If this is true, had there ever been a city so perfectly poised between the depths of Hell and the heights of Heaven as Paris?

He walked the streets like a shade, down dark alleys and over cobblestone carriage ways. Quieted, now, in the depths of night. Silent and still, yet all around pulsed the life of hundreds, sleeping, waking, loving, fighting, dying. It was almost as though he could reach out and place a hand over that silent, invisible life - yet, even as he did so, it faded away like a phantom ghost before the light. Tricks of the imagination. He was the ghost, slipping through the corridors of the sleeping city.

::Turn away, don't look, don't notice... I will be gone before dawn.::

So foolish to come, but he hadn't been able to resist. Fear and longing, like ice and fire within his heart. To come so close, tracking down a phantom call, a beacon that disturbed his rest and plagued his thoughts. /Marius, the Ancient One.../ He had been forced to come all the way to France to trace that call, and once there... insanity to enter the city but he had no control over his disobedient feet, and step by unwilling step they had drawn him there. Paris.

His heart was fluttering in his chest, like a frightened and captive bird beneath his ribs. The clatter of rubbish from the alley made him start, draw back, breath catching. Luminous eyes met his, just as startled, and after a moment he remembered to breath. "Gato," he whispered. "Stupido gato." But he bent, rubbing knuckles over warm fur, and was rewarded with a rumbling vibration of gratitude.

He drew his cloak tighter around him then, steps quicker. Senseless. He should not be there. He should leave. There was nothing but ghosts to be found there... ghosts and things better left alone. "No going back," he whispered to himself. "You can't go back... just let it be."

The longing ached inside, the fear scratching at him, and his feet had lost their way within the labyrinth of alleys and new streets that had sprung up in the centuries since he had last walked the city. Nothing was recognizable in the brick walls, nothing but one dizzying expanse of things he did not know to either side. The fear clawed a little harder but he quieted it, making himself take a deep breath. There was more then one way to do things, there always was. The hood of his cloak fell back as he glanced up to the clear night sky, gathering himself, pale hair slipping free of its confines and falling in soft waves over his shoulders.

Footsteps.

He froze, not daring to breathe, ears straining. But there was nothing, nothing at all but the muted noises of mortals behind walls and the distant squabble of alley cats. Nothing.

Silence...
Quiet...
Step.

The sound of a boot heel on pavement. Just one. The misstep of someone as quiet as he was himself, echoing from behind him. But he could feel nothing, hear nothing, there was no sense at all.

The adrenaline surged through his veins like ice, piercing, his heart stopping painfully. Eyes closed, not daring to look, he stood frozen in place and searched. By ears, by mind... Nothing. And then there it was again, the quick sound of a boot turned on a loose cobblestone, closer now. And all other sounds masked with preternatural skill, so that even his ears heard nothing more. No sense of the other's presence.

Trembling, he took one step. This was what he had feared. And then another step, his knees weak. This was what he had longed for. Another step. Foolish, foolish idiocy to come here, to tempt fate as he had. Insanity. Then the steps began to blur, one into the other, an endless stream of them. He was running down the darkened street, the houses and shops streaming past him like water in a rushing river.

And still the steps followed behind him, silent, invisible, and in his heart of hearts he knew what he ran from and he cursed himself as a coward.

But his feet did not care - his feet responded to the flood of fear, of dread, and carried him on faster and faster through the narrow streets. If only... if only... Doubts, hopes, dreams, fears, all flickered through his mind like quicksilver, piling one upon the other. It couldn't be, but what if it was? Then he was running from the one thing he wanted most in all the world. But if it was, why not cry out? To hear his name upon those lips once more... that would halt his treacherous feet, surely! But there was no call, no sound at all but those footsteps, half imagined, trailing him at a speed no mortal could match. And from that very silence his heart sculpted fears fueled by guilt, and the fear drove his feet farther and faster, down a maze of streets without name, lost in a labyrinth of dread.

How long would those steps chase him? How long would he run? Forever, it seemed, around and around in ever extending circles, the whole breadth and width of the city passing before him. A never ending series of twists and turns and narrow streets. And always the dread, pounding at him, the fear and guilt... and the little tiny hopes, confusing him, making his step falter until the guilt came again and he would run, never daring to look back for fear and hope of seeing his pursuer.

Minutes. Hours. He lost all track of time. And finally, at long last, the buildings thinned and there was dirt beneath his pounding feet and the darkened streets gave way to the open path leading out of the city and to the forest beyond. It spread before him like salvation and slowly, wearily, his steps slowed. Stopped. Nothing but silence - was his invisible follower still there? He did not know and could not bear to find out. But finally, thrusting the fear and guilt aside, he turned to look behind him.

Moonlight on auburn curls, an angel's face that he had seen in his dreams for three hundred years, hands outstretched towards him, beckoning...

Nothing. A darkened road, dirt and grass and a few buildings. Nothing but the trick of moonlight upon his eyes and imaginative fears with a life of their own.

Nothing at all but what could have been.

End.