She could feel her heart as it thumped against her chest, seemed to only hear her blood pounding in her ears, crashing.

She saw Its body as It raised her - how Its skin was not quite blood-red, not fully, at least, but was darker in some spots, lighter in others.

It was hairless, as though Its lineage were alien. Its shoulders were broad, muscle outlining every aspect of Its frame.

The hand rose her to Its face, revealing an angular face crowned by an almost chaotic set of horns that spiralled haphazardly. It was lipless, looking like a skeleton in many aspects - or the personification of death.

Its eyes were nonexistent, she saw, pits of black that seemed to offer no comfort, no humanity.

Terror gripped Netta, and she brought her hands to her chest.

As she did, she felt a sudden warmth from her left wrist. She looked down at the gap in her sleeve, saw what looked like something glowing at her with a light that had to be magical in source.

She reached down and pulled her sleeve up, realizing that the assembled chain - the one item that had been given to her, reassembled, at the wedding ceremony - was glowing. Its glow was the same as it had when Ash had taken her that night, but with a different light. Brighter, less gentle.

She leaped as she felt a rumble in the being holding her - it sounded like the Earth groaning, of tectonic plates shifting, scraping.

She looked up, saw the way that It looked down at her, Its skull-like mouth hanging open.

Netta knew that she logically should have been frightened. Instead of that, she felt an utterly depraved sense of sensuality. It seized her as she recalled the hunger, plain in Ash's face, every time they had sex.

It was the farthest thing that should have been on her mind.

Still, though, the shocking sensuality of her memory arced through her, undenied.

She stroked the gentle flesh of her inner left wrist, welcoming that feeling of creeping sensuality over the fear, the sadness.

Bold, she looked up into the pits where the monster's eyes should've been and removed the bracelet that had once held so large a soul inside of it, dangling it by her index finger's tip.

She was rewarded when she heard a throaty, heavy growl erupt from the beast.

The bracelet flickered, then glowed more strongly.

She smiled.

The feeling of something wet hitting her head made her look up to see the sky seeming to open up all at once to dump rain on them.

Netta winced, readying to pull her hood up.

The feeling of movement was sudden and horrifying to Netta as Its hand moved.

Briefly, she recalled the sight of It grabbing the reanimated corpses and crushing them.

She gasped. "No - no no no no -"

The feel of Its hand closing with her in it enveloped her in a terrible warmth that she was certain would end in crushing pain.

She winced, readying herself for it.

When the pain didn't come, Netta opened her eyes to look around her.

The space inside of the mostly closed hand was warm, so so very warm, and it was mostly dark, with what little light shot through the gaps in between Its fingers.

She sighed.

Then the sudden, surging feel of movement made her topple back onto her ass.

She gasped, then watched as his hand bloomed opened, revealing the face that she had been looking up at.

Netta hesitated, then saw as he reached his other hand out, extending his pinkie at a distance that was, in her crazed state, sweetly thoughtful.

Netta seized a laughably small portion of the wide mass of it in her hand and got to her feet, feeling the radiating, burning warmth of his skin on her hand.

As she stood there, she stared at him, at his face that she was now only steps away from.

His face was easily the size of a two story house, she looked into the pits where his eyes should have been. She looked, in the hope that he would give her answers as to what he wanted from her.

And then it struck her, threatening to finally do the damage that her earlier pain had nearly done to her.

She sniffled, fighting back tears that fell regardless, then rose her gaze to the Monster's face.

She lowered her head and pressed tear-wet lips to the hard, jutting bone that was where his lower lip should be.

As she did, she smelled, for the first time, the undeniable smell of Ash clinging to the Monster.

Somewhere, she was aware of the bracelet becoming as bright as a searchlight. Then she was not in the hand of a giant Monster, but was laying on the ground, with her husband, dark-haired and with brilliant green eyes that refused to look away from her.

He had taken hold of the hand that the chain hung from. Ash had taken hold of her index finger with his lips, tugging with lips that, slowly, curved into a smile around her finger.

Waiting, until her gaze was locked onto his, he took that finger into his hot, burning mouth.

When the ground crumbled beneath them, Netta found in the next moment that not only had her clothes been removed, but they had no need of the ground.

Netta had been reluctant to pull away from him, after morning had come and gone, following a restless night with Ash's smell etched into her body.

The sweet happiness of Ash's return was a much needed temper to the knowledge that her family had been snuffed out.

Or rather, Netta thought to herself, sex with Ash was a wonderful numbing agent to reality.

The man who picked her up when she had hitch-hiked had, at first, seemed interested in her ruffled look, the way that she seemed breathy.

She attempted to sleep for some time before it became certain that the man who had picked her up was insistent that she had been sent from the heavens as a gift for him.

As time passed, however, he seemed to have taken a different approach to her preseance, looking forward in a stiff manner.

Did you do something to this gentleman that was nice enough to stop him for me? Netta asked, knowing well how rhetorical the question was.

Ash only laughed that only slightly ominous-sounding laugh of his.

It was good to hear him laugh again. Netta decided that it was beyond what she would have thought possible, the afternoon before, that she would have been speaking again to her husband. As it was, he seemed to happily curl up inside of her, a warmth that diffused through her.

At some point, she managed to sleep for a short while.

In her dreams, he was there, bringing her into the realm that existed between the waking and the dreaming.

Somewhere, she knew that without him, a nightmare of what happened after she had left the house of the Coven Gardenia would infect her, drive her into trembling madness.

It was the very house that Netta was working at getting back to.

At a car rental place, Netta quashed down an employee's memory of her not having anything resembling a wallet and took a current model car that she was certain that she would never return. She did a similar thing at a restaurant, getting a quiet table seemingly by herself.

The waiter made a jump when he returned to find an intimidating man sitting across from Netta, then returned some time later to see that the man had seemingly disappeared, but the woman was in the middle of some sort of a spasm, almost as though she were overcome with some godly power as she writhed and cried out.

Ash laid his head between her thighs, visible to any humans who would dare to peek underneath the table, feigning ignorance to Netta's many pleas for mercy in his mind.

Beginning the drive, Netta found herself unwilling to sleep, even as her eyes fought with her to. When she closed her eyes overly long at a stop sign, she opened them to realize that she was now sitting in the passenger's seat and Ash was driving.

Netta didn't argue, only dropped her head to rest on his arm.

When they reached the town, Netta, who had woken up for some time, wanted to get to the house immediately. Ash refused, driving them instead to the nicest hotel in the town.

When he laid her down to sleep, she soon found him wound around her and with him found that her mind was suddenly quiet enough for rest.

The next morning, Netta drove to the house before sun's rise. Outside, Netta could already tell that something had run afoul at the home.

The only working vehicle that the Witches used - a blue-grey SUV - had had a rock thrown through its front window and its tires were popped.

Recalling Sia's words to Netta regarding her own suddenly inoperable car, Netta knew what she was looking at as soon as she saw it.

They had been trapped and, in all likelihood, had been hunted.

Netta saw the way that the chimney seemed dead and the windows of the home were unlit, giving an air of deathliness to it.

Netta's heart hurt, and the only comfort that she felt was Ash's hand in hers, his words in her head.

She braced herself and walked to the door, unsurprised to find it unlocked.

With a heavy sigh, she pushed the door opened, thinking that she was prepared for anything.

Inside, she was surprised to see two survivors of the catastrophe that had killed what she had thought was all of Coven Gardenia, busy at repairing damage done to a wall in the entrance.

The shock of the two, females - the older woman and the teenager - seeing them was quickly turned to relief.

"By the Goddess, you frightened the life out of me!" Erwinnia groaned, falling back against a wall.

Ophelia said nothing, turning back to her work with a cool resolve. Erwinnia looked at her, surprised, and nudged her.

"Pelly, what's the matter? She's returned - we should be happy!"

Ophelia again was silent.

Erwinnia sighed. "I - we thought you'd been killed. Sia, Beryl and someone else in a robe were doing - they were - that is to say..."

Netta encouraged her, saying that she knew what had happened.

Ophelia's stoic quiet was hard to ignore.

Erwinnia looked away, her lips drawn in a tight line.

Finally, she said, "I figured that what happened was meant as a message to you. And... ammo for Caspia. I'm sorry to say, but we took you for dead."

When Erwinnia offered her an embrace, Netta took it, burying her face against the comforting smell of her hair. When they had parted, unbelievably Erwinnia looked at the man in the doorway - Ash, who had manifested himself physically.

She cleared her throat, then said, "I suppose I owe you a thank-you - and an apology for my earlier behavior." She coughed. "...Obviously, Netta is returned to what's left of us because of you in some way, I would imagine. At least, you were the one that supplied her magic to act."

Ash leaned back against the doorway, his green eyes pinioned on Erwinnia. "How do you not know that I'm in full control of her at the moment?"

"Because you wouldn't have hugged me," Erwinnia said, motioning to Netta and laughing, her voice quaking nervously.

Ophelia, who had been seemingly deeply focused on patching a wall, dropped the tools and the patch she was holding and ran up the stairs around the corner.

Erwinnia sighed.

"Sorry, she's been... upset for a while. Understandable, but I don't know anything about teenagers. I've been... lost here with no one to help."

Netta didn't say anything at first, as she watched where the girl had wordlessly ran. "Oh. Um, sure."

Erwinnia said, "Me, her and Jaste hid in a hollow in the wood after... it started. We hid down there for a day, then came up to find that there was no one here when we came back. She - she wanted to go after them, thought that the others had been kidnapped. Netta, I profess that I haven't had any magic in me for a long, long time, but I know what the kind that kills smells like."

She hesitantly reached over and patted Netta on the shoulder. "Look, none of this was your fault. They're nuts, and I'm grateful that you got me away from them before something bad happened to me - or - or I -" she stopped talking and looked down at her feet then, her voice breaking.

Netta decided it was best to not tell her about Caspia's fate.

Some time later, Ash said that he was going to help Erwinnia with something, that it would be best if she would go and see if the teenager was up for helping someone cook dinner.

Upstairs, Netta found the teenager in question busy.

Two bags were open on her bed and Netta had opened the door in time to see the girl stuffing a handful of balled-up clothes in one bag.

For a moment, the two of them stared at each other.

Netta opened her mouth and found that she was unsure of what to say.

Ophelia interjected then. "Don't try to stop me."

"Oh Goddess, kid, put your things back in your closet and drawers."

This, Netta discovered, was possibly one of the worst things to say.

The girl's features became thunderous. "Don't tell me what to do. I waited long enough with that old woman while my family's been gone -"

"They're dead. Alright? There's nothing that you can do."

And then the little warrior - the rebel without a cause - did the one thing that Netta had not counted on from the moment that she had met the girl. The one who had only wept in silence at the irretrievable knowledge that her sister had been slaughtered.

Falling partially on the bed like a withering rose, Ophelia cried.

Netta stood there for what felt like an eternity, unsure of what to do.

She struggled to make her feet move, without realizing it she tried to offer comfort in the way that Lucia would have. She realized before she passed the bed that she was not Lucia.

"Get away from me!"

Netta backed up, her hands held up as though she were being strong armed. When she turned and left out of the room, she gave a fleeting thought to how any of this could be worse than it already was.

The sound of the knocking on the door, as Netta was halfway down the stairs, stopped her heart.