All Souls Night.

Disclaimers in Chapter One.

Gabrielle had tickled and teased, restrained and tormented, slowly taking Xena to that edge time and again. Promising release, only to leave her dangling. And when release finally did come(pardon the expression), Xena would have sworn she heard glass breaking.Would have, had she managed to stay conscious afterwards, rather than slip into blissful oblivion.

Not to say she didn't get her own licks in. Gabrielle wouldn't be sleeping on her back for a while, at least not comfortably.

They were spread out over each other now, a tangle of limbs, bronzed skin against crme complexion. And all glistening with sweat and other, richer fluids, they both fairly glowed in the silvery light of Luna.

Xena was dead to the world, which was as it should be, given the supreme effort Gabrielle had put into their lovemaking. She'd nearly lost herself in it this time, a rare enough occurrence, and could count on one hand how often she'd been as selfish. Their first time certainly, though Gabrielle wasn't sure if that necessarily counted. Coming in from her ritual hunt two days ago. A time here and there, when it had become painful to look at this child, only to see her warrior.

Tonight had been deliberate. Tonight sheād let all her passions loose and driven them both beyond their limits, beyond all known boundaries, and *still* this mortal child given as well as received. Better, truth be told, given the way Gabrielleās every *pore* was humming, her muscles, joints, and who-knew-what else all joining in a chorus to ecstasy.

It was so seductive, the idea to let it all lie. This was her heart spread out atop her, her very life. Asleep or awake, the aura of innocence clung to this one, though she kept it well hidden from most. Even Gabrielle hadn't seen it at first.

She might loose it all this night.

Gabrielle, who for centuries had prided herself on her decisiveness and courage (sheād advised dozens of royal courts, relocated the entire Amazon nation she ruled far from he corruption of the patriarchal world, even took to raising and riding horses though she could never conquer her fear of them), was very close to reversing herself for the first time in centuries. *Very* close.

Xena's whimper, which suddenly disturbed the sleeperās even breaths, made the decision for her.

With a last lingering look over her companion and love, as though it would be the last opportunity she would ever have, Gabrielle closed her eyes and let herself drift away.

No sooner had she relaxed, all consciousness melting away, than unnatural shadows fell upon the two sleepers.

******

Xena dreamed.

She opened her eyes to an unfamiliar street. An empty place, barren of everything save choking shadows and towering buildings on either side. All black and gray and void of life. The street was undivided, and simply stretched to the horizon in either direction.

There was no wind to be heard, nor clouds to be seen. The sky overhead, so impossibly far distant it seemed, was a flat ceiling of slate gray. So distant, yet to look at it for even a breath was to feel it press down upon you, crushing you with its weight. Xena avoided the sky and peered down the street to both ends, expecting the Powdered Wig, or the Toga, or the Voodoo Priestess to suddenly appear. She had no wish to see the one in filthy robes, yet wished with all her heart that the skull in clean robes would come again.

Xena was mildly shocked by this realization, knowing instantly the comfort this apparition brought was equal only to the same Gabrielle brought to her.Xena smiled in memory of their wild lovemaking. Even in this barren place, she felt alight with the passions and love the small woman set aflame within her.

And so she had no fear here, hence her decision to wander this shadowed place, a grin curving her lips and a lightness to her step. Xena occupied her thoughts by reliving the lovemaking which had *so* exhausted her, a whimper of tired arousal issuing at one point.

There was no way to know how far she had traveled (somewhere between one and one million steps) before she heard the distant voice filter to her.

"Xeeeeeennnnnnnaaaaa?" it echoed, faint to all ears...save her's. A voice she could recognize even amidst the busiest crowd. She snapped her head around in search of it...of *her*.

"Xeeeeeeennnnnnaaaaaa?" it echoed again, stronger now.

It made little sense for her to go running off in search of someone in this place. The fact it was entirely a figment of her disturbed subconscious notwithstanding, Xena simply had no idea which way Gabrielle (she was absolutely, positively, one-hundred-thousand-percent *sure* it *was* the genuine Gabrielle) was approaching from. There might have been only two directions to choose from, but to choose the wrong one would serve nothing save to turn this all from an oddity to a nightmare.

Gabrielle, out there, alone and unprotected...that was fodder enough for all the nightmare she'd ever need.

So Xena waited, and endured Gabrielleās calls silently. Oh, she longed to scream out at the top of her lungs in answer. Again, practicality reigned. What point was there to making even more echoes, which could only confuse Gabrielle's search as well? This gave time to think, which proved a mixed blessing.

Thinking allowed Xena to consider a bit more carefully her situation here. The landscape was, of course, utterly alien to her. Since she could divine no purpose or hidden Freudianesque meaning out of it, and so largely ignored it.

It was Gabrielle's being here which raised doubts concerning her sanity right then. And doubts on that count were something she had in abundance. This whole day, from waking and knocking Gabrielle on the head, straight through their butting heads in the bedroom and kitchen, and her ending up on the floor, pinned down and laughing herself hoarse under Gabrielle's tickle torture-foreplay... she'd been swinging from one high to the lowest low faster than Martia the Python Handler had during all three trimesters. The flashbacks were nothing new, at least not lately. But the arguments she was picking, the accusations she was throwing around...

Could it be she'd been possessed by some demon from the lower depth of the Underworld had taken possession of her for the day and done its level best to ruin their relationship, thereby ensuring she would return to the streets and end up having to sell her soul to him, him in his convenient pimp-disguise, and practically guaranteeing him a nice cushy position on the thirteenth level of Hell.

Or perhaps all those ranting paranoids she sometimes ran into on the streets, the ones screaming about vampires stalking the alleys and the undead ruling the world, were right and the government was spiking the drinking water with powerful psychotics, targeting her and Gabrielle as a test to see if they could systematically wipe out homosexual couples by driving them to murder one another since AIDS was no longer doing the trick.

Then again, maybe it was simply her time of the month.

"XEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAA!" bounced off the cavern walls of the buildings, interrupting these thoughts, which was just as well they were quickly spiraling down the metaphorical gutter.

This, unfortunately, turned Xena's attention to something more immediate. Namely how in *Hell* was she so sure, so *damn* sure, that it was the one and only Gabrielle calling to her? For all she knew it could be a twisted monstrosity out there, conjured up by her eternal guilt, trying to lure her to her doom.

"XEEEEEEENNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAA!"

Then again, what guilt-demon of her's would have the poor taste to deafen every non-entity not in sight? Xena sighed. God, you need help, girl!

"Here!" Xena shouted, daring greatly.

"Where?" came the response, close enough and clear enough Xena almost felt confident trying to follow it down the left branch of the street. The direction, she noted, which took her right into shadow-city. How appropriate.

"How should *I* know?!" Xena shouted, conveying her annoyance and growing impatience by quickening her pace towards the supposed direction of the voice. The street felt surprisingly smooth beneath her feet, and so Xena thought nothing of practically breaking into a run when her sharp eyes caught sight of the small figure fairly melting out of the shadows. It was without doubt Gabrielle, her calm stride and casual aura all the confirmation needed. At that point Xena wasn't sure if she wanted to kiss the redhead or punch her lights out. Right then, all she cared for was to have Gabrielle in her arms again.

She did not have opportunity to resolve this small dilemma, as Gabrielle's appearance rendering the matter quite moot.

Xena, her sight of the smaller woman naturally clearing with each step bringing them closer and closer together, became less inclined to punch her...and still less inclined to embrace her.

The redhead approached her in surprisingly long strides, her relieved smile wide and bright. This only further disinclined Xena and actually prompted her to take step *backwards*. Gabrielle's smile faltered and collapsed at this, her bright eyes losing their shine and regarding her with confusion. Gabrielle stopped some paces before the suddenly wary Xena and asked "What?"

Several questions tumbled through Xena's mind at this point. Why was Gabrielle suddenly appearing in her dreams? *How* Gabrielle, the genuine and one-of-a-kind- article Gabrielle, was appearing in her dreams and not simply some idealized representation of her? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? What exactly was the meaning of their meeting here on an undivided street in the midst of some art-deco fantasy realm? How long is a piece of string? What are these bicycle clips which British comedians are always so obsessed with?

Only one question managed to make it up her throat and out her mouth.

"Gabrielle?" Xena asked in a perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable, and utterly terrified voice. "Why is your mouth bleeding?"

******

It had been over seven hundred years since she'd attempted this, and still Gabrielle had no difficulty slipping from one realm to the other, and from there one mind to another. It left her at once reassured and unsettled; reassured that her more exotic abilities still functioned at their peak despite centuries of disuse...and unsettled for exactly the same reason.

She'd found her way to Xenaās dreamscape almost instantaneously, feeling the powerful pull of her lover's soul as if she'd been lassoed by it and was all but dragged into the dream. Gabrielle had learned long ago that any dreamscape was purely a construction of the mind involved, a sort of reflection of its inner workings which took a tangible form for the conscious mind to relate to while there. Sleep, she had found, was merely the consciousness moving from one level of awareness to another, this movement allowing the body to rest and rebuild its strength.

To judge by the surrounds she found herself in, Xena was in need of at least a year's worth of rest, relaxation, and more TLC than a newborn infant. All of which Gabrielle resolved to give her (and *then* some) when this was all done with.

Still, Gabrielle was quite lost when it came to seeing how deserted streets and empty towering buildings could generate anxiety of such force to disturb her sleep *every* night for the past several weeks. If anything, this place was positively serene.

Serene, but to the point where it quickly wore on her nerves, leading her start screaming Xena's name without really thinking. All Gabrielle could think of then was to get Xena out of here, fast.

This place *was* serene, calm. The sort of calm coming before a storm.

She kept screaming Xena's name, hysteria welling in her stomach.

Dreamwalking, as Gabrielle called it, it an inherently dangerous proposition. The dreamscape might be constructed by the mind, but it is the continued presence and attention of the dreamer's consciousness which maintains the construct for any length of time. A dreamwalker caught in the demise of the construct is lost, conceivably forever. She'd seen this happen only once, when an ambitious kin of her's had sought to assassinate Xena's mind. His cries for mercy and help, slowly consumed by the abyss she herself only narrowly escaped, still haunted her at times.

There are no words to convey her relief when Xena did call out in response. Gabrielle, however, kept her pace slow and relaxed. There were eyes watching them now, and damned if she'd tip them to her knowing it.

Xena practically running to her was difficult enough to take. Gods, did the woman have any idea how *powerful* she looked moving like that? Gloriously nude, heavy breasts hardly swaying, her every step a display of muscles in harmony, long ebony locks flowing about those broad shoulders...

But then she suddenly slowed to a dead stop, all in the space of just a few steps. She stopped, stared, took half a step back, and asked a question which turned Gabrielleās blood to solid ice.

"Gabrielle? Why is your mouth bleeding?"

Her hand shot up to her lips, fingertips coming away damp and sticky. She couldn't stop her mouth dropping open.

Xena asked another question, still with that maddeningly calm voice of her's. "And why do you fangs?"

Gabrielle's tongued her elongated canines and her head shot up, eyes wide and skin chalk white. Or so she thought.

"And why do you have red skin all of a sudden?"

She couldn't form words of explanation, but simply stand there, lips trembling and eyes fixed on Xena's equally wide eyes.

"And horns?" Xena was backing up another step, followed quickly by another. "And... you've got...claws?"

Somehow Gabrielle managed to snap out of it enough to look at her hands, both of had, indeed, become a pair of wicked-looking claws not unlike Bacchus' own. One hand flew to her forehead, only to jerk away at feeling the two small protrusions there.

She looked back at Xena, grateful to see she hadn't back away any further...though she certainly looked ready to run for the hill in the opposite direction in a second. Gabrielle knew the least movement or sound on her part would lead Xena to do *just* that, not that she could move so much as her big toe right then.

And the words still eluded her.

Again, just as well. The tremble of Xena's own lips, the mist settling over her eyes, these were enough to freeze her heart as well as her thoughts.

Xena whispered the question.

"What are you?"

It might as well have been screamed a thousand times over all at once, Gabrielle suddenly going deaf from those three words. Not "who". "What" was she?

She didn't hear what came next, any more than she felt it.

******

Xena sensed their presence long before she heard the clapping. Eyes, several pairs of them, watching. Each of them she knew burned with such malice she could taste it, smell the stink it left to the air as it blurred past her...and towards Gabrielle.

Xena knew all this the way she knew she was breathing, and consequently wasn't paying close attention to it. The sight of her lover (again, she had *no* doubt that this was her Gabrielle) looking like a over-made-up reject from a Hammer spaghetti vampire flick, with a bleeding lip no less, was more than her cognitive faculties could handle just then.

Still, the combination of cackling laughter coming from four different sides(three of them from forty-five and fifty degrees up from the horizontal), the sudden *whooosh* *whoosh* *whoosh* of air swirling about her, the continued clapping, AND Gabrielle suddenly being seized by both shoulders and being carried straight up and away proved just enough to jar Xena to full awareness.

She saw the Toga and Voodoo Priestess *flying* directly over her head, their laughter joining that of the smaller woman in orange robes, Gabrielle dangling between them. Out of the corner of her eye, she spied the Powdered Wig, loosing a full-belly laugh and clapping as though giving a one-man ovation.

Without hesitation, Xena bent at the knees and sprung upwards as though shot from a cannon. She managed to grasp both of the Toga's ankles, though one hand quickly lost its grip. Through tight-clenched teeth, she hissed above their laughter "Let her go!"

The Toga looked down at her, incredulous. A savage kick failed to dislodge her, each successive try only hardened her resolve to hold on. "I said," she repeated, voice easily carrying over their's combined, "let...her...*go*!"

The Voodoo Priestess threw her head back and laughed with glee at her fellow's discomfort and dismay. The small one, her arms not engaged in holding their prey aloft, glided upwards, coming to rest for a moment directly above Xena's twisting and struggling back.

She descend like a missile then, the heels of both feet impacting squarely on the fierce woman's spine and jarring her grip loose. Xena acknowledged the pain only with a forcibly expelled breath; the scream of rage she issued (backed by a silent vow of retribution) was directed solely at her lost quarry, the three of whom misunderstood what their heard and laughed harder still.

Xena fell only a short way to the ground, instinctively tucking into a ball and controlling her angle of impact enough that she landed in a roll. An out-of-control roll, it turned out, and one which landed her directly at the Powdered Wig's feet.

The fat prig hadn't stopped his damn clapping. "Bravo, my child," he fairly bellowed as she got to her feet. "Bravo!"

"Bring her back!" Xena hissed, drawing herself to her full height, her eyes level with his.

Yet he continued on as though she hadn't even spoken. "You performed beautifully, dearest. Played your role to perfection. I am *so* proud!"

Xena leaned in closer still, fists now clenching and heart pounding against her ribs hard enough to burst. "I said..." she began again, only to be cut off when the Powdered Wig seized her by the throat with a single beefy hand.

"You," he hissed in reply, "say *nothing*! You are *meat* to us, whore, and never forget that." He raised her by the throat, still using only one hand, it felt like a full foot off the ground. Xena desperately grabbed his wrist, so to prevent herself from choking.

"You should thank us, whore. Because of us, you will inherit her fortune." He drew her a little closer, giving a good look at his fangs. "Perhaps we'll even allow you to keep it."

He laughed again, his stinking breath robbing her of her own, and threw her away as though she were a child's toy. Xena sailed through the air, her thoughts racing ahead of her...to the wall she knew she would collide with in seconds.

It would be a clichŽ to say her life flashed before her eyes. It was more a disjointed series of images, running from the mundane and childish to the erotic and shameful. Tears having nothing to do with the wind cutting into her through the short journey collected in both eyes...eyes which could only see her lost love now, fangs, horns, and all.

"GabrielleIamsorrysososorryIdidnotmeanitallIwillfindyouIpromiseIswearIloveyou uforeverILOVEYOUILOVEYOUILOVEYOU"

She hit the solid-looking wall of gray brick and mortar head-first, her entire universe filled with the tinkle of a thousand mirror breaking.

******

Author's Notes(again): PANT! GASP! WHEEZE! This is IT for the time being, folks! I'm behind in my packing and I need to get to it cause I leave on Saturday. Rest assured, this is NOT the end of the story; if anything, we're just getting started!