Prelude 2.

	When he was a boy, Johnathan Liam O'Reilly had loved the journeys home
late at night after a visit to one of his seemingly innumerable relations.
Curled up snug and warm under a blanket on the back seat of the family Rolls
Royce, he would lie still, eyes closed, listening to the soothing rumble of the
road beneath them and the gentle purr of the big engine and drift in a
half-dream, watching the patterns that danced upon the very verge of sleep,
listening to his parents' quiet talk and imagining that an as yet unnamed
brother or sister he'd always wanted to be settled at his side or waiting in
the huge, too-empty house for his return. They could stay awake far into the
night and talk about the Shire or Narnia and perhaps one day they might find
some ancient cave that would lead them to Middle-Earth or a secret door into
the land of Aslan where they might journey even to the beautiful castle of Kair
Paravel at the margins of the sea. He would always wake a little as his father
drew into the long, tree-shrouded driveway, then stir still more as he was
lifted by him or his mother, still wrapped in the blanket, to be carried into
the house and up the wide, curving stairway to his huge yet cluttered attic
domain, a domain that should have been a nursery for a large and merry family
of children. Then alone in the dark he would lie awake, listening to the faint
ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall, one of four the house possessed,
and pray silently and with fervour to the lord and the virgin that a brother or
sister might be there when he awoke the following morning, or that at least
some new boy or girl might be at school, a boy or girl who could share dreams
that no one seemed to understand and for which the other children laughed at
him and threw peals and called him mad Paddy and feather-head and book-worm, or
stepped on his school-bag and took his lunch when he wasn't able to stop them.
	He had hated them, not simply for their teasing, but for the fact that
they liked all that stupid screaming rap-music and Michael Jackson and Death
Leopard or whatever they were and it was all out of tune and rubbish and they
were all halfwits and cads and they didn't know toss about when something was
in tune and well played and he just hated them all and wished that a black
rider or nine would simply appear and carry every last one of the stupid,
idiotic, worthless, vile, horrible, slimy rotten little dirty Orc-faced rats
off to some dark fate that would see every one of them gone forever and then
some.
	Johnathan had not liked the children with which he had been forced to
go to school, he had not liked them at all. Things would be better, he had, for
a brief time, believed, when he began at thirteen in his new school, but he had
been mistaken. He had always been small for his age and at thirteen he had
discovered that he needed glasses and that, contrary to what his father had
assured him, his growth seemed to be slowing rather than hitting the spurt for
which he'd been waiting for what seemed to be as long as he could remember. He
found friends of a sort, some few introverted, book-bound boys like himself who
would at least talk to him, but they had interests other than his own and,
being an only child and forced more or less without respite to play alone, he
was no longer capable of any real compromise. If there were any differences,
and these usually came down to some music other than the Irish and Celtic
influences he loved or a disinterest in classical history or, most hurtful
although not most important, comments concerning his own hopeless physical
ineptness and inability to defend himself in a fight, Johnathan would erupt in
a quick explosive flare of wild Irish temper followed by a very un-Irish-like
sullenness that discouraged any further intimacy.
	Johnathan had drifted through his later school years, concentrating his
time ever more completely on his own dreams and fantasies, not caring to exert
himself, deliberately under-achieving both to avoid notice and to spite the
too-rich parents who gave him all he wished save for praise and attention and
the teachers who knew his true abilities but refused to try to understand him,
whilst secretly devouring everything the school, then the public, libraries had
to offer. It was during his sixteenth year that he first began to write, and
with that, to imagine her, a wild, perfect anima to his own loneliness,
isolation and perceived inadequacies. Joanna Marina O'Reilly became in his mind
the sister and confidante he would never have, an invisible presence able to
understand his troubles and into whom he could channel all the rage and
frustration he had not the power or confidence to show.
	From the first she was an impossibility, a street-wise virago with a
heart laced with pain and bitterness and the need to escape the life of
depravation she was forced to lead, beaten mercilessly as a small child by
parents who could not have cared less about her until at last, on her ninth
birthday, when her twisted parody of a father had tried to make the almost
daily physical abuse into something more, she had driven a knife at his face at
a critical moment and sent him crashing screaming through the bathroom window
of their tiny eleventh-storey flat to a broken, bloody end in the alley behind
the tenement in which they lived, threatening to see the mother she hated but
from whom she refused to run to the same end should she not swear it to have
been his own drunken lust that had killed him.
	From that day forth she had set herself to pay her mother back a
thousand-fold for every day of suffering. By the time Joanna had reached her
twelfth year, Marina O'Reilly was in perpetual terror of her daughter, cringing
whenever she attracted her notice despite an attempt at callous authority long
since lost to her, surrendering with shaking hands nearly all the money she
made from selling her despicable, whoring body to any filth, man or woman,
Johnathan decided, sick and perverse enough to indulge in such corruption and
take her, so twisted as to enjoy and even seek out such attentions, while her
daughter spent her days winning back the self-confidence her parents had tried
to take from her with a frigid, righteous ruthlessness that soon had every
child she knew and some far older either in wide-eyed awe or terrified of her
and every teacher desperate for her to be placed anywhere but under their
jurisdiction.
	Joanna's fourteenth birthday, Johnathan decreed, saw her celebrate with
the killing of a dealer five years her senior who had tried, none too subtly,
to convince her that it might be in her interests to sell just what he wished,
when and where he wished, including at her school and especially to those so
stupid as to consider a cheap little street-bitch like her able to protect
them, in fact, she might sell something else too, he had leered. Having
determined her, by that stage, to have been training for years in every form of
martial art and physical combat of which she could learn, Johnathan took great
pains to have her humiliate the underworld filth, to have him plead and beg and
scream for mercy before he died whimpering at last like the gutter-slime his
kind were. He could picture clearly the absolution of triumph, contempt and
disgust that filled her face as she left him at last to choke and moan his
last.
	Like all those of her circumstances, his anima grew up too quickly, her
reputation for almost inconceivable righteous, unrelenting brutality and
bloodshed towards dealers, pimps, whores and any underworld pig-swill that
dared so much as think of her, soon so infamous that they both avoided her and
set a very high price on her head. She gave no quarter, beating, and, when
possible with impunity, killing anyone who crossed her with a savagery and
inventive flare that had even the coldest and most depraved soon too terrified
to consider touching her. So she grew in his mind, a girl of his own age, an
avenging bean sidhe nine inches taller than his pitiful five-foot two, an
impossibly, devastatingly attractive amazon with long flaming red hair and
blazing, emerald eyes, a savage, desperate creature convinced that she was both
physically plain, bordering on repulsive (and heaven help anyone who dared call
her beautiful as she knew herself not to be and they must be trying to gain
some perverse advantage over her) and incapable of any emotion save rage and
vengeance, supremely confident in her ability both in the destruction of any
enemy and the certainty that, no matter what, she would shape her own destiny,
a perfect singer and a player of the celtic harp, a soul whom, beneath the
wild, raging exterior, in a part of her mind scarcely acknowledged even to
herself, cried out through the pain of the music of her celtic ancestry, raging
at the injustice and sickening perversity of her circumstances, longing only to
escape to a place where she could find peace and happiness.
	Such was the anima he had created and the finer points of whose history
now held his attention as he sat, staring moodily at the note-book Pentium on
his lap, trying to decide just how much of her story to include in the fantasy
novel he had recently begun to write to the detriment of his final year of
schooling. She, of course, would be the character shifted from his world to the
universe of magic and darkness, a being far more worthy than he to be given
such a chance, yet still close enough to him in those ways that mattered for
him to understand that, in every way that mattered, it would be his ideal, the
supremely confident self, that would make the journey. Not that he had even the
tiniest flicker of a desire to be female, indeed quite the reverse. He already
knew himself to be more than hopelessly smitten by his creation, that was part
of her appeal and a necessary result of his own pain and trouble. She was his
perfection, a creature lost and lonely as himself who could, despite their
differences, understand him and whom he could draw from the ruin of her life to
a new beginning.
	Johnathan sighed. His parents were talking easily in the front of the
car, as usual ignoring the small, frail youth with too-thick glasses and quick,
jerky movements who had been such a disappointment but who could, it seemed, be
placated with enough of an allowance to buy virtually anything he could wish.
Johnathan wished that they would simply shut up for five seconds. It was
proving impossible to concentrate with all their mindless prattle about lord
Rutherford's sacking of his butler or what lady Madeline had worn to the ball
to which he had been forced to go that evening and which had put him in a mood
more foul than he had thought was possible, or why their son was such a
hopeless incompetent when it came to girls. Naturally, no girl had been
interested in him, nor could he have cared less about any of the shallow,
air-headed makeup-ridden shrews his parents now despaired that he should ever
attract. He was a hopeless dancer in any case and, usually an elegant speaker
(if nothing else, his years of reading had given him that), he seemed simply to
lose all ability to think or react when a girl spoke to him.
	"and I just couldn't believe Johnathan ignored her!" His mother
continued. "To think that he could be so impossibly, disgracefully impolite
when it was perfectly obvious Mariane was willing to dance with him."
	`Willing to dance!'
	Johnathan fumed silently. The vicious little she-cat was trying to show
him up in front of all her friends, just to see him squirm. He had heard the
giggles and seen the pointing and if his mother thought he was such a blind,
hopeless fool --. He glared and turned back to the note-book. That did it.
Joanna was about to gain more of his rage and with it, abilities beyond the
capacity for purely physical mayhem far sooner than he had originally intended.
She would meet such a little she-bitch soon after entering his created world
and tear the twisted, vicious little cat to shreds. Johnathan moved his hands
to the keyboard, and the machine flashed another battery warning and a moment
later, went dark.
	"BakaBakaBakaBakaBAKA!" Johnathan swore savagely under his breath.
	Manga and anime were a recent experience for him and he, being a strict
and practicing Roman Catholic and refusing to swear both because he didn't like
it and because everyone else swore, had begun to use such terms, especially
within hearing of his parents, who were convinced they meant something very
unpleasant and who would get furious, much to his satisfaction.
	With another glare at them, after all if they hadn't distracted him he
could have had more written, Johnathan put the note-book away and sighed again.
They were all but home, he consoled himself. At least then, once he'd bathed
and dressed for bed, he could settle in his room and, under the pretence of
some homework or other needing to be finished before the school camp that was
to begin tomorrow, he could get back to the epic again.

	"and see that you put the clothes *outside* your bathroom door."
	His mother's voice was the cold clipped tones of righteous indignation.
"I've told Sonja not to take them if you don't. Then when you have no uniform
tomorrow--."
	`I'm going to kill her, I'm going to kill her so much. She'll be so
dead they'll have to find every ancestor she ever had and kill them too just to
make up the difference.' Johnathan thought helplessly.
	"Alright, alright!" He said, his small weedy voice almost shrilling.
"Do you think you haven't told me that every night this week." He continued in
a mutter. "Baka! I said I'd take them down myself, what's the matter with you?"

	"Don't you use that tone of voice to me Johnathan." She snapped, her
own voice, he noted furiously, although not raised nearly so much as his, still
managing to carry far more volume and authority. "And stop glaring and
muttering to yourself. If you learned a little courtesy perhaps Mariane might
have considered you a little more worthy of attention tonight."
	`Oh for the lord's sake will you just shut up about Mariane!' He
thought wildly. `She's a shallow, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, vicious, vile,
nasty little--.'
	"Johnathan," His father roared. "Are you ignoring your mother?"
	Johnathan gave up, turned and shot upstairs. His parents heard the
slamming of several doors, then faint sounds as Johnathan banged things as he
prepared for a bath and bed.
	"I'm going to kill you both!" He raged helplessly. "I'm going to kill
you and make a pact with the devil to bring you back just so that I can kill
you again and again, and then I'm going to--."
	He stopped, a little shocked despite himself, and anyway, what was the
point? He had better things to do. Gathering up his robe and night-shirt,
Johnathan left his room, restraining himself from slamming that door as well,
and made his way to the bathroom which no one but himself and the few friends
who had stayed very infrequently, had used. Some half an hour later and hoping
that he had used enough hot water to see that at least one of his parents would
have a cold shower, Johnathan left the spar and, just to be sure, spent another
ten minutes washing his hair. Satisfied at last as he felt the water beginning
to turn cold, he finished drying and dressed quickly for bed. If he was lucky,
he might get an hour's writing done before his mother sent Andrews up to see
that he was in bed. He wasn't.
	Just how old did they think he was, he thought as Andrews left and he
settled himself. "Nearly seventeen and they treat me like some baka ten year
old!" He fumed to himself. "Gods I wish I was anywhere but here."
	With a sigh, he reached for the note-book again, trailing its supply as
he settled himself more comfortably and switched it on.
	"You're going to get a power-boost, my wild Bean Sidhe." He said softly
as he called up the historical information he had determined for his anima.
"I'm in a particularly bad mood and you're about to benefit. I hope you
appreciate it."
	And smiling, he began to write.

	It was so dark, and more deadly cold than he ever imagined was
possible. Johnathan shivered again, staring through the icy, cloying fog,
trying desperately to see his way.
	"Please Azusa-chan, you can't do this." The scream came again, a faint,
thin sound, surprisingly precise in the cloying, stifling dark.
	`Fog shouldn't carry sound like that.' He thought numbly, searching
desperately with eyes that could barely see six inches before his face. `I have
to find them, I have to find them.' He kept screaming to himself.
	The wild, maniacal laughter tore through the terrifying, numbing cold.
	"Save what strength you have left to scream." The voice was lost and
wild.
	Then the world exploded in red and Johnathan heard the screams begin.
	Gasping, Johnathan tore himself awake, his heart pounding wildly, hands
clutching desperately at the blankets as he shot into a sitting position, his
stomach still clenched in a tight knot of fear. A movement and crash nearly
made him scream, then he realised that the note-book had tumbled from the bed.
	"Cuso!" He gasped, fighting down the fear and reaching for the lamp.
	A moment later he was on the floor, lifting the note-book with a sense
of hopelessness. It just had to be damaged, things like that always happened to
him. For once however, his pessimism proved ill-founded as the little machine
fired up without a problem.
	Sighing with relief, Johnathan switched off the computer and packed it
and its supply back into its case in preparation for school in the morning.
Then he turned, glancing at the tiny antique travelling-clock he always kept by
his bed. Only half-past two. He had slept for barely two hours, yet the thought
of going back to sleep after the night-terror he had just escaped was not
something he relished just yet. He knew he was being irrational. He had
suffered from nightmares and the far more terrifying night-terrors for as long
as he could remember and was more or less used to at least two of the former
and one of the latter each month. Nevertheless, this one's end had been
particularly nasty. No, he would get up and go down to the kitchen for
something to drink before going back to sleep.
	Snatching his robe from a chair, moving quickly to shake off the
remnants of the horror of the dream, Johnathan moved to the open door, pausing
only to turn on the hall light before stepping out into the passage. The floor
protested beneath his feet and Johnathan fumed silently. His father, still more
than likely working in his study, would be bound to hear the movement from
above and demand in the morning to know what his son had been doing. He had
just passed the bathroom door when he noticed the light.
	"Blast it, I know I turned that off. Why can't Sonja leave things alone
up here? I've told mother time and again I'll clean the thing myself."
	Still muttering, Johnathan opened the bathroom door and half stepped
into the room, reaching for the switch.
	"Gods its cold in here!" He muttered as he flicked at the switch, and
stopped short.
	The thing was already off. Stepping full into the room, Johnathan
lifted his head, and stared. The light wasn't coming from above, but from
something small and half-seen that lay blazing in the middle of the spar.
	"What on earth?" Johnathan gasped, this time switching on the light and
moving quickly to the tub. "Cuso, but its cold."
	Kneeling by the tub, Johnathan leaned forwards, reaching for the
indistinct, glittering thing. But the spar had no bottom.
	Johnathan managed one shocked, choked intake of breath. Then, as he
somersaulted forwards into the abyss, his world exploded in red and Johnathan
heard his own screams begin.

	--------------------
Notes:
	This one is still a mess.  Johnathan is more or less set, yet I need to
define immediately just how intelligent and talented he is in his own way, and
therefore just how truly pathetic is his behaviour and ideal fantasies.  His
anima must be *extremely* unlikely while being very remotely possible and it
must be made crystal clear from the outset that he is absolutely fixated on her
creation while that fixation still remains rational.  He isn't mad, simply
*almost* but not quite obsessed.  A fine line that I need to make more evident
from the outset.