A LITTLE NIGHT MAGIC
(Forever Knight)
By Nancy Warlocke
e-mail: tannervin@aol.com
Rating: PG
Main Characters: Vachon, Tracy
File Size: 121K

This is an "alternate universe" retelling of the episodes Black
Buddha 1 & 2, mostly from the Vachon-Tracy POV.
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--- ONE ---

As often happened, the evening news was Nick Knight's alarm clock.
The story about a prisoner named Dollard, who was being transferred
to Alberta that night, rang those little bells in his subconscious
that began to kick-start his brain into an awakened state.

Dollard was being sent to Alberta because Nick and his partner Don
Schanke had captured him and procured evidence linking him to a
courthouse bombing in Edmonton.

The collar had earned Schanke a promotion to Captain of the 96th,
where he had replaced Amanda Cohen who had transferred to a more
prestigious position with the RCMP. It meant a big step up the ladder
for Schanke, but it also meant the end of their partnership. Nick
would be lying if he said he didn't have mixed feelings about it.
While he was happy for his partner, damn it, he was going to miss
working with him, too.

The ringing phone jarred him fully awake. It was Schanke, worried
about what he was going to wear when he faced the horde of reporters
that would no doubt be at the airport where he intended to personally
see Dollard and his uniformed escort onto the plane.

His amusement at Schanke's uncertainty with regard to fashion sense
was short-lived, fading the moment he opened the refrigerator and
grabbed a bottle of his evening meal. It was blood, just like it had
been for the past 767 years, despite four years of concerted effort
on the part of one Dr. Natalie Lambert to change that fact.

What the hell was he kidding himself for? He'd never change. No
matter how strongly Natalie believed in that possibility--and in him-
- he became more certain of that as time passed with no real change
in his 'condition.'

He stopped by the morgue to see Natalie on his way in, and she gave
him the usual pep talk: "It will take time." "You have to work at."
"I'm not giving up on you." It was that last one that always did it.
Whether he deserved her faith in him or not was a moot point--it gave
him faith in himself and motivated him to go on with the quest for a
cure when nothing else did.

His mood had almost lifted by the time he got to the precinct, and
was called into the captain's office. Seeing Don Schanke behind that
desk was going to take some getting used to.

The news was not good.

"This is a deal for me, okay partner?" Funny how he was still
calling him 'partner'--old habits would take time to die. "I don't
want to blow it for myself on Day One."

"But why me?" Nick groaned.

"Because you collared the bomber. Because last week you were all
over the 5 o'clock news. Because I want to keep his little ass safe
on my watch. Besides, you're without a partner now. You're the
logical choice."

Nick would not be placated. "His father is on the police commission."

"Which I wasn't going to bring up, but since *you* did, yes, he is.
And if I want to keep this job, I'm gonna need his support, so I am
assigning his little boy to you, pal, and you are going to make sure
he stays in one piece."

Nick grunted in disgust.

Schanke continued, "Hey, if he wasn't any good, he'd still be in
blues. Kid must have a head on his shoulders, right?"

Schanke led Nick into the hallway to introduce him to his new
partner, only to find him fast asleep on a bench in the waiting area.
Nick almost walked right past him. The leather jacket, tousled
shoulder-length black hair and 3 days worth of stubble did nothing to
indicate that he was a cop, and not some vagrant dragged in out of
the cold to sleep it off.

Schanke cleared his throat. "Detective Vachon!"

Dark eyelashes lifted almost imperceptibly. "Huh? . . . Oh . . . "
The young man sat up straight and blinked at Schanke then at Nick.
"Guess I fell asleep."

Nick eyed him with a sour expression and Schanke felt the need to
explain, "Detective Vachon was in vice before he came here. More
relaxed dress code."

"I see that," Nick muttered, realizing that Schanke had no intention
of enforcing homicide's more rigid standards on the scruffy young
detective.

"JD Vachon," he said, extending a hand. Nick shook it reluctantly.
His handshake was firm, that was a plus. There had to be at least one
or two more things he could find to tolerate about his new partner.

They had no immediate calls, so after giving Vachon a quick tour of
the precinct, he decided to head in the general direction of the
airport, and maybe meet up with Schanke to see how he was faring
after his first moment in the media spotlight as a precinct Captain.

He and Vachon had not had much to say to each other, but when they
arrived in the parking lot, Vachon's dark eyes widened in admiration
when he saw the Caddy.

"*Nice* wheels," he commented, gently caressing one of the fins.
Okay, that made two things Nick could tolerate.

Once inside the vehicle, Vachon quizzed him in unrelenting detail
about the car, not only because he was truly interested, but because
he was apparently trying to be friendly. Nick was still annoyed at
being saddled with him, though, and was less than cordial.

Vachon eventually sensed this.

"Look, I know what you're thinking. . . . " he began.

"I wasn't thinking," Nick interrupted.

"Yes, you were. Everyone thinks it. The Academy. The streets. It's
like I have a neon sign over my head: 'Commissioner's Son: Asshole.'"

Nick probably should have denied that, but he didn't. It didn't
matter, because Vachon's mind had temporarily drifted off the subject
by then. "Do they actually reimburse you for the gas mileage in this
thing?"

Nick laughed softly. "Yeah, but I won't tell anyone it gets 7 miles
to the gallon if you don't. . . . Although coming from you it might
make a difference."

Vachon glared at him. "I'm my own man, Knight. Who my father is . .
. "

"Has nothing to do with where you are in your career," Nick finished
sarcastically.

Vachon looked away and sighed. "No. I can't say that. We both know
it's a lie. I'm only asking that you . . . "

"Judge you on your own merit?"

"Yeah."

"No problem," Nick said, even though it was, in fact, a problem.

"Where are we going, anyway?" the young detective asked, apparently
just realizing they were driving without a particular destination.

"Nowhere special," Nick shrugged. "I just thought we'd drive around."

"And keep me out of harm's way?" Vachon scoffed.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to. . . . We're almost to the airport."

Nick nodded. "I thought I'd see how Schank . . . the Captain . . .
made out with the microphones and flashbulbs."

"So why aren't you there? You made the collar."

"Schanke made it, too."

"And he got the promotion."

Nick studied Vachon's expression and decided that last remark was a
statement of fact, and not an intentional barb.

"He earned it," Nick shrugged. "He has seniority, anyway."

Again, Vachon's mind changed gears. "I heard you were allergic to
sunlight. Phototropic or something."

"The word is 'photophobic'," Nick corrected him, "and yes, I am."

"So, why the convertible?"

Nick delayed answering because he knew his mortal partner would
never hear him above the engines of the departing plane that was now
almost directly over their heads.

Vachon gazed upwards at the aircraft at the exact instant that a
blinding flash of light ripped across the sky. As the roar of a
thunderous explosion reached them, the sky filled with flaming
debris, plummeting to earth from the spot where the plane had been an
instant before.

"OH SHIT!" Vachon exclaimed in horror.

"Call it in!" Nick barked.

Vachon continued to stare at the empty sky. "Oh, shit. . . . " he
repeated.

"Vachon, CALL IT IN!"

Nick activated the dashboard flasher and siren and both he and
Vachon were pushed against the seat backs as he slammed the
accelerator to the floor, headed in the direction where he thought
the largest piece of the aircraft had fallen.


--- TWO ---

They were the first to arrive at the scene. The wreckage had
miraculously missed a populated area and most appeared to have fallen
into an empty field where it lay in scattered, twisted pieces, some
of them still burning.

The detectives stood staring numbly at the scene for several
seconds, neither of them able to decide what to do next, or where to
start doing it. To Nick, every aspect of the holocaust was readily
apparent--his hyper-acute vampire senses detected the scent of
cooking blood rising above the odor of spilled jet fuel, the minutest
fragments of the human flesh that was literally splattered across the
landscape. After almost 800 years of witnessing nearly every type of
carnage imaginable, the sight still stunned and sickened him. He was
thankful that his young partner's mortal senses were oblivious to
much of it. What Vachon *could* see would be bad enough.

"Is everyone . . . " Vachon began, and then realized what a foolish
question he was about to ask.

But even as Nick was about to tell him no one could have survived
the crash, his sensitive hearing detected the sound of a crying
infant that unmistakably came from somewhere in the wreckage.

Without wasting precious time to explain, Nick rushed forward
towards the sound.

Vachon hesitated only a moment before following him.

Nick tried to step gingerly around the body parts, knowing that he
could see them and Vachon could not. He hoped the young detective
would stay in his footsteps and not have to endure the horror of
tripping over a severed limb or slipping on someone's entrails.

As they neared a heap of twisted metal, Vachon also picked up the
baby's cries, and sped up to keep pace with Nick.

Nick began to grab the tangled chunks of debris and fling them
aside. Vachon attempted to do the same, grabbing a slab of fuselage
similar in size to one he had just seen Nick toss aside like a
newspaper.

He could barely budge it, and he looked up at Nick with a puzzled
expression.

But Nick didn't have time for explanations and excuses. He tugged
the piece of metal from Vachon's hands and hurled it ten feet. The
infant buried in the wreckage was possibly seriously injured, and
rescue was his first priority. He'd deal with Vachon's questions
later.

Nick sensed that the infant, though dirty and frightened, was,
amazingly, unhurt. He reached down and lifted the crying bundle into
his arms. It screamed even louder, no doubt because, with that
peculiar sense that infants and small children often had, the baby
realized it was in the arms of something not quite human.

Nick shoved the child at Vachon, who held it at arms' length, unsure
of what, exactly, to do with it. Although the terror it had
experienced in Nick's hands abruptly subsided, the child continued to
cry.

"It helps if you hold them close to you," Nick pointed out.

Uncertainly, Vachon rested the baby against his shoulder and gently
patted its back. It continued to cry, but not in a way that indicated
it was in any real distress.

Nick spotted a piece of paper on the ground that looked like the
remains of a boarding pass. He picked it up and was able to ascertain
the flight number. It was the flight Dollard had been booked on,
which meant the two officers escorting him were among the charred
remains.

He ordered Vachon to stay where he was until help arrived and set
about looking for others who might still be alive, but the rescue
teams arrived before he got very far.

Even so, by that time he suspected the worst, that only the tiny
baby in his partner's arms had escaped the disaster.

Schanke arrived on the heels of the rescue personnel. He approached
Nick and Vachon at the ambulance as the little lone survivor was
being examined before being taken to the hospital for observation.

Schanke's face was uncharacteristically grim as he surveyed the
scene, and Nick knew he had already been informed that two of his men
had been on the plane.

"I have to tell their families," he said to Nick, as if it were just
dawning on him that his new job came with some unpleasant strings
attached.

Nick nodded. "What do you say about something like this?"

Schanke shrugged forlornly. "That the plane went down."

Nick saw Vachon look up at the Captain in surprise. Did Schanke not
know? "There was an explosion," Nick said. "We saw it. We saw an
explosion in the air."

Schanke nodded absently, as if still trying to assimilate the scene
before him. "It could have been a lot of things. They're not sure. We
can't assume a connection to the bomber. Not yet . . . What do I say
to their wives? Their kids? That could have been us on that plane,
Nick."

Nick nodded. Perhaps he wasn't doing Schanke any favors by
postponing a sad duty he would have to perform eventually, but
Schanke was right. Dollard was their collar. Where it not for their
rank, it would have been them escorting him to Alberta and people
would be sifting through the wreckage for their body parts. He put a
hand on Schanke's shoulders. "I'll take care of it, Schank."

Schanke displayed no outward emotion, but his small, dark eyes
filled with gratitude.

Nick was about to leave when Natalie drove up. He hurried to her,
and touched her gently on the arm in a silent gesture of empathy. She
was a strong woman, and as a forensic pathologist she was accustomed
to grisly scenes. But he knew that the next few hours were going to
be especially gruesome and trying, even for her.

Vachon had followed, but as Nick stepped away from Natalie to go to
his car, Schanke pulled the young detective aside. "You can ride with
me."

Whatever Schanke's reasons were for not wanting him to accompany his
partner, Vachon had the discretion not to question them. He followed
Schanke as the captain set out on foot to survey the crash site.

"You think both her parents are out here somewhere?" Vachon asked.

"Who's that?"

"The baby. You think she lost them both?"

Schanke sighed. "I suppose we'll know soon enough."

To Vachon, it seemed like the Captain was looking at his
surroundings but not actually seeing them. He couldn't blame him. He
didn't really want to be looking at any of this himself. He hadn't
had a lot of experience dealing with death, and he certainly had not
been prepared to deal with it on such a massive scale. A dead body
was one thing--people in pieces was something else, entirely.

He felt sick to his stomach and was actually trying to avoid seeing
anything when a flash of something faintly recognizable caught his
eye. He looked more closely and discovered that what he had seen was
the floodlights set up by the rescue team reflecting off of a shock
of platinum blonde hair.

There was no flag to indicate that remains had been located there,
so he moved in for a closer look, saying a silent prayer that he
would find something more than a severed head.

His heart sank when he saw her.

Even in death, she was lovely. Were it not for the nasty gashes on
her forehead and cheek, her skin would have been perfect. She was
tall, and elegantly slender, with strong Nordic features and hair
that glowed like gold even in the dim light. What a waste that her
life should have ended like this. . . .

She blinked.

He blinked, too, not knowing whether to believe what he knew he had
just seen and finally deciding that he had to.

"Captain Schanke!" he shouted. "She's alive!"

Schanke hurried to his side and knelt beside the young woman. He
placed his fingers on the pulse point on her neck for several
seconds, but then shook his head sadly.

"She's stone cold, Vachon. There's no pulse."

Schanke gently pulled the lids down over her open eyes--eyes Vachon
*knew* had been closed just seconds before.

"But I saw her eyes move," Vachon insisted.

Schanke stood up and placed his hands paternally on Vachon's
shoulders.

"Look, kid, I think you've seen enough for tonight. We all have."

"But . . . "

"Let's go."

Vachon reluctantly followed, but couldn't resist the temptation to
look back over his shoulder. Of course he had been seeing things, or
maybe it was a residual reflex action. Schanke had seen enough
corpses to know when someone was dead, hadn't he?

<What was that?. . .>

 Vachon was certain he'd seen a flash of movement, a blur of black
and that pale blond hair. He stopped in his tracks and turned to look
more closely at the spot he had just left. A piece of wreckage
obscured the blond woman's body so he couldn't tell if it was still
there or not.

<Of course it's still there. . . .>

He watched for several seconds more, but nothing else moved.

Captain Schanke was right. It was time to go. . . .


--- THREE ---

"Was it a bomb? Yes or no?" Nick questioned Schanke directly.

"Maybe. But the crash site is closed to us. It's RCMP, NTSB, FBI,
FAA, ATF--Alphabet soup and no one is saying a damn thing," Schanke
grunted.

"If it was a bomb . . . "

"Then someone wanted Dollard to keep his mouth shut."

"Like an accomplice."

"Let it go, Nick. We're already getting reamed for moving him on
public transportation, but it doesn't change a damn thing; we're out
of the loop on this one. We get nothing, nyetski, nada."

Schanke looked down at the framed pictures on his desk, photos of
the slain officers that would go in the precinct display case. "We're
too close to this one, Nick. . . . " he said softly.

Nick nodded. "Yeah, I know. Did Vachon come in yet?"

Schanke shook his head. "I gave him a couple of days. He was losing
it at the crash site last night."

"Losing it?" That didn't sound good.

"Oh, I don't mean he was ready for the canvas tuxedo, but he thought
he was seeing live people where there weren't any."

Nick nodded. He was so accustomed to seeing death in all its forms
that it was hard to imagine what it might be like for someone who
wasn't as hardened as he and Schanke were.

Besides, not having the green detective tagging along would give him
a chance to work on his own. His first stop would be the makeshift
morgue where what was left of the passengers had been taken. Natalie
would be there. Even though Metro PD had been cut off, the services
of the Coroner's office would be needed until all of the bodies had
been identified and claimed.

As it turned out, however, he entered the building directly behind
Vachon. The young detective didn't notice him, but Nick watched as he
casually approached the Mountie who guarded access to the building.

"I'm sorry sir, but it's a closed area," the Mountie explained.

Vachon pulled something from his leather jacket and flashed it at
the Mountie, who nodded and let him pass.

Nick was stopped with the same line the Mountie had used on Vachon.

He produced his ID. "Metro PD."

"Closed to Metro, sorry."

Nick indicated the direction in which Vachon had disappeared. "How
did he get in?"

"He's with the police commission."

Nick muttered an oath, and then caught the Mountie's eyes with a pre-
hypnotic gaze. He was not above using the whammy if it served his
purposes. Even Natalie agreed it came in handy.

"So am I," he intoned in a tempo that complimented the Mountie's
heartbeat.

"I knew that, sir," the Mountie said without hesitation. "Go right
ahead."

He caught up with Vachon easily enough.

"Is this JD-never-uses-his-father's-influence-Vachon?" he asked.

Vachon turned around. "I . . . uh . . . just wanted to see if they'd
found that baby's family. How did you get in?"

"A few well-chosen words."

Vachon didn't look like he was going to question that, but in any
event he never got the chance. Natalie, having heard Nick's voice,
appeared in the hallway where they were standing.

"This is not the best place for either of you," she said, giving
Nick a meaningful glance that ended with a nod in Vachon's direction.

Nick was at her side in an instant. He gave her a quick, but
affectionate hug. "Do they know yet?" he asked. "Was it a bomb?"

She closed her eyes, no doubt re-experiencing the horror of trying
to identify bodies from pieces too small to be more than bits of
meat. "It was a bomb," she said.

Vachon had noticed that the wall of the hallway was covered with
photos and descriptions of the passengers who had been positively
identified and matched with numbers that had been assigned to
recovered remains. On the opposite wall were three more cards
containing passenger information, but no ID numbers.

"What's with these?" Vachon asked.

Natalie joined him, motioning towards the incomplete cards. "Those
are the ones we can't find. The two men were seated over the wing,
probably incinerated." She indicated the third card. "Theresa Vaughn
. . . we don't know much about her other than she was in her
twenties, she was on the plane, and we haven't found her body. Yet."

A second Mountie approached the three of them. "We're securing the
building for the night, Doctor Lambert." He looked suspiciously at
Nick and Vachon.

"We're the last ones out," Natalie assured him.

Nick took her hand and they started for the exit. Vachon was
following a few steps behind when he was sure he saw a shadow moving
across the wall that did not belong to any of the three of them or to
the Mountie. After his embarrassing experience with Captain Schanke
the night before, however, he didn't want to say anything until he
was sure.

Nick turned and called to him, "Coming, Vachon?"

Vachon patted his leather jacket, he hoped convincingly. "I must
have set my keys down somewhere. . . . I'll be right out. . . . "

As soon as the couple was out of sight, Vachon drew his gun. He had
no idea who the intruder was and could not imagine what kind of
psycho would want to be locked in a dark building full of body parts.

He slipped into the morgue itself. Thankfully, the body parts had
been tagged and bagged, so the scent of disinfectant managed to mask
most of the smell of decay and blood. He squinted, adjusting his eyes
to the dim light and trying to block out the thought of what the
mounds of black plastic that dotted the floor of the room really were.

He treaded lightly, his nerves on edge not only because of the eerie
surroundings. Since seeing the awful things he'd seen at the crash
site the night before, his stomach had been one huge knot, and he
hadn't slept in over 24 hours. It had been about 12 hours longer than
that since he'd felt like he could eat anything. No matter what his
mind wanted to do, his body was in no condition to take on any more
stress.

He heard a rustling noise that made his heart skip a beat or two in
the instant it took for him to locate the direction it came from. He
followed the sound and then he saw it. . . .

Someone was squatting near one of the bags, actually rifling through
whatever was inside! What kind of total sicko . . .

Well, it didn't really matter what kind. He was going to arrest his
ass.

He raised his weapon. "Freeze! Metro police."

He was taken completely by surprise when the voice that answered him
was female. "You guys. You really say that, don't you? 'Freeze.' As
if!" She continued as though he wasn't there.

Okay, so she was a girl. He would arrest *her* ass. "Slowly turn
around with your hands where I can see them," he ordered.

She hesitated a second or two, but then slowly stood up. She was
easily as tall as he was, but very definitely a girl. As she became
fully upright, the moonlight shining through a window caught her
hair, pale as the moon itself. His mind turned flip-flops as he
realized this was the same girl he'd seen lying in the wreckage. The
one Schanke had told him was dead.

Her lovely face was smeared with grime and dried blood, but the ugly
gashes he thought he had seen the night before were gone. Her
clothing was in tatters, but even worse than that, she was holding a
severed hand as she grinned at him.

"I'm afraid that's impossible," she said cheerfully. "I lost one in
the crash."

She emphasized this statement by raising both arms in the air. One
still had a hand attached to it, and that hand was holding the
severed hand. The other arm ended in a bloody stump.

She continued to smile at him.

He knew he was staring at her like an idiot, but he couldn't move.
His insides had turned to mush and a cold, tingly feeling was quickly
spreading through his body. He'd fainted once--the first time he'd
watched an autopsy. He knew what that felt like, and damn it, he was
*not* going to do it again.

She kept smiling at him, that mangled hand dangling near her pretty
face, shreds of tissue and bone hanging from the stump. Maybe she was
saying something to him, but he really couldn't tell. The pounding
cadence of his own blood pulsing through his head would have drowned
out her words.

Despite the darkness everything started looking very bright. Too
bright. His vision was whiting out. . . . He squeezed his eyes shut
for just a moment, trying to clear it. Nope, he was *not* going to
faint. . . .

His gun shook in his hands and he tried to maintain a grip on it
even though he really could no longer see it. His visual field had
narrowed until all he could see was her smile-- and that hand and
that stump--and those images were rapidly fading. . . .

He bit down hard on his lip, hoping the pain would restore his
senses, and regretted that he hadn't at least had a Coke or something
to raise his blood sugar . . . . He absolutely could *not* faint in
front of this girl. There was no way . . .

+ + + + +

He woke up slumped in the seat of his red Triumph, tearing down the
street at blurring speed.

Dazed and startled, he groped madly for something--anything--to grab
onto and realized that his legs were draped over the handlebars
instead of straddling the bike. Not only was that position totally
ridiculous, it made it impossible for him to do anything but sit
exactly as he was. Suddenly shifting the position of his legs would
upset the balance of the motorcycle, not that he could have moved,
anyway. He looked down and saw an arm restraining him, so tightly
that he was virtually trapped..

What the hell . . .

He panicked momentarily when he realized he had no control over the
bike, but it slowed by itself as the light at the upcoming
intersection turned red.

As soon as it rolled to a stop, the arm holding him eased its grip
and he seized the opportunity to jump off.

He turned and saw the girl from the morgue sitting on his bike like
she owned it.

Her hands were on the handlebars now. Both of them. The bloody stump
he thought he'd seen . . . *knew* he had seen . . . .

"Your hand . . . " he muttered.

"You're awake."

The light from a nearby street lamp verified that the deep gashes
that he also *knew* he had seen were gone.

"Your face . . . "

She moved one hand to fluff out her bedraggled hair. "Can you begin
a sentence with another word?"

He noticed his gun was tucked into the waistband of what was left of
her jeans.

"My gun!"

"Good boy," she grinned and handed the weapon back to him.

"You stole my bike."

She raked her fingers though her windblown locks. He was the one
wearing the helmet. "Believe me, it was not my first choice for
transportation." She tugged at an especially unruly strand. "I am
*never* going to get these tangles out!"

Vachon frowned as a thought occurred to him. "How did I get here?"

"I carried you to this baby and put you on it." She patted the seat
of the Triumph. "After you fainted."

There was no way he believed that. If she weighed 125 pounds it
would have surprised him.

"I didn't faint," he felt the need to point out. If he'd eaten, it
wouldn't have happened. That severed hand had nothing to do with it.

"Okay, after you decided to fall asleep with your gun on me," she
giggled.

Somehow, he was going to have to salvage his dignity.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.

She was still smiling. God, she was beautiful, and she hadn't
*really* stolen his bike, since it was right there in front of him.

"Tracy Vetter . . . . and you're Javier Vachon, Metro Police. . . .
" Her nose wrinkled in an impish grin. "Checked your ID."

She'd gotten his name right, pronouncing the "J" like an "H" and not
trying to make the "ier" sound French. His grandmother was the only
one who ever called him 'Javier,' but it sounded so nice when she
said it that he didn't tell her he was 'JD' to everyone else.

She held her hand out for him to shake it, the hand that hadn't been
there before and now was. He saw what appeared to be a ring of scar
tissue around the wrist, but other than that it looked like a normal
hand.

Still, there was no way he was going to touch it.

Instead, he shoved his gun back into its holster and hopped back on
the bike so he was sitting in front of her. He removed her hands from
the controls.

"Good, then you know why we're going downtown."

"We are downtown," she pointed out.

"I'm talking about the station."

He didn't feel her move, but in the next instant she was off the
bike and standing in front of him, staring at him with the loveliest
blue eyes he had ever seen.

"We don't want to do that, Javier," she said in a way that made it
hard for him to tell what she was thinking. She stared at him, not
blinking or even moving her eyes, and he felt as though his own eyes
were being compelled to stare back.

"We don't?" he muttered.

In a voice that was almost a monotone, she told him, "You're going
to take me to the nearest mall so I can find something decent to
wear. . . . "

For a brief instant, he was ready to agree with her, ready to take
her anywhere, so that she could get everything and anything she
wanted. Luckily, that quickly passed.

"The malls are closed," he said.

She sighed in exasperation, and continued in that same monotone, her
eyes still fixed on him, "That does not matter. We're going to one
anyway. Then we are going to your place so I can clean up. And after
that, we'll say bye-bye and you are going to forget you ever saw me."

He stared straight into those incredible blue eyes, blinked, and
said, "No way."

She cocked her head to one side, and a confused look crossed her
face for a moment. But then she said, "Well, what if I tell you
something about the crash?"

He considered this, but emphasized, "We still aren't going to break
into a mall."

She folded her arms across her stomach and rolled her eyes
impatiently. "I cannot run around looking like *this*!" She let her
arms drop to her sides, palms out, and added, "Just look at me!"

He was happy to do that. He let his eyes travel the length of her
body, with its gentle curves and those long, wonderful legs. "I think
I have stuff that will fit. You can borrow something."

That suggestion just plain annoyed her, but she wasn't going to get
a better offer and she knew it. She hopped back on the bike behind
him and encircled his waist with her arms. That would have been fine
except it reminded him that she had had one hand and now she had two.

He decided the hand thing must have been a trick. A *good* trick,
but a trick.

The no-pulse-when-Captain-Schanke-checked thing was harder to
explain, but it could have been another trick. Some people could slow
their hearts or stop them. Or, more likely, the Captain had just made
a mistake.

But why had she left the scene?

Maybe she didn't want the publicity of being a survivor. . . .

Yeah. That was it . . . .


--- FOUR ---

Vachon efficiently maintained two laundry baskets, one for stuff
that was dirty and one for stuff that was clean. It saved him the
trouble of actually folding laundry.

He dug through the 'clean' basket until he came up with a towel.
Normally, he didn't see a lot of point in washing towels. You only
dried yourself with them after you had washed yourself, and they
dried by themselves if you remembered to hang them somewhere. But a
couple of weeks before, he'd sliced his thumb open working on his
bike, and he'd used this towel to stop the bleeding, so he'd had to
wash it. It still had a stain on it, but there was nothing he could
do about that.

He found a pair of jeans that weren't too crumpled because they were
close to the top, but the only shirts in the basket were wadded into
tight wrinkly balls because he had taken them out of the dryer before
they were actually dry. Watching clothes spin around at the
laundramat had never been his idea of an exciting time.

Maybe he had something hanging in his closet.

Tracy had closed the bathroom door, but not locked it. He folded the
clean towel neatly and tiptoed in to place it on the sink where she
would find it, all the while cursing himself for buying an opaque
shower curtain.

He then went to the closet where he discovered exactly two shirts on
hangers, both in that intermediate stage where they were not exactly
clean, but in an emergency could be worn one or two more times before
being laundered.

He rummaged through his dresser drawers, tunneling through socks and
underwear and finally struck gold. Under a pile of sweats was a
purplish-pinkish long-sleeved tee-shirt that his ex- girlfriend had
given him for Christmas. He had hated it, even before she dumped him,
and it was still in the package.

He ripped off the plastic and gave the shirt a good shaking to air
it out. He did the same with the jeans, hoping to make them look less
wrinkled.

He laid them out on the bed, and then realized that the bed had been
made. He had no bedspread, but the pillows had been fluffed and
placed neatly at the head of the bed, and the edge of the top sheet
had been folded over the edge of the blanket. At the foot of the bed,
both the sheet and blanket had been tucked under the mattress with
neat, precise hospital corners.

Was she trying to send him a message?

He looked back at the dresser and thought it might be a good idea to
stuff his shorts back into the drawers. While he was doing that, he
got a good look at himself in the mirror.

He dragged his fingers across a stubbly cheek. Maybe he should shave
. . .

But his razor was in the bathroom. Somewhere.

"Spend a lot of time staring at yourself in the mirror?"

He jumped at the sound of her voice. He hadn't heard her come out of
the bathroom.

He took a second to compose himself and then turned to face her. She
already had the shirt on and had wrapped her hair in the towel. How
long had she been standing there?

The shirt was long enough to serve the cause of modesty, but it
wasn't too outrageously big on her. He could still see the outline of
her small firm breasts and the curve of her hips through the fabric.
He tried to concentrate on that instead of her bare legs and the fact
that she probably wasn't wearing any panties.

Her skin was almost actually white--well beyond what he would have
called 'fair'--but for some reason she didn't look pasty or sickly in
any way.

She rolled the rib- knit cuffs up half a turn.

"Nice color," she said, admiring the fit in the mirror.

He could still see marks on her wrist and face, and he pointed to
them casually.

"I should take you to a hospital. Get someone to look at those."

She tugged her wet bangs out from under the towel as if trying to
conceal the scar on her forehead. "Actually, everything's healing up
quite nicely. . . . toss me those jeans."

He handed her the jeans and she slid them on. They fit easily over
her narrow, shapely ass, and while she would have looked stunning if
they had fit a bit tighter, they looked fine on her.

She pulled the towel from her head and then stood staring at the
rust-colored blood stain on it.

"It's clean," he said quickly. "That's just a stain."

She held the spot to her nose and inhaled, which was pretty damned
weird in and of itself, but then she closed her eyes and smiled as if
she could actually smell something and said "Chocolate."

"Uh, no . . . it's blood. I cut my finger." He held his thumb up to
show her, even though the injury had completely healed and only a
fading scar remained.

She smiled at him oddly--like she knew something he didn't--and
handed him the towel, which he tossed aside. She returned to her
image in the mirror and tugged on her bangs some more.

"Do you have a hairbrush?" she asked.

He did have one. Somewhere. "Uh . . . yeah . . . "

Once again he began to excavate his dresser drawers, but after all
but dumping their contents onto the floor, he was forced to look
elsewhere for the brush. He finally found it underneath the dresser.
He nonchalantly tugged the dark hairs and dust bunnies off of it
before handing it to her.

He tired not to stare too intently as she separated the silken
strands of her baby-fine hair. Even with her head soaking wet, she
was beautiful.

So beautiful, he almost forgot that there was business to be taken
care of.

"You were in the crash," he told her what he knew was true. "I saw
you getting away last night. Three people are unaccounted for. Two
men, seated over the wing, and a 25-year-old Toronto woman, no known
means of support."

He realized how a woman might construe that last line as an insult
when she stopped brushing and glared at him.

"Do I look like a hooker to you?"

"Uh . . . no . . . I just meant . . . uh . . . " Okay, he'd already
put his foot in it, might as well jump all the way in. "What you are,
I have no idea. But I'll bet you're a dead ringer for Theresa Vaughn."

She turned her face back to he mirror. "Good choice of words,
Javier, but 'Teri' died in that crash."

He had a hunch, so he played it. "You're running from something."

She put down the brush and turned to him. "You can't help," she said
softly.

"I'm a cop. . . . "

"My point exactly." She reached out her hand--the unscarred one--and
ran her fingertips down his cheek, then twisted a lock of his hair
loosely around her index finger. "You're not bad, Javier Vachon. . .
. "

Was she coming on to him?? He didn't know what to say. He'd never
expected to get that incredibly lucky with someone who looked as
exquisite as she did. . . .

He tried to keep his mind on business. Whoever she was, he believed
she had important information that might reveal what had killed all
those people on that plane.

"You were going to tell me something about the crash."

Her eyes darted to the window, as if she expected to see something
there.. "No time. I have to go." Her fingers moved to his neck and
then traced a path lightly down to his chest. Her hands were so cold
he could feel them through his shirt.

"This isn't making sense. . . . " he muttered, and he meant that in
more ways than one.

"It doesn't have to," she said.

That didn't make sense, either. "How will I find you?"

She shook her head slightly. "It's too dangerous. Don't try. I'll
come to you, okay?"

She stepped towards him and leaned forward, then kissed him lightly
on the lips, pressing her cool, soft cheek against his. She'd used
the very same soap that he showered with, but somehow, it smelled so
much better on her.

He felt her breath on his neck and found the sensation incredibly
erotic. Casually wrapping his arms around her, he drew her close,
wondering what would happen if she stood close enough, long enough,
to notice that she was arousing him.

He was just going to close his eyes, relax and enjoy whatever came
next, but the dresser mirror behind her was reflecting the mirror
over the bathroom sink, which in turn was reflecting her face, and
for just an instant, he thought he saw her eyes *glowing*.

He stepped away from her, trying not to make the movement too
obvious. Who the hell was she?? <*What* was she?>

But when he looked directly at her again, he felt thoroughly stupid.
Her eyes looked completely normal.

She gave his cheek one last, soft stroke and said, "Thanks for the
shower."

She slipped on her battered shoes--there was no way anything he had
would fit, but at least she still had them both--and hurried to the
door. She had it half-way open when she turned back, nodded towards
the bathroom, and said, "By the way, they do make products that get
rid of mildew . . . before it takes over your entire apartment."


--- FIVE ---

Nick had played the cockpit voice recording from the doomed airliner
over and over again. True, his hearing was super-sensitive, but
maybe if he pointed it out, a mortal pair of ears could pick up what
he had heard there.

Schanke had approached, an annoyed look on his face. Nick had had a
sound technician repeating the tape for him for more than an hour.

"Nick, that's enough," Schanke said, trying to sound like a boss
instead of the friend he was. "We've got better things to do."

Nick ignored the admonition. "Schanke . . . Captain . . . Listen to
this. . . . There's music in the background. It's tinny, like a music
box or something." He looked at the technician. "Back it up one more
time."

The technician replayed the tape, but Schanke wasn't listening.
"Nick, the Feds have been all over this tape. It's a waste of time."

"But Schanke . . . "

"I said, enough, Nick. Look, I know we used to go off on tangents
when we were partners, but I've got different priorities now, one
being the taxpayers' money. I can't have this guy logging overtime on
an issue that is out of our jurisdiction. Clear?"

Nick sighed and nodded. "Clear," he said, and was trying to think of
a way to get his ex- partner to listen to him when Officer Miller
stepped up and handed Schanke a gift-wrapped box of chocolates which
he opened on the spot.

"It's from Commissioner Vachon," she said.

Vachon had been working at his computer while Nick concentrated on
the tape. Something had motivated him to shave, but he had the kind
of hair that didn't look combed even when it was, so he still had
that 'street' look about him. He looked up when he heard his father's
name mentioned. "My dad doesn't even like chocolates," he shrugged.
"Says they act like germ collectors in the throat." He snorted, as if
he found that idea totally ludicrous, but when Schanke offered him
one, he waved him off.

"What? You don't like chocolate?" Schanke asked, as if that were a
sacrilege.

"I like it," Vachon eyed the box suspiciously, "but you never know
what you're going to get when you bite into one of those."

Schanke turned to walk away but stopped short. "What are you doing
here, anyway?" he asked Vachon. "I thought you were off."

"I'm here on my own time."

Schanke looked at Vachon's computer screen. "What's this?"

Vachon stood up and slipped on his jacket. "A girl who was on the
plane. Best we can do for an address is an abandoned church. Go
figure. I guess it will have to do."

Schanke frowned at him. "You're not going there . . . "

"I'm just gonna swing by and say a prayer," Vachon winked at him.

Schanke was dead serious. "Take a back-up. . . . Nick, go with him."

"I'm off duty," Vachon reminded him, and, looking at Nick added,
"and I don't need a baby-sitter."

Nick put up his hands to indicate that Vachon would get no argument
from him.

Schanke was apparently not inclined to belabor the point, either.
"Theresa Vaughn?" he read the name off of Vachon's screen.

Vachon pulled his bike to a stop in front of the address he'd found
on the computer. It was definitely a church and it was definitely
abandoned.

Or so he first thought. He found a side entrance that wasn't locked
and immediately caught a whiff of freshly-burned candle wax. The
light filtering in from the street illuminated an odd assortment of
junk that seemed to be everywhere.

A little further inside, he found a steep staircase, and he actually
saw candlelight flickering at the top of it. He climbed the stairs
slowly, giving his eyes time to adjust to the dim light.

What he found at the top surprised him. In contrast to the dank,
dusty and cluttered floor below, the area before him had been swept
and scrubbed clean. Furniture--*real* furniture, not junk--had been
meticulously arranged around thick rugs. Everything matched, so it
looked like a display in a magazine add. Moonlight flooded in through
the stained glass windows, although, he noticed with curiosity, all
of them were fitted with shutters that would block out the light
completely when they were closed. Why would anyone want to do that?

The hardwood floor had been oiled and polished to a luster that was
a stark contrast to the dry, creaky planks on the lower floor.
Looking down, he noticed a welcome mat at his feet. He thought the
head of a staircase was a weird place to put one of those things, but
since the floor's finish changed so abruptly at that spot, he gave
his boots a cursory swipe across it before continuing.

There were a half dozen candles burning. Someone was here, or
recently had been.

"Anyone here?" he called out. "Hey, Tracy, are you here?"

There was a movement directly above him. He looked up at what must
have been some kind of loft or library stack, and saw a flash of
blond hair, and a silhouette that told him it was a woman. For a
moment he thought it was Tracy, but he didn't have a chance to get a
good look at her before she vaulted the railing and jumped!! It had
to have been 15 feet to the floor, but she landed upright and steady,
and there was no thump, no thud, no sound at all, as if she had just
floated to the ground. How had she done that?

He didn't get a chance to ask. The woman who had leaped in front of
him wasn't Tracy. Her hair was curly, and she was shorter and more
curvaceous. She was pretty though.

Or would have been if she wasn't looking at him like she wanted to
castrate him.

She took a defiant step towards him. "Where is that BITCH!?" she spat.

He stepped back with his hands raised in surrender. "Hey, don't get
me in the middle of a cat fight. . . . "

Bad move. That pissed her off. She grabbed the lapels of his leather
jacket and demanded, "Where is she?!"

He moved his hands to hers and tried to make her let go, but she was
unbelievably strong. He couldn't even budge her fingers, let alone
pry them loose, and he really wanted to dislodge her. She was in the
perfect position to knee him in the groin and there was nothing he
could do to protect himself if she decided to do that-- and it looked
like she might.

"Tell me where she is, before I kill you!!" she shouted.

She was just a tiny thing, but damned if she wasn't actually scaring
him a little.

He shook his head, trying not to piss her off any more than she was.

She was backing him into the wall. He tried to stand his ground, but
couldn't. She moved him easily. How could she be that strong? He was
bigger than she was, and he was in good physical shape, but although
he couldn't guess why, instinctively he knew she could wipe the floor
with him if she decided to.

He tried reasoning with her. "I'm a police officer. Back off. . . . "

Wrong words.

She slammed him into the wall and forced the air completely out of
his lungs. He attempted to take a deep breath to refill them, but she
pounded him into the wall again. This time the back of his head
connected with the plaster, and his vision faded for a moment.

When it cleared again, she was right in his face.

Only now, she was different.

Her eyes were glowing a bright, fiery yellow like no human eyes ever
could, and her lips had pulled back to reveal the longest, most
vicious-looking set of canines he'd ever seen.

<No> he told himself. <They aren't fangs>

<Those aren't fangs> <They are not fangs> <She does not have fangs>

They were fangs.

"One more time," she said, "where is Tracy?"

He shook his head as much as he was able to. "I don't know where she
is."

"LIAR!" She slammed him against the wall again, so hard he thought
her fists were going to go through his chest. She was inhumanly
strong. She was . . . *inhuman*. . . .

He didn't care any more if she knew how scared he was. "Get away
from me!"

He was fighting her now. No more Mr. Nice Guy. He really believed
she could kill him, and he really believed she was going to, and he
didn't know *what* she was.

She put that mouthful of horrible teeth so close to his face that he
could feel her cold breath on his skin, and spoke to him as if he
were a total imbecile--which at that point probably was not an
entirely inaccurate assessment. "All you have to do is tell me where
that whore is."

<Okay, think about this. . . . > His heart was racing. He was
terrified, now. He felt like he was two years old and had come face-
to-face with the boogeyman. <It's a trick. People do *not* have
fangs. Their eyes do *not* glow>

She was lifting him off the floor. <No no no . . . this isn't
happening. . . .>

That petite little thing was dangling all five feet, ten inches and
one hundred and fifty pounds of him from her dainty little wrists
like he weighed nothing at all.

And they were moving upwards. Going higher and higher, until he
realized that her feet could not be on the floor, either.

This was no trick. This was some kind of alien or witchcraft thing .
. . . Only it was *really happening to him*. . . .

He remembered his gun. He was able to slide his hand into his
jacket, and almost wept with relief when his fingers closed around
the grip. It was loaded, and he managed to slide the safety to "off"
by touch alone.

He tried to look at the *thing* in front of him, tried to sound
calm. "Let me go, or I'll shoot."

She hissed at him, like a cat. Her mouth opened wide like she was
going to . . . <OhmyGod> bite him.

He pulled the trigger.

He heard the shot, and for a brief instant, she looked like she'd
been punched in the stomach, but nothing else happened.

Except her eyes turned red.

Like two little windows into Hell.

He fired three more rounds into her. He would have fired more,
except she threw him across the room.

He hit the opposite wall with his shoulder and head at about 30
miles an hour, and then dropped like a rock a good ten feet to the
floor.

The blow stunned him, and the shock of it left him unable to move
quickly. When he saw her coming for him again, he resigned himself to
the fact that he was going to die, and he didn't even know what it
was that was about to kill him.

Somewhere nearby, his dulled senses detected the sound of shattering
glass, and he felt the night air rushing in from outside.

There were other sounds--screaming, hissing, women's voices
shouting, wood splintering--but he couldn't comprehend all of it, no
matter how hard he tried.

And then everything was silent, and Tracy was there, standing over
him looking like the angels in the stained glass windows.

He tried to speak, but she hushed him and then carefully lifted him
off the floor. All of him, cradled in her arms. Just like that, like
he wasn't even half her size.

Her eyes were glowing, too. He hadn't been wrong about that.
Whatever that thing that had just attacked him was, he knew that she
was one, too. Only he wasn't afraid of her. Maybe he should have
been, but he wasn't.

"I wish I could make you forget this, Javier," she said gently..

His ears were ringing and colored lights were flashing inside his
skull. He knew he had a head injury, and maybe other injuries as well.

"I can't," he whispered. "I won't."

He was rapidly losing consciousness so maybe he just imagined that
she kissed him, but he did feel her drawing him close to her in a
secure, comforting embrace.

The last thing he was aware of was her cool lips against his cheek
as she told him softly, "I know."


--- SIX ---

This time, they had been the targets.

The innocuous-looking box of candy that had been delivered to
Schanke had not come from Commissioner Vachon, but from the
psychopath who had blown up the plane. It had been rigged to detonate
the moment a piece of candy was removed.

Luckily, Nick had been on the phone with Schanke when he'd heard the
same tune he remembered from the cockpit voice recorder playing in
the background. Just a split second from disaster, both he and
Schanke had realized the dupe. By that time, however, it was too late
to save the half dozen other precinct stations which Vudu, as the
bomber had been nicknamed, had targeted.

Nick had literally flown to the station and convinced Schanke to
allow him to dispose of the bomb in a dramatic moment that his mortal
friend would likely never forget. Schanke had has his hand on a piece
of candy, and had to keep it there because the wrong move would have
triggered an explosion. Schanke was no coward. He didn't want to die,
but he had accepted that one day he might do just that in the line of
duty. It hadn't been easy for Nick to convince him to trade places.
In the end, Nick had needed to apply a bit of 'vampire psychology' to
the task, and it was a lucky thing that Schanke was one of the
easiest whammies he'd ever met.

As soon as Schanke was at a safe distance, Nick had gotten as far
from the building as his vampire abilities would allow before the
bomb detonated, taking out an entire wall of Schanke's office and
several surrounding windows, but thankfully sparing all of the 96th's
personnel. Other precincts had not been so lucky. Twenty-three police
department employees were dead, and dozens more were injured, some
seriously.

The bombs had been made using a plastic explosive called Semtex, the
same explosive used in the Edmonton court house bombing. Forty kilos
of the stuff had been stolen from an Alberta mining company the
previous July, and the batch number matched the batch which Vudu had
used. He was daring them to find him, so confident that he hadn't
even covered his tracks.

Nick had gotten rid of the reporters that had descended on the
station for the time being, but then got the word that no one had
seen his new partner since a few minutes before the blast.

No human remains had been found in the debris, and Nick was sure the
commissioner's son had had time to get a safe distance from the
building, but where was he?

Schanke must have been reading his mind. "Have you heard from
Vachon?" he asked him.

"No. No I haven't. I haven't seen him since he went off looking for
that girl. What was her name?"

"Theresa Vaughn. Lives at a church or something. Ring a bell?"

Nick shook his head.

This was not good. Aside from the fact that Vachon was 'connected,'
Metro PD detectives didn't normally just disappear.

Schanke flagged Officer Miller down. "See if you can find Detective
Vachon," he told her. "Try his old pals in vice, first, and then try
his apartment. Oh, and don't call his parents."

She nodded that she understood.

She was back in minutes.

"Did you find him?" Schanke asked.

"I tried everywhere but his parents'," Miller explained, adding
uncertainly, "and then I took the liberty of trying them, too. No one
knows where he is. No one has seen him since he left here last night."

Nick grabbed his coat, irritated with Vachon. He had important
things to do, and playing nanny to an irresponsible spoiled brat
wasn't in his job description.

+ + + + +

Screed was Screed. There was no way to ever change that, and Tracy
Vetter knew it. He lived in the maintenance tunnels that criss-
crossed the city's infrastructure, but he would have been just as
happy in a sewer. Maybe even happier. There were more *rats* in the
sewers, and he subsisted on their blood instead of on humans like any
decent vampire.

He could be the most slimy, disgusting creature on the face of the
earth, but he was loyal to his friends, and it was an added plus that
he harbored a fantasy that at some remote point on the space-time
continuum, Tracy might find him attractive in some way she didn't
even dare contemplate. He adored her. He would do anything for her,
even if he wanted her to think he wouldn't.

"It's no' a screamin' problem, lady-love," he lectured, flattered to
have been asked his opinion. "Ya jus' do wha' needs to be done. Ya
look 'im in the babyshoots an' then give 'im the bloody fang-bang."
He picked up a squealing rat and brought it with him to where Vachon
was stretched out on a mattress on the floor. "Ya boozle the laddie."

Vachon had been drifting in and out of consciousness, but his level
of awareness had steadily increased each time he was awake, and he
would be fully alert soon. Tracy had pulled his jacket and shirt off
to check him for injuries, but other than one shoulder being scraped
and bruised, nothing seemed to be broken or seriously damaged.

She took his hands and held them in hers for a moment. He had
amazing hands, perfectly shaped, with long, graceful fingers. She
could feel callouses on the fingertips of his left hand, and another
on his right thumb. He played the guitar. She smiled at that. He did
look more like a rock musician than a cop.

He was a bit feverish, but his vital signs were stable. She sat
cross-legged on the mattress beside him. After moistening a clean
washcloth with bottled water, she sponged him off with it, gently
pushing his soft, dark hair back from his forehead.

Screed looked on, envious of the attention she was giving the mortal.

He altered his tone to reflect his indignation.

"Ya do him," he insisted. "Ya don't bring 'im over 'ere for me to
'ave ta look at 'is ugly puss. 'tis a major . . . . what's the word?"

"Imposition?" Tracy offered.

"Yeah, that. Ya do the deed, lady-fair. Ya wax him."

Tracy looked down at Vachon, and gently traced her finger across one
of his closed eyelids. He had the longest, most perfect eyelashes she
had ever seen. "I couldn't."

Screed bit down on the rat and drained it, making nauseating
slurping noises that she was sure were for her benefit.

"Bet ya let 'im 'ave a little sample o' the goods, though, di'n't
ya? Make's a bloke wonder jus' 'ow stiff is the competition, if ya
get my drift."

He winked at her and put a hand on her back, and almost immediately
knew he had overstepped his bounds.

She glared at him. "If you want to keep that hand, get it *off* of
me *right now*"

He moved his hand and smiled apologetically, then knelt beside
Vachon. He examined his neck for fang marks. "No' even a lil taste?"
he remarked when he found none. Vachon drowsily batted his hand away.
"Want me ta finish 'im? No' ol' Screed's usual queasy-zeen, but . .
. "

Tracy grabbed him by his grimy shirt and flew him straight into a
wall. He was a half a foot shorter than she was, so his feet dangled
off the ground when she pinned him there.

He smiled sheepishly. "Ice it, Princess V. I'm behind ya."

She let him go. He rubbed his neck theatrically "Oooo, whiplash," he
groaned. "Just gimme a reason, Missy T. Why 'ere in my doe-me-cile
an no' the church?"

"Because *Urs* has shown up, just like I said she would."

Screed begin to shake his head and wave his hands like he was
dusting a table. "No no no! No thank you very much. You expect me to
save your Barbie-doll arse from that she-witch? I don' think so. I'm
outa here, milady. . . . did I jus' call you milady? I don't even
know you. Never seen ya, never even 'eard of you." He headed for the
vent that was his exit. "When I ge' back 'ere, Romeo there 'ad better
be dust!" He pointed to Vachon and then scoffed. "*Urs* she says,
like i' was 'er Aunt Judy or something!"

The commotion had awakened Vachon. He was trying to sit up.

She went to him and pushed his shoulders back down. "Lie down," she
told him. "You have a concussion."

He struggled against her outstretched palms. "Let me go!"

"If you get up, you are going to fall flat on your face. Keep still."

He struggled harder. Disoriented and confused, he was becoming
combative. She would have to restrain him before he hurt himself.

She stretched out full length on top of him and pinned him down with
his hands above his head and a firm grip on his wrists. He couldn't
move anything but his head..

He looked up directly at her--there was nowhere else he could look--
and she saw a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

He had fantastic eyes--large, expressive, and so dark they were
almost black.

"Let me go," he demanded.

"Only if you promise to lie still."

He raised his head defiantly and she could feel him making a futile
attempt to buck her off.

She put her head temptingly close to his neck. "I'm only asking you
to lie still. Can you do that?"

He tried to wiggle out from under her again. He was furious now, his
male pride no doubt wounded. "LET ME GO!" he shouted.

She put her face nose-to-nose with his. "Lie still *and* be quiet,
and I'll let you go."

He resisted a few seconds more, but finally, he acquiesced. He had
no choice.

She released him and then put the bottle of water to his lips.

He turned his head away, so she grabbed his face and squirted a few
drops into his mouth. Once he'd actually swallowed it, he realized
how thirsty he was, and took the bottle from her. He drank his fill
and then tried to sit up again.

He made it halfway and then fell back. "I need to get out of here,"
he told her, but then frowned and said "Where am I?"

"Someplace safe," she told him. "You're hurt, but not bad."

He seemed to be remembering something.

"She was going to bite me. . . . "

"But she didn't. I didn't let her. And if it matters, she was
probably just trying to scare you." She tenderly massaged his bruised
shoulder, which looked like it had to be sore. "Sometimes we forget
how fragile you are."

He snorted. "I am *not* fragile."

"No . . . " she said. "Just human."

His eyes darted back and forth ever so slightly when he looked at
her and she could tell he wasn't ready to get into that territory
just yet.

He frowned again and asked, "Who was she?"

+ + + + +

Nick had gone to the address taken from Vachon's computer. It was a
church, just like Schanke had said. It looked abandoned, but as soon
as he stepped inside, his stomach lurched.

Someone lived here, and he sensed the presence of another vampire.

He explored cautiously, finally making his way up a flight of stairs
where he found what was apparently the vampire's living quarters. The
place had been demolished and a window had been broken, and the
intensity of the destruction told him that two of his kind had fought
there. At least one of them was still alive, and nearby. He felt it.

A chill went through him. If Vachon had happened upon a nest of
vampires. . . .

But the young mortal's blood had not been spilled there. He would
have known if it had been.

"Come on out," he said. "I know you're here." The other vampire
could no doubt sense him, too.

"I can't," an annoyed, muffled, female voice replied.

It came from behind a door, one that any vampire could have easily
ripped off its hinges.

He lit a candle to investigate and found that the door closed off a
shallow closet built into a niche in the thick stone walls of the
church, and it was not just closed.

Two planks from the scattered debris had been laid atop one another
at right angles, forming a cross on the floor in front of it. A 
large sliver of wood had been driven through both, probably
just by sheer force of being thrown down at great speed, joining the
cross together and nailing it down.

That trick wouldn't have worked on every vampire, but it obviously
had proven quite effective against this one.

He was not overly fond of religious objects himself, so he had to
find something to pry the cross apart with so he wouldn't get burned
by it. He could argue endlessly with himself that the response was
purely psychosomatic, but that wouldn't make it hurt any less.

He stripped the molding from one side of the door and used it as a
lever to disassemble the cross.

The closet door opened and he could see that the vampire had been
making a concentrated effort to dig and push through the stone walls.
Eventually she would have gotten out.

She was a mess. Her hair was disheveled, her clothing ripped and
bloodied. She stood staring at her fingernails which she had worn
down to the quick, probably several times judging from the progress
she had made towards freeing herself. Remnants of pink nail polish
were evident near the base of each nail, but the rest of her manicure
was history.

"I will *destroy* that SLUT," she hissed.

Never one to fully understand conflict between females, Nick thought
it best to avoid the issue for now.

"Who are you?" he asked


--- SEVEN ---

"My name is Urs . . . Ursula," the vampire with Nick began. "The
last name have now is one I chose myself, because my mortal surname
one was chosen for me. I didn't have one of my own. I was born in
France in 1608 and left on the steps of a convent when I was a few
hours old. I was raised by nuns who were convinced my mother was a
whore," she shrugged. "Who knows, maybe she was.

"I was indentured as a maidservant when I was 12, and from then on,
I was on my own. But, I had learned to read, at a time when most
*men* were illiterate, and I learned everything I could. I knew there
was a whole different world out there--the people I worked for
*lived* in it. I wanted to know everything there was to know about
it, even if I couldn't have that for myself. I learned to behave like
a fine lady, even though I wasn't. . . . "

She fluffed out her curls as if trying to show Nick she could be
attractive. She needn't have done that--he found her charming and
quite beautiful.

"Eventually, I attracted the attention of a young Englishman named
John Grey. He was from a prominent family and had a successful
business in Paris, and he didn't know about my background. Frankly,
he never asked, but I just let him assume that I was what I appeared
to be. Maybe I was wrong to do that. . . . "

+ + + + +

"John had lived in France most of his life. I had known him since I
was a young girl, and everyone had taken it for granted that he and I
would be married one day," Tracy was telling Vachon. "Including me.
We were of similar breeding, similar social station. Those things
were important in the 17th century. . . . "

Vachon thought about his ex-girlfriend, who had ditched him for a
guy twice her age, who had a six-figure paycheck and a condo in
Florida. "Sometimes they still are," he snorted.

Tracy looked annoyed that he'd interrupted her, but continued, "Back
then, I woman was judged by the man she married. It was as simple as
that. The fact that I was to be John's wife was as much a matter of
pride as it was love. You can imagine my humiliation when I found out
he was seeing someone else. He didn't even bother to tell me. He let
me find out from my maid, who'd heard it from his maid . . . . I
mean, it was outrageously callous of him to begin with, but when I
found out *who* the woman was, well . . . "

+ + + + +

"She had him followed," Urs went on, "and then she had me followed.
She found out who I was, where I lived, who I worked for. John had
proposed to me by this time. I was certain he loved me, that who I
was wouldn't matter, but still, I hadn't told him the truth."

"He told Tracy- -her name was Teresa then--about our engagement.
She was angry at first, but after a short time, she seemed to accept
that John would be marrying someone else. Later, to show what a good
sport she was, she announced that she would give a dinner party in
his honor, so that she could meet me and introduce me to her circle
of friends.

"Like a fool, I went with him. I don't know what I was thinking, how
I could have possibly hoped to have pulled off my act in front of the
upper class. . . ."

+ + + + +

"Not only did I invite her," Tracy laughed mischievously, "I made
sure I invited the family she *worked* for. You should have seen the
looks on everyone's faces when John walked in with a maidservant on
his arm!" she giggled.

Vachon frowned. "That was mean."

Tracy looked mildly surprised. "It was the 17th century. Things were
different then."

Vachon shrugged.

"Anyway, it backfired. John was humiliated, and it was only a few
hours later that he found out I was behind the whole thing. He sent
word that he never wanted to hear from me or see me again."

+ + + + +

"It turned out I was wrong about him," Urs sighed. "He *did* care,
and the way he found out about me caused him so much embarrassment
that he returned to England. My employers fired me and I was turned
out on the street. I had no money, no references, and nowhere to go.
The only options I had were to become a whore or kill myself."

Nick couldn't argue that. He'd lived in those times. He knew what
she was saying was true.

"I went to the river. I intended to throw myself in, but as I stood
there, I started thinking, 'If I do this, she will have won. Even if
she didn't have John, she would have finished me.' I was not about to
let her have that satisfaction."

+ + + + +

"I had left the house to take a walk. It wasn't proper for a young
girl to do that in those days, but I didn't care. I needed to be
alone, to clear my head. I felt guilty for what I had done to John,
but I was angry, too, Angry that *I* had been cast aside in favor of
someone whose purpose in life was to empty *chamber pots*."

Vachon wasn't sure what a chamber pot was, but he didn't think then
was a good time to ask. He'd look it up in the dictionary later. . . .

+ + + + +

"Then I saw her," Urs said, old anger rising in her voice. "Walking
along the river bank, all alone, just asking for the thrashing I
wanted to give her."

+ + + + +

"She came at me like a banshee," Tracy said. "She started slapping
me, and tearing at my hair. I fought back. I didn't care if ladies of
refinement didn't do such things. That bitch had ruined my life, and
I wanted to claw her eyes out."

+ + + + +

"I didn't push her into the water," Urs said defensively. "She will
tell you I did, but she fell. I even tried to pull her out. . . . "

+ + + + +

"After she pushed me in, she actually tried to hold my head under
the water!" Tracy spat. "I grabbed onto her arm, and we both ended up
in the river."

+ + + + +

"It was January, and the water was freezing," Urs shivered at the
memory, "and the weight of our clothing dragged us down. Women were a
lot of clothing back then. . . . You remember. . . ."

Nick nodded, recalling the heavy velvet gowns worn over numerous
petticoats that had been the fashion then.

Urs continued, "We couldn't swim dressed like that, and we were
being forced further away from the shore. I knew we were going to
drown. There was nothing, no one to save us. I began to say the Act
of Contrition in my head . . . 'Oh my God, I am heartily sorry, for
having offended thee . . . '" She laughed softly. "The nuns had
taught me well."

+ + + + +

"I remember the cold and the darkness closing in on me, trying to
hold my breath because I knew if I inhaled it would be the last time.
Finally, I couldn't hold out any longer. The water filled my nose, my
mouth . . . except what I didn't know then is that when a mortal
drowns in cold water . . . " she touched her neck "the trachea often
closes off. It's called a dive reflex or something. Anyway, the water
didn't go into my lungs, so I didn't really drown. I was unconscious
and underwater though, which was not good. . . . "

+ + + + +

"He pulled us out, both of us. Our master. There was barely any life
left in either of us," Urs said softly, "but he knew there was still
a spark. He knew there was just enough. . . . "

"He brought you both across?"

+ + + + +

Vachon was incredulous, but he asked, "What was that like?"

Tracy looked at him with those wonderful blue eyes and said, "It was
the most erotic thing I have ever experienced."

Vachon wasn't expecting her to say that, and was mildly embarrassed
by it. He didn't know what to say, so he muttered. "Oh."

"It was as if he were flowing into me. . . . " she continued. "It
was everything."

+ + + + +

There was sadness in Urs's voice as she finished the story. "He
taught us the ways of the night, and when the sun came up, he just
stood there, waiting for it."

"He destroyed himself?!" Nick asked.

Urs nodded. "Yes. We never knew who he was, or why he made us. We
never got the chance to know him, really. I felt like I'd been
abandoned all over again."

+ + + + +

"He didn't leave us near any shelter, and we knew we had to get out
of the light, so we buried ourselves in the earth." Tracy made a face
that let Vachon know how thoroughly disgusting she had found the
experience. "That night, I was the first to rise. She was still
buried in the soil." She inspected her fingernails as if trying to
appear nonchalant about what she said next. "The first thing I did .
. . . well, the *second* thing actually . . . " The way she looked at
him let him know that the *first* thing she had done was kill someone
and drink their blood. He didn't really want any more details than
that, and was relieved when she continued without offering any. "I
ran to the church. I beat on the door of the rectory until a priest
came out, and I told him where to find her and what she was."

She couldn't tell from the look on Vachon's face what he thought
about this.

"You gotta understand," she told him. "This was the 17th century.
People believed in vampires then."

"So what did they do when they found them?"

"Burned them, usually. Or cut off their heads. Or staked them.
Sometimes all of the above."

Vachon frowned at her. "First you set her up to embarrass her, and
ruin her chance to be happy, and *then* you were going to let them
*burn* her *alive*?"

Tracy disregarded the first part of his observation entirely, and
tried to sound casual about the second part. "Well, you don't really
need a fire for us. Just leaving her out in the sun would have done
it."

Vachon glared at her.

"Well it's not like they actually found her or anything. She got
away."

He was still glaring at her.

"What?" Tracy said finally. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because," Vachon leveled his dark eyes at her and blinked. "I don't
think I like you anymore."


--- EIGHT ---

Nick went looking for LaCroix, who knew at least a little something
about every vampire in Toronto. Urs didn't know where Tracy Vetter
had taken Vachon, or even how she knew him, but it was Tracy who made
her home at the church. Tracy Vetter and Theresa Vaughn were the same
person, and when Vachon had gone looking for Theresa, he'd found a
vampire. If he wasn't already dead, he soon could be.

He found LaCroix at the Raven, talking with Janette, who was not
really listening to him. Here attention was focused on the stage, and
the live performers dancing there. Nick did a double take when he
realized they were male strippers.

"Janette thought the female clientele were deserving of equal time,"
LaCroix explained as he sipped a glass of the Raven special.

Nick didn't have time to comment on that. He needed information from
LaCroix.

"Tracy Vetter," he said, knowing LaCroix would understand it was a
question.

LaCroix smirked. "Who's the morose frontman for a pretentiously
whiny rock band from Seattle?? Famous Vedders for 400, please, Alex."

Nick scowled openly. "That's Eddie and this is Vet-ter," he
emphasized the T's.

LaCroix sighed. "Where is your sense of humor, Nicholas?"

"I don't have one. Do you know her or not?"

"I believe so," LaCroix sipped some more. "Young. Blond.
Irresistible." He gestured to one of the men on stage. "He knows her
quite well."

"Who is he?"

LaCroix looked at the man and raised an eyebrow as he stripped down
to the very last, very tiny article of clothing he was wearing, a
black leather g-string. "A wannabe Adonis who calls himself The Inka.
Tracy is his master."

Nick had Janette signal to the performers that it was time to end
the show, and he nabbed the Inka as he left the stage. The towel
around his neck was the only thing he wore besides the g-string that
left very little to the imagination. He was tall, with lean, well-
defined muscles, the appearance of which was enhanced by what looked
like sweat. Nick knew it was probably baby oil or something similar.
Physical exertion rarely made any of them sweat, and when they did,
it was red from the blood in it, not clear.

He eyed the young vampire disapprovingly. He had dark eyes and pin-
straight, jet-black hair down to his shoulder blades, and his skin
was the same shade as a moderately-tanned Caucasian, indicating he
had probably been dark or olive-skinned as a mortal. He quite
possibly really was an Inka. "Aren't you cold?" Nick asked derisively.

The Inka looked only mildly self-conscious and shrugged. "The money
is good."

Nick got to the point. "I want to know about Tracy Vetter."

"She is not here anymore. She left."

"She was on the plane that crashed."

His features hardly moved, but suddenly the other vampire looked so
stricken that Nick hurried to continue, "She survived. That's the
good news."

The Inka closed his eyes and let out an audible sigh of relief.

Nick went on, "The bad news is, she might have a friend of mine with
her, and if anything happens to him, she's going to have to answer to
me. I need to find her."

The Inka nodded. "I think I know where she might be. . . ."

+ + + + +

Screed returned to his underground residence and called to his
guest. "You 'ere, Lady V? Did ya do the young constable in? Go' me a
place you can rest 'is poor dead bums, if ya need it." He held up one
of the two metal boxes he'd found in the tunnels. He'd sold the other
at a swap meet and had kept one for himself. He had no idea what was
inside, nor did he care, but the box itself would come in handy. It
would keep a rat nice and comfy for a few hours if he poked some
holes in it. What did the mortals call it? Brown-bagging it? He could
take his meals with him. . . .

He realized he'd gotten no answer. "Tracy?"

He heard a muffled sound around a bend in the tunnel, and walking
towards it came upon the sight of Tracy Vetter being held against the
concrete wall by another vampire whose hand was around her throat.

"Oh, fine," he sighed. "Let's all 'ave a party down 'ere while we're
a' it. I finally get the place se' up for a li'l peace an' quiet . .
. "

"Shut up!" Nick Knight snapped at him.

Screed took that advice only halfway. "Make yourself a' 'ome, mate.
Mi casa, su casa." To emphasize his displeasure, he punctuated the
sentence with a raspberry.

Tracy was having trouble talking, probably trouble breathing too.
"Does it make you feel like a big man to bully a woman?" she gasped
at her captor.

"Save the feminist rhetoric for someone who cares," Nick shot back,
pinning her more firmly to the wall. "What did you do with him?"

"I told him everything I knew about the crash," Tracy panted, "and
then I let him go."

"Does he know what you are?" Nick said accusingly.

"I told ya t' ring 'im," Screed interjected.

Nick gave him an angry look. "I thought I told you to shut up?"

Screed never knew when it was wise to remain silent. "Are you an
enforcer?" he asked.

Nick did not need the carouche's crap. He let his eyes turn gold to
let the scrawny rat-sucker know how mad he was.

Screed backed off. "I'm sorry . . . go on. . . . "

"He's a resister," Tracy tried to explain. "He only knows about
Screed here . . . and me."

Nick let her go, but continued to stand directly in front of her.
The younger vampire didn't dare move. There were certain
transgressions vampires instinctively did not commit, and
intentionally pissing off older vampires was one of them.

"AND Urs," he added. "He's your responsibility now. The rest of our
kind will kill him if they find out. Your dealings with Urs are none
of my concern, but what you do with Vachon is my business. The only
reason you are alive right now is because you let him go. Remember
that."

+ + + + +

Vachon went directly to his desk. He didn't want to talk to anybody.

It hadn't escaped his notice that the station had been blown to hell
when he wasn't there, and he knew that questions were going to be
asked, but right then, he just couldn't handle them.

Unfortunately, Captain Schanke had spotted him the instant he'd
walked in. He leaned in close enough that Vachon could smell the
souvlaki on his breath.

"Detective Vachon, would you care to explain where the hell you've
been? I came this close to putting out an APB on you!" He held his
thumb and index finger a centimeter apart.

"I can't tell you."

Schanke didn't like that answer. "You can't *tell* me?"

"I was . . . with a source." That was not entirely untrue.

"Look around, pal. Does this look like a newspaper to you?"

Vachon sighed. "Okay an *informant*."

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk.

Schanke's eyes became two little black pin-holes as he stared at
him. "Are we comfy?" he asked sarcastically.

Vachon let his feet drop back onto the floor and sat up straight. He
didn't want to play this game, but at the same time, he didn't really
know how much trouble Schanke could make for him.

"You better call your father," Schanke said. "I think he's worried."

Vachon dropped his head into his hands as a round of snickers
filtered through the room. "Do you want to know what I found out?"

Schanke was suddenly attentive, so Vachon continued. "A woman in the
cockpit crew . . . a pilot, not a flight attendant . . . carried a
gift-wrapped box through security. No one checked it."

"Your informant saw this?"

"Yeah. She was at the airport. She saw the woman board the plane. .
. . The co-pilot's name was Karen Tomlinson. I checked. It has to
have been her."

"That's it?" Schanke asked.

Vachon was irritated by his tone. "That's not enough? What more do
you want?" He slumped down in his chair, realizing he'd spoken out of
turn. "Sorry Captain. I'm just a little . . . mind if I just sit here
for a few minutes?"

Schanke clapped him on the shoulder. "No. Go ahead. You did good."
He started to walk away and then turned back and said, "Call home,
okay?"

Natalie Lambert walked past Vachon's desk as he was washing down two
aspirins with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.

"Vachon? Are you okay?" she asked.

<Well, let's see, since starting this job, I've seen a couple of
hundred people blown to shreds and every bone in my body hurts
because I got the shit knocked out of me by a *girl* and I met the
most gorgeous woman I have ever seen and I thought she was dead and
then I found out she was alive because she is a *vampire* and oh by
the way *vampires* are real and not only are they real Toronto is
apparently crawling with them and then I found out that not only was
the gorgeous woman a *vampire* but she has a past history as a world
class bitch and my father just has to be the ha-ha-everybody-have-a-
good-laugh-on-JD police commissioner and did I mention that
*VAMPIRES* are *REAL*? and I have a headache and I think I'm going to
puke even though I haven't eaten in three days but other than that .
. . >

"I'm fine," he grunted.

He pushed himself away from the desk and left, passing Nick on the
way out without so much as a nod in the way of a greeting.

Nick joined Natalie and told her what he'd found out about Vachon
and Tracy Vetter.

"You think he's attracted to her?" Natalie asked.

"I've seen her. I don't see how he wouldn't be."

Natalie smacked him on the arm and Nick realized his faux pax. "I
just meant . . . uh . . . yeah, I'd definitely say she has him under
her spell."

"Trouble," Natalie commented.

"Oh yeah," Nick nodded. "Definitely."


--- NINE ---

They had questioned friends and relatives of the ill-fated
jetliner's pilot, but had not been able to link her with anyone in
the city except for a vaguely described acquaintance named Jerry.
Karen Tomlinson had mentioned him to her sister, but her sister
didn't actually know the guy, or anything about him.

Nick and Vachon watched through a one-way mirror as Schanke
interrogated her.

"Great-looking guy, terrific in bed. Not exactly something you can
put on a poster," Nick said to Vachon, then turned to him and asked,
"Did your informant see her with anyone at the airport?"

Vachon shrugged. "I think I got just about all I can get from her."

Nick nodded. "Some relationships just aren't meant to be."

Vachon glared at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Nick tried to correct his blunder. "Nothing, just that . . . you
know, some informants don't work out."

For whatever reason, this irritated Vachon even more. "Well, don't
lose any sleep over it, okay, Knight?"

He stormed off in the direction of the briefing room, where the
night shift task force investigating the crash was scheduled to meet.

"All we can do is publish Karen Tomlinson's picture and hope someone
saw her with this Jerry guy last week," Schanke said to the officers
gathered at the briefing.

"He might not even be in the city," Officer Miller offered.

"He's here," Vachon muttered. "He's setting up his third bombing.
And if the pattern holds true, it will have something to do with the
police."

Schanke and Nick exchanged glances. "We threw out the three-bomb
pattern while you were 'away,' Vachon."

Vachon frowned. "Why?"

"Because there were four bombings in Edmonton," Miller explained.

"But you're assuming Vudu worked with Dollard on the courthouse
bombing. There's no evidence for that," Vachon said.

"Other than he blew Dollard up on the plane," Nick explained.

"Did anyone think to ask why?" Vachon looked around the room. "It
wasn't that he wanted to keep Dollard's mouth shut because they had
worked together. Dollard was making a one-time political statement,
but Vudu is a serial bomber. His mind works differently. His reasons
are more obsessive-compulsive than based on any obscure ideology or
political agenda. What if he went after Dollard because Dollard upset
his pattern?" Vachon pointed to his own head. "The pattern that his
obsessed mind needed in order to make it work for him?"

Nick and Schanke exchanged glances again, this time both frankly
surprised at Vachon's insight.

"You're saying he blew up the plane because he was pissed off at
Dollard for interfering with his master plan?" Nick asked, his tone
of voice indicating that the idea made sense to him.

"Psychos like Vudu have done stranger things," Vachon shrugged.

Schanke was listening too. "Dollard screwed up his magic three, so
he killed him."

Vachon continued, "His pattern in Seattle and Montreal were three
bombings in a week, each one bigger than the one before. It would
have been the same in Edmonton except the courthouse bombing--which
Dollard was responsible for--upset the pattern."

Schanke nodded. "You might have something . . . . What about
Toronto? First one bomb on the plane, then ten bombs sent out to
police stations . . . How much bigger can he go?"

Nick looked at the Captain, knowing that Schanke knew what he was
thinking even before he said it. "It's been five days since the plane
went down. If Vachon is right, we have 48 hours to find out what he
has planned next and stop him."

+ + + + +

Vachon sat alone in the coffee shop toying with the first serious
meal he'd had in days. He thought about Tracy Vetter. What was *she*
having for 'breakfast'? Some junkie? Some homeless family? Some poor
schmuck who was going to kiss his wife good-bye, leave for work, and
never be heard from again? She was a shark. A snake. A predator.
She'd probably kill him, too, if she got the chance.

Why did he not care about that? Why, despite all of his good-
Catholic-boy/cop/just-plain-human instincts to the contrary, did he
still think she was the most wondrous and fascinatingly beautiful
creature he had ever set eyes upon?

What did she think about him? Did she like him at all? And if she
did, was it in the same way women usually did <or didn't> like him?
Or, were humans like pets to them?

Not that he would actually mind being her pet . . .

He shook that thought out of his head. <You are whacked, JD. This is
getting to you.>

He heard a vaguely familiar voice somewhere close by, and looked
around. It was Officer Miller, flirting with some guy who was giving
her a line. Make that another line. He'd seen him there talking to
her the day before, too, only then the line had been, 'Oh you work
nights? Me too.' How dumb was that? Why else would they be eating
breakfast at 9 PM?

It wasn't that Officer Miller wasn't attractive, in her own way, but
there was something intimidating about the way she wore the uniform
that would have made most men steer a path around her when she had it
on. That was what made him think this guy wanted something from her
other than casual conversation. Besides, he knew a line when he heard
one. He'd used them all himself at least once. He just wondered what
this guy's motivations were.

He had told Miller his name was Gary Reynolds. Vachon had made a
note of that and intended to run a background check on him. No
particular reason. He simply didn't like the guy's looks, or his
attitude, or his ugly shirt.

Reynolds got up to leave. Miller continued to chat and giggle and
wave at him until he was out the door, giving Vachon second thoughts
about the background check. If Miller was interested in an asshole,
it was none of his business.

He tossed the tip on the table and was pulling on his jacket when
Miller saw him and smiled.

He waved and said 'hi' and then noticed the shopping bag on the seat
where Reynolds had been sitting.

"Looks like your friend forgot something," he indicated the bag.

She peered over the table. "Oh . . . I guess he did." She grabbed
the bag and pulled a business card out of the pocket of her uniform.
"I have his number. I'll give him a call."

Vachon walked out into the night air and looked at the sky.

Could she fly? Could they all do that trick that he had seen Urs do,
and float in the air like . . . angels?

Was he ever going to see her again?


--- TEN ---

Vachon was staring into his desk drawer. He'd forgotten why he'd
opened it. Almost a week without any real sleep did funny things to
your head.

The crash bothered him. It probably would until he buckled under and
submitted to the mandatory counseling that department personnel were
required to undergo after such an experience. But, he hated the idea
of 'sharing his pain' and intended to put that off as long as he
could get away with it.

Besides, that was only part of what was troubling him. The other
part, he couldn't tell anyone, unless he wanted to end up under some
serious psychiatric care.

He was 25 years old, and he was afraid to sleep because of *vampires*.

How would *that* sound to the department psychologist?

He couldn't tell anyone vampires were real. . . . . Well, he
*could*, *if* he wanted a quick end to a short career . . . .

Every time he thought of Urs's fangs in his face, and the way her
eyes had turned that fiery blood red, the hair on back of his neck
stood on end and his skin crawled. And then, he would think of Tracy.
Holding him in her arms like some kind of Super-Angel, speaking to
him in that soft voice of hers, looking at him with those eyes like
aquamarines--eyes that could turn yellow and glow. . . . .

Vampires.

He was afraid he'd see them again.

And, he was afraid he wouldn't. . . .

Miller and Natalie Lambert were talking about something. Normally,
female conversations didn't interest him, but now it made him think
about Tracy and Urs. Miller and Natalie seemed so *normal* and safe
by comparison.

"Whatever it is you're taking, I want some!" Natalie laughed.

Miller grinned broadly, "I met this guy. A really nice guy . . . who
just happens to be extremely good-looking."

Reynolds? Good-looking?

Vachon snorted and slammed his desk shut. The two women turned
around for an instant, but soon went back to their conversation.

"And he has a job?" Natalie asked.

"Underground engineer with the city, thank you very much," Miller
laughed. "Nights, like me. And I'm to call him when I get off, so we
can go out to breakfast." She showed Natalie the card she had shown
Vachon earlier.

Why would an underground maintenance worker <engineer, my ass> need
business cards? Vachon was thinking. . . .

Nick came in, and Natalie turned her attention to him. "Anything
new?" she asked.

Nick sat on Vachon's desk so he could talk to them both at the same
time. "I'm trying to make sense of his psych reports. . . . Find a
hook."

Vachon got his mind back on his job. "You're sure there's one to
find?"

Nick nodded. "Vudu attacks institutions of authority. And, he's
using women on the inside as carriers. In all of the bombings where
there were witnesses . . . all reported seeing either a woman with a
gift-wrapped package, or a man handing a woman one." He sighed.
"Anyway, we've got less than 10 hours to see what he came up with
this time."

"Knight! Vachon!" Schanke called from his office. He was already
starting to sound like a captain.

He had them follow him to the forensics lab, where a technician had
disassembled the contents of a metal ammo box and had them spread
across a table.

"Some swap meet dealer bought it from a homeless guy who said he
found it on a sewer pipe," the technician explained. "It's a bomb,
and it's one of Vudu's. I'm sure of that. The detonators are a
positive match, and it contains enough Semtex to level a city block."

"We've got him, then," Schanke said optimistically.

"Not so fast, Captain," the technician went on. "He has enough
Semtex to make sixty of these things, and if he did. . . . "

"He could level the city," Vachon finished for him.

Schanke took a deep breath, and immediately began charting a plan of
action. "All right . . . let's start by getting people off the
streets--out of the subways, downtown apartment buildings, hotels,
office buildings. We'll set up search teams. These things could be
anywhere."

Nick relegated the task of initiating the evacuation of the downtown
area to Vachon.

He remembered the carouche living in the maintenance tunnels. Most
vampires made it a point to know their surroundings well. It kept
them safe. The carouche probably knew what was under the city of
Toronto better than the public works people did.

Nick arrived at Screed's lair to find that he already had a visitor--
Urs was there.

"I'm tellin' ya Ur-su-leena, I've no' seen yer blood-sis since she
was 'ere w' tha' baby Sherlock. . . . "

Urs slammed him into the wall with her fist, just hard enough to let
him know he'd better be telling her the truth.

Nick cleared his throat to get their attention, even though both of
them had probably sensed his presence and knew he was there.

"Wha' is this?" Screed grumbled. "Di' somebody pu' my bloody address
on the Internet?"

Nick spotted a metal ammo box on the floor. It was identical to the
one the lab technician had shown him. He picked it up to take a
closer look and Screed grabbed it away from him.

"'ands off!" the carouche said irritably.

"Do you know where more of these are?" Nick asked him.

"I'm no' tellin' you skut."

"You sold one."

Screed looked at Nick uncertainly. "So?"

"They're bombs," Nick said.

Screed's eyes widened for a moment, but then his nonchalant demeanor
returned. "Yeah, an' I'm your Aunt Charly."

"With enough Semtex to blow up a city block," Nick told him sternly.

Screed was intimidated.. "Tha' would be the goo inside?"

"That would be the goo."

"But I saw more of these when I was looking for this place," Urs
commented.

"We think they've been planted all over the city," Nick said.

"Oh no . . . " Urs gasped.

"An' these boomers'll do a ci'y block?" Screed asked.

"Yeah," Nick told him. "And we need to find as many as we can."

"Two bills a piece?" Screed said.

Urs slapped him on the back of the head. "You'll do it for *free* or
I'll make *you* pay two bills apiece!"

Screed held up his hands in surrender. "Jus' a joke, yer ladyship. .
. . no 'arm intended. "

Urs turned to Nick. "Where do we start?"

Vachon had alerted the proper agencies to get the evacuation
underway and had gotten the search teams rolling under the city.

They faced a daunting task. There were literally miles of tunnels
down there, and no one person knew where all of them were. He
intended to join the search himself as soon as he could arrange for
calls to be relayed to his cell phone--and after he made sure his
cell phone worked. He'd accidentally run over it with his bike
and now the battery fell out sometimes.

Miller was heading out to join the search, and she stopped by his
desk to let him know. "I called my friend Gary. He works underground.
I'm meeting him at St. Patrick's station so he can help with the
search."

Vachon nodded, and she started to leave, but turned back. "Oops.
Almost forgot he wanted me to bring this along." She grabbed the
shopping bag Reynolds had left in the coffee shop.

Vachon waved to her absently as she left. He started rummaging
through desks looking for something to hold the phone together and
finally found some duct tape in Miller's top drawer. He wrapped it
around the battery compartment of the phone and then studied his
work. It would do.

As he was replacing the tape he spotted Gary Reynold's calling card
on Miller's desk.

'Gary Reynolds, Substructure Delineation Administrator, City of
Toronto.' What the hell did *that* mean? What kind of total,
pretentious jerk was this guy?

If Miller was lucky maybe he'd get his head blown off.

Miller!!!

What had Nick said? 'He's using women on the inside as carriers.'??!

He knew he was possibly grasping at straws, but when he remembered
the shopping bag, a wave of panic seized him. He took four flights of
stairs two steps at a time trying to catch up with Miller before she
could leave the station.

He got to the parking lot just as she was pulling out in a patrol
unit. He looked around frantically. Every available unit was out on
the streets. He'd have take his bike.

He ran back up the stairs for his jacket and keys and tried to call
dispatch to get them to try and turn Miller around before she got to
St. Patrick's. But the line was jammed with emergency traffic, and he
couldn't wait for an opening.

Time was critical, but he ducked into the gear locker on his way out
and grabbed a kevlar vest. He'd seen what Vudu's bombs did to people.
Call him egotistical, but he wanted at least one nice, big
identifiable chunk of him left if one went up in his face.


--- ELEVEN ---

Vachon found Miller's patrol unit in front of the station and parked
his bike alongside it.

He heard his phone as soon as he cut the engine off, and wondered
how long it had been ringing.

It was Miller.

"I'm right behind you," he told her. "I'll be inside in a minute. .
. . ."

"NO!" she said sharply. "Get away from here. The package Gary wanted
me to bring . . . "

"It's a bomb, isn't it?" Vachon asked softly.

"Yes. I don't know how long before . . . "

Vachon could hear a music box playing in the background. Hadn't Nick
said something about hearing music on the cockpit voice recording
from the plane?

An icy feeling crept through him as he realized they were out of
time. Miller was Vudu's carrier. He had lured her to this particular
subway station so that he could strategically detonate the bomb she
carried and thereby set off a chain reaction that would trigger the
others.

With luck, the city crews had found some of them, but chances were,
a lot of people were about to die.

"Detective Vachon?" Miller said softly, her voice just barely a
whisper.

"Yeah?"

"He's here with me . . . Vudu."

Why the hell was he just *standing* there??

He knew the answer to that. He was afraid. He had found Vudu--really
found him. And there was a bomb. A real, ticking bomb that was going
to explode in minutes.

He didn't want to die.

Officer Miller probably didn't either. . . . .

That one thought got his feet moving as he dialed his partner's cell
phone.

He told Knight where they were and that the detonator had been set.
It wasn't like Nick could do anything about it, but if the bomb went
off, at least someone would know that he and Miller had been at
Ground Zero when it happened.

He made his way into the station as quietly as possible. Vudu
probably didn't know that Miller had been talking to someone who was
right outside the building.

When he came to the subway platform, he saw them both. Reynolds/Vudu
had a gun on Miller. That was why she hadn't just made a run for it.
He was making her listen as the music box wound down.

"The detonator is spring loaded" he was saying. "There's no way to
disarm it. When the music stops . . . Boom!. . . . " He showed her a
device that looked like a TV remote, but was probably some kind of FM
transmitter. He explained how he'd used it to activate the detonator,
explaining proudly, "It has a range of ten miles. I mean, it's some
of my best work."

Vachon was at Reynolds' back, but he positioned himself so that
Miller could see he was there.

Her eyes barely moved, but he knew she saw him. He opened his jacket
to show her the kevlar vest beneath it, so that she'd know he had a
far better chance of surviving than she did if Vudu discharged his
weapon. He wanted her to try to escape if she got the chance, and not
worry about him.

"So how many bombs are there?" Miller said calmly, distracting Vudu
so he wouldn't look behind him. Vachon was trying to get into
position to take Reynolds down without possibly hitting Miller or the
bomb. He was a decent shot, but he wasn't a sharpshooter and he'd
never had to fire at anything other than cardboard targets. The fact
that his nerves were in overdrive did nothing to improve his aim.

He was forced to acknowledge that Miller's only chance was for him
to divert Vudu's attention away from her. He aimed directly at Vudu's
back.

"Metro Police! Drop your weapon!"

Vudu's reflexes were like lightning. Vachon had the fleeting thought
that the guy must have had some kind of military or martial arts
training an instant before Vudu's gun flashed.

A violent impact--he couldn't even tell where he'd been hit--spun
him almost completely around and knocked him off his feet.

By some miracle, he managed to hang onto his gun and motivated by
sheer instinct for self-preservation, he scrambled to his feet and
squeezed off three poorly-aimed rounds that didn't hit anything

Miller ran for cover and managed to get around the corner of the
building where Vudu couldn't reach her.. "He's got my gun!" she
yelled at Vachon, letting him know she couldn't provide cover for him.

"Get out of here!" Vachon shouted. "Get as far away as you can!"

Vudu was aiming his weapon again.

Unfortunately, he *was* a crack shot. Vachon felt three more slugs
hit him in the mid-section, and he went down again. He didn't even
know if he had bullets in his body or not. They said you didn't feel
it at first. But he felt like he'd just been hit by a truck.

Vudu was walking towards him, and Vachon raised his weapon to defend
himself.

Another flash from Vudu's gun was followed instantly by a sharp pain
that traveled down his fingers into his wrist and elbow.

Vudu had shot his gun from his hand. His middle and index finger
throbbed painfully and he wondered if they were still there, but he
didn't dare take his eyes off of Vudu to look.

The bomber inched closer, a cold smile on his face. "You're hard to
kill," he grinned, and then pointed his weapon at Vachon's torso
again. "Wonderful thing, kevlar."

That shot was deliberately aimed right at the center of his chest.
The impact alone knocked Vachon senseless and left him unable to
breathe. He didn't know if the vest had stopped the bullet or if the
bullet had stopped his heart. How long did it take you to die if your
heart was shot out? Was it instantaneous, or did you have a few
seconds left to think about it?

Vudu was going to fire again. . . . .

Except this time he was aiming at Vachon's head.

Vachon closed his eyes and hoped that for his mom's sake, the bullet
wouldn't completely obliterate his face.

There was nothing else left to do.

He didn't hear the gun go off. There was no way Vudu had changed his
mind. Had it been that easy? Did you not actually experience the
exact moment it happened? Had he already died, without knowing it?

"VACHON!" He heard Knight's voice in the distance and opened his
eyes, but it wasn't Knight he saw first.

Tracy was there.

And she had Vudu.

Her teeth were in his neck and she was drinking his blood.

What could he do? Tell her to stop? She wouldn't. Somehow, he knew
she wouldn't.

The bomber looked directly at Vachon, his eyes filled with terror.
He was dying, and he didn't even know why.

Vachon couldn't move. Couldn't do anything to save him. Didn't
*want* to do anything to save him. . . . .

Nick approached in time to watch as the life quickly faded from
Vudu's eyes. They stayed open, but the pupils blew and they were just
two dark, dead holes. They said eyes were the windows to the soul. If
Vudu ever had a soul, it was gone now, and the windows opened onto an
empty space.

When Tracy let him go, he saw her eyes, glowing red against her pale
skin like two little embers on a bed of ash. There was blood on her
mouth, on her lips. . . on the fangs she had. Fangs, just like the
other vampire. . .

Then, Tracy snapped Vudu's neck. He heard the spine crack.

She turned and looked right at him. The fangs were gone now, and she
pulled something <kleenex? a handkerchief?--his eyes didn't want to
focus on anything but her bloody lips> out of her coat pocket and
wiped the corners of her mouth.

He should have been afraid, but just like before, he wasn't.

He was struggling for each breath he took, but he managed to say her
name.

She knelt beside him as Nick ran up to look at Vudu's body. Tracy
took his hand in hers. It was so cold, but so soft . . . like velvet
on a cold night.

There was a feathery, scraping sound and Vachon saw another pair of
legs beside him. He looked up and saw it was Urs, but he simply
couldn't muster whatever he needed to be afraid of her when she knelt
beside him, too.

He could hear the music box winding down.

"The bomb . . . " he wheezed and tried to point in the general
direction. "It'll go off when the music stops. . . . "

The two vampires looked at each other and then Urs stood up.

"Stay with him," she told Tracy. "I'll take care of it."

	
Knight was shouting an 'officer down' alert into his cell phone.
<That was about him, wasn't it?>

He nodded in Nick's direction. "He saw you," he told Tracy.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I can make him forget everything."

Vachon accepted that. He was going into shock, but he didn't fight
it. Nick had already called for paramedics, and Tracy wasn't looking
at him like it was the last time she'd see him alive. She would know
if he was dying, wouldn't she?

"Tracy . . . "

"Shhhhh. . . . You're going to be okay."

He was cold, shaking. She took off her coat and covered him with it.

Off in the distance there was a muffled rumbling sound and the sky
lit up for an instant.

Vachon tried to turn his head in the direction of the explosion. "Is
she . . . ?"

Tracy stroked his hair. "No, she's fine. She just tossed it where it
wouldn't hurt anyone. . . . " She looked over her shoulder and saw
Miller running towards them, apparently having realized that the bomb
had been safely disposed of. "I should get out of here. There will be
too many questions."

He gripped her hand tighter. He didn't want her to go.

"I'll be at the hospital," she said, and wrinkled her nose in that
funny little grin she had. "I bet I beat you there."

She casually stepped aside as Miller dropped down to the ground. The
officer didn't say anything. She pulled off her jacket and tucked it
under his feet.

Tracy walked over to Nick, who had apparently decided Vudu was
really dead. They spoke to each other, but Vachon couldn't hear what
she said to his partner, to make him forget what he'd seen.

And then, she was gone, and Nick was beside him. At first, his
partner looked concerned, but when he checked and discovered Vachon
was not actually bleeding from any place, he winked mischievously and
said "Commendation."

Vachon laughed softly, even though it hurt. "I don't think it's too
bad."

Nick shook his head. "No. You'll live." He reached into Vachon's
jacket and poked his finger out through a bullet hole. "Nice
souvenir, too."

Vachon looked at the hole.

Yeah. That *was* pretty cool.


--- TWELVE ---

He had been scanned, x-rayed and forced to part with a couple of
liters of various bodily fluids before it had been decided that--
beyond the fact that his chest and abdomen were one big, nasty
bruise, and he was so sore that it required careful planning to sit
up or even roll over--there wasn't really anything wrong with him.
They were going to release him the next day.

True to her word, Tracy had been there when the paramedics had
wheeled him into the ER and she had stayed with him until friends and
relatives had begun to gather. He had introduced her to Nick as a
friend, to see if Nick really had been made to forget he'd seen her
at the subway station. There wasn't even a hint that Nick recognized
her. He'd have to ask Tracy how she'd done that.

He'd spent most of the day still running on adrenaline, assuring
everyone he was okay and trying to avoid answering questions about
Vudu. Everyone assumed he'd taken the bomber down, and he didn't know
how to say that he hadn't without telling the true story, so he had
tried to downplay it as a lucky shot. Considering the circumstances,
it *would* have taken luck for him to have killed Vudu.

He wondered why no one in the Coroner's office had noticed that the
holes in Vudu's neck hadn't been made by bullets. Maybe it had just
been assumed that they were--who would have dared call them 'vampire
bites' anyway?

Even he had noticed that Vudu hadn't had much blood on him, though.
With a gunshot wound in that area, he should have bled like a
slaughtered pig. Still, no one at the Coroner's office had questioned
that, either. He found that especially strange, but he knew he
wouldn't say a word about it.

Vachon also had a problem with the fact that Nick hadn't immediately
run to him instead of to Vudu when he had arrived on the scene. If
*his* partner had been gunned down, he wouldn't have wasted a second
worrying about the condition of the perp.

He finally concluded that the shock of seeing Tracy . . . what she
was doing . . . had caused Knight to have a temporary lapse of common
sense. Seeing Urs the first time had done the same thing to him. It
was understandable. If Knight had been made to forget how Vudu had
died, his memory would have started with him kneeling at Vachon's
side where he belonged. Vachon would have to let it go at that.

He had casually endured a constant stream of visitors all day long,
because, all things considered, he didn't really feel that bad. He
wasn't being given any really potent drugs, and the pain from his
injuries was not bad enough to keep him from enjoying the attention.

Captain Schanke had stopped by to show him an evidence bag
containing the five slugs that had been dug out of his kevlar vest.
This had impressed the hell out of everyone but his mom, who had just
stood there staring at the flattened metal fragments with a stunned
look on her face until his dad had taken them from her hand. It was
only then that he had realized--*really* realized--how close he had
come to being killed. It had been a sobering experience.

At around 4 pm, his dad had ordered everyone out, but had stayed
with him awhile longer, just the two of them. It had been one of
those Major Bonding Moments. Vachon was going to get a commendation,
just like Nick had said he would, but this time, being the
Commissioner's son had nothing to do with the accomplishment. He'd
earned it, and his dad had been quick to acknowledge that.

Well, he'd almost earned it. If Tracy hadn't shown up when she had,
they'd be planning a funeral for the pieces they were able to find. A
mass funeral, probably. Another one.

Vudu had taken out 25 cops, counting the two on the plane with
Dollard, and over 200 innocent people. He had deserved what he'd
gotten. The memory of watching him die was not going to bother
Vachon, ever. Maybe it was wrong for him to think that way, but that
was just how it was. . . .

His dad had left around 6, and he'd crashed big-time, the first real
sleep he'd had 7 days. Even when he'd been awakened a couple of times
by nurses checking his temperature and blood pressure, he'd gone
right back to sleep.

He didn't even think about the vampires.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. He *tried* not to think of them,
and he was so exhausted that it had worked, at least until he opened
his eyes to find her standing next to his bed.

Beautiful Tracy, looking more like an angel than she ever had.

At least, he thought it was her. He turned on the light over the
headboard so he could see her clearly.

"Hi," she smiled. You couldn't even tell she had fangs. How did they
do that? He'd have to ask her sometime.

He raised the bed to a sitting position. It was less painful than
trying to sit up on his own.

"Brought you something." She handed him a bag that had grease spots
on the outside, which meant it was something good. He looked inside.
Hamburgers, fries and a chocolate milkshake. "I've heard the food in
these places is awful."

He took the milkshake out and took a swallow. "Chocolate," he
smiled. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess."

He attacked the food. For the first time in days, he was really
hungry--starving, actually. It was 3 am, and they had served "supper"
over 10 hours ago, when he'd still been too keyed up to eat much.

He offered to share, but wasn't surprised when she didn't take
anything. Did they even eat real food? Ever? He'd have to ask her
that sometime, too.

She sat next to his bed, watching him eat, as if he were performing
some kind of fascinating ritual. He didn't mind. He was glad she was
there.

She took his right hand in both of hers. The first two fingers were
purple and blue down to the second knuckle, and he'd probably lose
the nails, but Vudu's shot had just missed taking them off his hand.
The plastic ID band on his wrist had shifted so that the closure was
on top of his arm, and she gently twisted it around so that it was
back in its proper position.

There was an IV line running into a vein in his forearm. She touched
it so gently he didn't feel it. "Does this hurt?" she frowned.

He looked into her wonderful, sympathetic blue eyes and thought
about telling her that it did, but finally shook his head and said,
"No."

She seemed a happy to hear that, but also a bit embarrassed to have
shown her concern. She busied herself with neatly arranging
everything in the room while he finished eating.

He loved the way she moved. Graceful, almost like she was floating.

She took his leather jacket from where it was hanging with the rest
of his clothes. There were three bullet holes in it altogether. She
poked her finger through one just like Nick had done.

"You know, these can be fixed," she said.

He shrugged and smiled. "I dunno. I kind of like them."

She sighed and hung the jacket back up, then sat beside him again.

"I'm glad you weren't hurt," she told him, and he knew she meant it.

"How did you know?" he asked. "About Vudu and where to find me?"

Her eyes shifted just slightly. "Nick was near Screed's place when
you called him. Screed overheard and then called me."

That wasn't the entire truth, and Vachon knew it, but he didn't
question her. She had her secrets. He could respect that.

"And Urs?"

Tracy blinked uncomfortably. The fact was, Urs and Screed had been
with Nick looking for the bombs when Vachon had called his partner.
That was how they had known. But how could she tell Vachon that
without telling him his partner was a vampire, too?

"She was following me," she lied to him again. "She just happened to
be there."

He nodded and accepted that too.

"Is she still mad at you?"

Tracy shrugged, "We've settled our differences for now, but you
never know with Urs. She and I started out as enemies, but after we
were brought across, it didn't take us long to realize that very
young vampires don't stand much of a chance on their own. They're too
inexperienced to avoid hunters, and they are not able to defend
themselves against older, stronger vampires who don't want their
territory invaded," she explained. "We only had each other, like it
or not." Tracy sighed and folded her arms. "She came here because of
something that happened over 80 years ago. We were friends, then.
Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't. . . ." She gave him a look that
was almost sad. "Neither one of us is the same person we were. I want
you to know that."

He remembered telling her he didn't like her any more. God, he could
be such a stupid jerk.

He nodded that he understood.

"What does she want?" he asked.

Tracy shook her head. "It's a long story."

Vachon looked at his surroundings, and pointed to the IV pole he was
tethered to. "I'm not going anywhere."

Tracy slipped off her coat and leaned back in her chair, stretching
her long, slender legs out in front of her. She'd gotten a new
blouse, some kind of blue satiny material that matched her eyes, but
she was wearing the jeans he'd given her.

He smiled at that. He wasn't sure why it made him feel good, but it
did..

"Sometime around 1910, we were living in France again, Urs and I,"
Tracy began. "An English woman named Claire Gibson offered a huge sum
of money to anyone who could procure a piece of art known as the
Black Buddha. It was really a tacky thing, just a chunk of unpolished
black marble about the size of a beer can, with all these gaudy
gemstones set in it. I mean really, what would something like that go
with?"

Vachon shrugged. He didn't even own matching dishes.

"Anyway, it supposedly had some kind of spell on it, and that was
the real reason she wanted it. Urs and I knew where it was and who
had it. We knew we could get it for her."

"You stole it?" Vachon asked suspiciously.

"No, of course not, although she would have paid us to do that, too.
The arrangement was only that we locate it and buy it for her, which,
as it turned out, was not as easy as it sounds." She crossed her legs
in front of her. She'd gotten some new shoes, too. Black, ankle-high,
lace-up boots that would not have been flattering on most women, but
which looked perfect on her.

She proceeded to tell him the tale of how she and Urs had acquired
the Buddha, and it sounded like the plot from an Indiana Jones movie.
He got out of breath just listening to it.

"Claire paid us what she promised. Every penny. The magic spell of
the Buddha was that it supposedly granted the owner one wish, and now
it belonged to her." She pushed her hair back away from her face and
sighed. "I don't know what Claire wished for, but it couldn't have
been what she got."

Vachon had been watching her intently, the way her mouth moved, the
way her eyes crinkled up at the corners when she laughed. How could
any woman be that perfect?

"What happened to her?" he asked.

"She sailed to the States a couple of years later . . . on the
Titanic."

Vachon's eyes widened. "No shit?"

Tracy smiled. "No shit. . . . Anyway, she had the Buddha with her.
The ugly thing was worth almost a million dollars back then. Who
knows what it would be worth now."

"Did she survive?"

Tracy shook her head..

"No. But the rumor was that the Buddha was saved. By one of us. . .
a vampire. Urs recently learned that it's here, in Toronto, still in
the possession of a vampire. Since I knew Claire, and since I live in
Toronto, Urs naturally assumed that I was the one who had it."

Vachon cocked his head to one side. "Do you?"

"No. I have no idea where it is. Screed could be using it for a
doorstop for all I know. I finally managed to convince Urs of that."

Vachon remembered something. "But the plane. You were leaving. . . ."

Tracy nodded. "Yes. It was easier than confronting her. You have to
understand, Urs would not have just let this go. For one thing, she
believes in the spell. She believes the Buddha has the power to grant
her a wish."

"What is it she wants?"

Tracy shrugged. "What she has always wanted. Money. Status."

Vachon wasn't sure he should ask, but he had to know. "What about
you?"

Tracy shook her head. "I don't know if I believe in the spell, and
even if I did. . . Wealth, position . . . I've had those things. It
didn't make me a better person. Urs can't understand that, though.
She would not have given me a moment's peace as long as she thought I
knew where that Buddha was. She'd be afraid I'd sell it and she feels
she has a stake in it and deserves her share. It's just how she is."

"But she's changed her mind now?"

"Yes. That bomb deal kind of put things into perspective for her.
Your lives. . . mortal lives . . . can end in an instant, yet you
took that chance to save people you didn't even know, and she not
only saw that, she was able to help you. That meant something to
her." Tracy's expression was unreadable. He had no idea from what she
had just said how she felt about Urs. She continued, "We live a very
long time. There will be other Buddhas. She knows that."

"So you aren't leaving?" he asked hopefully.

"No." She took his hand again, and gentle massaged the palm with her
thumb "Somebody has to stay here and make sure nothing happens to
you, Javier Vachon."

She leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips were so cold it was like
an electric shock, but it was awesome and thrilling and wonderful.

Did they have sex? He'd have to ask her that, too. Well, maybe not
right away, but eventually. . . .

She gathered the food wrappers and containers from the bed and
pushed them into the trash can, and then lowered the bed so he was
lying flat again. Her long, slender fingers reached over his head and
turned the light out.

"Go back to sleep," she told him. "I'll stay here with you until the
sun comes up."

Even though his subconscious mind was telling him he had to be mad
to even consider falling asleep in the same room with a supernatural
creature he had not believed existed a week before, he closed his
eyes and felt completely relaxed.

What was there to be afraid of? He had his very own guardian angel
now. A golden-haired vampire named Tracy.

She wasn't going to let anything happen to him.

THE END