Edward, his name was Edward.
Backing away from La Femme he remembered his given name. Looking into her eyes he knew what was next for him and having never before faced his own terrifying end thoughts cluttered back and forth across his mind. The lives he took and tortured, the person he was once and now to the end.
As she came closer, Cauchemar’s fear transformed and ignorant defiance stormed within him, was he about to let a woman bring him to his knees without fighting one last time to save the existence he savored for over a hundred years?
Desperate fire raged in his face. Cautious, La Femme slowed her pace and readied herself for what he might do. The only thing more dangerous than an angry predator was a cornered, angry predator. With a twist of his hand an image appeared to the side of him. It was Andrew making notes at his desk, his forehead furrowed in concentration while he focused on the computer screen in front of him.
“No…”
Her whispered denial only fueled the nightmarish ghoul before her; he had one last trick up his proverbial sleeve. Reaching into the image he plucked Andrew from his desk and pulled him from that moment to the one here between La Femme and himself.

The little bastard had lived up to his name. Cauchemar had created Layla’s worst nightmare and thrust it before La Femme. Torn between the simultaneous reactions of both sides to her, all she could do was look on waiting to see how she could save Andrew and kill the ghoul who really needed to die, like right now!
Andrew was slightly dazed, the sensation of being yanked through reality made him think he was in a dream, which dissipated as soon as he looked into Layla’s eyes.
He felt himself captured in a strong full blown manic grip. Glancing around he locked eyes with the very small man who had caused the pain in his beloved and so many others.
This insignificant spit of a human had caused so much misery? Had threatened the life of Layla? Was using him as a shield to slow her down and what, distract and try to kill her instead?

Blinding pain struck Layla and her head fell forward slamming her chin onto her chest. Something or someone was piercing her brain and taking over her body.
Finally, her head raised and both Andrew and Cauchemar wore stunned faces. Brown eyes had become green and glowed with an intelligence that was both enigmatic and very disturbing.
“Andrew… Aindreas… Alastar… Antaine… Ardghal…” the now glowing body of Layla whispered through barely parted lips.
It was the voice Andrew had followed to Trinidad and the voice he heard while alone with Layla what felt like months ago but was only a few hours before.
“Your destiny is intertwined with hers, for her to succeed you must release your own strength and fight with her.”
“I cannot do what you ask of me…” Andrew bemoaned the task. Letting go of his ideals and beliefs to plunge full fledged into an illogical world, for the sake of what…love?
All this time Cauchemar listened intently and surmised that though Layla had evolved into La Femme the man he held a firm grip on was intrinsic to her fulfilling her true destiny of eliminating those he worked for.
For that reason alone Cauchemar decided he would kill Andrew, quickly. So as Andrew conversed with his inner demons Cauchemar reached for a blade. His hand swung in a deadly arc aiming to take Andrew out with one sure strong blow through his heart.

There are moments when time seems to slow of its own accord and seconds take hours to pass while minutes last days. This was not such a time.

In a blink. In one blink, so very much can happen. Destiny can change; life can be lost or birthed and empires can be crumbled or reformed. And in this blink one of those things did not happen, instead…all of them did.
Blink.
Cauchemar was now dust on the floor between Andrew and Layla. The dead silence encompassed the shock their bodies felt. Staring at each other the realization of what occurred streamed over their collective consciousness.
They had moved as one being.
As the knife swung towards Andrew, La Femme used telekinesis to thrust it from Cauchemar’s hand. Simultaneously Andrew twisted his body breaking the grasp that held him and sent Cauchemar flying face first towards La Femme with a flick of his wrist. Femme stopped his flight with her lips on his, and then, well then Cauchemar was simply no more.
Andrew had stepped onto his intertwined path with La Femme, it was not about Layla alone any more. And they both had set off a chain of events that would change history and the future forever. Time alone would tell if they were strong enough to bear the burdens they had now jointly assumed.

“If you had died it would have killed me inside” The tears flowed down her face and in her voice as Layla spoke to Andrew. “In all the times I tried to die…nothing came close to the pain of almost losing you…”
Touching her tears Andrew stared at her in wonder. Almost losing him had made her so open and her emotions raw.
“You know I could never let that happen.”
“So you gave in?”
“Not gave in…I just listened to my inner guide and let my instincts take over.”
“So you are a warrior, like I am, we can fight side by side and…”
“No. I am not like you at all. I only have one cause to fight for.”
“Why? What could be so important that it requires your full attention?”
“You.”

Cauchemar they called him and a nightmare he truly was. His very appearance was dreamlike; seemingly if you looked at him too closely he would float away into nothingness. Barely 5 ft tall and with a slim reed-like frame he was easy to miss in a crowd.

He always looked sickly and walked with pronounced limp and a slight drag. He was someone whose image you didn’t want to keep in your mind, he represented the sickly and despondent that were abandoned as the century turned from 18^th into 19^th. Many people died and many names were never remembered. Le Cauchemar may have had a name but even he had forgotten it by now. He was special though, by the time he stumbled upon the Frenchman and his associates he already was a vicious murderer who enjoyed what he did with a passion that he lacked the resources to quench or maintain. With all this potential he was exactly what they needed and they cuckolded him into their embraces with a gift.

They gave him the ability to draw out the worst nightmares from a mind and use the fear embedded within to freeze the body attached.

Imagine being trapped by the fear that your worst nightmare induces while being slowly tortured. Sometimes he didn’t let them die, he let the shell he created live, if you can call what they had in their remaining years a life.

Tonight Layla had to face him. Andrew was not pleased but he didn’t try to stop her, especially since he had his own demons now to work out. Slipping away through the back of her house she tilted onto her back tires and slid carelessly to the very edge of the riverbed. The continuous rain kept the river level high and dangerous. She balanced on the edge for a moment looking at the river. She was about to test a new trick she built into her chair, if it didn’t work she would have a cold, wet slap of failure on her immediate future.

With a slight grunt she pushed her chair forward and hit the button on the inside of her left wheel.

Hovering just over the river she allowed herself a small smile before settling her face back to its grim determined façade.

That minor pleasure over she let her mind remember the enemy she was about to meet. Following the river out to the sea and then making a beeline for one of the islands off the North West coast of Trinidad, she didn’t notice the stunning scenery the moon opened up before her. She could only hear the screams of mothers and their children; she could only see broken men unable to die and yet not actually living and thankfully she could feel the century full of anger bubble within her veins taking over her mind and emotions as the sea water sprayed her face.

It felt like a minute but it was at least thirty before Layla felt the pull of evil drawing her off the sea and onto the rocky shore. She let her chair hover over and up along the shoreline until she came upon the flat expanse where Cauchemar and his cohorts awaited her.

Looking around she saw the forest behind and no other presence could she sense beyond those directly in front of her.

So this was the supposed new femme. The wheelchair somehow added to her, it was not a weakness. How very interesting. Cauchemar sized Layla up and tried to pull her fears out, gauging how best he could torment and prod her into making an initial slip up that he would greedily take advantage of.

“Your grandmother was nothing, not even a real femme de mort, her death was minor.”

Layla was so mad she was seeing everything in a purple haze and for once her favourite colour did nothing to soothe.

Cauchemar stood there taunting her and it was working, too bad for him.

Saying nothing to him she merely readied her body while her mind seethed with anger.

“And if she was nothing you are less than that. Suicidal Layla whose parents thought they could protect her with their lie…laughable really, maybe when we are finally through with you we could go take care of them. It is about time we wipe out all of you, end this insignificant bloodline.”

Still saying nothing Layla moved in closer, her hands clenching and unclenching, her breathing deep and her eyes intense.

Le Petit Cauchemar had selected his most gruesome and fearless soldiers to get rid of Layla, he was not about to underestimate her anymore.

He stood there waiting for what he was sure was going to be a quick end for nothing more than an irritating thorn in his side.

Well he was right about one thing, the waiting would be short.

Layla was no longer there. La Femme de Mort emerged and she was angry and hungry for the revenge she was trained to wreak.

There was no beauty or grace in the way she fought, this was no ballerina performance of death as she had performed before in her fights, this was a heartless forage of death and decimation. She was an artist of blood tonight, in her soul the pain of all those this creature had tortured all the days he had lived.

Cauchemar stared in shocking disbelief. With each kill one thing became clearer and clearer. She was no fake, she was indeed La Femme de Mort and with every disintegrating body he began to feel something alien within his shriveled void of a soul. Fear. For a century this nightmare killed and maimed, delighting in sharing out mental demise with a glee that was uncontainable. Never once had it crossed his mind that his just desserts would be returned unto him. But as he watched La Femme do her work in his mind this once never thought of possibility was taking form as his highly likely reality.

She didn’t seem to ever tire. Her arms moving and breaking bones, bending limbs in ways they were not built to withstand. Every part of her was destructive. Weapons drawn on her were thrust back through their owners’ torso, turning bodies into fleshy storage shelves. One outstretched hand crushed a larynx while her head crunched into the wayward skull of a man whose knee she had punched completely out of alignment. She even used her wheelchair to trap any body parts unlucky enough to come in contact with it, swiftly twisting attached necks and brushing her deadly lips to the barely breathing remains. These were trained sadistic killers and they were at her mercy, try as they might she gave not an inch to any of them.

And in the midst of it all her face, her still beautiful face never flinched but seemed frozen in a silent and persistent mask of cold calculated destruction. She felt pain but instead of letting it rule her, she wielded it to gain control and to create on the canvas she was born to paint on.

La Femme held the last of the killers by the hair twisting his neck around and forcing his lips to brush hers. She dusted his remains from her hands and looked fiercely into the eyes of the one who caused nightmares. As she looked she saw the change in him as he evolved from the nightmare everyone feared to face, to a desperate little scrap of a being facing his own worst nightmare come true.

Still she remained silent as she stalked her now helpless prey.

A mysterious melancholy seeped into the tavern and settled into the bones of the patrons as the door swung open letting in the oddly gaited waif of a being. The unease was palpable.

Everyone shifted and looked on restlessly as even more strangers filtered soundlessly into the formerly pleasant atmosphere.

His presence ensured the attack was over before the people in the tavern even knew it had begun.

The women watched children die as their own blood spilled onto the floor. Men who fought back were disabled and angled to witness a carnage they could do nothing to stop.

At the end of it all, men who were once proud warriors lay broken in mind andbody covered in the blood of their kin.

Layla awoke with two distinct tastes on her tongue. The now familiar metallic twang of fresh blood and the cold satisfaction of the revenge she would be delivering that night.

Andrew felt her tense while she lay sleeping. Turning towards her, he studied how her face twisted mirroring the pain her subconscious thoughts brought. Breathing shallow Layla came to with eyes focused but unseeing.

Common sense drew him out of her reach till he was sure she was aware of the now and not still caught in her dreams of the past.

“He made sure that they lived to talk about their worst nightmare. That is his trademark.” Locking eyes with Andrew the words he wasn’t sure he could continually handle crossed her lips. “Tonight I face him. If I do not kill him, he will kill me.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Why not?”

“Because when you accepted me you accepted all of me. I am both Layla and La Femme, I have to be otherwise…well you know better than anyone how I get otherwise.”
“That is a lovely choice, suicidal or homicidal.”
“It is not really homicide.”

“Excuse me? Killing people is not homicidal, I think I need Webster hold on.”

“You are soooooooo very lucky the sex is really good. It is homicidal but I am not going out killing random people. I wouldn’t even really classify them as human. Humans do not live for generations causing pain and devastation. I am avenging deaths and giving justice as my bloodline was made to do. I have to do this, they have been running around unchecked for over a hundred years.”

“So they have a hundred years experience on you, thanks I now feel so much better…go forth and kill oh babe in the woods.”

“Sometimes I hate how none of my gifts work on you. Because I would love to…”

“I love you. It worries me, but you know I would not stop you.”

Layla sat up in bed and faced him. She could stare at him all day long but Iyin Hasad wouldn’t show her a thing. Somehow Andrew was immune to her powers. It was nice on one level, as it meant with him she would always just be Layla and never La Femme in the true sense. She had gone through enough to know that there had to be significance to this, as usual the waiting to find out the what, was killing her.

Looking back at her, he could see her thoughts racing, it made him smile in spite of his fears. This woman of his was a one in a hundred year wonder and…”You were made for her…” the ancient voice that lead him to Trinidad echoed in his head.
“What’s wrong you just went really pale?”
So Layla didn’t hear that.
“Don’t even try to say it was nothing”

“The voice I dreamt, I always thought it was you calling me but, I kinda just heard it again, so…”
“It wasn’t me.”

Leaning over she kissed him with a big smile plastered on her face.

Planting her chin on his chest she laughed and teased him. “Spooky loves company welcome to my world.”

“This doesn’t change anything. Logically, being around you could just be inducing similar…”She is yours to guard…”

When his face paled even more, Layla settled more comfortably with her cheek rubbing soothingly against his soft mat of chest hair. His heartbeat though slightly erratic steadied her inside and out.
“When you don’t fight and just listen it goes by faster.”

Instinct had them reaching for the other’s hand, just as the last sentence filtered through Andrew’s mind.
“She will not make it without you…”

“You shouldn’t worry so much Andrew, it’s not our personal spirits we should fear, it’s those nightmares that live beyond us, those are the ones that bring true pain and death.”

MovieTowne was near dead on a Wednesday night, only a few stragglers roaming the food places looking for a quick food fix. Shakers for once had open tables and only a few token fat pocket drunks hugging the stools by the bar. Curiously all the free tables were towards the center, even though there were two men sitting at the centermost table having a quiet drink. Looking at it, there seemed to be a wall of empty cordoning off those two. No one wanted to be close to them. On closer inspection they seemed to be a father and son or an uncle and a nephew chatting casually about the things that interest men. The reality was though no one, could, be close to them.
“Why do you always insist on meeting in public areas?”

“What is wrong mon petit cauchemar? I thought you would love being out in the open making people cringe just with your very presence. Isn’t that why you came to us?”

His French accent did very little to disguise the menace that crawled along your flesh when the bigger man spoke. A few bar stool huggers left, apparently there was not enough alcohol to numb him out.

“Why I came to you is of no consequence now, I have always done as you bid and you have never complained.”
“Until now mon ami, until now.”

“Richard was a good soldier and an ally, he killed the grandmother as we needed him to”

“And left the real threat for too long, those we both work for are un peu concerned. There cannot be a Femme De Mort!”

His fist hit the table in outrage, and that, emptied the rest of the open air bar.

The little nightmare also pulled back as he felt the anger rising off of his immediate boss.

“This is very important ay cauchemar, get rid of the pretend femme, for she cannot be real non?”

“Of course not. For a hundred years the bloodline was not able to produce anyone who could …”

The older Frenchman waved away the forthcoming speech, irritated that the little waif would try to tell him of the history he had help create.

“We do not care about what was cauchemar, we want whatever she is to be destroyed. Tonight. Comprenez vous?”

He hated being dismissed but he knew his place in this hierarchy, nothing more than a hired hand with a dismally dreadful talent, he tightened his facial features and nodded his agreement.
“Oui.”