but he rolled his hands into fists and got closer to the manor door. Then he heard Claire Straker scream. Once. Twice. Three times. And he turned toward her, not missing a beat, pulling out his pistol only to have the manor door nearly flatten him as something darted out past him, faster than any racehorse. He only had time to make out a outline of a silver head and the glint of a familiar Glock. Damn Ed Straker anyway. He always could-Ed! That was Ed! Now he zoomed away, and if Mir hadn't known her man, she wouldn't have been right behind him, pulling a gun out of a holster strapped to one trim thigh.

"Spencer, what in the hell do you think you are-" Ed Straker was shouting, now that he'd seen she was safe. But that didn't make sense, he told himself.

"Get in the damn house, Straker, just get in the damn house!"

"Who the blazes do you think you are, giving me orders?" snarled Ed.

"Shut up! Just get that skinny ass of yours in the house, now!"

"You tell him, sister!" Mir cheered appreciatively, and got a gulp and a hand placed over her mouth by a stunned Alec. She gently bit Alec, and he yelped, pulled away, shook his hand like he was trying to pry a crab off his fingers. Mir smiled prettily at him.

"Mir, you stay out of this," Ed said in a deadly tone. "You too, Alec."

"Are you coming with me or not, Straker? I swear to God I'll drag you to your home office by the throat." snarled Claire. Alec was impressed. He'd never seen her snarl before. It was like seeing a sheep get up and head to the nearest salon for a shampoo and a trim. Ed was moving away, approximating the speed of a Japanese bullet train, and Claire was stomping along next to him.

"Well, move your Australian ass, dummy!" Mir said happily.

"What the hell is going on?" Alec said, walking with his wife. Suddenly he stopped.

"What in the world? Alec, will you move it?"

"Mir, he called me Alec."

"That's your name, dummy." she grinned at him.

"He hasn't called me Alec in months!"

"Then its high time he did. Come on, I knew she wouldn't take this lying down, I just didn't know when the woman in her would kick in. Hurry up, I want to see what happens!"

The both of them got to the door just as Ed Straker slammed it in their faces behind himself and Claire. Alec cursed in languages that Mir didn't know he knew, felt for a few minutes in his pocket for his keys. Mir watched in amusement, wondering when it would occur to the Australian that she had them in her purse. Suddenly he growled impatiently and kicked down the door. She gave a delighted squeal, which couldn't be heard over the sound of the alarm system having a nervous electronic breakdown. Ian and Perry came running down the hall, Molly started barking and rushed in, only to rush out with a yelp when the rabbits appeared the same way she had, out of nowhere, scaring the dog, who was maybe sixty times their size, out of its canine consciousness. Ian scooped up some bunnies, while Perry scooped up another. The security detail saw Alec and Mir and obediently switched off the alarm. Quiet reigned, until they realized they didn't know where the hell Ed and Claire was. Then there was a loud crash.

Everyone ran upstairs. Ed was yelling something. But it was muffled by the locked office door. Everyone crowded in to listen. Even the rabbits.

"God damn you, Claire, you gave me that paperweight!"

"And I broke it. And do you know why, Edward?"

"Isn't it clear enough? You've lost your damn mind. Screaming like someone was attacking you in the middle of the night. You scared me half to death!"

"It's fragile, Edward. Glass. It's glass."

"This is not the time to discuss this. Whatever this is." Ed said, chest heaving.

"I wondered for the longest time why you were so attracted to certain things. Order, for instance. Everything is neat and clean and in order. Like you. You wouldn't know what to do if your perfect world was shattered like I shattered that paperweight. But something happened to you, Edward. Something that did just that. Something more horrifying than even that time those killers had you. Something, something, familiar. It had to be."

"Claire, you don't know what you are-"

"Something got through to you. Right inside you. Something intimate, that threw all your defenses down the toilet. Something so frightening that it was like being thrust between heav-"

Ed sank into his chair, and she almost stopped, she could not bear to keep up, knowing she had to shake him up, not give him time to think. That awful look on his face. I can't do this to him. It isn't right. No, I have to save him. I'm the only one who can. Please Edward, please. I have to do this.

"I'm tired, Claire. I want to go to sleep. I want to go to sleep so bad. Get this over with."

"Glass, Edward. You know of course how glass is made. It's thrust into the furnace, and you'd think nothing could endure that. But then it is twirled and shaped and formed into something more beautiful than life itself. And you have a lot around you. Is it to remind you that the glass survives? Is it to reassure yourself that you'll survive too?"

"Claire, you're talking nonsense, and I'm tired."

"Because you're fragile, Edward. Yet you're as hard and as beautiful as the paperweights you so admire. You're as full of rainbows as your obelisk is, you're a living prism. Something blotted out your light. Damn it, Edward, out there, you didn't forgive me."

"You lied! You pretended not to even know me. How can I forgive you for that? You seem to know everything about me tonight, so maybe you'll give me the benefit of your ancient wisdom, Doctor," he said wearily.

"Edward, tell me where you were."

Ed sprang up and she reached over as he thrust his hand toward the door knob to escape answering, grabbing him. Momentarily, the menace came back into his face as she spun him toward her. She forced her fear way down in her body and glared at him.

"Claire, I'm not going to say this twice. Take your goddamn hands off me."

"Tell me where you were and what happened to you, Edward."

"No." he said, his tone like a razor blade. And he pulled free and opened the door, but she pushed him into the bedroom, almost causing him to fall, drawing gasps from the audience that were gathered outside. And she slammed the door behind her, and locked it.

"Okay, I have to stop this now," Alec said.

"Babe, you can't," Mir said.

"They're going to kill one another!" Alec complained.

"Do you want a drink?" Ian had produced a bottle of whiskey from somewhere for Alec.

"No, not now for heaven's sake."

"Well, I need one." Ian complained. They all stared at him, except Perry, who smiled. Ian didn't drink. But he managed to pop off the top and swallow a good third of it until they turned their attention back to the locked door.

"She pushed him, Mir!" Alec said in irritation. Mir was wedged up against the door, trying to hear whatever was going on in there.

"He asked for it, babe. This is what he needs. And she's the only one that can do it."

"I need to be at his side." insisted Alec.

"Always, Alec. But not this time," Perry said gently. Alec looked wounded.

"Alec, you want him to be all right, you have to let this happen. As hard as it will be, you can't go in there, no matter what." Mir said, holding Alec's hand.

"Mir, I'm telling you," Alec began to say. Ian suddenly bent and threw up what he'd drank, then coughed. Alec moaned and took the whiskey from him and threw the bottle's contents into a nearby potted plant. Ian looked greener than the plant's leaves as he coughed.

"How can you drink that stuff?" Ian complained. Perry chuckled.

"Can you save your self pity for another day?" Alec scolded Ian.

"I'm only trying to help, you know!"

"Ian, shut up." Mir said.

Then there was a scream; and this time it wasn't Claire.

It was undeniably Ed Straker's.

Alec charged, and Ian, Mir, and Perry grabbed him, barely able to hang on to him.

"Babe, no!"

"I'm going in there." Alec roared. Mir let him go.

"Fine, you Australian idiot."

"That's right." Alec said, and put his hand on the doorknob.

"Go ahead and lose the last opportunity to get back the man that you'd die for. Just so you can prove something to yourself. Go ahead and do it, you selfish son of a bitch, and then we'll all lose him." Ian picked up a squirming rabbit to hide his pain at the thought.

Alec's shoulders sank.

"Mir, girl, he's in pain." Alec said softly. "I've never been able to stand it when he was in pain."

"Women give birth that way, Alec, lad. Just try and hold on to that." Perry told him.

"That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"They have to labour, you stupid twit of a bloke. Before they can give life to something wondrous. Whatever made him sick came out of pain, and whatever makes him well has to come out of it too." Ian said, and Alec reflected this was an Ian (no matter how foul his breath smelled) that he could respect even more. Alec nodded numbly. The echo of Ed's scream still was etched into his soul as if it was a photograph.

What if they're wrong, he asked himself?

He pressed himself into the closed door, with the others all around him, not really wanting an answer.

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