Work In Progress

Twilight simmered on the horizon, a last fading trace of golden glow subsiding; and all around, the dazzle of city lights blossoming... She beheld it all with vampire senses, sight and sound and perception of mood and thought forming a symphony of mind-music that lulled her toward a semblance of emotional warmth.

She gazed at the city, the spectacle of human community, and thought, how could I have ever rejected this? To stand at the edge of civilization and perceive it as a whole, to watch time surge onward relentlessly, the panorama of human accomplishment and triumph and downfall stretching endlessly into the future... what insanity had made her turn Nicholas down?

As a mortal, she had loved in a mortal way; now, she surveyed the world through the eyes of a vampire and fell in love all over again: not with a single soul, but with life itself.

Oh, how she had fought; right up until the moment of truth she had struggled against him, screaming her denial uselessly into the maelstrom of his grief... had loathed him for the violation as he took her blood, had willed herself to die rather than accept what he was forcing upon her... no, I can't, I mustn't, I won't, had been her mind's insistent cry, as she clung to the last shreds of blissful human innocence... until that first taste of his vampiric blood.

She'd been sure she would hate him forever, for what he had done. She'd been wrong.

As a mortal, she had dared to dream of impossible things: home and family and human warmth. But those things could never be hers, for the simple reason that she had never known such luxuries -- hers had always been a world of chill and darkness, long before the world of the vampire had taken over. She had never been loved with such purity, and thus she could not truly love; and all she had managed of human 'normalcy' was the barest pretense, the most meager facade.

But that didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter.

The wind blew fiercely, tousling her hair, and she laughed long and loud, letting the sound of it be carried off into the distance. She was alive, yes, truly alive, as if her spell of humanity had been nothing more than a dream, vanishing into the mists...

And she was free: freer than she had ever been.

Surely, this was as it was meant to be.

She met up with her companion at the agreed-upon location, and they walked together in silence to their destination. Years had passed: and all that was left of the Raven was a boarded-up building, unidentifiable to all but the most informed passerby.

The two stood outside, each wrapped up in separate thoughts, sharing a silent empathy that had less to do with a common history than with the similarities of their existence. In the beginning, they had been rivals, diametrically opposed in all aspects of being; now they were so alike in so many ways, and all because of him...

"You've found no sign of him," said the woman on the left, less an inquiry than a statement of fact.

"Not a trace," said the other, with a brief shake of her head. "Where shall we search next?"

"Paris?" suggested the first.

"Why not," agreed the second wearily.

For a while longer, they lingered, wrapping memories around themselves as if by doing so they might shrink time and bring back simpler days... but such could not be. A vampire was immune to time -- but only in one direction. "We will find him," she vowed softly.

"We will," echoed her companion, with equal determination.

And in unison, by unspoken agreement, they turned and departed, leaving the shell of the Raven and the ghosts of the past behind.

She knelt beside the CD player and coaxed it to play, and music wafted through the fashionable furnished apartment; her partner reclined on the sofa with her glass of blood, bearing a regal elegance that her mortal alter-ego had utterly lacked. How odd, and how fitting, that this of all women had become her closest friend... she supposed that she would never quite get used to the incongruity, which did not lessen her appreciation of the friendship in the least.

They were traveling the world together, searching for Nicholas together, and when they found him... what? Would they fight over him, amity dissolving in acid jealousy, filling the atmosphere with acrid betrayal? Or would they share him? The mental picture presented by that last was unexpectedly amusing, so much so that she laughed softly.

Her companion glanced at her quizzically, and she related her thought with only the barest hesitation -- and was rewarded by a burst of merry laughter. "He doesn't know what to do with one of us," was the verdict.

But the other woman sobered quickly, and she guessed that the same dilemma had occurred to her as well. What would they do when they found him?

"Never mind," she said aloud, into her partner's somber silence. "The important part is to find him," and noted the other's agreement.

Find him they would, she had no doubt of that. And afterwards... well, they would figure that out as they went along.

After all, there was plenty of time.

He had changed the background colors on his computer four times already, to keep the eyestrain from setting in; but despite that precaution, his eyes were aching, leaking burning tears. "I need a break," he said wearily, and slowly pried himself up from the chair.

A pair of arms caught him, offering steady support, and he was only too grateful for their inhuman strength... he was guided to the sofa, where another helpful hand offered him a cup of coffee.

He sipped at it and sighed happily. They might not drink it themselves, but someone had taught at least one of his visitors how to make a damn fine pot of coffee.

"Why'd you tangle me up in this mess, anyway?" he asked without rancor.

"Because you're the only one who knows the truth," said one of the vampires, looking (despite immortality) at least as tired as he himself felt.

They were both tired; they were all tired -- it had been a long, long month.

Outside, the rain beat down on darkened streets, thrumming a steady rhythm. The chill soaked through the walls of the ancient house, permeated his bones. He had always envisioned himself growing old, but never this way... not alone, hiding himself away from those he'd once loved, separated from his family...

It was a hell of a situation, but now he had a way out. If he could help them, they would help him. They'd promised.

He sipped at the coffee and closed his eyes, kept them resolutely closed until the worst of the burning had passed, then stood -- a hand on his elbow steadied him. "Rest a little longer," the owner of the hand urged.

"Nah," he sighed, "might as well keep going. I'm getting closer," he said, as he'd been telling them for days, although there was no way they could really know.

He stretched -- favored his companions with a steady gaze. "Look," he said quietly, "I'm doing what you asked -- and I'm going to keep doing it, because I've got a stake in it too. Pardon the expression." A brief wry grin came over his face, disappeared just as quickly. "You promised me... well, you know what you promised... and, y'know, if you did it now, I could work faster, and longer, and maybe find the answer quicker." He said it casually, as if their response weren't of supreme import to him.

They looked at each other, then at him. "Makes sense to me," said the dark-haired one, and shrugged.

"I don't know," said the other uneasily. "I didn't like this idea from the beginning."

"You promised," said the man firmly. If nothing else, this one had only recently been human herself; a promise oughta mean something.

And finally, after an agonizing eternity of thought, a small nod of the rumpled fair hair alerted him of the decision. "Yeah," said the blonde unhappily, "I did promise."

She came toward him -- young, so young, his own kid oughta be about this age now; he had no business looking at her and feeling the way he did -- especially since she wasn't a woman at all, but a creature of the night...

He found himself glancing guiltily at her dark-haired 'boyfriend', but he just seemed amused.

She extended her hand to him and smiled, and he could feel the blood pounding in his veins. "Come here," she said softly.

Much later, the blonde woman stared down at the corpse at her feet.

"Not bad," said Vachon appraisingly, "not bad at all."

"Did we really have to do it this way?" whispered the blonde unhappily.

"You said it yourself: it was the best way to get the information we needed." He came to stand beside her, nudged the corpse with one sneakered foot. "The old man was starting to scheme. We had to get rid of him." Vachon studied her curiously. "You oughta be higher than a kite right now, with that much blood in you," he said. "Why are you so upset?"

She dashed a slender hand against her eyes, wiped away blood-tears. "Because we didn't get the information, that's why," she moaned.

"Sure we did," he said, and smiled, reached out to brush a stray teardrop from her face with his thumb. "You didn't catch the body language? The old guy knew more than he was telling." He turned away, seated himself at the computer, and began to call up files with a sureness that he hadn't allowed the human to see. "Here we go," he said, with certainty.

She rushed to his side, the corpse forgotten, and peered over his shoulder; the information that flashed across the screen burned itself indelibly into her brain in the space of a split-second.

A date. A location. And three names.

The tears began to flow then, uncontrollably, and Vachon caught her and held her as she fought to suppress the inevitable reaction.

She leaned into him, glad of his support -- she had steeled herself, had mentally prepared herself, for anything but this... the discovery that they were still, incredibly enough, alive.

It occurred to her that Vachon had to be going through his own reaction to this revelation, and she looked up... but his dark eyes were unreadable.

"You okay?" he inquired.

"We have to find them," she murmured. The pain, the fear, the grief, the startled hope, all of it intensified and focused into a single laser-point of conviction, of utter certainty. "We have to find them."

He hesitated, then nodded in silent agreement. "But are you really prepared for what you might see?"

His words hung in the air between them for a long moment before she opened her mouth to reply -- her voice caught in her throat, and she had to struggle to get the words out. "I have to be, don't I?" she demanded of him, of the universe. "We can't turn back now."

And again, he nodded.

"I'll take care of that," he said compassionately, indicating the still form of the man on the floor. "In the meantime, you... have a drink, relax. We'll leave by midnight."

She nodded, and went to the fridge to fetch a bottle of blood, to appease her fledgling hunger; by the time she'd retrieved the flask, Vachon and the corpse were gone.

He had been good to her, she reflected, as she drank, forcing herself to sip slowly instead of gulping down the blood. She was lucky to have stumbled across him, instead of some other vampire... well, instead of knowingly stumbling across some other vampire.

As it turned out, she'd known a number of them, and had never even guessed...

And now she was one herself, and she still hadn't gotten used to it; nor did she have the option of engaging in a period of leisurely self-examination. People she loved were in danger, and she had to help them, she had to.

Although it might well be too late already...

She drank, and tried to relax as Vachon had bidden her, but all the while, the three names she'd seen on the computer screen danced maddeningly before her eyes.

One of them, in particular, she could not erase.

I'm coming, Daddy! she called out silently, sending her anguished cry into the telepathic ozone, hoping against hope that somehow he would hear.

There was pain, but he didn't mind; she was with him, for this brief precious time, and it was better than being alone.

He sank his teeth into her flesh and tasted her blood -- it was thin, dulled and muted by deprivation, but it was blood, and it was contact, and after an eternity of solitude he was desperate for the touch of another mind, another soul, another body against his.

She wrapped her arms around him and whimpered as she bit him, and he tried not to flinch... it hurt, it shouldn't have hurt but it did...

How long had they been in this hell? And just how long did it take for sanity to shatter?

He prayed for an end to his own, for the horror of his existence was more than he could endure, and the vampire inside him would not let him die.

But in the meantime, she was with him: for a little while, he wasn't alone.

And he clung to her and cried as the slow trickle of her blood flowed over his parched lips, silent tearless sobs of agony for what his life had become.

"Interesting subjects," pronounced the observer, her expression as bland as always, betraying nothing. "But of course, the true challenge lies with the other..."

She gestured toward another screen, which showed a figure huddled into a corner, motionless. Bits of splintered wood protruded from its shoulders and chest, and its skin had gone ashen, evidence of the slow poisoning occurring within.

"Have someone attend to that," she said offhandedly, "we don't want the situation to go too far."

The assistant gulped uncomfortably. "Uh," he began, unsure of how to broach the subject, "last time, you remember... three men died..."

"So restrain him," the Project Director said reasonably. "In his current condition, it shouldn't be too difficult."

"Um, yes m-Ma'am," the young man stammered.

A faint smile touched her imperturbable face. "Call me Amanda," she said, as if it were some private joke.

He was too flabbergasted to respond; and a moment later she had forgotten him anyway, too caught up in the events on the screen. "Look," she said, and gestured.

The handlers, dressed in what amounted to body armor, had come to separate the pair of younger vampires. Despite their starvation, it took four men apiece to restrain them, as the female was returned to her own cell. "Such strength," mused the Director. "Decrease their rations by half again. I want to see what it will take to weaken them."

Her assistant said nothing, merely made a note of it.

"And as for him..." She indicated the other vampire with a jerk of her chin. "He should never have been allowed to damage himself this way; but we might as well take advantage of it. I'll want to talk to the surgeon -- we must examine the effect of wood on their metabolisms. This is definitely an exploitable weakness." Her eyes gleamed, and her lips twisted into something less than a smile.

The young man scribbled diligently on his legal pad; and in the background, one of the vampires howled in agony. The Director was oblivious to the sound, but her assistant shivered...

Sometimes, he thought, I really hate this job.

"He is my son," said LaCroix, through clenched teeth.

He might as well have been speaking to stone. "Forget him," said the Enforcer.

In a sudden burst of rage, LaCroix lashed out -- and the other parried, lunged with uncommon speed and strength; LaCroix found himself unexpectedly sprawled on the floor.

A lapse of judgement, he realized. They weren't called 'Enforcers' for nothing.

"There is more to this than you realize," said the other vampire, eyes gleaming white-gold in the darkness. "You are not to interfere."

LaCroix snarled in reply, sprang to his feet... did not make the mistake of attacking again. "And if I refuse?"

"You are not to refuse," said the Enforcer, very quietly, and LaCroix understood the threat quite clearly.

And knew, of course, what he had to do.

He allowed his own eyes to flare fever-hot, then forced the fury back. "I will obey," he grated, with just the right mixture of anger and proud defiance.

"See that you do." The Enforcer fixed him with one last cold white gaze, then abruptly was gone.

LaCroix did not trust himself to move. Could do nothing more, for a long moment, than stand there and seethe.

He would be watched, most closely, now that they knew he knew. His seeming compliance could not have convinced anyone... his attachment to Nicholas was too well known. If he had been less ancient, less powerful, less politically well-connected in the vampire community, he would have died -- and even now his survival lay in keeping low, doing nothing that could be construed as the merest sign of rebellion.

Yet he could not allow this to continue, either.

He drew a long, deep breath of the cold night air, felt its chill go through him, calming the heat of his ire; and when he felt sufficiently composed, he took flight, headed home, there to plan his next move.

They dragged her away from him, from the only scant bit of solace she had; and with the last fading remnant of her strength she tore at the faceless figures that grasped her.

A miracle: her scrabbling hands found purchase and tore away a bit of the armor that protected her captor. Not much, only part of a forearm-plate... but there was skin, exposed skin; and the scent of his humanity hit her like a sledgehammer.

He let out a screech, which she didn't hear; she was preoccupied with the odd feel of her fangs penetrating his flesh, like pushing her index finger through packing styrofoam -- that tiny initial resistence, and then just sinking in, sinking deeper, deeper and deeper and the blood, the blood...

Was this what it tasted like? Oh, the difference... the animal blood, the drugged, diluted stockyard blood they'd doled out in meager portions, the thin sour liquid that barely kept her stomach from chewing on itself; it was all she'd ever tasted before, and this was ambrosia in comparison.

But there wasn't enough; she couldn't gulp it down fast enough. How to get more? For she had to have more of this, she had to.

Hands on her, pulling her, wrenching her away. No, this wouldn't do. Not at all.

She turned, and found herself gazing at a blank faceplate; but senses awakened by the lush taste of mortal blood could discern his heartbeat, hammering in fear. But the armor... the blood was inside the armor; how to get it out?

Easy. Grab appendage, twist and remove.

And then there was a veritable fountain of blood, spraying into her open mouth and over her naked body; it felt so good, like a hot bubblebath on a cold wintry day, like lotion on a sunburn, soaking right into her skin.

Bullets whizzed past her, as the man in the armor screamed and died; and Tracy stood in the midst of the gunfire, covered with his blood, holding his dismembered arm and laughing.

The music was loud, louder than it had ever been at the Raven; and together they stood at the bar, sipping glasses of the 'house special' (nowhere near the quality of that which had been kept behind the bar at that erstwhile club) and looking for their nightly meal.

It had become something of a ritual: there was always a youngster, or two or three, whose hormones were stronger than their natural caution -- easy enough to coax them to a hotel, and send them off a few hours later missing a few pints of blood and bearing happy memories of a sexual encounter that had never happened. Another trick that her companion had taught her...

"Another drink?" said that companion politely, and she held out her glass so that the bartender could pour her a refill.

As she sipped at it, her eyes tracked a figure across the club: an attractive young man, a robust specimen who surely wouldn't miss a half-liter of blood, who strode through the writhing masses on the dance floor toward... another woman. She sighed. Granted, it wouldn't be impossible to lure him away, if she truly wanted to; but generally such things weren't worth the effort -- and there were other, more important matters to attend to before dawn.

"Perhaps a trifle less ambition," her companion suggested with amusement.

She sighed again, and chose another: less attractive, but more importantly, alone. An easy target.

"Go ahead," said her friend, "I'll meet up with you at the room," and she downed the rest of her drink and headed for her quarry.

She began a slow stroll through the club, a circuituous route designed to bring her to his side... once, she glanced back at the spot where she'd been standing, and noticed that her companion had departed. Someone named Aristotle had contacted them, said that he had some information regarding their quest; it had been decided that the older of the pair, the more experienced, would be the one to retrieve that data.

And it was left to her, as the youngest, to 'bring home dinner'.

Not that it was a task she particularly minded.

Finally, her feet brought her to his side; and she smiled up into his startled seafoam-green eyes. "Hi," she said, shouting to be heard.

The young man looked around himself, to be certain that she was talking to him. "Hi," he yelled back, looking a bit dazed -- as if he'd never had a strange woman come up to him in a club before. And from the look of him, perhaps none ever had.

"Wanna dance?" she asked him loudly; he was probably all left feet, but it was an important part of the ritual, necessary to deflect the suspicion that undue eagerness would provoke.

"Sure!" he said enthusiastically. "I'm Steve. What's your name?"

She told him, knowing that by tomorrow he wouldn't even remember... "Can I buy you a drink?" he offered, all unknowing innocence.

"Maybe later," said the blonde. And laughed.

They had been very thorough.

They'd removed the splinters and shards of wood, cleaned the wounds properly -- and then inserted new ones, chips of varying sizes and types of wood placed just under the skin, all carefully plotted on a chart, so that they could examine him and compare the damage.

It was like being eaten alive, like the fiery touch of the sun, a slow burn that consumed him.

And the IV drip in his arm wasn't enough: blood, but only enough to keep him alive, and not human. He needed human blood, hungered for it as he never had, not even the first night he'd awakened as a vampire to that ravening blood thirst -- he would have killed for it without a thought, would have murdered anyone, an innocent, a child; anything to quiet the screaming agony that lived within him.

Still, there was a part of him that luxuriated in his torment, for all of this was his fault. His fault.

How foolish he had been, how naive; how quick to believe, to trust. And now he was suffering for his actions -- but that wasn't the worst of it: he knew that others were suffering, too, and that all of his kind were in danger, and it was all because of him.

He wished he could die, knew that they would never allow it; he tried for the thousandth time to think up a plan of escape, and failed; he thought of the people he loved, and even the ones he hated, none of whom he would ever see again, and the pain that washed over him was worse than the ache of the wood poisoning.

And he closed his eyes, shutting out the antiseptic white walls of his torture chamber, tried to lose himself in memories of a time when his search for humanity had brought him nothing more traumatic than the occasional protein shake; for his memories were the only light that was left in his life.

She ran, lightning-fast, dodging the trees in the midnight forest with the aid of her new night vision, delighting in the crystal clarity of it, and in the sharp coldness of the brisk breeze against her skin.

She'd left her pursuers far behind, and now she ran simply for the sheer joy of it. She'd always been the athletic type, the nervous, restless type, and being confined in such a small space for so long had damaged her in ways beyond the blood starvation and experimentation...

The others. They were still there, still captive, still being tortured. Her soul ached at the thought of leaving them behind, but she couldn't go back, she could not go back, could not face the spectre of renewed torment. She barely remembered her own escape -- blood, there had been blood everywhere; details were beyond her comprehension.

A flicker of dappled brown dissuaded her from her path; she pursued the deer, caught it and drained it and snapped its neck with cool unthinking ferocity, not pausing until its corpse had fallen at her feet. She looked down... I just killed Bambi! came the thought, remnant of a not-so- distant childhood; but the vampire within her was more preoccupied with the difference in taste between this and the blood of the human guard. Human was definitely better - - human blood was...

Murder! The thought shocked her to the core, for it highlighted just how far she'd strayed from humanity; but a lifetime of moral belief was as nothing beside the imperative of vampiric hunger. So demanding, so seductive... she wondered how any of them could resist the temptation to kill, and kill, and kill again, draining one human after another to slake the constant thirst.

Nick. At crime scenes, so close to the blood, battling his own hunger all along; how bravely he'd struggled, how hard he'd fought. How awful it must have been for him -- she had to admire his strength, even if both power and intelligence had deserted him for the few precious moments necessary to cause their slavery.

She didn't blame him for her downfall, though he had caused it; neither of them had ever blamed Nick. How could they? All he'd ever wanted, poor guy, was to be human again... such a small thing, such a huge thing: such a gift, humanity... and she'd never realized it, all the years she'd taken living for granted.

There were so many things she wanted to say to Nick, now that she had experienced his world first-hand. And the other... stranger at the start, closer to her now than her parents and brothers had ever been; the very blood that pulsed through their veins had come from the same source, and it ripped her soul to shreds to know that she had left him behind in that horrible place.

She looked down at herself -- most of the blood had been absorbed through her skin; some of it lingered, caked and dried into a dull brown crust. She started to brush the remnants away, stopped when she realized that the powder crumbling on her fingers smelled good -- tasted good, stale but still good -- and eagerly, she began licking the residue from the crevices between her fingers.

Sloppy seconds... but her 'brother' had not even had that much sustenance; while she'd been feasting on the remnants of the unfortunate guard, he was still starving to death.

The very idea of going back there scared her sick, so badly that her stomach heaved -- she forced the nausea away; she'd been too hungry for too long to allow her body to rid itself of needed sustenance -- sat still and attempted to calm herself, closed her eyes and recited a mantra her first college boyfriend had taught her, willed herself to relax.

When the worst of the terror had subsided, she opened her eyes again... pictured how she must look, sitting there beside the corpse of her kill, naked except for the mud and blood. A wry smile crossed her face at the thought of how carefully she'd always prepared herself before leaving the sanctuary of her home, checking makeup and hair to be sure it was all just right -- who of her friends would have recognized the disheveled waif she was now? Let alone the fearsome monster she became when the hunger grew fierce...

She wondered, idly, just what she looked like with the glowing eyes and fangs; wondered if she would ever have the luxury of checking out her reflection, to find out.

She didn't want to go back. Did not, did NOT want to go back.

But she knew she would. Because he would have gone back for her, if their positions were reversed. And because, quite simply, she couldn't leave him there. Not either of them.

They were family now; and family took care of each other. A family of vampires, or the 'family in blue' -- the three of them fit into both categories: it was her obligation to help them, or to die trying.

Or risk recapture, which was a fate worse than death...

She swallowed her fear, rose to her feet, and began the long trip back to the complex, the only way she knew how: not permitting herself thought or emotion, just concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, step by step, until the journey was done.

The latest news from Aristotle was disturbing, unsurprising but with staggering implications; he hadn't yet begun to puzzle them out yet. He was too intent on making his way back to his companion: they had not been separated for more than a few hours at a time since she'd been brought over.

Fifteen. What the hell had a fifteen-year-old kid been doing at the Raven anyway? Especially one who could pass for a suave twenty-two in makeup and the right dress, who was so cool and composed that she could pull off the act perfectly, right through the feeding and the moment of death and the reawakening afterwards?

She'd informed him of her plans so casually that it had taken him awhile to realize he'd been set up... and just as his anger had reached its peak, she'd gazed at him with tears in her eyes, and told him why she'd lured him in...

...and they'd been together ever since. No choice, really; she wasn't strong enough to do it alone, no matter how determined she might be, and he had spent enough of his life fighting injustice to be willing to do it one more time for her sake.

And for his own.

Tracy. Tracy's scent, etched into his memory; Tracy's face, solemn and stubborn, saying goodbye. For both their sakes, she'd said. But she wasn't happy, and neither was he, and what sort of solution was that? She hadn't been able to answer his question, but she hadn't changed her mind, either.

He'd expected her to come back, and she hadn't... it had never occurred to him that perhaps she hadn't been able to come back.

And now he was committed to yet another fight he hadn't looked for, hadn't asked for; as always, he was expert at ducking responsibility until his heart got involved.

But the news that Tracy still lived had implications that he simply couldn't face.

Especially not when he was going back to his companion, his adolescent fledgling, to spend the day curled up beside her with his teeth buried in her neck. No choice, really; that closeness was the only solace either of them had.

Now, more so than ever.

He flew onward, homeward, into the velvet night.

If she had been stronger, she could have fought them. If she had still possessed her old power, she would have sensed them coming; but she was young, and weak, and they caught her by surprise, and took her effortlessly.

She struggled, to no avail; the bonds were secure, and not even vampire strength could break them. Desperately, she sent out a telepathic cry to her closest companion, and only then realized that it was unnecessary: the other had sensed her distress from the first moment and was already on her way.

What a lovely change from Nicolas, who had always remained stubbornly blind to anything more subtle than a sledgehammer across the brow; and how reassuring it was, to have a companion she could rely upon with such certainty.

"Take it easy," said a voice in the darkness, a quiet male voice. "I'm not going to hurt you. The only reason you're tied down is to make sure that you'll listen to what I have to say, without killing me first. That's all."

She fixed her gaze upon him, what little she could see of him in the shadows, hoping against hope that she could make it work. "Let me go," she commanded, summoning her power...

"Don't bother," he replied wearily, "it won't do any good. And it's not necessary. All I want is ten minutes of your time, and you'll be free to go."

She delayed her reply, sensing another presence nearing -- and seconds later, someone tore the back door off the van they were holding her in.

Her captor looked up, regarded the newcomer curiously. "Well," he said, "if I'd known, I would have called you directly."

"Capt..." Natalie's voice trailed off; the bright golden fire in her eyes flickered and dimmed.

"It's just Joe, now," he said easily.

"Set her free," she ordered him, not even bothering to make it a telepathic command, merely demanding that he obey.

"Of course," he replied. "As long as you promise to listen to what I have to say before you kill me."

"Why should we?" said Nat, and if her voice was deceptively casual, her eyes were deadly.

He sighed. "It's about Nick," he said.

And while they were absorbing that, he got up from his chair and went to Janette, began removing her bonds, talking all the while, so that by the time she was free to kill him for his presumption, they were too preoccupied with his tale to notice.

Killing, she had discovered, was fun.

Fun, and tasty.

She had the feeling that her family would not be pleased with this discovery. And she determined that they could be as annoyed with her as they chose -- after they were safe.

The worst part was that she could feel them both, sense their presences, at opposite ends of the compound... and there was only the slenderest chance that she might rescue one of them; no way in hell she could get to both.

One of them was in pain, agonizing pain, growing steadily more intense with every passing moment...

The other felt no pain whatsoever; he was too close to death to register even the faintest flicker of consciousness.

Tracy sighed, and chose.

Funny thing: the more guards she killed, the stronger she felt; the easier it was to subdue the next assailant. Yet she never felt full -- she could have gone on killing and drinking forever, never getting enough, never feeling the need to stop.

Their emotions fed her rampant desire as much as anything else: they were panicked, desperately afraid of her, and that felt good. Some of their minds, she remembered, taunting her from behind their armor as she lay bound and starving... now those minds pleaded for mercy, and it sent a sharp thrill of pleasure through her to feel their dark souls flicker and die.

Finally, she was near, so near; she shattered the door with a kick, burst through, every inhuman sense she possessed focusing on her vampiric 'brother'.

She dropped to her knees by his side, pulled him roughly into her arms -- her once perfectly-manicured fingernails were jagged ruins, and she dug them into her neck and ripped open the flesh there, guided his head toward the favored spot. The scent of her blood revived him; a sound halfway between a growl and a moan, and she felt his teeth penetrate the raw wound.

All the pain he'd been spared by unconsciousness came crashing in on him, like the awful tingling fire of sensation returning to a numbed limb only a thousand times worse -- he shuddered, and she clung to him, striving to soothe him. Finally, she felt him beginning to strengthen, and she forced herself to push him away. "We have to get out of here!" she said urgently. "We have to escape..."

Too late, she sensed the troops thundering up behind her; the blast of the gun caught her by surprise, a burning sensation like liquid garlic, acid on her flesh, and she screamed -- then darkness stole in and swept her away.

"I couldn't keep him here," she said miserably, feeling guilty. "The whammy wouldn't hold."

"S'alright. I grabbed a bite on the way back," he said curtly; but she could tell by the tone of his skin that whatever he'd bitten, it hadn't offered him nearly enough to assuage his need, and her guilt deepened.

"You're hungry," she said, and went to him, but he shrugged off her embrace; she stared at him for a moment with wide, hurt eyes before realizing what his abruptness had to mean. Hard to read his cues, sometimes, but this mood was one she'd come to know. "You're upset," she divined accurately. "Why?" Of course, it had to be something the other vampire had told him...

...and she flinched in dread as he touched her face with fingers gone suddenly gentle, more afraid of the tenderness than she had been of his brusqueness. "What is it?" she demanded, blinking back the hot tears that had materialized in her eyes.

He told her: what they'd suspected, but in considerably more detail -- and by the end of the account, she was crying, big crimson teardrops trickling silently down her cheeks, dripping onto her t-shirt and staining it. His hands slid onto her shoulders, and she ducked away from him; now she was the one who couldn't bear the contact. The images were too sharp, too vivid in her mind, as if she'd witnessed the scenes herself.

One thing to imagine the worst: another thing altogether to know it.

She remembered him pushing her on the playground swing in the afternoon sunlight -- bandaging the scrapes on her knees -- reading her bedtime stories at night. Her daddy. What would it be like now, what would he be like now? She knew how the hunger could transform a person, knew what it had done to her; how the blood-need could wither compassion and caring with its ferocious heat. What had it done to the warm, funny, loving man she remembered?

She recognized that she regarded him in a rose-colored glow; that memories of old spankings and scoldings had dissolved into the ether with his loss. Loss: she had never truly believed it was death -- not her daddy, not that way. If he was going to die, it would be in a blaze of heroic glory... not as the anonymous victim of random evil.

And she had never given up, no matter how hopeless and futile it had seemed, no matter how likely the fact that her disbelief was unfounded... and finally, there had been a break. A clue. The slenderest fragment of an answer, too impossible to believe...

...and now she knew for certain. Her daddy was alive.

Well, sort of, she thought, with a trace of her father's ironic humor.

Alive, but in what condition? and enduring what sort of agony? Oh, she couldn't bear it.

She looked at Vachon and saw that he was lost in his own private nightmare; she went to him, and this time he didn't push her away.

His hands, his kisses, were rough and demanding -- as he had been that first night, when she'd found him huddled into a corner of the Raven with a half-empty bottle and a golden glow in his eyes. It was his way, to transform pain and sorrow and regret into anger, into sexual desire; they were easier emotions to handle.

And she welcomed his roughness now, as she had then, and for the same reasons that he did. It was a release, an escape, a way of working out the rage that lived within her without killing anyone. In vampire intimacy, where pain and pleasure and blood and sex and death and life were all tangled together into a tight little knot, there was really no discerning the end of one and the beginning of the other.

She had never known any other sort of intimacy than this; and distantly she wondered, as always, what mortal lovemaking would have been like -- and then she felt his fangs at her throat, and reality and reason dissolved into the hot luscious passion of the blood.

"They're dead," said the woman he'd once known as Amanda Cohen. "They were killed during their escape attempt."

He reached out with the last vestiges of strength, to delve within her mind and find the truth; but she was as inscrutable as ever, her mind a closed book. So he closed his eyes against the words, hoped desperately that it was untrue, not believing it.

He couldn't sense them, but that was nothing new; he had never had that tie with either, due to the circumstances of their birth. He'd been so weak when he'd made them that it was startling they'd survived -- they'd been taken from him immediately afterwards; he had not so much as seen either of his offspring since their transformation.

And he wondered what they had looked like, those two dear familiar faces, altered by the demon virus into pale, dangerous planes. Well, now he would never know.

Goodbye, Tracy, he thought, anguished. Goodbye, Sch... goodbye, Don.

She came closer -- no body armor; she needed none. He was too weak to break free of his bonds. But the scent of her blood was a siren lure, an unspeakable torment, beckoning, enticing him... arousing him; and damn her sharp scrutiny, she knew it, too.

"You should have played the game, Knight," came her voice, that level voice more menacing than any overt gloating would have been. "You should have cooperated with us. You could have had anything you wanted."

"Freedom," he gasped, hampered by his fangs; they were extended, of course, and his jaw ached. "A cure..."

"You always did want the impossible," said the woman who had once been Amanda, in a voice that could have been LaCroix's.

Another step closer, and he lunged against the straps that bound him; his skin was burned and blistered from the wood- allergen tests, and he was hungrier than he'd ever been in his life, and he loathed her with a passion that surpassed anything he'd felt for his creator. He wanted to rip out her throat, a very specific desire that he'd honed to a razor's edge during many hours of furious contemplation; and with her so close, the hunger/desire/rage/lust was unendurable.

She leaned over him -- inches closer and she would have been lunch; she stared into his eyes with cool derision. "How long do you intend to resist?"

"As long as it takes." It was all he could do to manage coherent speech.

Her hand moved, down his chest, his abdomen, lower... involuntarily, his hips rose to meet the touch, desperately seeking even the tiniest morsel of fulfillment; and the pure helplessness of his body's reaction, the obscenity of receiving gratification from his tormentor, made him wish he were dead.

"It won't take long," said the woman, and laughed; and the sound of it made him shudder.

But worse, far worse than her laughter was the feel of her hands roaming across his skin...

Blood. The smell of it drew her from the darkness, brought her back to awareness. Rich and thick -- not living blood, but newly dead, the next best thing; and human. Not quite paradise, but close.

She gulped it down, lunged for the fresh corpse and sank her teeth into the flesh, drank thirstily until her hunger abated enough for her to think clearly -- and felt a stab of panic. What had happened? The guards...

"Easy," said a wonderfully familiar voice. "It's all right. You're safe. We're both safe."

The sound of his voice, a little bit hoarse but otherwise all right, was more than she could take -- all the anxiety and fury and terror dissolved into a sudden tidal wave of blood tears, and she leaned into him and sobbed. "Shhhh." She could feel his hands, stroking her hair; so comforting, as always. Those hands, that voice: she'd imagined it stilled, the uniqueness of him nullified by the true death -- had not dared envision this moment of reunion.

In her previous life, her mortal life, she'd have never looked at him twice: too little hair and too much extra poundage, too old and too ordinary, to be worthy of closer scrutiny. But during their time together in hell, she'd come to know another side of him than that which was visible and purely superficial. The loyalty. The steadfast bravery. The nobility he'd kept hidden behind wisecracks and crass flirtation, up until the time she'd confronted him with his secret: that he was secretly a Knight himself, a creature in shining armor, determined to defend her from all harm...

He'd done his best, right up until the last; he'd offered himself as a sacrifice in her place, never mind that his actions had only delayed the inevitable. He'd given his all for her, right down to the last few drops of blood in his veins; always giving more than he took, always.

It was easy to love a man like that; it didn't matter what he looked like.

She gazed up at him, and saw nothing -- there was no light, none at all, only a sea of black; but for the pressure of his arms around her, she might have been alone.

"Where are we?" she asked, trying and failing to keep the tremor from her voice.

A slow chuckle, and his arms tightened their embrace. "Underground," he told her. "We're in some kind of cave, just adjacent to the complex ventilation system. A lucky break, that I found this place."

"Sorry I couldn't help," she whispered, and buried her face in his neck -- no mortal could have sensed it, but she could feel the feather-soft surreptitious rhythm of the blood flowing through his veins.

"Sweetheart, you saved my life," he murmured in her ear, and she shivered as his lips brushed against her earlobe. "If it hadn't been for you..." and he abandoned speech, kissed her neck in earnest. "You did good," was the last thing she heard him say, muffled against her skin, just before she felt the points of his fangs.

She settled herself into place... "assume the position", their feeble joke during the worst times, a catch-phrase applied to both the torture and the brief respites in between. Those short periods they'd been allowed contact, when she'd become accustomed to the taste of his blood -- puncturing his flesh now was a revelation; so this was what it was like, when people weren't starving to death? And she had thought it was good before...

Afterwards, it didn't matter that the cave was pitch-black, that it was clammy-cold, that there were small insects leisurely strolling across her bare legs. If human blood was ambrosia, the blood of her own kind was white lightning, setting her afire inside.

And he was healed, on his way to recovering completely; and that knowledge was even more pleasurable than the residual afterglow of the blood-joining.

She still remembered... opening her eyes, that first time, being terrified by her new vampiric vision and senses and desires, aching from a hunger she didn't yet comprehend. Looking around fearfully for Nick, still haunted by that last glimpse of him as he lunged for her throat... and that voice, his voice. "Take it easy, honey, you're all right..."

To the best of his ability, he'd made the lie into truth.

"I love you, y'know that?" The words were out of her mouth before she realized she'd said them; and she knew that it was true. All her life, it had been, "not bad" and "almost right" and "can't you do any better?" Her father, refusing to check the closet for hidden monsters, insisting, "You're seven years old, you're a big girl now; don't tell me you're still afraid?" Her brothers, mocking her as she examined her newly-skinned knee, "aww, baby fall down? Gonna cry now, crybaby?" Her mother, examining her with a critical eye as she prepared for her first date, "you're not going to wear that, are you? You could be so pretty, if you tried..." Acceptance and love, but always (she felt) contingent on some hidden factor; always bestowed grudgingly, with an admonition to improve.

Now, she had a new family: an unwilling father who'd given her immortality because the only alternative was her murder; a sibling who she hardly knew, who was brother and father and damn close to being a lover, all at the same time... she had been reborn in trauma and violence, begun her vampiric childhood amid starvation and pain...

And despite all of that, she was happier with this family than with the one she'd been born to; and it struck her as both wonderfully apt and dreadfully sad that this should be so.

For the first time, she wondered what Vachon would think of all this -- then felt simultaneously guilty and embarrassed, at both the realization that she was contemplating Vachon while lying in another man's arms, and the fact that she hadn't given him a moment's thought since before she'd been brought over.

Then there was the sure knowledge that her blood-partner was eavesdropping on her every thought...

She would have blushed, if she'd still been capable of it; but in her companion's mind, she sensed only rueful amusement. His left hand caressed her cheek, and she felt the cool metal band on his finger, colder even than his skin. "I'm a married man, you know," he mentioned casually, and she remembered how fiercely he had battled to keep that ring -- a guard had lost three fingers trying to take it from him.

"At least," he continued, "I used to be married. I guess you would say that my wife is now... my widow." A short laugh, a bitter sound. "Funny thing is, she was my widow before I was even dead. Ain't life a bitch?" He laughed again, but this time it sounded more like a sob.

Tracy took his face into her hands and kissed him, lips, cheeks, eyelids; tasted the saline tang of blood tears and resisted the urge to lick them away -- then thought about it twice, and gave in to the impulse.

The touch of her tongue against his eyelids made him flinch in startlement -- but as he ducked away from her, his laughter sounded almost merry.

He kissed her back, a light pressure of his lips against her forehead. "I love you," he mentioned, as unobtrusively as if he were making an observation about the weather. "But you knew that, right?"

"Right," Tracy said, through the lump of tears welling up in her throat, even though she hadn't.

"You and me; we're all we've got, now." His voice took on a somber tone, a minor key. "Nick..."

The name brought back a string of images: Nick the detective, who'd been the first to truly treat her as Tracy- the-cop and not Daddy's-girl-Vetter -- Nick the vampire, eyes flaring bright red with a hunger too far gone to allow any control, blank fiery eyes that stared straight at her and saw only prey... "Do we have to go back for him?" Tracy heard herself say, and was horrified by her own words.

Her partner drew back. "Tracy...!"

"I don't want to lose you!" she cried, suddenly afraid that he would misunderstand. "I don't want to endanger you again!"

"We have to get him out of there." His voice was calm, stating simple fact, with the faintest edge to the placidity that dared her to argue.

She sighed. "I know," she said, "but..." Memory of the antiseptic white rooms with the heavy iron shackles, memory of blind agonizing hunger and desperate loneliness. "If they recapture us..."

"They won't," and there was that determination in his voice, that ferocious loyalty that would not be balked.

"I'm scared," she whined, like a little girl -- the same sort of thing that had labeled her a 'crybaby' at that age - - knowing that he would comfort her, reassure her; and sure enough, his arms slid around her, right on cue.

"I know," he soothed; and she sank into him, letting herself melt in the warmth of his concern.

"We'll get some rest," he said into her hair, "and then we'll start working on a plan. You got lucky, kiddo, twice. They've gotta know that we're going to come back for him; they're gonna be waiting for us."

She said nothing, merely shivered; she'd already expressed her opinion, wasn't about to reiterate it.

"I'm not thrilled about it, either," he said wryly, as his hands caressed her.

Abruptly, Tracy became aware that she was naked. She had been all along: clothes were one of the first things their captors had denied them, as an attempt to apply psychological leverage. After the initial period of embarrassment, the two of them had determined that they were not going to let it get to them; by sheer force of will, they'd accustomed themselves to the situation, so that nudity was no longer an issue. The blood-drinking, while deeply intimate and passionate, hadn't been a sexual experience... well, it had, but... not that way. They'd known a closeness beyond human experience: but there was that last line they'd never crossed, that last barrier between them that remained intact. They'd writhed in each other's arms in the bright ecstasy of blood-union, but they'd never had sex. An odd dichotomy, and yet, Tracy thought, somehow perfectly appropriate.

But now she was acutely aware of her nakedness, and his; and realized that he was just as aware of hers; and knew with utmost clarity that they were a hairsbreadth away from something very, very awkward.

"Uh," she said tentatively.

A soft breath of laughter. "Yeah," he agreed, and shifted position, to put a bit of space between them. Not a lot of space, but enough to dispel the sudden buildup of heat. "Maybe let's not get complicated right now, huh?"

"Maybe let's not," she said, and tried to figure out whether or not she was glad of his common sense; she knew what those hands felt like against her skin, she could imagine what else they might be capable of.

"Besides, I wouldn't want your boyfriend to come after me," he added, in a lightly teasing voice.

"He's not my boyfriend." Her response was abrupt; how often she'd wished that she'd changed her answer and stayed with Vachon, given herself to him. That she'd allowed him to bring her across -- for as it turned out, she was destined to become a vampire anyway: and how might it have felt, to greet immortality in his arms, receive eternal life from his lips and blood, instead of knowing the terror of Nick's desperate attack?

"But he can be, now." Her companion's voice had grown serious.

"We have to get out of here, first," Tracy said, listening to her voice echoing off the stone walls and unseen stalactites, refusing to think of anything more threatening than braving a complex filled with her torturers again...

She paced from one end of the room to the other, muttering under her breath; her companion watched her without comment.

"Stupid," she growled -- her voice closer to a literal growl than she would have preferred. "How could he be so stupid?"

The other let out a long, tired sigh. "Not stupidity," she corrected. "Willful naivete."

"I'm not sure which is worse!" the first woman exploded. Her fist lashed out in sudden fury, embedding itself in the wall; she stared at it for a moment, at her arm wedged wrist-deep in crumbling plaster, as if she couldn't quite comprehend what she'd done. "I hate this," she said in a nearly expressionless voice. "I hate what he does to me."

Harsh laughter greeted her declaration, a sound ill-suited to the sultry voice. "Join the club," said her companion darkly.

Natalie extricated her fist from the wall, examined it blankly. Little abrasions, smoothing themselves into fresh new skin; little dark bruised spots disappearing as she watched. Vampiric healing: it was a miracle, she had always thought of it as a miracle, despite the connotations -- she, who had seen altogether too much death, found a certain comfort in that renewal.

"Will they kill him?" she said, her voice level.

"If they don't," said the other bluntly, meeting candor with equal honesty, "the Enforcers will."

"So, what, you're telling me it's hopeless?!" Incredulous, Natalie whirled to face her friend. "Are you saying that we should just... give up on him?"

"You know better than that." The other moved with deliberate grace to her side. "I am saying that we can expect no support, not even from our own kind."

"Mmm." Nat thought about it. "If even LaCroix is afraid..."

Her companion held up one finger, in the attitude of a teacher lecturing a student. "LaCroix is not afraid," she said. "LaCroix is cautious, prudent, and disinclined to risk exsanguination." But her properly sober tone was belied by the flash of humor in her eyes.

"Uh-huh," Natalie said disbelievingly. "If it were anyone else, I'd buy that; but this is LaCroix and Nick we're talking about. I can't imagine... what it would take to induce him to give up on the situation."

"He hasn't," said Janette with certainty. "But they are watching him, and so he must move carefully. What do you imagine the Enforcers would do if they knew that we were aware of this?" She frowned. "What I cannot understand is why he chose to confront them in the first place. It seems... uncharacteristic."

That word, applied to that man, and coming from one who'd had nearly a thousand years' experience dealing with him, brought Natalie up short. "What do you mean?"

The puzzled, thoughtful look on her face dissolved slowly into something else entirely. "I'm not sure," Janette murmured. "But I have never known LaCroix to voluntarily contact the Enforcers about anything."

She shook her head, and the mask of perfect composure slipped; beneath it, Natalie caught a glimpse of her true feelings. "Nicolas," she whispered. "Have you any idea how often this has happened? How frequently we have had to rescue him from his folly? Every time he has gone chasing this foolish dream, he has been betrayed..." Her eyes met Natalie's. "Nearly every time," Janette amended.

Nat smiled, but it was a rueful, half-hearted smile. "And a lot of good it did," she said. "He trusted me, and I didn't help him; but I didn't kill him either. And so, he goes off and trusts someone else..."

"Natalie, don't be ridiculous." The words were sharp, but the tone was loving; Janette slipped an arm around the younger vampire's shoulders, held her as she had in the early days, when Natalie had been hard-pressed to cope with the sudden changes, and Nicholas so consumed with guilt over what he had done that he could not bear to look at her -- leaving Janette to handle the situation.

Nick had given her his blood, but Janette had been her 'master' in all other ways: teaching, guiding, supporting, so that by the time he had at last come to terms with his actions, they had neither needed nor wanted his assistance.

That last argument -- the two of them facing off, Janette sheltering her like a lioness protecting a cub, glaring at Nick with silver-eyed hostility. "I will care for her," she'd said fiercely. "If you do it, she'll be dead within the week!" And Nat had been surprised by the depth of emotion in Janette's voice, the caring; but even more so by the look on Nick's face, the misery there, and the bleak acceptance of it -- as if he had become accustomed to the fact that it was simply his lot in life to be continually unhappy.

At the time, she'd not been in a particularly compassionate mood; her only thought had been, let him suffer. He deserves it.

Which he had -- but now she knew that the confrontation, their midnight departure, no matter how justified, had sent him on a headlong plunge into the current dismal state of affairs...

"It is our fault," she pointed out quietly. "It was our doing."

"Nicolas' actions are Nicolas' responsibility," was the instant answer. "Natalie, listen to me: if you try to shoulder his burden, you'll destroy yourself."

She listened, because she knew that Janette was right; yet she couldn't help but wonder whether her companion's denial of guilt was as unfair a reaction as Nick's kneejerk acceptance of it.

"What are we going to do?" she wondered aloud.

"Silly question. We are going to retrieve him." Janette's calm, slightly disdainful voice was an echo of the past -- Nat had once found that superior tone irritating in the extreme; now she welcomed it, understanding the mixture of proud determination and resentful fear that it concealed, and liking the way Janette made it all sound so easy.

"Yeah," she murmured, "we'll rescue him. And then I'm going to rip his head off and feed it to him, for putting me through this."

Janette laughed. "You," she said, "will have to get in line."

The scent woke him from an uneasy sleep -- not mortal: one of his own. Yet it was a familiar scent, reminding him somehow of a simpler time...

It took him a moment to identify the stranger; he was thinner, looked younger than his years -- and Nick's vision was failing, along with the rest of him.

But it was good, so good to know that she'd lied.

"Schanke," he whispered hoarsely.

The intruder came closer, caught his first clear look at him -- "Oh, man," he muttered, and swore under his breath. "What the hell did those bastards do to you?"

There was compassion in the voice, and pain, where all he deserved was contempt and loathing... Nick drew a deep, shuddering breath, and silently thanked whatever gods might exist for sending him a companion like this one.

"I'm sorry," he said -- it took all his energy to speak, but he had to say it; he needed Schanke to know. "I'm so sorry."

Incredibly, a smile appeared on the man's pale face. "Hey," he said dismissively, "these things happen, y'know? I mean... you were hungry, right? I know there've been times I woulda killed for a souvlaki." He shrugged, and the light, teasing tone gave way to something more solemn. "Forget it, okay?" he said softly. "It's all right."

The matter-of-fact acceptance floored him. To know that, after all he had done, Schanke still cared -- it warmed his soul, the same way that blood would have warmed his dying body.

And a moment later, there was that, too; his old partner brought his wrist to his mouth and tore the flesh away as matter-of-factly as if he'd been doing it all his life, brought the slow-bleeding wound to Nick's lips.

"Easy," he heard the other say, as if from a distance, "don't drink too fast; you'll make yourself sick," exactly as he must have said it to his daughter Jenny, a lifetime ago, and tears began to slide from beneath Nick's closed eyelids as he drank, at the thought of what he'd taken from Schanke. And Tracy, and Natalie, and Janette... whose life hadn't he destroyed?

"I said, take it easy." Schanke's other hand was working on the restraints; a sudden pressure and all at once his right arm was free. Blindly, he reached up -- it hurt to move, but he couldn't help himself -- his hand encountered Schanke's shoulder, and he clung for dear life, holding on to the fragile newfound balm of his presence.

"Yeah, it's me," came the voice, quiet and reassuring. "Hang on, Nick, we're going to get you out of here," and his left arm was freed as well.

He forced himself not to cry out as the other extricated his wrist, although it took every ounce of slender control to keep from fighting it -- but already the blood was working in him: beginning the healing, the strengthening. His skin itched and burned, and he moved to scratch... "Stop that!" his partner spoke up firmly, and slapped his hand away. "Jeez, this is Jenny and the chickenpox all over again."

Obediently, Nick stopped scratching at the blistered flesh, lay there quietly while Schanke worked at the rest of the restraints, and couldn't keep himself from grinning.

Once his legs were free, he moved them experimentally, winced at the pain -- moaned aloud as he was unceremoniously pulled to a sitting position. "I know," said his companion, "but we gotta get moving, before..."

"Before I show up," said another voice, a familiar, dreaded voice; and Nick looked past Schanke to see her standing there.

It was a simple complex of innocuous-seeming prefab buildings, faintly luminous in the twilight; but just standing on the hillside looking down at it made her feel acutely uneasy.

This was where they'd taken her daddy, where they'd held him for something like a third of her mortal life; and the hatred surged within her for the faceless monsters who'd stolen that part of her existence.

"Tracy," said a soft voice beside her, trailing off into the breeze.

She looked up at him -- more and more often, as they drew closer to their goal, he had slipped into reveries; she knew, as she had known from the start, that she was losing him. They were nearing the end of the path: once their quest was over, they would part -- one way or another.

She had accepted that fact from the beginning, but now she was beginning to rebel against the inevitability. Their relationship hadn't been intimate, exactly, for all of the blood-sharing and lovemaking; he'd always maintained a certain distance, kept himself remote. And yet... there had been times when they'd been one, joined so closely that she could find no separation between them...

She would miss that. She would miss him.

But there was Tracy to think about: the woman whose face she'd only ever seen in his thoughts, the one who'd captivated him. He had come all this way to find her, after all, and now they were so close, so close...

...to her father, too; and why was she thinking about Vachon when her daddy was imprisoned just below? A surge of guilt slammed into her at the realization.

"How are we going to get in there?" she murmured.

He glanced at her sharply, as if she'd startled him; his face colored with the faintest hint of a vampire blush. "I don't know," he responded, and began heading down the slope.

Warily, fearfully, she followed him.

The supply truck drove through the gates unhindered, pulled up next to the storage facility and parked; its driver got out, went to check with the supervisor on duty.

Unseen, a pair of shadows detached themselves from the truck and disappeared into the night.

Bound by blood and common purpose, there was no need for speech -- their eyes met, conveying and affirming their mutual realization that there was more going on here than they'd imagined.

There were others of their kind here.

Not just the three they'd expected to find. Many, many more -- not held captive, but walking around the place casually in their uniforms, simulating their human fellows...

Swiftly, silently, they made their way to the heart of the complex; the hidden underground chambers where the experimentation was taking place.

"Tracy," said a voice.

She whirled around, eyes gleaming, expecting attack -- instead found herself confronting a single figure: a man dressed in black who eyed her patiently... one who was strangely familiar; where had she seen him before? In Nick's thoughts, that night...

"You're the Nightcrawler," she said, not quite accusing.

"I was, once," he acknowledged. "As you were once Detective Vetter."

She nodded, understanding. "Nick..."

"Should never have been brought here. My mistake." His eyes focused suddenly, sharply, on yours. "And you have come to rescue him."

"And you haven't?" she parried.

"I have... other concerns, at the moment. In any event, your other companion seems to be doing quite well, if one ignores the fact that he has walked into an ambush."

Startled, Tracy moved toward the exit, ready to follow... found the Nightcrawler blocking her way. "No," he said thoughtfully, "I believe that we shall allow that scenario to play itself out without intervention. You..." He regarded her with interest, and she shivered under his scrutiny. "I have another task for you."

"What makes you think I'm going to do what you tell me?" Tracy said bluntly, disliking his cavalier attitude.

He laughed, and the sound of his derision set her teeth on edge. "Ah, you are inexperienced, aren't you? You truly have no idea what you're dealing with." His eyes pinned her, penetrated to the core of her soul, sending her a silent message: an impression of limitless power and immense age, a very definite warning.

Tracy blinked and broke the contact, unimpressed. "You remind me of my father," she said, letting her tone make it clear that this was not intended as a compliment.

"Really." He seemed amused. "Perhaps you will accept some 'fatherly' advice, then." Swifter than thought, his hand moved, gripped her chin with a strength that could easily shatter vampiric bone. "In a world of predators, you are the weakest infant imaginable," his voice grated, echoing in her ears. "Tread carefully..."

She jerked free. "Or what?" she said angrily, defensively.

"Or learn the true meaning of fear. Child, whatever trauma you think you've sustained is as nothing beside the... inventiveness of our own kind, in a similar situation." His gaze turned reflective. "A foolish experiment, as I warned them. We have learned nothing here; we have merely endangered our existence."

Tracy shook her head, struggling for detachment: to see beyond her own narrow perspective and understand what he was talking about.

"Why do you think this has happened, young Tracy?" He drew out her name, mockingly; her lips drew back, exposing fang teeth in an involuntary snarl, but she refused to allow the provocation.

"I don't know," she shot back. "I didn't exactly have the time to think it over while I was being tortured."

"You might want to take that time," he said, ever so politely. "To consider the implications..."

All at once, it crashed in on her: uniforms -- government installation -- experimentation on vampires...

"They know?" she queried. "They know about us..."

He nodded curtly.

"But..." She shook her head, unable to articulate her whirlwind of thought. "This is bad, right?" was the best she could do.

"Yes," he said grimly, "this is bad. Worse than any of us could have imagined."

He took her by the arm and guided her from the room, down the corridor. "Where are we going?" Tracy asked, no longer fighting his assumption of leadership.

And he told her: where they were going, what was happening, and how it had all begun...

"Sorry," said Don weakly.

Nick glanced sideways at him, smiled a tired little smile and didn't say anything more.

"I shoulda known better," Schanke added, after a moment.

"You should have," said Nick mildly. "Didn't they teach you, at the Academy, to keep out of the line of fire?"

"They did," agreed the other sheepishly.

The elder vampire reached out, took his friend's hand, examined it. "The bite's healing nicely," he commented.

"Yeah, well, I snacked on a coupla guards on the way in to get you," said Schanke, exactly the same way he would have related the tale of his donut-and-coffee breaks, years before.

"Fresh blood helps," Nick concurred. "Sorry about that..."

"I shouldn't've gotten in your way," Don said ruefully.

"Yeah, well, don't worry about it. Like you said... these things happen."

Silence descended; and outside the windows, the sky lightened, from black to deep blue. Only a few hours until dawn.

"Nick?"

"Yeah, Schanke."

"How come you never told me?"

A bitter laugh. "This," said Nick, with an eloquent gesture of his hand, "is what happens when mortals discover our secrets."

The other man nodded. "I guess you were right not to trust me," he murmured.

"I trusted you with my life," was the immediate reply.

Schanke thought that over. "You did, at that," he acknowledged.

More silence. The silver glow of moonlight lingered, coloring the cell, the walls, the floor by their feet.

Uneasily, Don shifted his feet. "Think there'll be any shade in this room, once the sun comes up?" he wondered.

"With the position of these windows? No," Nick answered.

"Mmm. I was afraid you were gonna tell me that," Schanke grumbled. He hesitated. "Nick?"

"Yeah?" Idly, Nick scratched at a peeling spot on his arm, one of the slow-healing patches blistered by the wood poisoning.

"Before... all of this, y'know... after the explosion..." His voice faltered. "Myra," Schanke said finally. "Jenny?"

Nick smiled. "They were fine," he said, "the last I saw them."

"Good." Don shook his head. "That was the worst, y'know? Being locked up here, seeing the newspaper clippings they brought me, the obituaries... knowing that they thought I was dead." He glanced up at Nick. "That you thought I was dead. I mean... I didn't believe them then, what they were telling me about you; I didn't know what you were. I just figured, y'know... me dying would hit you pretty hard."

"What I am," said Nick steadily, concentrating fixedly on the itchy spot on his arm, "had nothing to do with how I felt." He looked up, met his partner's dark eyes. "It hit," he said. "Hard."

A sudden, small smile. "Good," Don said. "It's nice to know your friends miss you when you're dead, ya know?"

Against his will, Nick found himself grinning.

"You know what this reminds me of?" Schanke continued. "Sitting on a bomb. Just sitting there, tied to a chair, waiting to have my ass blown across metro Toronto." His fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against the floor. "Sitting there, thinking about my family, about my friends, hoping like hell that my partner would be bright enough to figure out where I was. Hoping like hell that he wouldn't get his butt blown off trying to save me." A sudden thought occurred to him. "Hey! The garlic -- the crossbow -- she knew, didn't she? She knew about you..."

Nick's face darkened. "Yes," he admitted. "She knew. And she picked a hostage designed to lure me to her."

Schanke's eyes widened. "So it was your fault I almost got my ass blown off?" he said pointedly.

The other man wouldn't, couldn't look at him; but he nodded.

"Uh-huh. So tell me, Knight, how many other times was I in danger, without ever knowing it?"

"I can't count that high," was the reply, a faint attempt at levity.

A long, long sigh. "Thanks, Nick," said Schanke, half amused, half annoyed. "Thanks steaming loads." He let a few seconds tick by. "But you never let anything actually hurt me, so I guess I can let it slide."

His companion looked at him then. "How can it be so easy for you to forgive me?" he whispered.

"Simple," Don said steadily. "Dogs go to the end for each other." And smiled.

Nick blinked back tears, and smiled back.

Together, they waited for the sun to rise.

She crept along the deserted corridor, feeling desperately alone. They'd split up, he to check out the main complex, she to search the adjoining area -- she felt like a character in one of the B-movies Dad used to let her stay up and watch sometimes, the silly teenagers who inevitably got chomped by the monster.

The feeling made her shiver; but the involuntary association with the memory was one of warmth -- snuggling close to him on the couch, his arm around her, tugging the knitted afghan around her shoulders -- and she hurried onward anxiously.

She rounded a corner... ducked back quickly, as voices came her way. "The word just came down," said one of them. "This operation's being terminated, all evidence to be eradicated."

"Trust the Council to act with its usual swift and certain insight," said another, with heavy sarcasm.

She caught a glimpse of them as they passed her hiding spot: one nondescript, in uniform -- one tall and imposing and clad in black -- a blonde woman in a lab coat -- and realized instantly that they were vampires, as she was; only their intent concentration on their conversation saved her from detection.

"And the subjects of the experiment?" pressed the tall, sarcastic one.

The vampire in uniform merely looked at him. "All evidence," he said, "eradicated."

She didn't wait to hear more; she scuttled back the way she'd come, dove into a ventilation shaft and pulled the grate closed behind her, settled down to catch her breath.

From her pocket, she pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper: a rough layout of the complex, which Javier had sketched messily and from memory of documents he'd glimpsed only briefly. Incomplete data, but it was all she possessed; and she had to get to her dad before they did, she had to...

From his pocket, he pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper: a rough layout of the complex, which he had sketched messily and from memory of documents he'd glimpsed only briefly. Incomplete data, but it was all he possessed...

He rounded a corner, and saw her there, and even with his foreknowledge he did not recognize her; it was as if his mind refused to accept the sight before him.

The white lab coat and the pale blonde hair were streaked with blood, and she was laughing -- laughing -- as she shoved her victim up against the wall; the man's feet dangled helplessly as he gazed into her eyes with a blank look that was somehow worse than terror.

"Where are they?" she said, in a conversational tone.

The man recited a location in a monotone, and though the words meant nothing to him, Vachon could see that she knew what he was talking about.

And she smiled.

"I remember you," she said to her captive. "You liked to fondle my breasts while you were taking test samples."

The man was well and truly whammied: his face took on an expression of childlike bliss. "They were pretty," he murmured.

"Why, thank you," she said, as cheerfully as if he'd presented her with a bouquet of flowers. "I'm glad you enjoyed them."

And then, without further ado, she tore his throat out.

It wouldn't have been so startling if she'd used her teeth; but instead her fingers dug into the flesh of his neck, jagged fingernails piercing flesh, ripping apart skin and sinew and tough fibrous tissue -- a fountain of blood began to spurt forth, spattering, showering her; and she laughed again and tilted her head sideways, pressing her lips to the gaping wound, sucking up the flood with a fledgling's fierce appetite.

When she was finished, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the unconscious gesture of a child, and let her victim fall to the floor, as if his corpse were so much garbage, to be discarded and forgotten.

She turned around and noticed him then, leaning against the wall watching her, making no pretense at concealment; her face lit up with a bright smile that almost, almost made her resemble the person she'd once been. "Vachon!" she said, with delight.

He looked at her, then looked past her, at the ruin of the man she'd killed. "Y'know," he mused, "if you open up the chest, break through the ribcage, you can get to the heart - - if you're quick enough, you can catch it while it's still beating, hold it in your hands and squeeze the blood out... it's got the most incredible flavor."

Her eyebrows quirked into a quizzical expression -- no horror in her face, no disgust, only puzzlement. "Why are you telling me this?" she said.

He studied her, examining the transformation that had occurred in her; the colors were so much paler now, delicate and fragile, as if she were something made of porcelain that might break. "Sometimes, when people come across, they stay the same," he said. "And sometimes, they change."

She shook her head, not understanding.

"Who are you?" he asked her. "I don't know you."

For a moment, she seemed hurt; then honesty won out, and her wounded look gave way to thoughtfulness. "No," came the eventual reply, "I guess you don't."

And she extended her hand to him, slender hand covered in fresh blood. "Allow me to introduce myself," she said. "I used to be Tracy Vetter."

He took her hand, brought it to his lips with old-style courtesy -- the scent, the scent of her was gone: no more apricots and calla lilies, the onset of the vampire had swept them away. Instead, there was the indefinable aroma of one of his own kind, unique to her as all beings had an individual scent, but unrelated to the mortal scent he'd so loved.

And there was the smell of freshly-spilled human blood, coating her skin; he licked it away, feeling a small surge of pleasure rush through him at the taste of it.

"I missed you," he whispered. "Whoever you are."

Her hand closed around his, and it held the bite of a steel- claw trap. "Some things," said Tracy, in a trembling voice that struggled hard to remain steady and failed, "haven't changed."

Even as he was pulling her close, he felt her new strength drawing him to her; and for the first time there were no barriers separating them as they kissed.

He knew instantly that he had underestimated her; that he had failed to discern the wild child that lived behind the veneer of Daddy's well-brought-up little girl... it had been there all along, but he hadn't noticed. Not that this was necessarily a failing on his part; he recognized as well that it was a side of herself that Tracy had long sought to suppress, even to herself.

She wasn't bothering anymore, and there was a certain sense in that, since the world that had required that demeanor was no longer one she belonged to. Eminently sensible, and also unavoidable. One didn't survive torture and remain the same. He knew that from experience.

This new Tracy was as much a product of her environment as the old one had been; different environment, different Tracy. And maybe it was just the confidence that came from knowing she wouldn't lose her life and/or several pints of blood from the encounter, but the new Tracy was definitely one hell of a kisser.

But she wasn't his Tracy.

Although, at the moment, feeling the lushness of her in his arms, reasonably alive and (for a vampire) healthy, after he'd despaired of ever seeing her again... he wasn't about to argue the finer distinctions.

They separated, and she gazed up at him with shining eyes. "You came to rescue me," she breathed.

"Yeah," he affirmed, deciding that this wasn't the time to mention his companion and her quest, or the relationship that had developed between them.

For a brief moment, she rested her head against his chest, and he held her, remembering simpler times. "Thank you," she said quietly, and he knew that all the danger, all the difficulty, had been well worth it.

Questions of philosopies and futures could wait.

"You know where the others are?" he queried.

She nodded briefly. "We have to get them out before sunrise."

"Lead the way," he said, and she did; he followed her, still marveling at the changes, and enjoying the way her hips swayed beneath the thin lab coat.

The sky at the horizon was growing dangerously bright; already it hurt his eyes to look at it. So instead, he glanced in the other direction, at his companion.

Schanke was resting quietly, gazing into the distance, at images only he could see: Nick wondered what he was reliving, which memories he was replaying.

For himself, there was only wistful regret: things he had not said, that he had never done, mistakes left unrectified, promises unfulfilled. In eight hundred years of life, there had still not been enough time...

There was a noise at the door; instantly, both of them were alert, vampiric impulse and police training combining to the same lethal focus that had almost allowed them to overpower Amanda and her guards.

A swift glance passed between them as the door opened slowly, slowly... simultaneously, with inhuman speed, they moved to flank the door, just as someone slipped inside. There was a muffled squeak as Schanke caught the intruder, efficiently pinning it against the wall.

"No," whispered the erstwhile detective. "Dear God, no..."

Nick's eyes slid sideways, drawn by the shock in the other's voice, and he saw that his partner had paled to an alarming degree, even for one of their kind; he turned to study the intruder, and with sudden bleak empathy, understood Schanke's reaction.

"Daddy?" came the small, plaintive sound.

"No..." His hands skimmed along the sides of her face, her shoulders, in a light, trembling caress. "What happened?" Schanke asked her, anguish in his voice. "Who did this to my baby?"

"Daddy, I'm all right, I'm fine!" Her eyes were huge and liquid, pleading. "I came to rescue you..." and her voice cracked and broke; she dissolved into tears.

Schanke caught and held her, enfolding her in his arms in a tight bear hug; and watching his friend's face, watching the crimson-tinged tears sliding down his cheeks, Nick knew that for all the suffering he'd known throughout his own life, here was a pain he could only begin to imagine. Schanke hadn't seen his daughter in years -- and now she was a vampire. All the human potential, home and family and life and love, everything he'd hoped and dreamed for his only child, irrevocably lost...

"Schanke," Nick said softly, not wanting to interrupt the reunion, not seeing any alternative, and waited until he had his partner's attention before indicating the newly-unlocked door. "We can go now..."

The other man looked up at him, nodded, blinked hard to clear the tears from his eyes; his voice was almost steady as he addressed his daughter. "You know a direct way out of here?"

She blinked too, her face assuming a mirroring expression of determination, and nodded. "I have a map, sort of," she said. "And I memorized the route I took to get here."

"That's my girl," said Schanke fondly, and kissed her forehead.

Moments later, the room was empty, save for the lengthening rays of dawn sketching patterns on the floor.

"This was not our plan," said LaCroix, fury rising through his carefully polite tone.

Amanda merely shrugged and smiled, and gestured toward one of her guards.

"The others have decided to terminate our arrangement," continued the vampire unhurriedly, as if it were of no import to him that several very lethal weapons were trained on him, following his every movement. "These experiments will not continue; your data has been destroyed."

Her face creased into a cool smile. "Did you really believe I wouldn't store copies of the data elsewhere?"

"Do you honestly think we haven't monitored your every move?" he countered.

Amanda's eyebrows lifted. "I suppose that time will tell which of us was more thorough," she remarked.

He regarded her for a long moment. "Why did you violate our agreement?" he probed.

Another smooth ripple of her shoulder, a casual shrug. "Nicholas was the more viable subject, as you well know. The others were inconsequential; hardly a true measure of the typical vampire." Her dark eyes were penetrating. "I seem to recall you approving the initial series of tests."

"As a warning," said LaCroix, feeling his temper rising, "a demonstration of the pure folly of his quest. Your 'tests' were never to have progressed to this point!"

"Ah, yes; you wanted him beaten, but not broken. As I remember, you wanted that pleasure yourself." Her gaze mocked him silently. "Sorry to disappoint you."

The rage within him boiled; he snarled and sprang at her -- not quickly enough. He felt the impacts, one-two-three, and the burning sensation alerted him to the danger: the weapons had been designed for protection against vampires.

An immense error in reasoning, on the part of the Council -- and he had gone along with it, had approved enthusiastically, for he'd seen immediately the potential inherent in the scheme for swaying Nicholas to his point of view. How foolish he had been, how driven by his need to reclaim what was his... and now they would all suffer; if even the tiniest scrap of information should escape, vampires everywhere would be desperately vulnerable.

It was his realization of his own error, and his sudden determination to correct the mistake, that helped him find the strength to ignore the sharp ache inside him and continue the attack -- the guns fired again, but this time he barely felt their sting; everything had narrowed down to a single focus, a single aim.

Then he felt the pliancy of her skin under his grasping fingers, and knew that he had won.

Her blood poured into him, fresh human blood nourishing him, even as the slugs inside him spread poison throughout his veins, and it was an open question as to which would emerge victorious...

"Keep still," said Natalie firmly; but in the end, Janette had to hold him down as the erstwhile doctor cleaned his wounds -- the pain was that severe.

"Save the bullets," he instructed her, his voice no less imperious for its hoarse weakness. "We shall want to analyze them later."

She spared him a long, penetrating glance. "I should have known this was your doing," she shot back. "When will you learn that these things always backfire on you?"

LaCroix glared at her, but was silent.

"I ought to let you suffer," she muttered, extracting another of the slugs with deft skill. "I ought to leave 'em in and sew you up; it's about what you deserve."

"No." Nick's voice was quiet, soft, in the near-darkness. "No one deserves that." One hand scratched at a still- tender spot, in reminiscence.

He turned and studied his mentor/tormentor with a curious acceptance, hardly the scathing anger one might expect of someone in his situation... perhaps it was merely the frequency with which incidents like this one had occurred; or perhaps the beginning of comprehension, of how a certain type of desperation could so easily impel one to take desperate action.

"Why?" he asked the elder vampire.

LaCroix sighed. "It was a mistake," he admitted, in a moment of rare candor. "A very big mistake."

"Is that an apology?" Nick wanted to know.

"You may take it as such, if you wish." The mask of cool control slid back into place swiftly.

He thought it over. "Okay," he said simply. "Apology accepted."

This earned him incredulous stares from Natalie and Janette, and a look of startlement the likes of which he had never before seen on LaCroix's face. "Really," the elder said, recovering quickly. "Absolution from you, Nicholas? I find that... unusual. And somewhat disconcerting, in fact. Why so generous?"

Nick gazed around the small cavern, lit only by the single lamp they'd been able to liberate during their escape effort -- past the three he knew best at the ones he knew the least: those he had created, those whose lives he had inadvertently touched, who were now (for better or worse) his responsibility. Mistakes... he knew all about those. And would be living with the effects of his own for a very long time.

"I don't know whether to laugh or cry," he whispered.

Abruptly, voices rose from that corner, interrupting their conversation. "You're the one who did this to my baby?!"

"Um, listen..." Vachon was backing away from the fledgling vampire, apparently realizing that his four centuries of accumulated strength were as nothing beside the force of paternal outrage.

Schanke kept advancing, his face strangely calm, his eyes golden. "I'm gonna kill you," he advised the other.

"Daddy!" Jenny clung to his arm, vainly striving to get his attention. For lack of another option, she interposed herself between the two, forcing them to acknowledge her. "It was my choice," she said firmly, with a determined maturity far beyond her years. "I made a free and informed decision, Dad."

He glanced down at her, and the anger in his face dissolved into wistful tenderness; his hand moved, cradled the side of her face. "Jenny, sweetheart," Schanke murmured, "when it comes to this, there's no such thing as informed consent."

His words echoed in the sudden silence; and more than one pair of eyes grew misty with reminiscence, at the recollection of a choice not made freely, or a mistaken determination of intent, or a decision utterly ignored. No words could convey the agony and the ecstasy of the vampiric existence to one who hadn't experienced it. No way to prepare the fledgling for the truth of their new reality.

"I did not know she was fifteen," Vachon said, into the stillness, and his steady voice held concealed sorrow. "I didn't know until far too late."

"You couldn't tell?!" The outrage was back in full force; but the golden glow had faded from Schanke's eyes. He looked from Vachon to his daughter, and Nick saw him register the fact that his little girl had grown up in his absence. "How could Myra let you..." and all at once his voice trailed off as if he knew, he knew what Jenny would say next.

She looked very much like a child in that moment, the facade of womanhood falling aside to reveal her pain; in a trembling voice, the words came out, inevitable, inescapable. "Mommy's dead," she said. "They killed her when she discovered the truth."

For a moment, Nick was certain that Schanke was going to lose the little control he had left -- but instead, he watched as Don fought back the rising fury, feeling a strange mixture of pride and shame; he's stronger than I am, came the thought, for Nick had often enough succumbed to lesser emotion as an excuse to satiate the blood-hunger.

"Aw, Jenny," Schanke murmured, and held out his arms, and Jenny melted against him and sobbed; once more anonymous, Vachon backed away into the shadows, where Tracy waited.

A brief, rueful smile crossed Nick's face at the knowledge that the confrontation had only been delayed -- he would not have wanted to stand in Vachon's place. Except that he had, and he did... Natalie, Janette, Tracy, Schanke: his choices, his mistakes.

But was that necessarily such a bad thing? He couldn't make himself believe that, somehow. Natalie's hair gleaming in the lamplight, Janette's blue eyes; the fact that they had come to get him, despite his betrayal, had cared enough to save him from the effects of his foolishness. Schanke's loyalty and calm forgiveness. More than he had any right to expect, from any of them. Had he really done the wrong thing, giving these people a chance at immortality?

His reasoning might have been flawed, but the result was sound: his children were astonishing creatures, intelligent and strong, fine companions with which to share eternity. To keep him company, through the endless years -- and Nick thought of LaCroix, and for the first time, understood.

He looked at his 'father', and recognized that their destinies were irretrievably bound together: there was no way around it, not for either of them. LaCroix could not escape that, any more than he could.

The only thing remaining was... to make the best of it.

"What now?" he asked, although the hasty and rather confused conversation following their flight from captivity had already given him a fair idea of what lay ahead.

"We are outlaws." LaCroix's quiet voice resounded through the small cavern, drawing everyone's attention; even Jenny's quiet sobs abated in response. "We have defied the will of the Council, and of several governments: both mortal and immortal Enforcers will be searching for us. There will be precious little safety for us by day -- and none at night."

"If all the information was destroyed..." Natalie began.

"If the efforts to destroy the installation were successful, and all copies of their data were eradicated, we might have a reprieve. The humans would have no way of tracking us, and the Council might be induced to... forgive and forget." A twist of his lips indicated sarcasm. "However, we must assume that our dear friend Amanda was efficient enough to arrange sources for her data that we did not detect; we must assume that we are being hunted, because it is the most likely outcome. Optimism at this point may be lethal." Flash of gold in LaCroix's eyes. "We have not come this far," he remarked, "to allow ourselves to be killed."

"Damn straight," muttered Schanke, and his arms tightened perceptibly around his daughter.

"Bring 'em on," said Tracy, from the darkest corner of the cave, and laughed; her eyes shimmered eerily in the dark.

Tracy... Tracy was the one who worried Nick. The look in her eyes, he'd seen it before: the eager, earnest, not- quite-sane gleam of innocence overwhelmed by lust. The killer had possessed her, enraptured her; did she have the necessary control? Could she master the beast, or would it dominate her?

A shadow moved forth and claimed her, dark hair, dark eyes, arms that enfolded bright golden Tracy and drew her back into the darkness, whispering something into her ear that stretched her smile into something wickedly secretive. Vachon -- determined avoider of responsibility, yet it seemed that he'd managed to acquire more than he'd bargained for.

As had Nick. As had they all.

"Stonetree!" Nat said suddenly. "He brought us the information, he'll help us..."

"I too have allies. We are not without resources," LaCroix affirmed. "But we must be very, very careful." His penetrating gaze pierced the cave's darkness, sought out Tracy and pinned her with a look. "While I do admire your enthusiasm, we must be prudent," he said. "Is this clear?"

Tracy's expression of annoyance indicated that while she didn't like his imperious attitude one bit, she wasn't about to risk crossing the older, stronger vampire -- and Nick felt a stab of relief: he was suddenly extremely grateful that LaCroix was here to help him deal with this.

Even though the old bastard had essentially caused the situation in the first place. If Schanke could forgive him for a similar mistake, Nick could do no less for his own creator...

Just this once.

"What do you suggest we do first?" he asked LaCroix, letting some of that gratitude color his voice, knowing that the other knew him thoroughly enough to interpret the tone and the concession correctly, without specific words having to be said.

LaCroix studied him for a moment, and something in his eyes softened briefly: message received and understood. And appreciated, though that was something the other would never admit. "I suggest that we rest," he said briskly, no sign of that emotion coloring his voice. "We must be prepared to flee this place, as soon as it is dark enough to travel safely," and his quick glance around the room made it clear that the timing would be based on the fledglings' fragility, rather than his own dual-millennia endurance. Whatever else might be said about his self-centered ruthlessness, LaCroix had a strong concern for family.

Family. It was their single strength, in the face of overwhelming opposition; their only chance for survival.

Natalie settled herself into a comfortable position beside him, rested her head on his shoulder -- a thousand unresolved issues between them, but none of it mattered at the moment. Janette moved to occupy the space between himself and LaCroix, nestled securely between them, a position to which she was well accustomed... Janette on one side and Natalie on the other; as far as unresolved issues went, this was one of the biggest -- but that didn't matter, either.

What mattered was the imperceptible sound of their vampiric heartbeats, immortal-slow but steady in the dimly-lit cavern. Not just those two, but all of them: eight surreptitious pulses forming a syncopated rhythm to preternatural hearing. Still alive, despite all odds.

Nick remembered how he had despaired, when true death was near; how he had longed for one more sight of these faces, one more chance to hear the sound of their voices, even raised in anger, let alone the soothing words of comfort he'd received... and he vowed that never again would he take them for granted, nor deny the gift of extended life. No matter how much the demon bloodlust within might torment him, the accompanying immortality was a treasure -- the alternative was loss, and not even the intensity of his craving for humanity could change the pain of that fact.

If there was to be no redemption, at least there was the solace of companionship: the bittersweet pleasure of sharing the eternal darkness with the people he loved.

And those he merely liked. And even those he hated sometimes. Whatever: it was still better than being alone.

Schanke turned down the already-faint light of the battery- operated lantern; and for the first time in unmeasured months, Nick fell asleep with a smile on his face.

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