The infernal light radiating from out of the chain's links flickered, as though in a stutter, then glowed more strongly.

Slowly, Netta smiled, then she frowned.

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 cold, unforgiving 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. 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. It was dark, with what little light visible seeming to be like cuts of light, gaps in between Its fingers.

She sighed. Then the sudden, surging feel of movement made her fall onto her back.

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

Netta hesitated, then watched as It reached Its other, enormous hand out. It extended Its pinkie at a distance that was, in Netta's panicked, crazed state, almost sweetly thoughtful. As though it possessed a sentience that made it ache to move with care.

Netta seized a laughably small portion of the wide mass of it in her hand. It was as she felt the numbness leave the lower half of her body that Netta realized that she had regained feeling in her body. She paused, running the hand that had taken hold of the hot skin of its smallest finger, taking in the smooth, unprinted, alien flesh.

Netta gazed up for a moment, felt a breath hitching in her throat. Did she dare to hope that there was something in It, something that retained something of the man she had grown to care for?

Without thinking of it, she had begun to stroke the links in the God's Chain with her other hand, became aware of the unintentional movement when she heard a slow, rattling growl resonating from the chest of the creature who held her in Its hand. She was so startled by the sound that Netta almost dropped the chainlinks. It was as she closed her eyes and listened to the continuing sound that she realized that she had been mistaken about the sound.

It was not growling. It was purring. The grand size of It had made the noise sound instantly foreboding, dangerous.

Netta rose to her feet, taking the surface that Its offered pinkie allowed her to regain balance on her feet. As she did, Netta turned her head upm stared at It, at the face that she was now only steps away from.

Its face was easily the size of a two story house and she looked into the pits where his eyes should have been. She looked, in the hope that what she could see there would give her answers as to what the God wanted from her. Could not avoid making eye contact with, even if that was what she would have wanted.

It did not, she realized as she stared at It, struck by the sudden and complete impression of a kinship with It, see Itself in that manner. Least of all when It was in this form.

And then it struck Netta, threatening to finally do the damage that her earlier pain had nearly done. Netta felt that she, finally, understood why the cruelty that Ash insisted on was not some act, something that he could control. After all, how could a creature who could become this be capable of sharing vulnerability? How could Its behavior not be warped by the impression of the fear and hatred of those smaller - so much smaller - than It was?

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 soft, hot flesh of its small finger, then hooked an arm as far as she could around the girth of the finger, buried her face against it. Netta cried, for how long she did not know.

As Netta did, she smelled, for the first time, the undeniable scent of Ash clinging to the God-Monster.

In that time, she was aware of the chain becoming as bright as a searchlight, tangled in her fingers.

Then Netta was not in the hand of a giant Monster, but was laying on the ground, with Ash. Her lover was dark-haired and possessed brilliant green eyes that were once hers, even underneath the heavy shadows of his unkempt hair and the curling weight of his horns.

He had taken hold of the hand that the chain hung from. With his other hand, the nude Ash had taken hold of Netta's index finger in his mouth, tugging with lips that, slowly, curved into a smile around her finger.

He waited until her gaze was locked onto his. As she looked at him, he sucked 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.

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 noticeably breathy. It was the way he smiled, that overly bright manner, and the way his dull eyes sparked with the illumination resulting from wicked plans that made her hesitant at first. Still, Netta 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 presence, 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 laughed that only slightly ominous-sounding laugh of his.

Once she had reached a car rental place, Netta quashed down an employee's memory of her not having anything resembling a wallet, taking a current model car that she was certain that she would never return. She repeated her trickery at a restaurant, getting a quiet booth table seemingly only for herself.

The waiter jumped when he returned to take the woman's order, only to find an intimidating, wild-looking man sitting across from her. The kind of man that seemed to exude something foul, disturbing, like the sort of gloom that he would imagine a serial assassin carried with him.

The man had only lifted a lip in what could have been seen as a sneer - and, the waiter would later insist, revealing a mouth full of perfectly sharpened teeth - when the waiter had asked him if there was anything that he would like to order.

He returned some time later to see that the man had seemingly disappeared. As he was about to walk away, shaking off the impression that there was something odd about the disappearance of that disconcerting man, he jumped as he heard someone cry out. When he turned around, he found that the lone woman was in the middle of some sort of a spasm. He wanted to go to her, to see if there was something wrong, when he was struck by what felt like a force that stopped him dead in his tracks, had him retreating with an almost religious terror seizing him. One that he forgot that he had felt, as soon as he had run to the kitchen door in a blind retreat.

To make the Human man flee had been easy work. Too easy as to distract the Monster from his single-minded fixation. Ash laid his head between Netta's 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.

The truth to her desires was clear, with how she had taken hold of his hair in her tight fists, throttling his soaked face against her opened inner thighs.

Even before Netta had walked up to the front door of the Coven's home, she could already tell that something had run afoul. The only working vehicle that the Gardenia Witches used - a blue-grey SUV - had had a rock thrown through its front window and its tires were popped, the rubber masses looking like they had melted on the snow.

Netta was unable to not recall Sia's words regarding her own inoperable car. Netta glanced up at the house itself, saw the way that the chimney seemed lifeless without the plumes of smoke it gave out. The windows of the home were unlit, and Netta felt uncomfortably like one of the women who had come here for the purpose of snuffing lives out.

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

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, Netta pushed the door opened, thought that she was prepared for anything.

Inside, she was shocked to find 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 - was quickly turned to relief.

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

Ophelia said nothing, turning back to her work with a cool resolve. Winnie looked at her, surprised, and nudged her. "Pelly, what's the matter? She's returned - we should be happy!" Ophelia again was silent.

Winnie 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. Winnie looked away, her lips drawn in a tight line. Finally, Winnie 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 Winnie offered her an embrace, Netta took it, burying her face against the comforting smell of her fine hair. When they had parted, unbelievably, Winnie looked at the man in the doorway. At Ash, who had remained, manifesting himself physically.

Winnie 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 the magic to act."

Ash leaned back against the doorway, his green eyes pinioned on Winnie. "How are you so certain that I'm not in full control of her at the moment?" His voice was cold, stiff, only a few steps from the monotone of a Monster without any pretense of humanity.

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

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

Winnie 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."

Winnie hesitated, then her shoulders drooped. She 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 - 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.

Upstairs, Netta found the escaping teenager. 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 into one.

For a moment, the two of them simply stared at each other. Netta opened her mouth and found that she was unsure of what to say.

Ophelia saved her from having to speak. "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 -"

Netta willed the words to be gentle, in spite of her tiredness, symptomatic both of the sleepless night she had spent the night prior, as well as how hard the words would, necessarily, have to be. "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 same girl 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 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.

She had walked downstairs. Still, all Netta could do was continue to stare at the door as though it might implode. She was not alone, however, as Winnie that sidled up to her and whispered in her ear.

"Were you followed?" Even in a whisper, Winnie's voice sounded terrified.

Netta closed her eyes and could feel Ash burning in her, ready. If she were to take a final stand, then it may as well be now. She would die before she let them kill these two survivors.

She walked up to the door and drew it opened, Netta again certain that she was ready for everything that could possibly be on the other side of it.

When she saw the face of the Human man, Netta thought that she was imagining it. Or she was going to be ill.

Wallace was wearing those very chic, nostalgic horned rimmed framed glasses of his and a slightly form-fitting brown leather jacket that made him look, in a very good sense of the word, like a nerd.

"I finally found you." Those eyes of his found her, pinned to Netta's face.

Netta found it impossible to swallow a thick lump that had appeared in her throat. She blinked rapidly, found that she could not say anything, think,

Seeing him in the flesh was surreal. To her, he had almost become a rapidly fading voice, trapped in the speaker of her phone. A voicemail, lose in a labyrinth, unable to escape. "H-hi."

Wallace's eyes were awake, soft brown things that dove and scurried around as they tried to connect dots that Netta was not stringing together for him. He threw his hands out, then asked, "What gives?"

Netta opened her mouth and felt it remain open as she tried to discover what she should say to him.

Wallace sighed, shutting his eyes before opening them up to stare at her. "Look, it doesn't matter now. I've been worried sick about you - that message you left me? It scared me. You sounded disturbed. Can I come inside, please?" Before Netta could say yes or no, he gently pushed past her and entered the house. Wallace looked around the house before he turned his gaze immediately on Netta. "What is this? Why did you leave the city?"

"Wallace -"

"Look, nevermind, doesn't matter. I came all this way because - because I need to tell you that I lo-"

The words came from her, and the sound of the so very Human sentiment on her lips startled Netta. "I'm married now."

Wallace looked at her as though she had split in two. "Care to run that by that me again?"

"I'm married now." Netta found that she could not longer continue to make eye contact with him. Rather, all that she could manage to do was to look at the wall behind Wallace. In her mind, she could hear Sia, patronizingly, cruelly, calling that Monster her husband.

As she stared at the wall, Netta saw movement out of her eyes and knew, unerringly, that it was Ash.

Wallace sighed deeply, shoving a hand through his hair. Gathering himself, he said, "Look, I know you think you've got a handle on whatever's going on, but I have a few things to tell you - things that'll change your perspective -"

When Ash walked further into the room, Netta almost wanted to give a sigh of relief. He walked up and placed an arm around her shoulders, a smile that only looked pleasant at first on his lips. This was the closest the man was capable of politesse, but it was also plain, surely even to Wallace, that it was a veneer stretched thin as ice over a choppy sea of black waves.

"Care to introduce me to your friend here?"

Wallace paled, then looked rapidly from Netta to Ash and then back again. On his face was written the thing that Netta had long grown tired of. You? With him?

Nevertheless, Wallace recovered and an uncharacteristic glint of something, sharp, came into his eyes.

"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wallace, and I'll be taking your wife. She belongs with me - I don't know what she's doing here, playing house with you, but she needs to come with me -"

Netta broke in, her growing shock at his words, his uncharacteristic coldness, pushing her. "What are you talking about, Wallace?"

Wallace ignored Netta, his gaze fixed on Ash as though he were a much shorter and less muscled man than he was. "There's a few things that I need to explain to Neith that she's never fully understood - things that only I can teach her." He brought his hand to his chest in a single slam. "I have been dutifully waiting for her to regain her senses, but she left without telling me anything."

Ash craned his head a little forward, then nodded politely. "Mmmm. That's a pretty humorous story you're telling me. When does it get to the part about you turning around before I slam your body against a wall so hard you never come to?"

The movement came so quickly that Netta did not realize it, until Ash was holding onto Wallace's wrist in his much larger hand.

"Ash!"

Wallace screamed then and tried, unsuccessfully, to take his hand back. Finally, he closed his eyes, and said, "This is about to get a lot more amusing for me, you simple ape." He grinned, and Netta realized that she had never seen him come close to smiling that way to her. Her sweet, gentle, boring Human, near-platonic boyfriend. His teeth seemed to be set in his face like the blade of a scimitar.