Missing Heroes

Oz sat on the window seat as it seemed he always did. The day outside was hazy as it had been... when?

Oz blinked and stared at his bare feet.

When? Where?

He looked around the dingy room with its one dirty window. As soon as he viewed the cheap furnishings and threadbare carpet he forgot them and looked again out the window.

The building across the way was probably industrial. The street below was a surprisingly clean alley. The sky was gray.

Nothing ever changed outside. Just...when the light was just right, sometimes he could read words in the dust on the window.

Random things.

Hope. Find me. Watch out. Beware. Get Lost.

Who wrote them? Had he? Why?

Did the words come to him in dreams? Were they something he shouldn't forget?

What had he been dreaming (remembering)? Or was he dreaming this?

He was on stage playing with Dingoes Ate My Baby. Man, they'd sucked, but they were happy.

He was happy now. Wasn't he? He wasn't unhappy. Oz thought he just... was.

But not the peaceful, oneness, meditative "just was" he'd learned in Tibet. He was like the gray of the sky or the washed-out yellow of the linoleum on the table. The table was yellow, wasn't it?

He lifted his head to find the answer and just as quickly forgot why he'd moved.

Willow.

It had been Willow. His most vivid dreams (memories?) were of Willow.

She'd been beautiful, pale and naked on a bed of furs as she'd looked coyly over her shoulder at him.

She was dressed in little-girl clothes and suspenders as she'd been when they first started dating, her books clutched to her chest.

Her breathing quickened as he kissed her.

She is evil. Oz blinks as if he's found a diamond ring in a box of cereal.

He sees her clearly, briefly. Her eyes are black, her hair is long and wild, her fingers are like claws as she paints a pentagram on the wall in blood. Whose blood?

Light fades from the window and Oz thinks he was once ruled by the turning of the Earth, by the waxing and waning of the moon.

The wolf is still with him. It will never leave him. Mostly it... sleeps.

She sometimes calls it out. She fights it. She fucks it. She makes it sit by her chair and she pets it like a beagle. She feeds it....

Red.

Oz shakes himself and looks at his bare feet.

What had he been dreaming?

There were words in the dust.

No pets.

No. There were no pets here. Or were there?

Not knowing where you are, leaves you feeling….trapped…Missing Heroes

Book 10: Captive

“You know, I always thought I’d turn around someday and there you’d be,” Willow said wistfully, “ Istanbul , Paris , Rome .”

“I just never expected it to be today.” She casually held her hand behind her back, hiding the silver wolf’s head ring she always wore. He was the one who told her about it all those years ago. If he saw it, the game would be up.

“Or here.” Oz looked curiously around at the stone walls that surrounded them, realizing for the first time he wasn’t quite sure where ‘here’ was. It seemed familiar somehow. He turned back to Willow, feeling the recognizable ache, it was still like missing a torso. “It’s been a long time.”

She wondered if he knew exactly how long. “It has,” she agreed, smiling her goofy-Willow grin. “I see you’re still all talky.”

Willow circled him, unable to completely suppress her predatory intent.

As she completed her circuit, he tilted his head, sniffing. “You smell…different.”

Willow pressed her cool lips to his, distracting him before he could analyze the scent further.

His lips parted and she devoured him hungrily, heat flaring in her belly when he responded with equal ardor. It was like old times, just what she’d been craving.

But the wolf inside was restless, trying to tease out the individual strands of Willow's fragrance. He could easiliy identify the high, sweet scent of berries, rich and wild. Beneath that, however, was the taint of rot and fermentation, and further down; the scent of blood, freshly spilled and laced with innocence.

Oz pulled away, shaking. “I’m sorry, Will, I can’t,” he said panting. “I love you, but I can’t.”

Their eyes met, and hers flashed yellow briefly, and then black. Waves of the darkest magic crashed over her, fueled by fury. Her hair blew backwards in the storm and Oz held his hands up, shielding his face. The fine hairs rose on his arms and the back of his neck and then he felt…nothing.

As the wind died down, Willow glared at her hand, watching the ruby eyes of the wolf's head ring flare brightly and then fade. “You can stay in there and rot!” she hissed.