Disclaimer, Rating Explanations and Stuph: Okay...I wrote this...I on a whim...it is horror...it is pretty sick...so if blood make you cringe, I suggest you stop reading here.

Disclaimer....gotta have this...I don't own the characters...I'm just writing a story...so...uh....:::shuts up:::

"Bloodcall"
by Crista the Wicked Watermelon

She woke up and shivered slightly in the morning air, spitting on the ground. Others were rising around her, their eyes lucid and vacant like hers. She ran her fingers through her ratted hair and stood up. There was blood all over. No one was clean.

Silently, the dark-haired woman walked through the trees. There was a pool, and she dropped her blood-stained dress on the ground and dove in.

The woman washed herself, rinsing her mouth of the dark blood that had dried on her face. The water becoming too cold, she dumped the black dress in and out of the pool a few times and stretched it out on a rock.

She rubbed her eyes and walked back to her small hut-like house and put on some dry, clean clothes. She stared at the apple on the table and felt ill, knowing she wouldn't be able to eat more than a few crackers as usual.

The woman almost smiled at the thought. As if it ever changed. Nothing ever changes here. Hell could freeze over and still it would remain the same. She closed her eyes as the grating memories came back. Memories of only the night before, but they were chilling and made her nauseous. What we did... who we are, it never stops.

Trying to shake it off, she came outside and went to the center under dark green trees. She saw Arrow leaning against a tree, expressionless. His blue eyes looked bloodshot; she was sure hers were the same.

He was remembering too, the evil, or however he saw it. "Last night was a really bad one," he said matter-of-factly.

She nodded. "I wish..." she trailed off.

He patted her on the shoulder. "I know. We all know, Eirena. It's not ever going to change, no matter how much we feel or hate. We're helpless." It had been a while since she'd had a pep talk, and she needed one badly after last night.
Eirena looked around at the little 'village', if that's what you wanted to call it. No one cried. They couldn't. She couldn't. The very first time, she couldn't stop crying. But so many years had passed, so many tears had already fallen. They stopped coming.

Arrow sighed. He understood, and she wished he hadn't had to. He was one of her first victims, lucky enough to have caught her 'virus'. The others had also been infected. It was rare, but it still hurt to think of the lives destroyed. Arrow, if he was angry at her, never showed it. Nor did the others. The years had forced them beyond that.

"I just don't want another one of those." Eirena shook her head. Her dark black-brown eyes, which were slowly losing their redness, blinked in pain.

"I want to say something to make you feel better."

"I wish you could, too, but unless you can kill me, I'll never be better."

***

"What the hell happened here?"

Eirena stared down from a tree at the two humans that were poking around on the ground. The red-haired woman looked disgusted at what they had done. The man was silent.

Eirena shivered at the sight of them, picking up the bones from last night's feast.

"Someone must have been hungry."

"They're human bones, Mulder. Some still have blood on them." The stench was bothering them, along with the startling thought that over fifteen people must have died there overnight.

The woman sighed. Eirena repositioned her feet in the tree, and the dark-haired Mulder looked up. Thankfully he didn't notice her in the dark folds of the tree, ten or twelve feet above him.

"Animal?" Scully semi-whispered to him.

Eirena was glad of this facet of her curse. Her hearing was brilliantly better. Their conversation was as if she was standing next to them. One of its few good points.

"No, animals don't suck the marrow out." He was looking inside a femur.

She made a face up in her tree, closing her mind to the thought, to the memory, and returned her eyes to the people who were still discussing. But why are they not speaking German? Only those who fell through the Door don't speak it. Day-travelers occasionally, but never people in suits. They sounded as though they were from America.

Eirena almost gasped in realization. They were trying to find out what happened. There had been many Americans that had come through the Door in the past week.

But how did they know to come to the Black Forest, to this spot? She sniffed the air, trying to see if there was some explanation, but there was none. It was a mystery, and something to speak of with the others in the few hours before the Change happened. Arrow, she knew, would be interested by such news.

However, it didn't change the fact that she wanted them to leave. She didn't like people here who hadn't gone through what she had. It was like teasing her with the fact that they could leave, and they didn't have to deal with the 'curse' or 'virus' or 'plague' or whatever the hell you wanted to call it. They didn't have to worry and that was that.

Eirena's mind was clouding, and she shook all of the useless thoughts out of her head, desperate to collect the last shards of information.

"We'll have to come back tomorrow and collect all the bones for identification," the woman said.

Eirena gulped, even though she knew that she couldn't find her, or her people, much less change them. But that the bodies could be collected and identified angered her 'other self' incredibly. Talyn hated it when she couldn't find what she wanted. She was sure that everything was created solely for her personal pleasure.

The man and the woman seemed rightfully somber. Eirena knew what they were thinking, about cults and death, but they didn't know. They would never see how dark the dark side was unless they were Called. It almost saddened her. They seemed like interesting people. She'd hate to have to kill them. Especially him.

It was getting dark, and she jumped.

***

As she ran back to the village, her fingers began to burn, and her mind began twisting and contorting. The Change only hurt slightly now, never like it used to, when she felt her body being torn away from her frame like so much turkey off a bone.

It simply was a quick searing pain, and then Talyn arrived. Eirena almost looked forward to it, and that made her mad.

Many a time, the Others had discussed just giving in. Not fighting it when the dark forced wanted to stay past the sunrise. And she had always said 'no'. Eirena snickered in spite of herself. Moralistic me, huh? I tell them not to give into the darkness after all, not to let it take them despite the insanity, and yet here I am, considering it myself. Hypocritical.

She sighed, panting a bit from the run. She was only meters away from her home, but Talyn was reaching out again. She wanted out, and when the moon rose, she would have her wish while Eirena went away to wherever she went.

She'd read the paper, when someone had ridden into the nearest town outside the forest and bought them some things their day-lives had wanted. She'd read about people who had some sickness that the humans called multiple personality syndrome. She wished she could get a syndrome and walk into a doctor's office and they'd fix it. Like doctors do.

The syndrome meant that the people had another distinct personality or more, some over a hundred. She had laughed at that then. Her brain couldn't even handle two. Eirena let out a twittering, throaty giggle. Talyn was within moments of arriving.

She ran back to the village, hoping she would remember the humans with guns at their sides. And Talyn's bones.

Screams flooded her ears, screams of the pain the Change put the novices through. Talyn was here, ready to spend her twelve hours, and she was hungry. She licked her lips and sniffed the air, extremely pleased.

Talyn looked herself over. Her dark black hair coiled around itself in tendrils and curls. She dug a piece of a shattered glass mirror out of her black-skinned satchel and looked at her face in it. Talyn giggled at the sight. "Beautiful... absolutely gorgeous."

She blinked a few times and then smacked her lips together and stared at the glass, thinking it could be useful later, to hack off a piece of this or that. Talyn laughed maniacally, closing her eyes and feeling out where the Others were. She wanted to eat. To feast this night, for being free and back in the world again.

Her hand slid back into the satchel, next to her scabbard. Talyn grabbed out her midnight-black armband and whipped it around her arm, tying it. It matched the tight leather that covered her legs and front and back. The boots she wore went up to her knees, laced so tight it looked like another skin.

Talyn let out a shriek and shot over the log, towards Blackfang.

She sauntered into the center of town, screaming various obscenities as some of the Others came out of the huts, shrouded in black as well.

They laughed at her, and she laughed back. Their faces were pasty white, albino even. The blood was drained from them. She wanted blood. She needed it now. Talyn couldn't wait.

"Go!"

They went. Straight to the Door. To wait, and that was the damnedest part of it. Talyn wanted to go through the Door herself and hunt. A bloodbath to quench the need that filled her empty insides with a fiery passion. A bloodlust. Not just that, though. The blood was nice, filling enough, but what she wanted was the souls. Strength came from them, they sated her physical need.

Talyn clawed at her head. "Too much thinking!" Animal instinct was taking over. She climbed up into her tree, even though all the trees were hers. Her knife was sharpened and in her grip. Breathing silently, she stared down at the dark chasm that swirled beneath. Life came from that darkness. Even she came from it.

The evil within it nourished her and the rest of the Called at Blackfang. If it wished her to do anything, Talyn knew she would. And, in turn, it brought creatures to hunt upon. And souls to take. Sometimes it took many hours for the Door to produce one of these creatures, and other times five or six would spill out onto the ground.

Oh, the fear in their eyes. It drove her wild, crazy for the flesh. They would leap down, tearing flesh from bone, until there was nothing but bone, piled upon themselves in testimony of the violence of the previous night.

She sighed at the sight. It was so filling. Never having been beyond the confines of the forest, Talyn knew only that the darkness brought their victims. She, and Callers, as she named them, killed them. Reason was useless. She killed, ate, and only took her time to think in these moments. Right before.

The dark hole in the sky shuddered. Talyn's animal insides felt so ready to pounce on the two small creatures who hit the ground... hard.

She waited in masochist fashion, teasing herself with the fear that exuded from the humans. One man, one woman. They had never met, never known of each other's putrid existence, and yet here they were. Afraid together, and now they were dying together.

It was insanely pleasurable. Tantalizing. It shocked her that these inferior 'goody-goodies' pleased her so. Thousands had died at her hands, each causing a similar reaction. Saliva trickled down her chin. The Others, the Callers, her pupils, her mercenaries, her children, waited for her signal. They understood what she was feeling, the drive she was containing and nurturing in sadistic glee. They were doing it themselves.

The humans were hunched down, blabbering, as they tried to regain their balance. As usual, they didn't see their momentary attackers. She glanced once at her obsidian-bladed knife and rose to her feet, balancing on the semi-thin limb that held her above the ground. Her ebony-haired companions were silently standing as well.

The heat shot through her, and animal instinct. Talyn could no longer think, she only felt.

Leaping from her place, she hit the ground, but the humans heard nothing. They saw only a flicker of movement in the shadow. They kept talking, trying to understand why they had come to be wherever they were. It irritated her sensitive ears. The others were moving in as well.

Closer, closer, closer. Talyn's eyes focused only on her victims. Her nose, ears, her entire system intoned her violent need. Her eyes were red, glazed over.

Still they didn't see. They were so afraid. She loved it. Talyn was going to tease these ones. Tease them like never before. Tease them straight into their graves, or lack of them.

Signaling for the others to stay where they were, she walked as calmly as possible up behind the man. His hair, as she could see, was thinning blonde. He was rather tall, but Talyn outstretched her fingers and wrapped them quickly around his neck.

The woman screamed as he struggled to breathe. With her foot, Talyn motioned for another to come out, and slowly Lirei appeared, her eyes glowing as red as Talyn's.

She nodded. Reaching up, she grabbed the man's glasses and shattered them with her thin little hand, giggling. Lirei loved this part.

"Ah, my little protégée," Talyn purred.

"What are you?!" The petite brown-haired woman was half-screaming, half-whispering.

"Oh, how to explain?" She let go of the man's neck. He fell to the ground. Talyn knelt next to the gasping human, whispering, "We want you to feel every second of it." The blood was draining from their faces.

Quavering, he asked, "What do you want? Money?"

Talyn looked at Lirei. "Money? Of all things, money is worth the least to me."

Lirei smiled. In the strange moonlight, her wolf-fanged mouth seemed to glow. "You see," her words stung the humans as though they were burrs, "you have two things very precious to us. Firstly, you are human, and your flesh will strengthen us. But humans also have something worth more than all the money you could ever imagine. Your souls." Lirei shrieked in peals of cold laughter. It seemed to hold in the air.

The woman knelt down, almost as if she was praying. Talyn laughed, and then slashed her across the back with the knife in what could have been a fatal blow, half an inch deeper.

"Come out, my friends! The soup's on!"

Wild tribal shouts, screams, and yells flew out of the trees. Weapons were everywhere.

The man tried to run, but a young one ran after him, faster in the split second than the human could blink. The dark boy reached out and yanked a huge tuft of hair out. "Back," he growled, and the woman's moaning became clearer. The man felt at the back of his bleeding head as the boy, who looked no older than ten, pulled him by the arm into the evil clearing.

The boy dropped him next to the woman. He struggled to stand again, but a man stepped on his stomach. He choked out the words, "Why? What have I done to deserve this?"

"Done? You are food, life, prey." The man who was standing on him spoke, or hissed, rather. "You are nothing more than what we need from you. And right now, you are an appetizer."

One of the creatures was sucking on the torn part of his head, drawing the blood past its lips. He heard it swallow. He tried again to scream, but the man with midnight-colored shoulder length hair and mind-wrenching maroon eyes pressed the heel of his boot into his gut. It made him writhe in pain.

"Oh, yes. Let's do this one at a time, nice and slow." Talyn was thoroughly enjoying every moment. They laughed at their pain. The man still was not unconscious. He knew every move. And they wanted it to stay that way.

She reached into her satchel. There was a thin tonic bottle filled with a whitish milky liquid. Talyn open the bottle, grabbed the man's chin, yanked his mouth open and poured the liquid down his throat. The same was done to the woman, who tried to spit it up. A thump on the stomach ended that.

The humans were aware, very aware, of what was happening. "You'll feel every bite until the last piece of flesh is torn from your feeble skeletons." She giggled.

They were quivering in fear. They were utterly convinced... frozen in it.

She flashed her victims a fang-filled grin. The didn't move. Then she remembered the piece of glass. "Oh..." She reached back in, pulling out the sharp-pointed splinter.

She used the glass to tear off the man's pant leg. Smiling yet again, she dug into his skin, carving out her name. T-A-L-Y-N. The potion had paralyzed the victims. She kneeled down and licked his leg, the blood rolling all over her face.

"Come, pets, take as you wish from this one. Save a finger or two. Let's let the other know her fate."

Talyn stepped back a few steps, watching the Dark Ones devour the human. Blood was everywhere, on everything.

The beating stopped.

***

"Scully, there are more."

"What?!"

"Three more bodies here than last time."

Scully looked around. "How do you think... what's your theory?"

"I don't think that has anything to do with animals. Someone's been doing this." A trail of body bags left the clearing. "We have to wait here overnight," he sighed. "It's the only way to see. I'll call Skinner and tell him."

"But, Mulder, there are bears, animals... any number of things that we can't protect ourselves against."

"This is the F.B.I., remember. Technology. People... protection, guns. Tranquilizers. People do this all the time. It'll be nothing."

"Oh, I'm sure. Maybe Skinner can send someone else. I don't think it's such a great idea."

"Baby bones. This 'thing', whatever it is, has to be found. Has to be stopped, and now."

Her eyes were reddened. "...I know, but I'm scared of this place. For some reason, I feel something horrible and evil here. I'm not talking about Melissa and what she used to feel. I mean, I feel it. It's pervasive and intrusive. Different, though. It's eating me inside."

"I admit, I feel something, but you're the first to discount anything of this nature. It's just a result of the folklore. You've let it get into your head," Mulder told her.

"No. It's more than that. I don't feel at all good here."

"Then leave." The voice was not Mulder's.

"What?" The agents looked around and saw no one. "Who's there?"

Eirena walked out from the shadows. "You can't stop it. You should accept it and leave us be."

Her dark hair was brushed out and clean. She looked beautiful. Like a spirit of something transcending all time. She felt cold, and yet drawn to them, people that she wasn't, or her body wasn't, going to kill.

"What is it?" The man ventured forward, closer to her. She felt his warmth and shivered in spite of herself.

"Does it matter? I could tell you, but then..."

"What, you'd have to kill us?" the woman asked, half-jokingly.

"Perhaps." Eirena felt herself curl up inside, but forced the words out. "I wouldn't, but she would."

"She?"

"Talyn. She is me, half the time. It is my curse. She is the killer, the soul-devourer. I cannot stop her. If you try, she will kill you in the day, in your place, in your time. She'd kill me, kill the Others if we did not keep them alive, if they were not her children. She is waiting for tonight. If you are here, she may try... and kill you both."

Mulder almost stepped back. She seemed dead serious. Dead afraid.

"I have lived with Talyn inside me for over two hundred years. I cannot die. I cannot leave this forest. I cannot be more or less than what she is. I cannot live, nor die. Please go now."

"We can't just leave... people have been killed, and, with all apparency, you have something to do with it."

The woman's voice was piercing... no one talked that way in the light. She whispered, "Too loud..." The woman seemed grounded by the remark.

The man's voice. She liked his voice. It was calm. "Now, we really need to know a few things, and you seem to know about this more than anyone else we've seen."

She sighed and knelt down, folding her legs beneath her.

"What's your name?" He was so warm, young. She missed seeing the warmth, feeling it close to her.

"Eire...na."

He smiled, kneeling down by her and motioning to the woman, who turned away. "How did you get here?"

"Years ago, before you were born, I died." The man looked at her. His eyes seemed to live on their own. "Yes, and something happened. I didn't get mixed at all."

"Mixed?"

"When you are born, you get an equal amount of pure good and pure evil, and it all is mixed together to make a person. I was not mixed, as you might say, 'properly'. That's why, when I was reborn, my temperament was horrible in the evenings. It got worse and worse until my mother and father left me about a mile away from our village. Then, it was 1782. Our world was deathly small.

"Anyway, someone found me. I barely remember him, but he knew of my 'condition' and he taught me to live in this place and built my hut. Then he left me to live in here, to hunt in here. I don't know what happened. I went back to find him, but I couldn't leave. Something stopped me. I was twelve years old.

"I hunted animals for two years. Only at night would I kill any creature that came into my area. As time progressed, things got sicker and sicker. I ate things raw. That's when Talyn developed, I think. At night I barely existed anymore. Talyn came burning through. She was evil, and now she is worse. I was fourteen, in your terms, but for me it seemed as time is endless."

She took a breath, and they looked on, entranced. "Go on..." The woman thought she was lying, or just telling a good story. But she listened.

"Talyn no longer changed just my opinion, but my appearance as well. I had a knife at night but not in the morning. That's when it happened. There's a place in the forest. Talyn calls it the Door. Someone came out, and she killed him."

Eirena shivered and sat all the way down on the forest floor. The man had a puzzled look, and aura of disbelief and almost amusement as to what he was witnessing.

"But she didn't stop at that. She was a cannibal -- she ate that man." Tears barely made their way down her face when she stood up. "No... do as you wish. Die as you wish. It is endless. You can't stop it. Why do I insist on trying?" She leapt up into the tree and was gone.

A moment of silence passed. "Obviously, she needs psychiatric attention." Scully straightened her coat.

"Maybe." He stood up.

"Maybe? Mulder, she spent the past ten minutes telling us that her other personality is a cannibal who kills everyone who comes through a door in the forest, and to tell me that she doesn't need some mental help is ludicrous."

"Look at the circumstances. It's possible, that's why it's an X-File."

"...and cows'll fly over the moon. It's obviously an elaborate hoax, for whatever reason."

He shook his head. "What? Money? I doubt it. She could just as easily be telling the truth. I'm going to find out. What about you?" He acted as if she had a choice, so she decided to take it.

"No, I think I'll go and examine those bones. And then I'll come back and tell you how silly this whole thing was."

"Let's only hope."

"Why do you want to do this?" she asked.

"I'm an F.B.I. agent. I investigate. That's my job. That's what I'm doing here. Besides, I have my trusty gun."

Scully rolled her eyes. "I still don't like this place."

"I'll be fine. Get Moutti, if you're worried."

Her mouth twitched for a moment, and then she walked away, north, out to the car. Rarely did they work separately like this. Nor had she ever refused an assignment. Yet she had felt something. Evil. She knew, even beyond simple instinct, that it was there. Mulder didn't seem to notice, or else was pretending not to.

She was worried for him, but somehow, she couldn't forbid him to spend the night in a German forest. In the morning she could, however, say 'I told you so'.

***

"Why? If they're still here, it won't be our fault what we do."  Lores blew his bangs out of his face.

"I just would rather not..." Eirena looked away, ending up murmuring.

"Oh, Eirena, we can't be responsible for what the humans do. We can't tell them what to believe and if they are fool enough to lay their lives on the line, then we have no choice."

"I merely wish to spare him... them," she sputtered out.

"Humans are trouble now and food later. Think of them as more, and we compromise whatever it is that we have here." Para was a newer 'arrival', but she had grown to understand, perhaps better than Eirena herself, what they were in for. How horrible things were, but that they must be kept reasonably secret.

"I know... it was a mistake. Most likely they already dismissed me as a crackpot or a fool. I don't know what to do about the bodies, though. They'll keep coming, and someone's going to find out besides the two humans, and they may try to stop us. Then what?" She held her head in her hands.

"We'll have to deal with that then." Arrow was calm. Restful, with a sliver of an unidentifiable emotion. "We don't have a choice about it. We never have. It almost might be better..."

Eirena's voice got louder, and she rose to her feet. "What? Killing is better? Just to hide from the inevitable? Someday they'll know about us, know everything we've done, and then they'll be here. They'll poke their faces in all our private homes. They'll take pictures of us and plaster them on screen after screen. They'll hunt us, or try... seeking revenge or whatever they end up calling it."

She closed her eyes briefly. "And we'll kill them. It'll never stop. Not with these people. They will always wonder, and therefore always explore, and we will become like the next Bigfoot or Loch Ness monster. We'll be sought after... hunted like dogs... I don't know." She tensed, ready for the backlash, the comments. None came.

"Eirena, we're all so lost. The only thing we have to hold onto is the thing we despise the most. We are lost within it and without it."

"Nothing ever changes in the hundreds of years, the thousands of deaths. Why is it changed now?" Para asked.

"I don't know anything beyond the fact that it has."

The others mumbled to each other, and Arrow turned to her. "There is always the possibility..."

She sat silently.

"What?" They almost screamed it.

"A long time ago, it was Arrow, Cheris and myself. There was a rumor that if we could stay and combat the Change, and not kill those that came through the Door, we would become... nor would we be enchained here."

"Why aren't we doing it, then? I'd take any chance I could to get out of this hellhole."

Eirena explained, "It was, to say the least, ten times more painful than anything I have ever experienced or inflicted, myself. The wrath was horrible. One attempt and we were shattered. Physically destroyed. We couldn't bear the thought of having anyone go through such horrendous pain."

"After that it rarely came up, and even though we wished for it to work, to think of suggesting it would be foolish. But now..." Arrow said, his wet hair dripping on the ground.

"Talyn wouldn't hurt the Children, would she?"

Eirena shrugged. "She would know it was us, but what she would do... I have no idea."

"How do we do it? Do we even want to?" Para looked determined, yet afraid.

Arrow raised his eyebrows. "I never thought we'd be here again. So desperate to get out."

"And you're not?" Eirena looked at him.

"I'm wondering what it will be like. No one we know is alive. We're not meant for this time."

"So what? We can adapt, we can move on," she argued.

"No!" He stood straight. "They will punish us and lock us up. How could they understand what we have been through? We'd be imprisoned."

"How is that ant different from now? We are just as trapped here, and then the bloodlust will go away, there. Even if they find us, we'll be better off."

Solara looked up. "Us?"

Eirena smiled at her. "We won't leave you. All of us can stick together, if we make it out of here, anyway."

Arrow seemed somewhat calmed. "Be prepared. The rumor itself may be false. And it's no walk in the park."

They all nodded gravely, but only three knew how horrible the night would feel. How much pain the dark could inflict. Now there was nothing to do but wait.

***

Everything was all set up, and it seemed relatively safe. Skinner did question the validity of staying in a German forest overnight, but he accepted and had a German contact send over the appropriate supplies.

It was barely getting dark, but it was getting cold. Mulder grabbed a coat and put it on. He shivered a bit, getting used to the cold air that was flowing around.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting to find. When Marita called and said to check it out, he had simply assumed that, while it was important, it certainly wasn't anything cannibalistic.

But what about that girl? Why would she lie? How could she be able to maneuver in the trees and hide like that without even living here for years? It wasn't possible, she was too good.

And she seemed genuinely afraid and angry. Except there was a strangeness to the story. An improbability.  Maybe she saw someone murder these people and she can't explain it beyond a story? he wondered.

In the distance, he head noises, coming from the south, but the clearing was so tanged in that direction that there was no way he could get through and investigate. It sounded like voices, but they were whispersoft. Barely audible, even to a trained ear.

The Eirena girl seemed to think something was going on at night, and Mulder agreed. What Scully was talking about with the cold, frightful feelings was now becoming strangely apparent to him.

As the might came closer, it got stronger. An evil was here, feeling and growing. It was very uncomfortable. He turned his eyes to the car. He knew he could leave if he needed to. He wondered if he would. Not to say he was scared, but it just was an unusual feeling, a bad feeling that he wanted to leave him.

The sun was beginning to set. Rubbing his hands together, he watched it move towards the horizon. It seemed like some odd bearer of impending doom. Laughing at his little bit of self-worry, he breathed gently, watching his breath wave around like a puff of smoke.

That murmuring in the background had grown much louder. It was English, but almost a violent version, like the speakers were speaking deeply and throatily. He could pick out various words. Occasionally, he heard a groan, one of the sickest sounds he had heard. As if they were gagging up something.

Various cries and curses spilled out. Others were muffled. He wondered if they knew he was still there. She, the girl, hadn't exactly cozied up to them, and it was quite possible that, whoever these people were and whatever they did, they'd do whatever it took to make him leave. He had to find out what had been happening here.

The bones, they were real and human. And some of those were baby- sized.

It disgusted him to think about it.

"Why couldn't you listen?" someone screamed at him. He couldn't see who, but he knew it was directed at him.

"You knew I would stay. We have to investigate crimes against Americans."

"It's only Americans now, eh? What about the others, the Australians and the Mexicans, the Japanese? Do they not count?"

"Their governments have not been alerted."

A man's voice was yelling now. "We are all the victims here, the victims and the killers. But no one cares what happens to us. We are forced to inflict such incredible pain. We wake up and know all that we did but had no control over. Do you think we do not grieve?"

"I know nothing about you," Mulder yelled back.

"And you won't. Because you wouldn't listen, you wouldn't leave. They will hunt you down. I will hunt you down." A breath, a pause was taken. "If there is any possibility that you can get out of here before nightfall, I advise you to do so." It was cold, but not hateful.

"And if I don't?" he called upwards.

"Then I won't tell Eirena you were anything else but a fool. Your grave shall be marked only with the passage of time and the few, if any, who see it will shake their heads in disbelief."

There was no movement that he could see, not in the fading sunlight. The voice was loud and penetrative.

"We shall see," was his answer.

A strange laugh came in reply. "With the Callers, nothing and no one is ever that lucky."

There was a scream and a rush of wind, and then nothing.

More screams followed, one after another. Painfully, agonizingly they flew through the air. A metamorphosis unwitting was occurring.

A cackle, and then footsteps. A figure appeared, relatively small in stature, moving closer. It was very obviously female. Her ebony hair was pulled into tight wiry braids on the side of her head.

She held a knife a couple of inches away from her body. A curious, cold expression and a lascivious smile were pasted on her shockingly pale face. Shrouded in black robes, she looked the personification of all that was evil and thoughtless and cruel.

Mulder shivered at the sight of her. She stopped a few feet away from him and laughed. "A gun? What in the hell are you planning on doing with that?"

He stepped back, but spoke with confidence, "Whatever it takes."

She raised her eyebrows, the grin never leaving her face. Vaguely he saw Eirena's features in this thing's expression. "Why did you take my bones?"

"Your bones? What makes them yours?"

She was walking decisively around him, slurping and making clicking noises. "I killed those whose skin was around them. I made them mine."

"Why? Why for any of this?" He wanted to use his words, he wanted to just stop all this now.

"Oh, darling," she drew the words out, rolling her tongue in a strange, seductive fashion, "It's more than obvious. We do what brings us pleasure, what nourishes us. It's simply survival of the fittest."

"You're sick."

"I know." She laughed and kept circling, that horrible look in her eyes. So cold, and yet filled with bemusement.

He stared at her again, knowing that all Eirena had said was true. Even he had questioned it, but now it was becoming too surreal. His eyes darted around, mouth getting drier and drier.

"See how frightened you are? That's how we like it. It's what you Americans call barbeque sauce for us. Makes it ten times tastier than usual. But then, when has anyone ever not been afraid?"

He looked toward the car. Maybe he could still get away, somehow get out.

"By the way, while I'm thinking about it... where are my bones?"

He straightened as much as he could under the strain of her stare. "They are being identified and then returned to the families."

Talyn laughed again, a sadistic laugh. Full of hatred. "Oh, that'll do them so much good. We actually had a purpose for them. They just put ‘em right back into the ground. From dust to dust, they say. Fools, is what I say."  He watched her leap on top of the car.  "And you wouldn't even be honest enough to tell them what happened! You'd make up a story, wouldn't you, Mr. F-B-I Agent. Imagine if you told that poor mother that her baby was eaten... to the bone."

He felt sick, thought about going for his gun. But it seemed useless.

"No. I wouldn't even give you the satisfaction of proving me right. You won't die tonight, as much as I might hope. Too simple, too easy, and not nearly fun enough. Oh, no, the fun is just beginning. The more scared you are, the more pleasure we get. I'm not that hungry, at any rate. I think, no, I'm certain that the best thing for it is time. Not too long. We wouldn't want me to starve, now would we?" She chuckled, a strange sound, and jumped up and down on top of the car, testing its strength.

He was starting to sweat. She licked her lips. It was so dark he could barely see this creature. This thing that was so dark, so evil, so hungry. Talyn, as she called herself, was starving for his blood.

"The others can gorge on the Door's treats." She leaped off the car, landing with cat-like grace in front of him. She shed off the robes, revealing her sleek, black clad, wiry body. He breathed a bit faster for a moment, and she cocked her head. Looking him over once again, she raised her eyebrows. Talyn motioned into the dark night.

There was nothing but cold and silent darkness.