“Life is too short to…” There are so many ways to finish that sentence fragment, and I'm only just getting started.

We met up with Holden after the incident with Dien Ho, and discovered he had gotten himself shot up and had his things confiscated by the police. Well that's just dandy. I called up Chrysanthemum Lee and had her stop by Glamour Shots to patch him up. While this was going on, Jake whipped up some h4x0rage at a nearby Starbucks and changed our phone numbers I guess. I'm not sure what else he did to the accounts, but hopefully it's enough to not link us to Dien Ho.

We went the extra length to screw over Dien Ho since he seemed an incredibly unsavory fellow, by Jake breaking into the APD server building and setting up some kind of permanent access for himself to change records. This will come in handy a lot in the future, I think (what does that say about us? *frown*). So, I believe Jake modified the two Dien Ho incidents so that they were no longer alibis for each other.

Additionally, Holden met with A Pimp Named Huu Tran, pretending to be that pedo cop, and through him got in touch with a representative of the Five Ts.

Holden met with this Five Ts guy, John Vu, and essentially told him (with the hope of getting the Five Ts to bump Dien Ho off in order to silence him) that Dien Ho was dropping names to get a lighter sentence. Can't tell whether or not this ploy was effective, however, until Dien Ho dies, I suppose. If it doesn't work, I guess only the pedo cop will get in trouble. But anyway, we shall see. Somehow, I think our run-ins with the Five Ts are not quite over yet.

I was really looking forward to the Summer Court box social being held at Glamour Shots this coming Saturday. I talked to Ahriman about it a good bit at the office, to try and get a feel for what type of party it was, what the dress code was, and what I should expect there.

I'm not usually very sociable, but I was looking forward to meeting others like me who were just regular court members, not politicos of great power with hidden agendas. I was also looking forward to what may or may not be forthcoming from “him”, as it seemed like an apt time and occasion to cross that bridge finally. But, the idea kinda freaked me out, and since the ball was technically now in my court, it was up to me to press forward, beyond the boundary of “teasing” and into the realm of “blatant”. I just wasn't sure if I could make that plunge, though.

With all of these thoughts in mind, I found myself very anxious about the party. I knew I wanted to make a good impression with everyone I came across, so with that idea in mind, I snagged Tim and headed to the mall to get some duds. Tim, of course, being a metrosexual of pretty good taste who seemed inordinately “into” lesbians, was needed to help me pick something really nice (and sexy, who am I kiddin'?). And that he did, although it was still kind of creepy having him leer at me that way. Especially after that display the other night at home with his two lesbian girlfiends, with all the booze and weed and god knows what else going on.

Anyway, with that done, all that was left was for Saturday to arrive.

I asked Tim to give me a ride to the Box Social since it would be annoying to have to drive my motorcycle in a dress. He did, and we arrived a little after start-time.

First up, as we were walking in, seemed to be a charity (Freehold) date-auction. Violet, Sylvan, Massimo and Jennifer were all auctioned off to individuals in order to generate money for the Freehold. Violet tried to drum up as much support and money from her court as she could, but alas, Massimo beat her by $1,000 without even trying. Well, he IS a pretty-boy after all.

If I had the kind of money to waste $17,000 on a date with Massimo… man, I would SO be using it for something else. Not that Massimo isn't a great date, I'm sure he probably is, but still. Ah well, guess not everyone in the Freehold is poor like me and can instead spend money on frivolous things.

After the official business kinda broke up, I decided to start wandering about introducing myself to people I didn't recognize, and find out who the other members of the Freehold were. There were a lot of younger types here, and a few older types as well. In particular, this one chick named Heather Smith, of the Autumn Court, was really cool with her manly job. She had big muscles too.

I noticed Jake had set up some sort of table with his laptop at hand and was having people come by to talk to him. It appeared, as I peeked quietly over his shoulder while walking by, that he was getting information for this wiki thing he had been working on the past month or two. The same wiki that, I hear, had some scandalous page up about me. *frown* Well, I guess this was a pretty convenient way to gather info about the local changelings he didn't know; I mean that's what parties are for, right?

I couldn't help but take a look every now and then to see what “he” was doing as I walked around talking to people. I really wanted to go talk to “him”, but I didn't really know how much of this event was business and how much of this was play. I did bump into “him” a few times and we would chat briefly, but then someone else would come up to talk to “him” and I would slip away.

I did notice some people disappearing and reappearing after while; Violet in particular reappeared with her hair all tussled up and not hiding it in the slightest. I went to ask Kevin about it; surely he would know what was going on there (aside from the obvious part).

Kevin filled me in on what was going on and suggested, seemingly out of the blue, that I should take advantage of it and go upstairs with “him”. I chuckled nervously and replied, “so you noticed?”, to where I was informed that “duh, I could cut the tension between you two with a knife.” My face flushed a little and I looked away and told him that from what he had described, “upstairs” didn't seem very private and I thought it would be kind of weird to do that type of thing here. Besides, there were people talking to “him” all the time here and I didn't want to bother “him”. Kevin rolled his eyes and shrugged, poked some more fun at me before I headed back out into the mass of people.

I had been having a bit of drink, and decided for some reason that it might be fun to get out on the dance floor or something. I noticed Violet over there, and hit her up for some slutty lesbian-style dancing. She seemed amenable to this idea and we did that through a song, and afterwards I felt my head kind of swimming like maybe I was having a little too much fun. Was someone smoking weed around here?

I decided to head back over to the bar to chug a couple of glasses of water to hopefully straighten myself up a bit. That was when I noticed Kevin had wandered over to talk to “him”. I saw Kevin point in this direction and I quickly looked in a different direction and pretended to be watching some other group of people talk nearby. It's really too bad I didn't get this childish behavior out of my system when I was 15 years old instead of now.

I glanced back in “his” direction briefly and noticed “he” was headed over in my direction! Argh, Kevin, you interfering pest! He would pay for this later. I grumbled annoyedly into my glass.

“Privyet, Svet.” I was so focused on watching “him” but not doing it in an obvious manner that I hadn't noticed my brother walk up next to me. “What're you doing sitting here by yourself?”

I glanced over to him with a “huh?” and he looked over to where I had been looking.

“Ah” he replied with an omniscient tone. What, did everyone know? Maybe I should go hide in the bathroom and drink my sober-up water out of a toilet bowl instead. At this point, Sabina walked up next to Ilya, putting her arm around his and leaning against him. Her hair was messed up too.

“You should go upst-” Ilya began, grinning, but I cut him off with a quick motion and told him it wasn't going to happen. Ilya gave me a pouting look and I rolled my eyes. Why was everyone in the universe either telling me I need to get laid or conspiring to get me laid? And here I thought I'd mellowed out a little bit. *frown*

At this point, Ahriman arrived. Ilya and Sabina greeted him casually, and then said bye to me and walked off. Ilya gave me a very obvious wink, and I gave Ahri a somewhat helpless look as Ilya sauntered somewhat drunkenly off with Sabina. Ahri said he was going to go get a new drink and wanted to know if I wanted one too. I told him sure in order to get rid of him again for long enough to hopefully regain my composure.

As he turned to head over to the counter across the way with the tray of drinks sitting on it, I noticed him glance toward the stairwell. I felt my face go pale; well, now I know what Kevin had been yammering at him about. Great. “Slutlana” indeed. I wonder if people really think that of me? I sure hope *he* didn't…

I let out an exasperated sigh and leaned back to stare up at the ceiling, and that was when noticed some weird movement up there. Something flapping around. As I sat up to study it to try and figure out what it was, my vision suddenly went black and I fell into unconsciousness.

I woke up to a splash of water in my face. I saw Holden standing over me with an empty glass in his hand. I heard yelling and sounds of battle. As soon as my brain registered that, I was on my feet in an instant, looking around, assessing the situation.

On one side, near the kitchen, we had the huntsman standing in front of an open hedge gate with a giant friggin' sword, and on the other side, standing in front of a very LARGE open hedge gate that was the main door to Glamour Shots, was a giant pack of brier wolves who were busy dragging unconscious people through the gate as quickly as they could.

Well. Water worked to wake me up, maybe it will wake everyone else up too. I stepped out onto the floor and moved toward the front doors, and willed the fire sprinklers to unleash a torrent. Seconds later, a deluge of water sprayed forth, covering pretty much everyone in the building. I glanced over at the huntsman just in time to see him send Massimo flying into a corner. A white-hot rage began brewing in my belly, but fighting the huntsman was not my battle. I needed to prevent those damn wolves from taking anyone into the hedge.

There had to be 30 wolves in this place, 20 of which were between me and the door, but even so, I did my best to redirect the flood of water to do my bidding and clear the area around the door, including knocking some of the wolves out of the way, preventing them from taking anyone else in. I continued moving toward to the door, but damn, they already had 10 or so people through the gate. With the water, I splashed them awake and propelled as many of them as I could out of the gate with it, and glanced back toward the huntsman.

Sylvan, Violet, Wallace, Jennifer and Ahriman all seemed to be on him, trying to take him down. I glanced over to poor Massimo worriedly, but went back to what I was doing.

I activated my water armor as I arrived at the door, and helped yank the stragglers bodily through the gate in order to get them out of it so that I could close it. At that point Jake got up on the stage and began to use the electronic equipment to zap wolves from a distance.

Just as I was closing the hedge door, two brier wolves came up and ripped me up quite horribly with their claws. They took some damage from my armor as they came into contact with me, and then Jake sent some electrical death their way, further hurting them and pissing them off even more. I took their distraction with Jake, however, as a chance to step out of their line of fire, behind Ugly Archie, and spent a moment fortifying my stamina while Archie attempted to beat them senseless.

That was when I saw, god, Sylvan's head go rolling in a different direction than his body. Shock and horror wracked through my body and my resolve wavered a bit as I got my feet back under me. I was losing a lot of blood, I realized, and would have problems later after my adrenaline high wore off.

A lot of people were running around screaming, trying to get away from the huntsman but not being able to go anywhere because both doors were gates to the hedge. I had been having to deal with this mass-hysteria problem since people had begun waking up, and had been making good use of the water in the area to keep people from trying to go through the main door while it still opened to the hedge.

But now that the hedge gate was closed, it was time to reopen the doors to Glamour Shots and let all the crazy people flee. I flung the doors open, yelled as loudly and commandingly as I could for people to escape through HERE, and moved away from the door so I wouldn't be trampled in the stampeding mob.

As I did this, I noticed Tim fly past me at a run through the door, but more importantly, Violet was sent flying through the air, landing in a heap on the floor. My knees wobbled but I walked forward away from the door toward the center of the room anyway. The ranks were thinning at the huntsman's front, and now the wolves, with no more hedge gate to drag people through, were consolidating their numbers for a charge toward the front line. I absolutely could NOT let this happen.

While I was trying to drum up a tidal wave of epic proportions, Jennifer unleashed a blast of frost, freezing the water beneath the charging wolves, sending them splaying in all directions. At about the same time, the huntsman's sword came down on her sending her to the ground, broken and bleeding. I. could. not. let. my. resolve. waver.

Jake had been shooting lightning bolts at wolves and in various directions while all this was going on, and Holden, at least I think it was Holden, had been throwing molotov cocktails into the melee. I did notice as Jennifer's freeze-radius spread out that Jake had managed to zap the second hedge gate shut. The huntsman went to reopen it, and, since he was focusing more on that than the fight at that point, the group standing before him took the opportunity to send him staggering away from the door a little bit with a series of blows.

It took me far longer than I would've liked to get the water positioned, but finally I was able to unleash the tidal wave, and sent it cascading over the mass of wolves, also managing to snap the huntsman up with it in the process. Once the group was swooshed together and slammed against the wall, Jake sent some lightning death down on the area.

The huntsman, yet even still alive despite the serious amounts of damage he had taken, struggled to his feet and turned to head back toward his former hedge gate. No way, asshole. I summoned the water in the area into a solid column of water around him, forcing him to wade through what amounted to a small swimming pool's worth of water to get there. Slowing him down to that degree would surely give Jake enough time to finish the bastard off.

I held that column of water against him, Jake sent several more electricity bolts his direction, and at this point I started hearing gunfire from behind me.

Finally, blessedly, the huntsman went down. I dropped my arms, and the column of water that had been surrounding him splashed down to the floor as well. I clutched my bleeding belly while I took a look around to determine what to do next.

There were still wolves scurrying around, and several people were busy pounding their faces in. Jake continued to shoot lightning bolts at the remaining wolves, but Holden's molotov cocktail onslaught seemed to have tapered off. Tim, I observed, was the one with the shotgun and seemed to be finishing off anything that was still moving that resembled a wolf. Well, but not himself obviously.

It was pretty obvious that I wasn't needed for wolf-detail, so I decided to focus my efforts on the hurt and dying.

Once I determined I was no longer in any danger, I took stock of those dying around me and headed to the first one of relative importance that Chrysanthemum hadn't yet gotten to: Massimo. I hurried as quickly as I could since he had been one of the first injured and probably fading fast, if not already gone. From a distance I could see he was badly hurt, his innards somewhat hanging out of his slit gut. As I got to him, I ripped his shirt off of him and packed things back in as carefully and correctly as I could.

I barked at Kevin who was scurrying around in abject hysteria to get his ass over here with the best bottle of vodka he could grab in the shortest amount of time. He jumped and obeyed, hurrying over. I grabbed the vodka from him and told him to go give some to both Chrysanthemum and Bill Duggan, and he hurried off in compliance.

I used the ambient water in the area to clean out Massimo's rather large and horrible wound, and then used the vodka to disinfect it as much as possible. Once that was done, I used Massimo's shirt as a tourniquet around his abdomen, tying it solidly into place.

Anne Meryls I had already noticed lurking under a nearby table watching in horror, and I ordered her by name to get over here quickly. She came as ordered, scurrying hurriedly, and I told her she needed to take Massimo back to his house and keep an eye on him. I gave her my new phone number and told her she should drive his car not hers; if she had driven herself, she should instead move her car to a different parking lot before leaving with him and then come back later to get it. I also offered her the help of Ugly Archie if she needed a strong arm, before heading on to the next person and leaving Massimo in her care.

With that, I hurried over to Violet who seemed to be in nearly as bad a state as Massimo had been, although she had a somewhat different set of problems. She was cut up, but her real problem seemed to be several broken and/or dislocated bones. Like last time, I used the water and vodka on the open wounds, but I also had to set one joint back into place and splint one of her arms. I suspected she had several broken ribs and possibly some internal bleeding, but those issues I couldn't really do anything about here, and it would be best to leave that type of thing to the professionals anyway.

Those things I could do for Violet were somewhat more difficult than patching up Massimo's wounds had been. I was careful but determined, and managed to get her rearranged in as correct a form as was possible with what I had to work with. Chrysanthemum or Duggan would probably have to pay her a house-call later, as most of her bad injuries seemed to be internal. Wallace came up as I was doing this and I explained to him what needed to be done for her and that he should find someone to take her home.

After I finished with Violet, I hurried over to check Jennifer, but unfortunately she was already gone. I put my hand over my eyes and my shoulders shivered momentarily as I knelt before her lifeless body. Finally I took a deep breath and yelled Kevin over. I told him to give me his shirt in a tone that brooked no argument. He frowned and took it off, handing it to me. I did my water and vodka trick again, this time on my own wounds, and used Kevin's shirt to tourniquet-off the blood flow of my belly wounds. I told him to find someone to gather up Jennifer and Sylvan, and squirrel them off somewhere, through a nearby hedge door he was familiar with, preferably until after the inevitable police portion of this event was over.

After that I got up and looked around for Ahriman. I caught sight of him sitting on a bar stool near the huntsman's body with his head in his hands, talking to a really big guy covered in wolf detritus, whom I had met earlier during the party, named Max. He finally looked up at Max and Max nodded to him, and then headed off in a different direction to go do … something.

I could see he was bleeding as I approached him, but despite this Ahriman didn't seem to be too bad off compared to, well, Massimo and er, Jennifer. Or even myself, really.

“Svetlana-” he began as I walked up to him with a bottle of vodka in my hand and a vaguely delirious look on my face.

“Take your shirt off,” I told him as I sat the bottle on the bar beside him. He complied in silence with a somber look on his face as I knelt down to take a closer look. Yeah, my initial assessment had been correct; he was hurt but not too badly… comparatively. Yet again I did my water trick, willing a stream of it up off the floor and into Ahriman's wounds to cleanse them of any filth. After that I used water mixed with vodka to disinfect the wounds, before tying his shirt around his middle to ensure the bleeding would stop.

After doing that, I stood up and let out a huge sigh of relief that I hadn't realized I had been holding in. The water continued spraying from the sprinklers all around us, hiding the tears that I know had begun streaming down my face just now as I observed him still alive before me. Somewhat spontaneously, I stepped forward to embrace him, hugging him to me tightly for just a moment, no doubt aggravating my own wounds (as if I cared). When I pulled away from him, I then leaned forward to give him a solid yet quick, passionate kiss, on the lips, as if to drive the point home.

Finally, I stepped back away from him and told him with great relief in my voice, “I am SO GLAD you are okay. … Well, relatively speaking.” His face had taken on an expression of surprise and confusion, and while he was unable to formulate a reply, I turned away from him and hurried off to go find my brother and Kevin before I was tempted to start bawling or something equally lame and useless right now.

Those of us who had remained around to help out all coordinated using the remaining water to wash the bodies of the wolves into the hedge and to get as much of the blood and gore cleaned up around Glamour Shots as was possible before the cops got there. Which should be soon, those fucking slackers. And how the hell do you explain something like this to a normal human, even if they're a cop? Well, I'd let Kevin figure that out. Anyway, I swooshed furry bodies toward the door while others quickly tossed them through the newly-opened gate, while still others quickly cleaned up the floors and walls and such before I finally shut the sprinklers off.

It hadn't really been all that long since this horrible battle started, but I found myself swaying unsteadily on my feet as I watched some person whose form was fuzzy and indistinct in my vision close the hedge door, hiding the pile of wolf bodies behind it. Did I lose too much blood or did my stamina boost finally wear off? Both maybe? Those were my last thoughts before blacking out and collapsing in a heap on the floor.

My eyes opened slowly to an unfamiliar ceiling. I was immediately struck by a searing pain through my abdomen. I curled into a ball in the unfamiliar bed and struggled with the pain, making small whimpering sounds while a few tears streaked down my cheeks. After a moment, I had fortified my stamina again to where the pain had subsided to a dull ache and I could observe my surroundings more coherently.

I sat up. The clock read just after noon. I seemed to be wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants; not what I had last been wearing, that's for sure. I climbed quietly out of bed and walked slowly over to the door, opening it quietly also. I peeked out to observe a fairly typical house hallway with sounds that resembling cooking floating in the air. This was almost assuredly not Faerie, and it was certainly no hospital ward, so I saw no reason to continue sneaking around.

I stepped out into the hallway and headed toward the sound until I found myself in the kitchen of the house, standing across the counter from a bathrobe-clad Ahriman, who seemed to be cooking something at the stove. “Good morning,” he said looking up at me, “how do you like your eggs?”

His yellow eyes regarded me carefully, quickly assessing my physical state as he waited for my reply. “Uh…” I blathered staring at him quite rudely, “scrambled…. with cheese?”

He quirked an eyebrow at my response. I immediately felt like a jerk for my rather picky reply. Even if it was true. He chuckled a bit, and I asked if I could use his shower and if he had some bandages and gauze and neosporin and… He told me that everything I needed was in the bathroom. I nodded and headed back to the bedroom to take my shower.

I returned to the dining room a short while later, showered and re-bandaged, and sat down at the table next to Ahriman to a plate of scrambled eggs with cheese, toast, and sausage. I asked him quietly how long I could stay – that I was worried about imposing on him, but I was also concerned about what my roommates would think about my leaving bloody bandages everywhere.

“Stay as long as you'd like,” he replied easily, looking over at me with his intense yellow eyes as he took a bite of his eggs.

After a short, uncomfortable silence, I blurted out the first thing that popped into my head. “I- I think Jake has some kind of permanent access to the Atlanta Police Department database,” I stammered, embarrassed suddenly as I began to recall my behavior from the previous night, “he can probably change the details about the report for what happened yesterday, assuming the police eventually showed up…”

“Well,” Ahriman replied, picking up the TV remote and clicking the TV on, “that will definitely be useful.”

The station that popped up on the screen happened to be running a news report on the incident from last night. They were explaining it away as a gang-related crime. And then, what I saw caused me to drop my glass of water on the table without even caring, water spreading out across the table and the glass rolling onto the floor.

The woman giving the report, the Assistant District Attorney, was… she was… the Snow Fairy. A human version of the Snow Fairy. MY Snow Fairy. My eyes widened to saucers, my jaw quivered and my hand shook, but no sound came forth. I pointed, a shiver running up my spine, causing my hand to shake even more.

“What's wrong?” Ahriman asked immediately, tensing, with very obvious worry in his voice.

“Th- the Snow Fairy,” I stammered, still pointing, not even looking at him, “She's the Snow Fairy. My owner, the- the huntsman's boss.” I reached up and covered my face with my hands, staring in horror. It was my fault, MY FAULT, that everyone was hurt, compromised, that Kevin's club was wrecked, that Sylvan and Jennifer were dead, and that the Freehold was fragmenting.

My mind went numb and I stood up, about to do only god knows what, when suddenly… the doorbell rang. Ahriman was half standing and paused while reaching toward me, and we both stared in the direction of the sound. It rang a second time, and I managed to get my crazies under control enough to where Ahriman was free to go answer it. After a second, I turned to follow him, still shivering, but silent.

It was Tim. He carried two bags of what appeared to be cherry-like grapes. He handed one bag to me and one to Ahriman as we stood in the doorway staring at him. I took the fruit and stammered something to the effect of “the ADA is the snow fairy.” Tim shrugged and nodded, indicating he knew but it wasn't worth worrying about right now. He was right, of course.

Ahriman invited him in for a few minutes. Knowing what this fruit was just by looking at it, I popped it into my mouth absently as Tim and Ahriman talked briefly. It was, of course, healing fruit. Apparently Tim and Jake had contacted Jeb early this morning and had been helping him get some of it harvested for the survivors. It hurt like the dickens while my flesh knitted back together, but when it was done, the pain subsided again, back to a dull ache. Apparently, while the wounds had healed, the pain remained, so I suppose I would have to endure that for the forseeable future. At least I no longer had to dress any wounds, though, nor had to worry about infection, aggravating the wounds, or any other complications. Pain I could deal with.

In the end, I elected to head back to the house with Tim because I didn't really know how to deal with Ahriman at the moment. I told Ahri that I wouldn't be able to come in on Monday, but Tuesday might be okay. He nodded in response without showing any kind of expression, and so, I thanked him again for his help, and then Tim and I left.