Don Schanke drummed nervous fingers on the steering wheel. He'd just pulled in and parked beside Nick's Gateway Lane loft, not surprised that for the twelfth night in a row, Natalie's car was here, too.

It had been here every night, after her shift ended, since Nick and Janette had disappeared. Together.

Schanke chewed his lip and drummed some more, trying to decide whether to go up and try talking to her again, or simply to turn around and head home to Myra and Jenny and a nice, hot crack-of-dawn breakfast. Waffles. With oodles of butter and hot maple syrup. Man, oh man, he could already taste it.

What else could he say to Nat, anyway, that hadn't already been said a dozen times in the past several days? "You know, he pulls this sort of stunt all the time, Nat. I never know when the heck he's gonna up and take off on me, in the middle of a case, even. And I'm sorry you kinda got your hopes up about maybe having some sort of a relationship with Nick and all, but, you know, he's just not the kind of guy who..."

Oh, hell.

With a sigh, Schanke opened the door and heaved himself out of the car. He'd try talking to her one more time. But this was the last time. Absolutely the last time.

Yeah, Donnie. Sure. And chartreuse pigs will fly on Thursday.

He entered the access code to admit himself to the freight elevator, then rode the creaking antique lift up to the second level, where he had to muscle open the heavy door.

She was sitting just where she'd been the night before – on Nick's black leather sofa, with one of his remote widgets in hand, staring into a fire that roared in that stone gothic monstrosity he called a fireplace.

"Nat?"

She didn't answer him at first. Not until he shuffled noisily over to sit down beside her. She looked at him then, the ever-present tears filling her all-too-weary eyes.

"He's not coming back, Schank," she sighed. "Not this time."

Well, that was a new one. Always before, she'd held out at least some hope that this was just another of Nick's unexplained – and temporary – disappearing acts. Was she really giving up this soon?

"Oh, he'll be back," he found himself saying, and wished he could believe his own words. "He's been gone this long before." Had he? Hard to remember. "But it's not gonna do any good, the two of us just sitting here every night, is it? I mean, geez, Nat... What are we doin' here?"

"It's my fault," she said, and that was a new one, too. Her fault? How the heck was Nick taking off with his old flame Nat's fault? Now she was sounding just like... well, like Nick.

"Huh?" His puzzled query only seemed to make the tears come harder. She quelled them with a visible effort, steeling herself for... what?

"So, talk to me," he urged. "How is Nick cutting out on us – again – supposed to be your fault?"

She all but flew off the couch, promptly "colliding"  with the ornate mantelpiece, both hands clutching its gargoyle wood carvings. "I drove him away, Schank. I said something so... so stupid and thoughtless..."

"Whoa. Whoa-whoa-whoa." Schanke came to stand beside her, intrigued now. "You're saying Nick took off just because of something you said? Oh, come on, Nat."

"It's true." She sounded more angry now than hurt. Schanke didn't know if that was good or bad. "The night he caught up with Dr. Shawna Welsh, the night she killed herself, he was trying to tell me something. Something... personal. I didn't want to hear it. I shut him down, Schank. I told him he didn't have that problem anymore, and I walked away. Like an idiot. He left that same night. They left."

"Yeah, well..." Not really much he could say about Janette, though it did appear that wherever she and Nick had gone, they'd gone together. Not that he could make a case for it, since neither of them had so much as packed a bag or taken a solitary thing from their dwellings before they'd disappeared.

He'd been about to point that out again when a faint sound made both of them turn.

"Nick?"

The name escaped Natalie's lips before either of them could see who it was standing in the shadows on Nick's upstairs landing. But the man who moved into the light and all but floated down the long flight of stairs was definitely not Nick.

"Who the hell...? How'd you get in here?" Schanke's .38 was in his hand before he'd thought about it. Something about this guy was just so... well... creepy. And instead of showing any trepidation at the sight of a loaded revolver pointed at him, the guy glided to a stop in front of them and... smiled. If you could call it that.

He had one of those smiles that only a tiger shark could properly appreciate.

"The weapon will not be necessary," he said, in a voice like silk scarves slithering through a magician's sleeve. Schanke thought it was vaguely familiar though, that voice. Where had he heard it before?

"I repeat..." Schanke kept the .38 right where it was. "Who the hell are you?"

"Schanke..." Nat's hand shot out to gently push the gun barrel floorward. And to the stranger, she said, "You're LaCroix, aren't you?"

Schanke glanced at her, puzzled. "La-who? Natalie, how do you...?"

"It's all right," she said, though she didn't sound at all sure of that. "He's a... friend... of Nick's." And again, she met that frost-blue stare of his head on and snapped out a question. "You know where Nick is, don't you?"

"Most assuredly." An elegantly simple answer with, apparently, no forthcoming elaboration.

"Well?" Schanke prodded, sheepishly tucking the service revolver back into his shoulder holster. "He's with Janette, right?"

"Of course." LaCroix flicked an imaginary speck of something from the sleeve of his crow-black coat, and strode to the nearby window, where he gazed out a the night as though it and not they were the entity asking him for explanations. "Our dear Nicholas is rediscovering himself," he said. Whatever that might mean. "I've seen to it, therefore, that he should have all the time he requires to accomplish that task."

"Wha...?" Schanke stammered. "You mean, like a vacation?"

That smile again. Turned on them like some predatory savannah cat toying with its prey. He moved again, crossing to a wide wooden cabinet Schanke had never noticed before. When he opened it, flourescent lights mounted inside flickered on to illuminate something that had been concealed there – a portrait. The painting appeared to be centuries old, but Schanke knew it couldn't be. Because he recognized the woman it depicted, or thought he did.

"Janette?" Well, maybe not. If it really was old... "Or maybe Janette's twenty-times great grandmother?" Try as he might, Schanke could make no sense of this at all. "Look, what is it with her and Nick anyway? They were an item once and then it ended. But he just can't drop that torch, is that it? And what are you to them, Cupid? Sending the reunited lovers off on an extended honeymoon?"

"That's exactly what you've done, isn't it?" The hurt was back in Natalie's voice. "You've forced him to go  –  with her."

"Hardly." The portrait's lighting dyed LaCroix's pale face an eerie shade of blue. "He is more than willing, Doctor," and he nodded at the lovely face in the painting, "because he is quite, quite drunk with her. Or more accurately, drunk with his love for her. Can you even begin to understand a love so all-consuming? So eternal?"

For a moment, Schanke thought that Natalie might just explode. He'd seen those thunder clouds in a woman's eyes before – the last time Myra'd caught him sneaking all the M&Ms out of her bridge club candy stash, for instance. But again, Nat controlled herself with an obvious effort. The hurricane in her eyes slowed to a category three.

"I don't suppose you'd care to tell us," she seethed, "whether he'll be coming back?"

"I really wouldn't know." LaCroix closed the cabinet doors with such poised, meticulous hands that Schanke wondered if he might be a musician. "In any event, I shall be looking after things here and at the Raven until that particular matter is resolved. I thought it prudent to apprize you of this, Dr. Lambert, so that your nightly vigil, while not altogether unwelcome, might perhaps be put on hold for the time being."

Never in his life had Schanke ever heard a more eloquent rendition of "get lost." He'd been about to say so, but Nat's next question precluded him.

"Where are they, LaCroix? Where have you sent them?"

If her demanding tone irritated him, LaCroix didn't show it, beyond the ever-so-minute arching of one pale eyebrow, anyway. But he countered with an equally blunt question of his own. "Do you really need to know?"

That response took much of the wind out of Natalie's sails. Schanke watched her sigh heavily before she said, "I just want to know that he's safe, that's all."

"Ah." LaCroix's long fingers spread themselves outward. "Well, if by ‘safe,' you mean continuing certain medical treatments and dietary regimens which you've devised for him, then, I must inform you, good doctor, that Nicholas shall no longer require your services in that regard."

Schanke opened his mouth to object and saw Nat do the same, but they were both silenced by the sudden sweep of LaCroix's hand into an L-shape, and by the riveting depths of those too-blue eyes and the commanding tone of his voice.

"You will not pursue Nicholas," he said, and there was simply no disobeying that order. The very thought seemed ludicrous. "You will tell his employer that he has taken an unpaid leave of absence. And above all, you will not question others of my... flock, nor myself, nor the Raven's staff, as to his whereabouts. You will, in short, leave well enough alone."

The hand came down, leaving Schanke blinking and shaking his head. What the hell had just happened?

"Nat?"

She was also shaking her head, and when they'd both cleared the cobwebs enough to look up at LaCroix...

The spot he'd occupied just moments before was empty.

"Where...?" Schanke turned a complete circle, searching, but their erstwhile visitor was no longer anywhere in evidence. "All right, this now officially qualifies as Creep City." Schanke ran one hand through his thinning hair and shivered. He had a nagging feeling that he should know the name and face of the man who'd just left here in such a hurry, but just now he could recall neither. Who was that guy?"

"It doesn't matter." The bitter tears were back in Nat's eyes and voice. "Nick's left us, Schanke." She turned and started toward the elevator. "And it's still my fault."

Two of the things Janette loved most in the world – Nicolas and Paris – had both, in this past two glorious weeks, been given back to her. She couldn't remember a time, in all her ten centuries of unlife, when she'd been happier.

At the moment, the sun was setting on their thirteenth day of rediscovering one another, the thirteenth day of revelry in pleasures, both carnal and sanguinary.

For several minutes, she watched Nicolas sleeping soundly in the bed beside her, in love anew with every well-muscled contour, every pale gold hair, every nuance of him. This was the Nicolas she had fallen in love with eight centuries ago, the Nicolas who had embraced immortality with vigorous, guilt-free abandon. She'd long ago lost hope of ever knowing that Nicolas again. Until last week.

What had changed him so profoundly remained unclear to her. He wouldn't speak of it, and his blood told her only that it somehow involved the last case he had dealt with in Toronto, one of a sexually-charged nature that had deeply affected him somehow.

In the end, it didn't really matter how or why. Nicolas was hers again. And so was Paris.

She slipped from the bed and wrapped herself in the red silk robe he'd purchased for her on their first night here. With the sun at last gone, she pushed open the balcony doors and went out to watch the last of the dying light glitter on the Seine. One by one, the lights of Paris then began coming to life, a sight she somehow never tired of watching. This beautiful city was, and always had been, her home.

The whispering touch of Nicolas' mind to hers sent a thrill through her, even before his arms came round her from behind, and his hands slid inside the robe's silken folds. She tilted her head, leaning back against him as his hands began to roam farther south.

Laughing, she turned to slip her own hands inside the black silk robe that he wore. "Mon chevalier," she breathed. "You are quite, quite insatiable."

"Yes." He answered her in between ardent kisses. "And we still have several centuries to catch up on. So what are we waiting for?"

"For the sun to return, cherie." She indulged him in one last, passionate kiss before breaking free and heading back inside to dress. "In the meantime, we have much to see and do. I must speak with Philippe Roget about supplying my new club. And I must see to hiring a bartender as well. You will come along with me, yes?"

"Anywhere." He'd followed her inside, dropping his own robe as she discarded hers, and promptly gathered her back into his arms. "Just as soon as we've seen to one last matter."

As his hands explored anew, his fangs descended and found her jugular vein, piercing her with an exquisite flood of thoughts and emotions that made her gasp with their sheer intensity.

Janette decided that the new club could wait just a bit longer.

With a feral growl of pure delight, she indulged him yet again.

In only two weeks, the workmen she'd hired had already done wonders, transforming the interior to her specifications. And because word of mouth traveled so quickly in the vampire community, a score of old friends had already dropped by to say hello and to welcome her home. Monique, Jacques, Antonio, Lilia, Ariel, Ulysses, Jeneé... So many friends. And she had missed them all so very much.

To at last begin a new life here with Nicolas... perhaps she would find a way, as many of her eternal friends had done, never to leave Paris again.

The workers were gone for the day. Nicolas had kindly agreed to attend to the remaining legal matters for her before all of the bureaucrats went home to bed. And Janette had interviewed eight applicants for bartender – five mortal and three not. She ‘d chosen one of the latter, a centuries-old Sicilian beauty named Lucia, whose charms should be ample enough to entice both mortals and vampires to partake of the libations she would offer.

Which brought her to the last order of business for the evening: supplying her new wine cellar. The man to solve that problem for her should be arriving any moment now.

And arrive he did, with an entrance worthy of LaCroix himself. Philippe always had possessed a flair for the melodramatic. He appeared as if from nowhere beside the unfinished bar, looking more than ever like that handsome mortal actor who had once played Dracula. What was his name again? Ah yes. Frank Langella.

Janette rose to greet him, extending a hand, which he gallantly accepted, and kissed.

"They say we do not change. But you, my dear Janette, grow more beautiful with every passing century. However is that possible?"

She met his charming smile with one of her own, graciously accepting the ornately-labeled wine bottle he'd placed in her hands. "Because you, my dear Philippe," she answered coyly, "become more of a shameless flatterer with every passing century."

And so, negotiations had been opened. From one of the pasteboard boxes stacked on the bar, she removed two long-stemmed glasses and carried them with the bottle to a nearby table, where they then got down to the business of bargaining.

Their agreement had been sealed and the "wine" half-consumed when Janette felt the distinctive vibration of Nicolas' arrival.

Philippe had sensed it as well. He rose to greet Nicolas, who came through the door (no melodramatic entrances for him) bearing a fist full of documents. "DeBrabant," the wine merchant intoned solemnly. "How very nice to see you again."

Nicolas, whose expression clearly belied that false affection, afforded the other man a brief nod in exchange. "Hello, Roget. You're still doing well in the wine trade, I see."

"In both its mortal and immortal venues, thanks to the exceedingly lovely lady." Janette found herself being drawn to her feet by the gentle pull of Philippe's hand, and again he made a show of raising her fingers to his lips and kissing them. "You really must visit my vineyard one night soon. There's really nothing quite like flying over vineyards in the moonlight."

Had vampires been capable of changing their color, Nicolas would, just then, have turned a most unappealing shade of green. Feeling rather like a ewe caught between two bull rams, Janette primly extricated her fingers and moved to Nicolas' side. She took the papers from him with a murmured "Merci, mon couer," and permitted the embrace of the overly possessive arm he immediately wrapped around her waist.

"We would be delighted to visit your vineyard, Philippe," she said demurely. "Very soon."

"Tomorrow night, then. I'll expect you... both of you." He amended his invitation with a veiled glance at Nicolas.  "At nine. And of course, my lady‘s first delivery will arrive here, as agreed, promptly at seven. And now I must bid you good night."

When he looked as though he might like to reclaim Janette's hand, Nicolas precluded him by claiming it for himself. "Good night, Roget," he said in what was clearly a dismissal. Not until the smug merchant had actually, finally departed did Nicolas release her hand. And when he did, it was with a short string of epithets muttered under his breath in medieval French, the last of which might still be heard in any Paris alley today.

"Bâtard."

The vineyards were indeed beautiful in the moonlight.

Janette marveled at the sheer size of it all. And when Philippe had concluded their guided tour from the air, he impressed her further with walk-throughs of the wine cellars and of the huge processing and bottling plants.

The factories employed a mortal graveyard shift. Both vast buildings were ablaze with light and hummed with the noisy, monotonous activity of both humans and machines. Nicolas had appeared nonplused by it all – until they concluded their journey in an underground complex that was hidden from public view.

It was one expansive room, as brightly lit as the factories had been. But here, the walls were lined with medical equipment, including several dozen beds, most of them occupied by mortals with other mortals attending to them.

Nicolas recognized its purpose before she did, and said so to their host. "Your own private blood bank?"

Philippe's cultured eyebrows rose slightly at the accusatory tone of the question. "The company's donor program, actually," he corrected. "From which is derived our private stock. I assure you, it's all quite voluntary and, how would you say it? I believe the phrase is ‘above board'?"

Something in Nicolas' eyes said clearly that he suspected otherwise. Janette had sensed something odd about these mortals as well. In fact, all of Philippe's workers, everywhere they'd seen them this night, had seemed unusually complacent and unnaturally quiet, almost as if he'd found some way to hypnotize them en masse.

But that simply couldn't be done. Could it?

She'd never heard of such a feat. Yet, there was something...

Nicolas had clearly sensed it as well. She could feel it spark in him, that curiosity that had always been so much a part of him, and of the investigator-detective he'd been for so long in mortal pose. She watched him wander away from them to speak with the nearest pair of humans, leaving her to presumably, somehow, distract Philippe. Just at the moment, however, she could think of no better distraction than to ask the question outright.

"Tell me, Philippe. However do you keep this many mortal workers so remarkably co-operative? In my experience, they are not usually so complacent in such numbers."

Philippe nodded toward Nicolas, now deep in conversation with the mortals. "Is that what so concerns deBrabant?" Well, so much for distractions. "He needn't worry. Nor should you. Rest assured, my employees both mortal and immortal are unflaggingly loyal to me because they are treated well and paid well. And that's as it should be. Don't you agree?"

"Mes oui." But why did she have the strange feeling that at least part of that statement had been an unabashed lie? And that Philippe was hiding something?

She'd been about to quiz him further when a woman – a vampire – appeared and pulled Philippe aside to engage him in a brief, hushed exchange. Janette could make out only a few words of it: "lab" and the word "formula." Philippe's pleasant demeanor darkened momentarily, but was back in play by the time he returned to her.

"I really must apologize," he said, "but I'm afraid I've been called away. A business matter. Do feel free to stay as long as you like, explore at your leisure, as you please."

He kissed her hand again, and Janette returned a polite smile. "We thank you for your hospitality. And we do look forward to a long and lucrative business arrangement."

"Oh, by all means." Philippe looked genuinely pleased at that. "You will give deBrabant my regrets?"

"Of course."

"Good night, then." And with that, the impatient woman swept him away. Janette was sorely tempted to follow them, but resisted the urge. It would probably not be wise, after all, to anger the man from whom she would be purchasing all of her stock.

"And how long have you worked for Roget Vineyards?" Nicolas was asking when she approached him. He was addressing his third mortal in this impromptu interrogation, a forty-ish Oriental woman with decidedly unstylish eyeglasses. She was engaged, as were all the others in the room, in extracting a blood donation from another mortal, a young black male, reclined in a vinyl-upholstered chair.

"One year, four months and eighteen days," she answered, so mechanically that Nicolas might have been conversing with a robot, for all the dull vitality she displayed.

"And are you happy here?"

"Yes." Again, the flat and toneless response. She gave him an equally artificial smile before returning doggedly to her task and proceeding as though neither of her visitors was present at all.

Janette felt Nicolas' hand grasp her arm. He drew her aside, out of the mortal's earshot, and she knew exactly what he would say before he said it.

"Something is very wrong here."

"Strange, at the very least, yes," she agreed. "They all appear to be under his hypnotic spell, and to remain so, always. However has he managed it? To control so many at once..."

"I don't know." Nicolas continued to stare at them, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. "But I intend to find out."

Janette felt a pang of regret at his oh-so-serious tone. After two glorious weeks with her carefree vampire lover back again, she was, alas, once more in the company of a police detective.

The new club opened two weeks later, and Nick was certain that in eight centuries, he had never seen Janette so happy.

From a private table in a darkened corner, he watched her mingle with Le Corbeau's new  clientele, clearly most in her element among the young, goth-clad patrons. Janette had always sought out the dispossessed, often taking in strays, whether mortal or vampire. And that intrinsically trusting nature had always puzzled Nick. That so loyal a child of the cynical and distrusting LaCroix could maintain a faith in humanity nearly as strong as Nick's own was a miracle indeed. But it was very much a part of his enduring love for her.

Dancers writhed amidst the flashing lights to the deafening beat of some tuneless (to his classically-trained ear, anyway) recording that blared from the overcranked sound system. Nick tuned the noise out to concentrate instead on the wine glass that had just been placed before him. One taste of it enveloped him in the myriad sensations of its human donor. He knew in an instant that she was middle-aged, unmarried, and desperately lonely. He knew that her name was Leanette DuBois, and that she lived in a tiny flat located inside Philippe Roget's vineyard compound. And there was something else...

It was more difficult to pinpoint, that something. Another sip did little to help. Nor did several more. But there was definitely a lingering emotion... Anxiety? Discomfort? Fear? He couldn't identify it.

What troubled Leanette DuBois so? Perhaps he should visit Philippe's vineyards once again and find out.

He drained the glass and placed it firmly on the table, looking up in time to catch the radiant smile Janette was sending him from the edge of the circular bar. He returned the smile, along with an affirmation of his devotion, sent through the link that had bound them together for so long.

For her sake, he had refrained, in recent weeks, from following up on his suspicions about Roget. She'd begged him not to "be the cop" again, and not to intimidate her club's sole blood supplier. While mortal wine might be plentiful in France, Philippe's was apparently the only source, at present, for a discreet supply of vampire libation.

So, with an effort, he had quelled the urge to investigate further, despite a nagging certainty that the wine merchant was up to something far more sinister than it would seem. He could no longer find it in himself to deny Janette anything she desired. The very thought of losing her again was intolerable. Fate had wrenched her from him once, and their rejoining had been centuries in the making. He meant to do all he could now to keep her - forever.

To lose her again would be to lose himself, as he had nearly done five centuries ago after her departure. Had LaCroix not intervened...

"Really, Nicholas," he'd scoffed. "Such melodramatics."

He'd needed to shout above the roar of the flames. Though the castle's servants were long abed, the kitchen hearth burned on. Its embers might have died out by now, had Nicholas not fed it a wholesome supply of kindling until it now leaped higher than his head, a writhing inferno that sent both waves of heat and clouds of smoke billowing out into the now-stifling kitchen.

"Go away, LaCroix," he'd shouted back. "I won't go on without her. I can't."

Ah. So it would appear, then, that self-immolation is today's prescribed cure for a broken heart?  Shouting no longer, LaCroix's voice reached his mind now instead of his ears, its intimidating near-whisper more threatening than any shout could ever be. Nicholas watched the fire's lights dance on his master's pale features, thinking how like demons from hell they were, paying homage, no doubt, to a kindred spirit.

Don't mock me, he sent back angrily. It is no jest, LaCroix. I'm going to do it.

Sheer contempt laced the elder vampire's reply. Very well. If you really must, then get on with it. But do keep in mind, Nicholas, that a betrayal of trust notwithstanding, in doing away with yourself, you will be wasting no small effort on my part, not to mention that of our mutually beloved Janette.

Despite his resolve, Nicholas found himself forced to retreat a few paces from the searing heat. "Effort?" he echoed, verbally this time. "What effort?"

LaCroix withdrew still further from the inferno, and with a firm grip on his protegé's arm, drew Nicholas with him. "The three centuries of effort we have invested in you, of course. How do you suppose Janette will feel when she eventually returns to us, only to find that you, in your impertinence, have selfishly abandoned us both?"

While Nicholas hesitated, pondering that thought, his master stepped back to the hearth. Never once flinching at the searing heat, he grasped the iron hoist, and with one hand, swung the huge stew pot toward the fire. Before Nicholas could object, the enormous vessel tilted, and with a sputtering hiss, discharged the watery remnants of last night's soup onto the flames. They died with an explosive chuffing sound. Clouds of white smoke roiled out into the room, forcing a coughing Nicholas to retreat still further. LaCroix's unyielding grip took him again by the arm, and pulled him out into the blessedly cool night air.

"Now then," he'd said, and paused to fussily whisk gray ashes from the sleeves of his cloak, "we'll have no more of that."

He'd summarily taken flight, tacitly expecting that his son would follow. Which, of course, he had...

"Lost in thought, Nicolas?"

He came back to the here-and-now to find Janette smiling at him from across the table. And beside her sat a waif-thin woman with large, timid eyes, an ebony complexion – and the unmistakable mental signature of a vampire. But for that signature, Nick might have mistaken her for a troubled – and very frightened – mortal.

"This is Clarise," Janette said by way of introduction. "She wishes to speak with you, mon coeur." She rose, coming around the table to endow him with a decidedly possessive kiss. "You will be kind to her, yes?" And with the softest whisper of her mind to his, she added silently, I think perhaps she is another lost lamb, ne pas?

Janette vanished then back into the noisy crowd of her patrons, leaving him with something of an awkward moment.

Clarise breached it for him. "I'm sorry to bother you with my problems, Monsieur..."

"Nicholas will do," he interrupted gently. "Or just Nick, if you prefer. And what problems plague you so, Clarise? One of our kind as lovely as you are should never be so troubled."

That evoked a faint smile, albeit a fleeting one. She glanced nervously at their surroundings before she went on. "They say that you..." Hesitation now, as though she were gathering courage. "Forgive me. I don't mean to be personal. But... is it true what they say, that you have spent the past two centuries trying to become mortal again?"

Somehow, that was the last question he'd expected. And if mortality was her goal, she was going to be disappointed in his answer.

"I thought for a time that it might be possible," he admitted. "But I never found any proof that it is."

"Monsieur...  Nick..." Again, the uncomfortable glance aside. "Do you think we might go somewhere, away from here, just to talk for a while?"

He gave her his best reassuring smile, then escorted her out of the club, pausing only long enough to kiss Janette on his way to the door.

They emerged into chill night air and into the midst of a small throng of mortal bar patrons who had rather noisily carried their celebration outside. Skirting these, they walked uphill into quieter streets lined with offices and warehouses, all shuttered for the night. A short flight to the roof of the tallest of these, and they had both privacy and a panoramic view of the City of Lights.

"So beautiful," Clarise said, as though she were addressing Paris itself. "It must have been impressive, even eight hundred years ago."

"Not as much," he answered honestly. "You haven't been one of us long, have you?"

"Three years," she said, her black eyes somehow growing still darker. "And I have loathed every moment of it. That is why, when I heard that you... Have you truly given up on your search for a cure?"

"For now." Another honest answer. He hadn't abandoned that quest altogether, but for Janette's sake, he would not pursue it for a while. "If you're looking for a cure, Clarise, I'm afraid I won't be of much help to you. I never found one."

"But you tried." There was a definite ring of desperation in her voice now. "Against all opposition, you tried. I think perhaps you can be of help to me, if only to explain how you withstood that opposition for so very, very long. If my master were ever to learn of this desire, I think he would not hesitate to destroy me."

Nick wondered how she'd managed to keep the desire to be mortal a secret this long. He'd certainly never been able to hide his mortal yearnings from LaCroix for long.

"And who is your master?" It was a casual enough question, but it had the unsettling effect of making Clarise stiffen and then shudder briefly, as though an ice cold wind had washed over her.

"I am the child," she said to the Paris night, "of Philippe Roget."

Janette retreated to her private office while the night's revelry in Le Corbeau began to wind down. She dutifully examined the books, re-checking both the present and the previous evening's receipts. Finding both to be in order, she poured herself a crystal glass of wine-laced blood from a bottle that had been patiently awaiting her attention from its place on the desk, a few inches from her green hooded lamp. She savored a number of mouthfuls before sitting back to relax with the glass cradled in one black-gloved hand. She closed her eyes and thought of Nicolas, who was no doubt still deeply involved in listening to the lost lamb's tale of woe.

"Is it true," Clarise had asked her oh-so-timidly, "that he wishes to be mortal again? That he has sought a cure for our condition?"

What could she have said? To deny it would be folly, although Nicolas no longer desired a cure – at least for the moment. But the discovery of another vampire unhappy with her immortal state would no doubt be of interest to Nicolas. Such vampires were rarities indeed. In all her ten long centuries of unlife, she had known of... well, only one.

Until now.

The sudden touch of another hand upon hers startled her out of her reverie.

"Nicolas?"

But the face smiling down at her belonged to Philippe Roget. How had he entered so silently? She'd neither heard nor felt his presence until he'd touched her.

"Do forgive me." He withdrew the hand then. "I'm afraid I've rather disconcerted you."

Janette composed herself with an effort, sitting up to return the wine glass to the desk.

"I must have been dozing," she said, though it wasn't true. "I never heard you come in."

"Well, allow me to atone for that. With this." From somewhere beneath his floor-length, dark gray coat, he produced an opaque bottle rather smaller than the one already standing on the desk. He carefully emptied what remained in her glass back into that taller bottle, corked it, then half-filled the glass once more from his own bottle. "It's a new and very special vintage, entirely exclusive to my vineyard. I'm most anxious for your opinion. Would you indulge me?"

She accepted the proffered glass and immediately sampled its contents. With the very first taste, sheer ecstacy flooded into her veins like a warm, enveloping river current. No more than an hour old, the blood had come from a young male donor named Andre, one of Roget's laborers, and it spoke eloquently of his love for a woman called Lisette. She could also read his positively fierce loyalty to Roget and to something of great import that Roget would soon accomplish. This thing, however, remained cloaked, as though Andre had been mentally trained to conceal it. But he believed in it, whatever it might be, with all the fiber and soul of his being. That, and his devotion to Roget, overshadowed all else. It defined him. He had no other purpose, no other reason to live, not even for the lovely Lisette.

"Exquisite, isn't it?"

Janette's eyes flew open once again. In just those few delectable moments, she had quite forgotten that Philippe was here. How odd...

"Quite," she managed after a moment to gather her thoughts. "But it is so much more. So... so..."

"Euphoric?"

"More."

Euphoric did not begin to describe it. She was suddenly adrift in a tranquil sea of both intense pleasure and utter contentment. The concerns of her business and of the world at large no longer mattered. Only one thing – one person – mattered. How could she not have seen it? Philippe would soon accomplish such wondrous things. It would be folly not to assist in his cause. Sheer folly.

"Now that you understand," Philippe was saying, "you will, of course, come with me. I own a villa in the hills above the vineyard. You will be quite, quite comfortable there. I have very special plans for you, mon petit. Very special plans indeed."

The touch of his hand on her shoulder sent something not unlike an electrical charge racing through her. Janette had felt nothing so intense since... since that night, a millennium ago, when LaCroix had brought her across.

From somewhere deep within her, Janette felt a mental cord snap, breaking the ties to those who had long been her family. Some tiny part of her protested the severing, crying out to those others, but she angrily quelled the response.

"Of course," she found herself agreeing breathlessly. "Of course I will come with you."

It seemed the most natural thing in the world, to do as he asked.

Janette could no longer imagine doing otherwise.

"Tell me about Roget."

They had abandoned the rooftop for a stroll along the late-night banks of the Seine. The walkway was quite deserted at this hour, though Paris' eternal traffic still honked and roared past them on the nearby street.

Clarise's step faltered ever so slightly, and the night breeze whipped strands of loose, raven hair across her face. "What do you wish to know?"

Nick couldn't help himself. He had to know. "What exactly is he doing out there, at the vineyard? What's he done to all those mortals that makes them so... complacent?"

She stopped walking then, turning to place both slender hands on top of the rock wall. "All of Philippe's people are unfailingly loyal to him. Humans and vampires alike. He has that effect."

She stared out at the glittering water, with its myriad reflections of the city's lights. "He is extremely powerful, as well as immensely old."

Nick's detective instincts honed in on a seeming contradiction, overlooking, for the moment, the fact that she had avoided answering his question. "Unfailingly loyal," he echoed. "Yet you want to leave him. To become mortal again."

A bitter smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and she turned from the wall to face him. "He says it is a flaw. A rare but serious flaw in my vampire nature that must be excised at any cost. Janette tells me that your master, LaCroix, says the same of you."

"Yes. He also said I was the only vampire ever to suffer from that particular ‘flaw.'"

"Well, you are not." The fear and pleading were both back in her eyes now. "You said you could help me, that you could tell me what you'd found that might lead to a cure."

The sudden rush of tears caught him by surprise. In the next moment, she was in his arms, clinging to him with terrified, shuddering desperation. Nick held her, one hand pressed gently to the back or her head as she sobbed against his shoulder. "I will," he said. "But I never found a cure, Clarise. I can't promise..."

Her attack came without warning. With the first stinging pierce of her fangs, he felt such a rage at her impudence that he clutched at her, ready to pry her away by force. And then...

Then an odd, unnatural euphoria began to overcome his fury. From somewhere very far away, he thought he heard a voice cry out his name. But then images of Roget, intertwined with a sense of overwhelming, ecstatic joy, flooded through the instant blood bond with Clarise, and he felt her unshakable devotion to Roget as if it were his own. For a few moments, it was.

But in spite of the alluring temptation to submit to this feeling, his anger found its way back to the surface with enough force to wrench her away. "What's the meaning of this?" He took her shoulders in a grip that would have shattered mortal bones, and shook her. "You're not afraid of Roget. You never were. So why...?"

Confusion and disappointment flickered briefly in her eyes, both quickly supplanted by defiance. She tore his hands from her shoulders, no trace left now of Janette's "lost lamb."

Janette...

He had heard Janette's voice call his name.

Cold dread clutched at the pit of Nick's stomach. If Clarise had wanted him away from the club for a reason...

He left her where she stood, taking flight to make all haste back to Le Corbeau. The City of Lights became a mad tangle of blurred shapes and colors far below him. He barely saw them. A near-blinding rage had begun to consume him, a rage directed in part at his own gullibility. How had he been so easily decoyed?

He arrived at Le Corbeau to find it closed for the night. Nick resisted the urge to tear the door from its hinges and used his key, but the moment he stepped inside, his worst fears were realized.

Janette wasn't here. No trace of her signature remained. He called home. No one answered. He proceeded to methodically search the club, his fury burning hotter at the sight of each and every empty room.

She wasn't here. And try as he might, he could find no trace of the intimate vibration that had bound them together for eight centuries. What he sensed instead was Clarise's arrival upstairs on the main level, and he flew from the wine cellar to confront her there, landing on the deserted dance floor as she entered through the club's front door.

No courtesies. No preamble. He was far too angry for that. "Where is she?"

He would have expected the timid and frightened Clarise, the one who'd left Le Corbeau with him earlier tonight, to demure, to look innocent and perhaps ask, "Where is who?" But all trace of that Clarise had vanished now. This woman, this vampire, resembled her not at all. The once meek eyes held cold resolve now; the once pleading demeanor gave way to a smug, triumphant stance.

"You must be resistant," she said, pointedly not answering his question. "One bite has always been enough before."

"Enough for what?" He met her chill gaze with defiance. "What have you done to those people? And to Janette? Answer me, damn it. Where have you taken her?"

He started forward, intent on choking a response from her if necessary. The small silver pistol that appeared in her hand gave him no reason to pause: guns had never done him any harm.

Until now.

He'd nearly reached her when the weapon fired, a small flash and a loud pop the precursors to a stinging pain in his chest. Nick stopped in mid-stride with his outstretched hands mere inches from her throat, and found to his horror that he couldn't move any further.

"What...?" He couldn't complete the question. The muscles in his throat contracted and cut off the words.

"Resisters are rare, even among mortals," she said, an air of contempt in her tone. "I've never known one among our kind, other than the Master himself, of course."

Resisters to what? Nick wanted to scream the question at her, but neither his mouth nor the vampire's mental connection to its own kind would function. His fury at having been so easily duped made his situation all the worse, and judging from the smug look she wore, Clarise knew it. She'd lain her groundwork well, learning enough about him to know – and exploit – his greatest weakness. She'd never feared Roget. She'd never wanted to be human. It had all been designed to decoy him, so that Roget could abduct Janette.

But why?

"You are unique indeed, Monsieur Nicolas." She sneered his name now as though it were a curse. "The only vampire who wishes to renounce his gift of immortality. And the only one resistant to the Master's serum. Not that you should pride yourself on either count. Both are flaws that may well cost you your life."

She fired again without warning, calmly squeezing the trigger and smiling as the bullet's insidious payload spread more agonizing fire through Nick's system.

Curare. It had to be. Nothing else would have...

Nick had no time to contemplate it any further. The last thing he remembered was the dizzying sight of Le Corbeau's polished dance floor rushing up to meet him.

The Raven's dance floor had been deserted for hours now, while the sun arced its way overhead. LaCroix had found sleep elusive, so had returned to the club's main floor to triple-check the previous night's receipts. He'd been fully engaged in that activity, seated at a small round table beneath a bank of multicolored lights, when a faint sound distracted him from the papers strewn over the tabletop.

A voice, plaintive but quite faint, called his name.

Janette's voice.

The chair's legs shrieked on the tile floor when he rose. His own footsteps sounded like gunshots as he crossed into the shadows beyond the Raven's bar. He entered the small private room, brushing the heavy drapery aside, and paused to listen once again.

Nothing. No one.

It could not have been Janette, of course. Not physically, anyway. She was in Paris. LaCroix frowned. It was thoroughly unlike him to confuse audible voices with those "heard" through his mental connection to others of his family. How odd. And how puzzling.

Consternation kindled yellow fire in his eyes. What was happening here? What sorcery was this?

For nearly an hour, he prowled the Raven's every darkened room and floor, watching, listening. He found nothing.

It was only after he'd returned to his mundane task with the receipts that he began to feel the distinct vibration of a familial chord teasing at his ancient vampire senses. No more than a whisper at the start, it grew rapidly into a loud and desperate plea for help, a cry so strident that it nearly drove him to his knees on the Raven's polished floor. He gripped the table's edges so tightly that the stressed wood crackled, close to splintering. Then with an effort, he pulled himself into a rigid stance, and by sheer force of will, dampered the mental connection until the scream was at last muted. But his eyes were glowing red now, his rage double what it had been moments before.

No longer did some unknown thing endanger just one of his own. Now there were two facing threat. The cry for help had come not from Janette, but from Nicholas. And it had implicitly conveyed that Janette – their Janette – was in peril.

LaCroix had rushed to the Raven's double doors with no other thought than to fly to them both, here and now, no matter the distance. But the doors burst open onto the blazing day, flooding the club with an instantaneous inferno of sunlight.

With a roar of exasperation, and with thin tendrils of smoke rising from his singed flesh, he slammed the doors shut once more, nearly wrenching them off their hinges in his zeal to shut out the accursed light.

Swearing an ancient Roman oath, Janette and Nicholas' master retreated into the club's shadowed depths in a high dudgeon of frustration. What to do now? He could perhaps pray to gods he no longer believed in that his progeny would somehow survive until the night returned. Or he could damn the light and go to them in spite of it. There were ways...

Seething but resolute, LaCroix stalked to the bar and picked up the phone.

Not in all her thousand years of unlife, nor in the few mortal decades preceding them, had Janette ever seen a house so resplendent.

Philippe Roget's villa surpassed even the homes of Europe's wealthiest royalty, past or present. Not only did it contain a breathtaking collection of priceless antiques and objets de' art, it also boasted sprawling gardens on every side that would have rivaled those of ancient Babylon. They were so beautiful by moonlight that Janette wished, for one of the only times in her very long life, that she could see them by day.

She had been given a palatial bed chamber, with tastefully curtained and opaqued windows – and multiple wardrobes filled with the loveliest designer gowns in all of Paris. Philippe's servant staff was second to none, and saw to her every need. Oh, she could get used to this pampering, to this lavish extravagance, all too easily. In fact, because it simply seemed natural that she should be here, with Philippe, she intended to do precisely that.

She'd only just finished completing her ensemble for the evening when Philippe knocked on her chamber door. She'd sensed his presence long before he'd reached the threshold, and now she hurriedly re-examined her reflection in the mirror a final time before rushing to admit him.

"Mon petit," he said, and the smile on his face instantly brought one to her own. "You are ravishing, as always."

She nodded in appreciation. "Merci. Your servants have been so very helpful. I'd quite forgotten how wonderful it is to be waited upon. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it."

"Then you shall never be without them again. That I promise you." He proffered an arm, which Janette accepted without hesitation. "Would my lady care to join me for an evening's repast?"

"The lady would be delighted."

She'd expected, then, that he would escort her out into the hall and down the stairs. His sudden embrace and passionate kiss came as a surprise, though hardly one that she minded. She succumbed to it willingly. But for the first time since her... what should she call it?... awakening, two images intruded on her state of bliss.

Two faces.

The first belonged to Nicolas. She had the vaguely uncomfortable feeling that he was in some sort of distress. Yet she could scarcely bring herself to care. He had meant the world to her once. But her world was very different now.

The second intruder she found rather more difficult to dismiss. LaCroix had been her master – her life – for a millennium. Yesterday, when she had first begun to fall under Philippe's irresistible spell, she remembered mentally calling out to LaCroix, an impulse that had quickly passed. But the impression that he had not only heard, but was responding to that call, persisted. She could feel him moving closer. Coming to rescue her, perhaps?

But Janette no longer wish to be rescued. How odd that she'd ever thought it necessary in the first place. She belonged here. This was right. And nothing must be allowed to change it.

She drew back from the kiss, stung by the sudden nagging fear that unlike Nicolas, LaCroix might well be more than a match for Philippe's extraordinary abilities. And if Philippe were harmed...

"What is it?" He had already sensed her discomfort. There would be nothing she could do to hide the truth from him, not even if she'd wanted to. "Tell me what's wrong, my love. What troubles you?"

"Can you feel it?" She closed her eyes, aware of the ever-nearing, centuries-old vibration that was, unmistakably, LaCroix. "He's coming. LaCroix is coming."

Philippe's dark eyes glittered, though they betrayed no sense of alarm. "Is he?" Neither did alarm nor surprise lurk in his voice. "Well then, we shall simply have to prepare a suitable greeting for him, when he arrives."

Lost in his gaze, Janette found herself wondering why she'd even begun to worry. LaCroix would pose no threat. He and Nicolas were the past. Her future now lay elsewhere.

"Shall we go?" Philippe again offered her his arm, and again, Janette accepted it, more than happy to permit the master of the manor to escort her down to dinner.

Nick's head was splitting.

Curare's after-effects were, on an order of at least ten, far worse than any mortal hangover he'd ever suffered. Clarise must have dosed him with enough of the noxious stuff to kill twenty mortals.

He came to in what appeared to be a wine cellar. There was little light, but he could make out the hulking, shadowy shapes of the huge fermentation vats, and he could definitely smell their puissant contents. The odor of it only served to make his head throb more painfully than before.

In the next moment, still more unpleasantly, he discovered that his hands and ankles were shackled to the metal arms and legs of the chair he occupied, and that the weakening effect of the curare prevented him from using vampire strength to snap the bonds. He was engaged in trying to break them just the same when soft footsteps heralded Clarise's return.

The overhead flourescents came on, nearly blinding him with blue-white light. He closed his eyes against the glare, waiting until she'd made her way down the creaking wooden stairs to the cellar floor. Then, when he sensed that she stood directly in front of him, he waited several calculated moments more before finally opening his eyes and facing her with the coldest stare his aching head would allow.

Clarise responded with a humorless smile, equally cold. "You are the different one, aren't you," she said, with a curl to her lip that confirmed it was no compliment. "Dosed with both the serum and curare, and still resisting. I wouldn't have thought it possible."

With both hands, he jerked at the restraints, surging forward in the chair as though to attack her. He still couldn't break free, but the violent movement had the desired effect on Clarise. She stepped backward, checking her flight only when she saw that he remained chained.

"This really won't do," she scolded, and her right hand slipped into a pocket from which it retrieved a capped hypodermic, filled with a milky pink fluid. "It really won't do at all."

The hypo's plastic cap, also a sickly shade of pink, popped off with a flick of her thumb and bounced away into the shadows on the concrete floor. No amount of straining against his bonds could deflect the needle. In true vampire fashion, Clarise went straight for the jugular vein, jabbing him just under the left ear.

Roget's serum, whatever it was, had the nearly-immediate effect of worsening his headache and setting the rest of his veins on fire. When he tried to twist away from her, she grabbed a handful of his hair and held him fast until she'd emptied the hypo of its vile contents. Then she yanked the needle free, and with a sneer, shoved his head against the wall behind the chair.

"No one is going to stop us, deBrabant. Least of all you."

Nick had trouble making sense of her words over the painful roaring in his skull, brought on by both chemicals and the impact with the concrete wall. Something not unlike a turbine engine had taken up noisy residence in his head, and he could feel his eyes turning crimson. A rage surged through him unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. He didn't remember snapping the chains, but in the next moment he found himself across the room with a flailing Clarise beneath him, fighting to break free. He pinned her arms, and oblivious to her cries, allowed the vampire's ravaging hunger to overpower all else. He attacked her with savage abandon, delighting in every last drop of her blood. He didn't stop until there was no more to be had, until she lay drained and gasping under his restraining grasp.

Nick stood without offering her any aid. He watched with cold eyes as she struggled to her feet, weaker than a human child, and stumbled away to a corner of the cellar, where several wine bottles gathered dust in a wooden rack. She snatched one free of its cradle, uncorked it and drank deeply, glaring back at him with glowing amber eyes.

He made no apologies. In his rage, he'd narrowly avoided smashing one of those racks and driving a shard of the wood through her heart. He might manage it yet.

"Where is Janette?" he demanded again, this time in the vampire's deep bass growl. "What has Roget done to her?"

She didn't answer. Instead, she shoved the emptied bottle back into the wine rack and yanked out another. As she proceeded to drink from the new one, he started toward her, intent on choking an answer from her if he had to.

Something stopped him midway across the floor.

He staggered, reached out, and found the flimsy support of a small table to steady himself while a bizarre, dizzying sensation of euphoria began to overwhelm him.

Was this what Roget's drug was supposed to do? He felt like flying, like floating to the ceiling and laughing hysterically, like hugging Clarise to him and...

No.

No, he would not succumb to this!

But it would be so easy. So easy, just to let go, to surrender to this simple, unconditional bliss. Why shouldn't he?

He looked up to find Clarise standing directly in front of him with yet another bottle of Roget's special vintage in hand. The wounds left on her throat by his attack had already healed, though the trails of blood they'd produced still remained. She proffered the bottle with a knowing smile, apparently aware that her injection (and perhaps the double dosage provided by her blood?) had finally begun to take effect.

"Chaser?" she queried, and pressed the cold, smooth bottle into his hands. "You understand now, don't you?"

He did, though not completely. There had been visions in her blood of some grand plan that Roget was about to undertake. He knew that it somehow involved the serum and all of those oh-so-complacent mortal workers. He knew that their devotion to Roget was absolute, and he could feel the compulsion – it bordered, in fact, on a need – to pledge his own loyalty to the same cause, whatever it might be.

He answered Clarise's query with an agreeable smile, and uncorked the bottle to take a long and very satisfying drink. Apparently, she took that as an affirmation. Good.

"I knew it." She sounded pleased. "No mortal or vampire has ever resisted the serum for long. Though you may have set a record for holding out longer than anyone has ever done before." She edged closer, and seductively slipped one hand around his neck while she reclaimed the bottle with the other. "You may be an aberration among vampires, chevalier," she breathed. "But you are far from unattractive."

He permitted the kiss, if only because the close contact allowed him to search her vibrations for some explanation of Roget's "great cause." All he found, however, was reaffirmation of just how slavishly devoted to the man she truly was.

That realization brought his barely-suppressed anger surging back again. With an effort, he fought it back into submission and concentrated on returning Clarise's kiss with a passion he didn't feel.

"I'm more than pleased to join the cause," he whispered to her between kisses. "Though I still don't know what it is."

The direct question seemed to unsettle her for a moment. She pulled away, taking another long drink from the bottle before she answered him. "Philippe will tell all of you of his plans, later tonight at the villa. You've joined us on the eve of our triumph, Nicolas."

He had to stifle the urge to press her further. Instead, he affected an insipid smile and said, "I shall patiently look forward to this evening, then." He used the same flat inflection he'd heard in the vineyard workers' voices, and the ploy seemed to further appease her. She nodded, as though to acknowledge his compliance, and then turned to head for the stairs.

"Come," she said without looking back at him. "I will escort you to the villa."

Still feigning compliance, Nick followed close behind her. All trace of the euphoria had vanished now, subsumed once again by both his anger and the raging headache that continued to plague him. When they had reached ground level, Clarise took to the air and again, he followed. They were halfway to the hillside villa when his vampire senses tingled with an old and very familiar vibration from somewhere very close by.

Nick smiled, confident now that Roget's mysterious plans were about to be derailed.

LaCroix had arrived.

The signatures were all wrong.

Janette and Nicholas were here; of that, LaCroix was certain. But something – or someone – was trying to impede their mental link to him. And that was something he would, plain and simply, not permit.

This busy little vineyard on the outskirts of Paris was somehow too busy tonight. Why were all those mortals streaming toward the villa perched on the hillside? Ah, but they weren't all mortals, he realized. There were vampires among them as well, walking with them. All but two. Two were in flight overhead, aiming for the house as well, and one of them...

One of them was Nicholas.

LaCroix lifted silently from his observation point atop one of the warehouses, and made for the stately house as well. It was, he thought, high time he got to the bottom of this.

The villa's massive great hall had been prepared for grand festivities indeed. Glowing candles and be-ribboned floral arrangements lined the walls and adorned the multitude of tables. An impressive array of food and libation, both mortal and vampire, sat waiting at the head tables down front. It all looked rather much like a medieval wedding feast.

Was someone getting married? Surely not Nicholas. He'd tried that foolhardy union with a mortal once before, with predictably disastrous results. Besides, he'd come to this city quite thoroughly "wed" to Janette once again, which arrangement suited his master just fine. So... what was he doing here? Who was that young female vampire with him? And where was Janette?

He found a shadowed niche to the left of the head tables, and settled in to watch as the hall filled with oddly silent observers. In his experience, most mortals at such a celebration would be far more talkative, inclined to chatter and laugh. These, however...

One of his questions was shortly answered when Janette, wearing an exquisite burgundy-colored gown, walked out onto the platform accompanied by a vampire whose arrogant visage LaCroix had hoped never to encounter again.

Roget.

It had been over two centuries since they had last crossed paths – and locked horns. Now, it appeared, they would be doing so again. No one came between LaCroix and his children.

No one.

But this odd scenario was becoming more strange by the moment. Janette – his Janette – looked directly at him with no spark of recognition whatsoever in her eyes. Nicholas and the thin young vampire who'd been flying with him shortly mounted the platform as well. They, too, looked in his direction. The woman glanced away again at once, but Nicholas held his gaze a moment longer. Long enough for the mental thread that had joined them for eight hundred years to vibrate slightly.

So, Janette may have fallen under Roget's peculiar enchantment, but Nicholas... Nicholas, if LaCroix read those vibrations correctly, remained unfettered by the Frenchman's egomaniacal charms. Excellent.

Like father, like son. They would defeat this interloper together, then.

"Ah, Lucien." Roget had swept a hand toward his alcove. "So good of you to join us. Now the little family truly is all together." He placed a possessive hand on Janette's shoulder, and the words that followed were obviously intended to goad. "Janette, my love," he said, "why don't you pour your former master a glass of our very special vintage?"

While his apparently mesmerized daughter obeyed the command, LaCroix stepped defiantly out into the amber-hewed light, a move that, in and of itself, challenged Roget's authority. "Your love?" he rasped, loudly enough for the waiting multitude to hear him. "She is neither, Roget. I will not permit you to take her from us."

The familiar arrogance LaCroix remembered from their last encounter flashed in Roget's near-black eyes. "Really?" he smirked. "Come now, my dear old friend. When you have tasted our wine, I promise you'll see things quite differently."

Janette – his beautiful Janette – had come down off the dais to offer him a glass of Roget's libation. In her lovely blue eyes there was no hint of recognition, no acknowledgment of their millennium-long association at all. His mental ties to her, and hers to Nicholas, had been severed, or suppressed so completely that it amounted to the same thing, and the emptiness left by that rending was a deep and gaping wound for both of them. He could feel that loss seething in Nicholas' vibrations, a fury barely contained, waiting for the right moment to explode.

LaCroix  took the glass from his daughter, glaring up at Roget as he did so. And from Nicholas, he felt a sudden and urgent sense of danger – a warning, no doubt, not to drink this swill. Yet he also sensed that Nicholas himself had been dosed with it, and had, judging from the rage that broiled in him while he feigned compliance, eluded falling under its spell.

How very like his Nicholas to resist where no one else apparently had.

No one, that is, until now.

Like father, like son. And, of course, vice versa. He would rise to the challenge.

Lifting the glass, he toasted Roget's look of smug reassurance, returning one of his own, then downed the contents of the glass in a single motion.

Nicholas looked briefly alarmed. Roget went on looking smug. The beautiful Janette wore no expression at all. For several protracted moments, LaCroix felt nothing. Then, swiftly, the poison began doing its insidious work. Or trying to. He could feel it invading his senses like some hideous, tentacled beast, dragging with it a nauseatingly sweet euphoria that made his ancient stomach churn. He repressed a disgusted grimace and instead schooled his features to imitate the bovine-like stare on the faces of Roget's waiting audience.

And that quite obviously pleased the wine peddler very much.

"As I thought," he gloated, "you see the truth of it now. Come, Lucien. Join us. We have some very important matters to discuss."

LaCroix could have cheerfully snapped the man's neck then and there. He had a fleeting but pleasant vision of dropping Roget's severed head into the murky depths of the Seine. But he forced himself to affect a fawning smile, and putting aside the empty wine glass, accepted the hand Janette had extended. He permitted her to escort him to the table, where he stood fifth in a line comprising Nicholas and his companion, and Roget with Janette held close by his side. A number of servants had shuffled into view from somewhere and placed freshly-filled glasses in front of them all. The wine merchant plucked one of these from the table and held it aloft in a toast to the waiting crowd.

"My friends," Roget announced in a stentorian voice, "and to our dear Clarise, Nicholas, Lucien and the lovely Janette. To your health."

The multitude rose to its feet. Hundreds of hands lifted hundreds of glasses in near-perfect unison to return the toast. LaCroix followed suit, though he noted that, like himself, Nicholas merely pretended to drink the undoubtedly doctored concoction. No use tempting fate. LaCroix considered one dose of the vile stuff more than enough.

"With each of you," Roget went on, "the new world begins this night." New world? What twaddle was this? "Each of you has received a package containing your destination and travel arrangements, as well as a vial of the serum and instructions as to how it may be introduced into each city's water supply. By tomorrow, the world will know your joy, as you will have shared it with them all." LaCroix saw Nicholas' eyes widen, and felt a definite surge of alarm in his vibrations. "But before you depart," Roget was continuing, "we will share a feast together, both to celebrate the eve of our victory, and..." He placed his glass back on the table and possessively claimed Janette's hand instead, lifting it toward his audience in formal presentation. "May I introduce the ravishing Lady Janette, who has most graciously agreed to become, when our new world is in place, my consort and my queen."

LaCroix heard nothing more of the speech. The blood rushing in his ears drowned out all else, and his eyes had begun to glow red, forcing him to turn away. He could feel the exact same reaction rising in Nicholas, and so re-focused his energy into a mental warning.

Not yet, Nicholas, not yet. The time is not yet right. Quelling the fire in his eyes, he turned back to face his son. In between them, Roget was still holding Janette's hand, still speaking, but LaCroix heard only his own silent words to Nicholas. Concentrate, he admonished. We must reach Janette. She will return to us. Together, we will see to that, you and I.

Five distinct words came back to him across their link, emphasized by the growing wrath that smoldered in Nicholas' eyes.

He will not have her!

No. Nor she him. No one takes my family from me. No one.

By unspoken agreement then, they broke contact with each other, and turned their attentions to the spellbound Janette. Standing near enough to touch her, though he did not, LaCroix was delighted to find that her connection to him, though strongly muted, remained within her. Now, he and Nicholas need only probe far enough to resurrect it.

They and Roget's congregation had been politely ordered to sit and enjoy the repast. While he pretended to sip more of his tainted libation, LaCroix focused his attention on Janette while the servants began doling out food and drink to the primarily mortal audience. The hall grew noisy with the sounds of clattering china and murmured conversation.

The meal dragged on for what seemed an eternity, but LaCroix continued his assault against Janette's mental barriers. Something abruptly intruded on his efforts, however. It was a sensation of sheer hatred so intense that he thought at first it had come from Nicholas, directed at Roget. But its source proved to be the young female vampire at Nicholas' side. Roget had called her Clarise. And her wrath was indeed intended for the wine merchant.

Strange. Surely she was another of the man's drugged minions, loyal to the very core? LaCroix took a moment to study her dark eyes: they glared at Roget and Janette in equal turns, burning with an emotion he needed no vampiric power to divine.

How telling, and how very, very amusing. Roget's subjugating potion was apparently no match for the proverbial green-eyed monster of jealousy. Had the role of queen and consort been hers until now? And had she learned of the usurpation only with Roget's impetuous announcement a moment ago?

So it would appear.

Nicholas had discerned the woman's feelings as well, judging from his glances between her and the soon-to-be-unhappy couple. Roget, however, seemed oblivious to the silent barrage of enmity surrounding him, engrossed as he was in sharing a goblet of human vintage with his thoroughly enchanted "intended."

Good. The less he was aware of their efforts, the greater their advantage would be. LaCroix fixed his eyes on Janette and reasserted his quest to break through the obscuring fog. In a moment, he sensed that Nicholas had once again joined him there.

The tedious dinner concluded at last, and once more Roget rose to address his devotees.

"And now the new world begins," he said pompously. "When each of you has disseminated the concentrated elixir and returned to us, you will be rewarded for your service. Go now."

The disturbingly quiet mob rose as a single unit and obediently filed toward the exits. LaCroix paid them no heed. He, and consequently Nicholas, had at last found a faint glimmer of the Janette they had  known. LaCroix latched onto that spark, and immediately exerted all the mental force that his considerable age and power allowed him.

You belong to us, Janette. To Nicholas, and to me. We are your family. You must remember that. You must return to us!

When she turned to look at him, breaking Roget's grip on her hand, LaCroix thought, for a fleeting moment, that he had succeeded. He did see recognition in her eyes, but there was also raw, abject terror. And worse, Roget had at last realized that something untoward was going on here. He reached to take her hand again, but in the same moment, Nicholas had stepped in to intervene, claiming the hand instead.

"Janette..."

"Non!"

She eluded them both and bolted in a panic from the platform, half-running, half-flying to the floor below, where the last of the departing congregation turned back to stare at her with drug-dulled curiosity. Roget and Nicholas both rushed after her, but this time the vintner brooked no interference. He dealt Nicholas a blow that sent the younger vampire reeling away to crash through and overturn several tiers of burning candles. He struck the banquet hall's stone wall with stunning force, went down and stayed there.

Roget had grasped Janette's arm and spun her violently around to face him. But she resisted him, fighting his hold on her both physically and mentally. From up on the platform, where he had calmly stood his ground, LaCroix smiled.

You will come back to us, he told her again, and this time he knew by her response that he'd touched her core, her spirit, her innermost being. She looked up at him with eyes that were no longer fearful and mouthed his name, clearly pleading for his help. Before he could reassure her, however, Roget asserted his own considerable mental controls, and with a firm grip on her chin, forced Janette to look at him once more.

The effect on the fragilely restored familial link, not unlike a door slamming shut, wrenched an ancient Roman oath from LaCroix, and prompted him to leave the dais with every intention of separating Roget's pompous head from his body.

Midway across the floor, he halted at the loud report of two gunshots behind him and the sharp sting of two bullets piercing his back. What should have been no more than a minor annoyance drove him instantly to his knees as the crippling effects of both curare and another dose of Roget's serum began taking an instant toll. He could not regain his feet, but forced himself to remain upright on his knees, striving to see who had shot him.

His answer – the one called Clarise – marched past him a moment later, the gun still in her hand, to accept her master's smiling praises.

"Oh, well done, my darling Clarise, well done." He remained oblivious, apparently, to the jealousy still lurking in her eyes. A pity it hadn't been enough to sway her allegiance.

LaCroix tried again to rise, only to find, to his consternation, that his legs would not obey him. At the snap of Roget's fingers, two of the mortals who remained in the hall came to stand on either side of him, securing his position with their hands on his shoulders.

A calculated insult, that. The ancient and powerful Lucien LaCroix, overcome by two mere mortals. And Roget was enjoying every moment of it. His opportunity to gloat, however, was interrupted by Nicholas, who had roused and started toward the wine merchant with obvious, murderous intent.

Two more of Roget's minions, both vampires, checked him in flight and bore him back to the wall, pinning him there and standing vigil, as LaCroix's mortal guards were doing, on either side of him.

"Well now..." Roget clucked his tongue as though he were scolding an errant child. "Two resistant aberrations in one family. What am I to do with you?"

"Damn you!" Nicholas swore at him. "Why are you doing this?"

"Why?" Roget echoed the word somewhat incredulously, as though Nicholas should already know the answer. "If only you had truly joined us, you'd have no need to ask why."

"Subduing all the world's populace with his potion is why," LaCroix provided. How very like Roget, with his monumental hubris, to embark on a mission no less ambitious than conquering the world. "And once that is done, all mortals and all vampires alike will belong to one vast, united kingdom – albeit an enslaved one – with Roget, of course, its sole king and emperor."

Roget turned on him with a snarl. "And why not? I am the one – the only one – they will all follow. It is not merely the drug, but my power that binds them. And you yourself have always said that we are the superior species. How better to improve this pathetic, dying world than for one of our own to take and rule it?"

From the wall, Nicholas scoffed at him. "You would hardly be the first megalomaniac to try," he said. "Nor the first to fail."

Roget ignored the taunt, turning his attention instead to Janette. He drew her to him and assumed an admonishing, parental tone of voice. "You'll forgive me, my love, if I must now ask you to prove your fealty. But I must be certain that this unfortunate rebellious streak does not infect you as well."

With one hand, he snatched up one of the nearby wooden chairs, and in a single, savage motion, smashed it against the table. Dishes flew and shattered along with the splintering wood. Roget then shook free one pointed length of the chair's frame, and pressed one end of that into Janette's hand.

"First the sire," he growled, "and then the sibling. Your test of faith, my queen."

And with that blunt command he stepped away from her, to stand and wait with the faintest of expectant smiles on his smugly handsome face.

With a cry of outrage, Nicholas made an abortive effort to escape his captors and was again slammed back against the wall for his trouble. Unable to move, LaCroix concentrated on trying to recapture Janette's gaze, seeking any vestige of the bond he'd touched in her just moments ago. But she would not look at him. Her eyes remained fixed upon nothing at all as she raised the stake over her right shoulder, and as LaCroix's mortal guardians held him fast, began moving toward him with the weapon poised to strike.

Do not listen to him, Janette. He has no right to command you. You belong with us – with me and with Nicholas.

He couldn't be certain that his thoughts were reaching her now, but he continued to send them. And he dared to attempt a command of his own. Turn around, mon fille. Turn and thrust that splinter into the heart of the monster whose arrogance would presume to steal you from your family. Do it. Do it now!

She kept coming, stopping just inches in front of him and lifting the stake higher above her head, prepared to plunge it downward.

"Janette! No!" That hoarse cry from Nicholas seemed, for the faintest of moments, to give her pause.

It gave LaCroix just enough time to send a final message to his son. A touching plea, mon Nicolas. I didn't know you cared.

The deadly shard of wood began its plunge toward his heart...

...and froze an inch short of its goal.

A gunshot, deafeningly close, had arrested Janette's strike. Clarise marched into LaCroix's field of vision with a gun in her hand. Had she shot Janette with her curare-tainted bullets?

No, not Janette. LaCroix looked up to see Roget turn and lunge at his jilted protegé in a blind fury.

She pumped three more bullets into him in rapid succession. He stopped in his tracks and emitted a howl of rage, but somehow remained on his feet – until Janette suddenly let forth a sobbing oath of "Damn you!", wheeled and savagely plunged the stake deep into Roget's back.

For a bizarre, suspended moment, no one moved.

Then, in the same instant, the thralls holding both Nicholas and LaCroix abruptly released them. And Janette...

LaCroix winced. His beautiful Janette, who had thankfully heard him after all, clamped both hands to her head as though in intense pain and began to scream.

Roget had stumbled into one of the banquet tables and was now leaning over it, desperately trying with both hands to reach around and grasp the deadly length of wood protruding from his back. By sheer and dogged persistence, LaCroix struggled to his feet and managed to force his feet to move. Nicholas had already flown into their midst and was gathering the hysterical Janette into his arms. LaCroix, however, made his way to the table, where he whispered two malevolent words into the flailing wine merchant's ear.

"Allow me," he said, and then with a vengeance, drove the stake in until it not only pierced Roget's heart, but pinned him, like the insect that he was, to the table.

Janette's screams cut off abruptly, and she went limp in Nicholas' embrace. Clarise and the others in the hall had all collapsed, as though their lives had ceased in the same moment their master had perished. Apparently fearing the same, Nicholas had placed a hand to Janette's throat, desperately searching for some sign of the vampire's infrequent pulse. His stricken expression said that he hadn't found one.

"She can't..." Tears choked off the rest of Nicholas' words.

"Of course she can't." The desperation in his son's voice drove LaCroix to answer before even he was certain. He gently took Janette from Nicholas' arms, placing his own fingers over the vein in her throat. He found the pulse almost at once, and nodded to Nicholas in affirmation. "She's unconscious. As are they all."

Nicholas appeared to remember, of a sudden, what Roget's minions had been on their way to do. He bolted to the doorway, peered outside, then turned back with a relieved look on his face.

"They're all over the courtyard out there. All of them out cold."

LaCroix settled Janette into a chair, placing her in what he hoped was a comfortable position, then rose to cast a jaundiced look at Roget's corpse. "He said that the sheer force of his will held them together. Apparently, that was more than mere egotism."

"We have to destroy it," Nicholas said. "Every ounce they were carrying and the lab it was produced in. All of it."

"Agreed." Pleased to find that his legs would now support him, LaCroix approached Roget's body and regarded it with cold indifference. "I'm afraid we will also have to dispose of the rubbish." He mock-dusted his hands in anticipation. "Well, Nicholas, shall we begin? It appears we have a great deal of work to do."

With a fire crackling on the hearth and soft music lilting from the stereo speakers, Nick could almost imagine that he'd never been away. His loft, his sanctum sanctorum, somehow felt more welcoming each time he returned to it. The only difference this time was that he would no longer occupy it alone.

Curled up at his side on the leather couch, Janette clung to him and stared morosely into the flames. "I will never understand it, Nicolas. He was able to control me so easily! One dose of his poison and I could think of nothing but Roget. Nothing! And I came so close to killing LaCroix at his bidding. So close..."

When the last word became a sob, Nick cradled her against him and stroked her hair. "It's all right, love," he whispered. "You overcame him in the end. You won. That's all that matters."

She sobbed for a while, and he could do nothing but hold her and murmur soothing sounds between caresses.

"I'm so tired, mon coeur," she said when the wracking sobs had at last subsided. "So very tired. I feel as though all my years, all one thousand years, have caught up with me at once."

"It's nothing that time and rest won't cure." He lifted her head, and with a gentle stroke of his hand, dried her crimson tears. "Go on upstairs," he said. "I'll be along in a moment."

She nodded in weary agreement, and then slowly made her way up the stairs. She'd only just reached the landing when the door of Nick's loft slid aside, and Natalie Lambert stood on the threshold, backlit by the elevator's pale yellow light.

"Hello, Nick." Her voice was hesitant, the situation undoubtedly awkward for her. "LaCroix told me you were back. Could I...?"

"Come on in, Nat." Nick rose from the couch, turning as he did to look up at the landing, where Janette leaned on the rail, smiling tiredly down at them.

"Good evening, Natalie," she said. "How very nice to see you again." Once, there might have been sarcasm in that remark. But no venom infused Janette's words now. Even if she'd possessed the energy to snipe, there would, after all, no longer be a reason, would there?

Natalie looked up, returning a nervous smile of her own. "Hello, Janette."

"You will forgive me, I hope," Janette told her. "I was about to retire."

"Yes, of course. I... I only wanted to speak with Nick for a moment. I'm sorry if I'm..."

"It's all right, Nat," Nick reassured her, and then to Janette he said softly, "Get some rest, mon cher. I'll be along in a few minutes."

He turned back, as Janette disappeared into the bedroom, to find Natalie standing beside the fire, her expression unmistakably one of disappointment.

"LaCroix didn't elaborate," she said. "But he did say that Janette had been through quite an ordeal."

"She'll be fine, in time. And Nat..." He knew of no other way to say this. "Don't ever think that I didn't appreciate your efforts to find a cure. I did. I still do. But for now, for as long as she needs me, I'm going to accept what I am, even if I don't re-embrace its every aspect. Janette and I are..."

"Married. Yes, I know." More disappointment lurked in her tone. But he was sure he heard a hint of resignation as well. "I only came to say that if... when you want to try again, I'll be here for you, Nick. And I'm going to keep looking for that cure. I guess I just don't know how to give up. I never did."

"I know." Nick grasped her shoulders and gently, chastely, kissed her on the forehead. "Thank you, Nat. For everything."

With a nod and a tight smile of self-dismissal, she said, "Good night, Nick," and then quickly made her way back to the lift.

He let her go. It was too late anyway, with dawn's light creeping in through the loft's windows, to accompany her outside.

Nick pointed his remote at the ceiling, and in another moment, the shutters had rumbled down to once again close out the day. Then he headed up the stairs toward the bedroom, and Janette.

It was time to rest.