I stood in front of the mirror trying to put on my tie. Doing up the shirt collar had been a trial, but the tie was something else. Since my return, I had only worn casual wear, jeans and tee-shirts.

Formal wear on Ellas, which was something I never wore anyway, was nothing like a suit, shirt and tie, and looked nowhere near as uncomfortable. But today was my first day back at work, a new three month contract which, if anything like my past assignments, would stretch into six and then nine months at least.

Finally getting it done, I gave myself a good look in the mirror. I was now clean-shaven, and my hair was cut shorter than it had been for years.

On Ellas it had grown to shoulder length, and it had stayed at that length until the job interview last week. I don’t think I was ever a vain person, I certainly wasn’t now, but strangely I was proud at how dark my hair was, not a single grey – there had been more than a few before I was taken, and I had absolutely hated each and every one.

Tony had been right at the hospital, when he said that I looked younger – I really did. Dar’cen had done that, yet another of the changes that he forced into my body.

He required that my body should always be at its peak, and a byproduct of that was that I would look younger. I had been late thirties when I was taken and, for me at least, ten years had passed. That would make me close to fifty now, and yet the face looking back at me from the mirror was nowhere near that age – it was thirty at most.

The really scary thing was that I would stay looking this way. It was not immortality exactly, but more an extreme form of longevity. I didn’t know how long I had been given – Dar’cen had not seen it as a gift. To him it was convenience, he had invested time and effort into making me what I was, and he was not prepared for something as trivial as nature to undo his work. Nor accident or injury for that matter; my body would now heal itself at an amazing rate from the most horrendous of injuries. He had ensured that neither time nor injury would undo his efforts, he alone would be the one to dispose of me when I tired him, or he produced something more efficient.

I thought then about today and what I was doing. I was attempting to lead a normal life again, and put all thoughts of Ellas, Jain and the others behind me – put the last ten years of my life behind me, and try to forget that it had ever happened.

My threat, promise, whatever it was, to the woman Carthia to avenge my friends, kept jumping to the forefront of my mind, and sometimes the guilt I felt was overwhelming.

But I had tried, I had tried for months to work out how I could get back there. I had scoured the woods where I was taken, moving gradually out further and further from where I had seen the Nargu, until I had covered almost five square miles. I had camped out overnight for almost a week at the site where I was taken, and also the site where later I had eventually been returned, and I had not so much as seen a rabbit let alone a Nargu.

I spent ages on the Internet looking for ancient standing stone site but found nothing remotely like Achra. I suppose that I did not really expect to, given that travelling circles were a feature of Ellas and not here, but I tried anyway.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I had done all I could, and that it was time to give up the search, and try and salvage the life I had here. I had already lost Maggie, and the relationship I had left with Tony was so stiff and formal that you would think I was his wicked stepfather, rather than the father and friend I had been.

No, I had lost enough, and besides Jain and the others were dead, and there was nothing I could do to bring them back. And even if I did somehow manage to return and avenge my friends, I would then be back to trying to keep one step ahead of Dar’cen yet again – before my return, I had spent years constantly on the move, evading Dar'cen’s clutches, while I searched for a way home.

And he had been getting stronger with each passing year, it was only a matter of time before he again ruled Ellas, and then there would be no hiding from him.

So I had decided, I would have a life here, a normal life. I would just have to put up with the guilt trips over what happened to Jain and the others.

Who knows perhaps one day Maggie and I might get back together. I quickly pushed that thought away. She was better off without me, the few months we had together had proven that to me.

I would make a new beginning, and today was the start of it with a new job. I didn’t need the money, not at all really. I had enough saved to keep me going for years. But a job would give me a sense of normality; bring me into contact with people again, normal people from here on Earth.

It would help me learn to interact and socialise again, and ease me back into my old way of life – life before Maggie, but still a normal life. Today was my first step to my all new, normal life.

I put on my jacket, walked to the door, turned the handle and suddenly stopped dead in my tracks. Knives I thought. I wanted to be normal again, accepted into the world, and here I was walking out of the door with knives hidden all over my body. I had not even thought about it until this instant, I had just picked them up as normal and dressed. They had been a part of my life, a part of me for so long that I hadn’t even thought of not wearing them to work.

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I would feel naked without them, but if I was going to succeed with my attempt at normality, they had to go. Leaving them was only symbolic I knew, they would be with me in an instant should I merely call. But I needed to feel normal, needed to be normal. So I went back to the bedroom and, one by one, I placed them in the back of the wardrobe.

An hour later I was sat in a briefing with my new manager, listening to what my duties were to be, what the business was all about, what I could and could not access, who was who, and on and on. I was already beginning to wonder why the hell I wanted to be normal. I had forgotten all the rules, the formalities and the politics that came with the work place.

You can put up with it, I told myself, it’s a a small price to get your life back on track. I would soon be able to just get on with the work, maybe make a few friends and start to enjoy it all.

But even after my induction, the day seemed to really drag by; everyone I met was quite stiff and formal. To be expected I suppose, given that none of them knew me, and after all, I was a contractor – because of the so called really high rates we contractors were paid, some permies tended to shun us, and as a result making friends could be difficult.

But in the past I hadn’t really had a problem making new friends, I was quite outgoing, outspoken even, and people warmed to me quite easily.

That wasn’t happening today though, but then I had changed a great deal. I resolved to make a real effort tomorrow, and told myself that everything would be much better in a couple of days.

The day ended, there were no invitations to the pub for the new guy, something that had happened quite often on my first day in the past. It did worry me a little that it might really be me, that the changes in me were apparent on some primeval level that those around me somehow sensed.

True, I wasn’t back to the gregarious, cheerful chap I used to be, but I had been talkative and friendly throughout the day. Oh well, tomorrow would tell.

The bus journey home was hell, the bus stopped almost everywhere, and unlike the half hour morning ride, it took almost an hour to get home.

As I walked down the street and my front door loomed, I could not wait to get out of my bloody suit, flop down on my comfy sofa, put on some music and just chill.

My first day really had been hell.

Old habits die hard, they say, and in my case there was no truer sentence. I had left my knives at home, but my senses had still been on alert the whole day. Maybe that was what my new colleagues could somehow sense in me – I was constantly watching out for dangers, for any kind of threat, anything at all. It was to be expected, I suppose, given what I had been, how I had been trained, and that I had spent the last five years avoiding capture at the hands of his servants.

I assumed that I would eventually learn that I was safe here, safe from him, and would begin to lower my guard. But for now I watched everything around me, watching for the threat that could come from anywhere at any time.

So when I opened my front door, I was already inwardly tensed, and seeing the package merely shifted my state of readiness up a few gears.

My knives returned in an instant – I held one in each hand as I surveyed the hallway and approached the package.

It was small, about the size of a paperback book, wrapped in thick brown paper with a wax seal holding it together at the top. It lay on the floor in the hallway, some six foot from the door, strategically placed so that it would be the first thing I would see.

No one else had keys, not Maggie or Tony.

So this was something to be wary of, something that should not be here. I listened but heard nothing, only the pollution – the noise from the street, the surrounding houses, TVs, cars, children playing; all those noises that pollute the world, and yet we somehow are able to tune out. But there was nothing else, nothing close, nothing that was a threat to me.

Still I searched the house, checking for anything untoward, anything that had been disturbed.

There was nothing. No one had been in any of the rooms, if they had I would have known. They had only entered, placed the parcel on the floor and left.

I slowly knelt, picked the parcel up, carried it to the kitchen and laid it on the table.

I had nearly dropped it when I saw the figure embossed into the wax seal. A bird, a hawk rising into flight, its wings seeming to strain to drive it upwards. It was the same figure that had suddenly appeared on the travelling rod, the one the woman Carthia had used to send me home.

I sat in front of the parcel hands at my sides, my mind split in two. One half remembering and reviewing every detail of those last few moments before my return, examining the raised figure of the bird on the travelling rod, Carthia’s face, her eyes and her words. The other half scanned the parcel in front of me, the wax seal, the creases in the wrapping, and the writing below the seal, one word, Kanteth, written in a flowing script in bright red ink, not blood as I had first thought.

No one here knew that name, the name that had brought fear and terror to so many – the name that he had given me. I had not dared to tell Maggie or Tony of that name, or of the man I had been.

I carefully split the brown paper around the edge of the parcel, leaving the seal intact, to reveal a single, loosely folded sheet of what appeared to be fine parchment.

I carefully unfolded the sheet and saw the same red ink, the same flowing script, the same hand

.

You are not safe, he hunts you still.

It was simply signed – A Friend.