Author's Note:
This story is rated R for vampire-style sexual situations, but is not otherwise deemed “adult” (at least, not by the author). Many thanks to Nancy Kaminski and Sunny Maghsoudi for proofreading! (Yeah, proofreading. “Beta-reading” [where the heck was the “alpha-reading,” anyway?] is a geek term this old English major/writing teacher doesn’t recognize. Sorry.)

The Raven’s last dance of the evening had ended, its final patron wandering out into the chill Toronto night to leave the club in near-total silence.

For once, Janette welcomed the transition. Only Miklos’ footsteps marred the quiet as he delivered a bottle of the cellar’s finest vintage to her private table, then wisely departed without comment. Alma and the rest of her resident flock had made themselves scarce as well. The Raven’s mistress, they discerned, was in no mood for company this night.

The only visitor she wished to see had not come near the club in months. Not since the night she had pried from him the truth about what had become of LaCroix. Most of their kind would probably say that it should end there. But mourn though she might for their lost sire, she had not – could not – purge Nicolas from her heart.

Nicolas was her heart.

She had spent centuries trying to deny it, centuries hating herself for ever having sent him away. Perhaps if she had stayed with him in Venice, he would never have drifted so far from the flock, never developed his all-consuming fixation with regaining his humanity.

“Humanity,” she told the bright red fluid in her glass, “is like virginity, mon Nicolas. Once you have lost it...” She vented a lengthy sigh.

Now that same fixation had driven Nicolas to destroy LaCroix. She wanted to hate him for that. For months, she had been trying with all her might to hate him.

And she might just as well try to strike down the moon.

Impossible, of course, to purge a part of oneself – as impossible as trying to bring back virginity. Or mortality.

A deep draught of the blood wine, and she permitted herself to indulge the vivid memory of a time long ago in Vienna. Nicolas had returned with LaCroix, angry and sullen, after many months spent in that wearisome battle for Constantinople. It had taken weeks for his brooding to end. But when he had at last allowed her back into his bed and heart... Ah, those were sweet memories indeed.

No lover she had taken in a thousand years had ever begun to compare. No one, not even LaCroix, had ever cherished her as Nicolas had done. So much so that she had not known, then, how to deal with his devotion, with his possession. Yet for a while, in Vienna, they had possessed one another, and known bliss.

The simple stroke of his hand upon bare throat or breast could send passion like no other coursing through her. His kisses brought a fire of their own, long before they pierced flesh to draw blood from her veins. She could remember every curve of his body, every sculptured muscle preserved in its prime by LaCroix’s gift. And she remembered the ardent desperation of his lovemaking, as though she might vanish into smoke at any moment. As though he might lose her.

But for her own foolishness, he might not have lost her. Not ever.

“Reminiscing?”

The pleasantly erotic memory dissolved at once into present-day Nicolas, sitting close beside her at the table. So close, in fact...

He kissed her, and she lustily responded to the ardor. If this was a fantasy, she had no intention of allowing it to end soon. When their lips parted, however, Nicolas remained.

“As a matter of fact,” she breathed, “I was thinking of Vienna. Of our time together there. Perhaps...” She offered him the glass. “...you would care to share with me a pleasing recollection or two?”

A forlorn hope. This was, after all, a Nicolas so far removed from his own kind that she had not even sensed his arrival.

He shook his head, and she withdrew the glass, placing it back on the table. Happily, however, he did not spurn her reciprocation of his kiss, nor her playful nibbling at his ear.

“You stayed away so long,” she whispered, “that I thought you would not come again.”

“I didn’t think you...” He left the rest unsaid, and just as well. Better, perhaps, not to speak of LaCroix just yet. She had, however, just felt the faintest wisp of their once strong bond stirring somewhere deep within him. She could not read the emotion, and it was vanquished again before she could try.

He doused the flames of ardor altogether then by sitting back and pulling a manila envelope from the pocket of his long black coat. “A favor?” he said.

Merde. So this was about some vapid mortal police matter, else he would not have come at all. The request for a favor would once have presaged a diverting tryst in her boudoir. Now, her fervent lover of centuries past lay submerged beneath this rigid, tiresomely mortal persona, this “Detective Nick Knight.” If only he knew how much she loathed that truncated abomination of his beautiful name...

“Oh.” She allowed her disappointment to fully inculcate the word. “Please, Nicolas. Not another of your tedious mortal homicides.”

“Something like that.” Purposely oblivious to her frustration, he opened the envelope to produce a newspaper clipping, unfolding and smoothing it against the table with his long, graceful fingers. She envied the paper.

Aware that he was waiting for a response, she forced herself to feign interest in the clipping. It depicted a most unattractive mortal in a rumpled business suit and the caption, “Veldyne CEO Mark Goffman leaves court, acquitted of multiple racketeering charges.”

Janette shrugged and took another sip of the blood wine. “So what has an ugly little mortal in a cheap suit to do with me?”

His gaze lingered for a moment on the glass in her hand, and again she felt the faint, faraway stirring of their severed bond. “Probably nothing,” he answered, tearing his gaze away from the “wine” with a visible effort. “Goffman’s a small cog in a much bigger wheel, but he’s a mini-Teflon Don just the same. Nothing we’ve thrown at him ever sticks.”

Her expression said well enough just how utterly boring she found all of this, but of course, Nicolas remained characteristically oblivious. “We did have a tip not long ago,” he said, “that some of his less savory ‘employees’ were into the goth club scene. Maybe you wouldn’t mind taking a look at a few pictures?”

“Mm.” She schooled her lips into a small pout. “Does that mean I must come down to that terribly noisy bull ring of yours?”

He laughed, a sound she had not heard from him in years. “Bull pen,” he corrected. “And no, you don’t have to come into the precinct. We can call up the database from my loft.”

Ah, the wonders of mortal technology. This, at least, had possibilities.

She retrieved the wine glass from the table. “Tonight?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Well...” She swirled the thick red contents of the glass, and tempted him again with its bouquet. “It is only a few hours until dawn. Suppose I should become so very engrossed in your photographs that I am trapped and forced to spend the day?”

He smiled and kissed her chastely on the cheek, feigning disinterest in her proposition. But she had seen the spark if interest in his eyes, and felt yet again the stirring of their tenuous connection. Promising. Most promising.

“See you in an hour?” he said. “I have to stop back by the precinct and book off.”

“And I must finish closing up. Very well. An hour then.”

He left without the parting kiss she had hoped for, perhaps because her human beverage had begun to weaken his resolve. Which reminded her... She had best take along her own refreshment. Nicolas’ loft would stock only that vile bovine swill which, for the past century, he had forced himself to drink.

Shuddering, she went to examine the night’s receipts and complete the Raven’s closing.

She always found a flight through Toronto’s late night sky refreshing. Now if only she could remember just where to find that warehouse Nicolas called a home.

Once, before this quest for mortality had become his all-consuming passion, she would have found him quite easily by following the bond’s vibrations.  Nicolas’ had always been a particularly strong pulsation. But he had suppressed the vampire so thoroughly of late, she could scarcely sense him at all. No wonder LaCroix had arrived in Toronto in so foul a mood. Not that his rage had saved him...

She curtailed that thought as the broad roof and rusting water tower of the loft tilted into view beneath her.  She landed without a sound, a full bottle of human vintage safely cradled in the black silk folds of her cloak, and effortlessly lifted the heavy glass pane of the skylight.

She drew back at once when voices floated up from the room below.

“Never mind how I got in,” someone said. “If I want to talk to you, Knight, no security system’s going to stop me. And I do want to talk to you.”

Nicolas’ soft voice responded, deceptively calm. “With a gun in your hand?”

She slipped to another side of the skylight, the better to peer down into the room. From this angle, she could see the ugly little man from the news clipping – Goffman, wasn’t it? – aiming a ridiculous mortal weapon at Nicolas’ heart. One could probably safely assume that he had not thought to load it with wooden bullets.

“I just stopped in,” the man was saying, “to ask the relentless Detective Knight one question.”

Nicolas humored him. “And what would that be?”

“What’s your price? How much to leave me and my company alone?”

A deliciously familiar, dangerous tone infused Nicolas’ voice then. “I’d be careful if I were you. Breaking and entering, brandishing a firearm, attempted bribery of a law enforcement officer...”

“Come off it, Knight.” The mortal gestured with his useless gun. “You have a price. Everyone does.”

In the shadows above the skylight, Janette smiled to herself. You could not pay his price, mortal, she thought. Not even I can give him the only thing he now desires.

“I’m afraid you’re wasting your time, Goffman.” Nicolas had not said “Mister Goffman,” and she could see the mortal bristle at this deliberate slight. She had always admired Nicolas’ ability to so patiently bait and tease the prey.

“Well now, that’s a pity.” The swagger in Goffman’s voice proved how thoroughly ignorant he was of his own peril. “Because Boyer here gets very upset when somebody wastes my time. Don’t you, Boyer?”

What was this? A second mortal? Janette moved to yet another angle, craning to see. There was indeed a second one – a hideously fat one with oily hair – emerging from the loft’s stairwell with a large, ugly rifle pointed at...

Nicolas spun toward the new intruder, and she felt an abrupt surge of rage flare in him as the vampire began to emerge. But it did not emerge nearly fast enough.

Boyer’s rifle fired twice, slamming hard against his shoulder each time. The twin explosions echoed so loudly that her ears ached. And Nicolas, taken completely by surprise, stumbled for a moment before turning back to glare at Goffman with eyes that had suddenly gone gold.

Both mortals gaped. With an oath, Boyer fired again. This time his target, hit in the back, went down, and to Janette’s amazement, stayed there.

It took all of her willpower not to fly in and kill both men then and there, but she forced back her own rising fury and watched a bit longer. In a moment, the “dead” victim would get up again. If his would-be assassins did not expire of heart failure from that sight alone, well, Nicolas would doubtless prefer to deal with them on his own.

Yet, while the mortals moved to stand over him, smirking, the object of their gloating attentions did not stir.

Mon amor, you have lived your faux mortal life for too long. It has made you weak. Too weak to sense the second mortal. Too weak to resist their feeble weapons. Get up, Nicolas! Show these simpering swine what you truly are!

Nicolas remained still, face down on the floor.

The fat one nudged him with the rifle’s barrel, then looked to Goffman for further guidance. “You want me to put it in the lake?”

“No,” the ugly one replied. “We’ll make a bit more of an example out of this one. Burn him. And the rest of it, too. Let it all go up.”

With that, Goffman turned his back and strode toward the stairwell, disappearing through its bright red door. Boyer, still wearing his disgusting smirk, knelt beside Nicolas’ supine form and roughly pulled his black cloth coattail free, gathering it into a small bundle on the “corpse’s” back. Nicolas showed no sign of reviving. The fat one produced a small flask and poured liquid from it onto the fabric. The strong stench of whiskey reached Janette’s nostrils.  Another moment, and the flask had been exchanged for a cigarette lighter, which Boyer thumbed to life, moving its tiny flame within inches of Nicolas’ wadded coat.

Before he could touch fire to fabric, something small, swift and infuriated flew at him from the open skylight, picked him up and bore him with ease to the loft’s brick wall. Boyer screamed, a strangled cry cut short by the abrupt sinking of two very sharp fangs into his fleshy throat.

She fed with unbridled enthusiasm, aware all the while that there were signs of activity behind her. Nicolas, she realized, beginning to rouse at last, and the echoing footsteps of Goffman coming back up the stairs. He must have heard the fat one scream.

The last morsel of Boyer’s pathetic little life evaporated along with his heartbeat. Goffman yanked open the door just as she released the prey, allowing the obese husk to fall heavily at her feet. She turned then, eyes glowing, to confront the ugly one.

“What the hell...?”

Oh, quite. Mortals were so terribly astute. She advanced on this one more slowly, relishing his look of disbelieving horror at the sight of her bared fangs.

“Janette...”

For the moment, she ignored Nicolas’ soft calling of her name. He was still getting up, still trying to shake off the effects of Boyer’s rifle blasts. But the fact that he had spoken at all evoked a classic mortal response from Goffman. He looked from the fire-eyed beast bearing down upon him to the dead man rising from the floor, panicked, and ran.

With Nicolas’ futile pleas for restraint echoing behind her, Janette gave chase.

She would not overtake this one too quickly. Just as LaCroix had always taught them, the thrill of the hunt was in the stalking, in savoring the prey’s cold terror before you struck, fed and killed.

She savored Goffman’s radiating fear down the dark stairs to the street, around a corner and through a narrow alley between warehouse buildings, coming at last to the car he had so cleverly hidden from sight around the block. She let him get the key into the lock – the barest illusion of impending safety – before she attacked.

Like the fat one, he tried to scream, but she stilled the effort with a stranglehold pressed with one hand to his bony larynx. “Be silent!” she hissed, and with the same hand, she wrenched his head aside, exposing the sumptuously pulsating vein in his throat...

“Janette!” Nicolas’ voice.

With a small rush of wind, he landed behind her, grasped her shoulders, tried to pull her away. But the blood lust, once triggered, was not so easily denied. She roared her displeasure at being halted on the brink of her kill, whirled, and blindly attacked anew.

Only with the first taste of blood did she realize that her victim was not the intended mortal; was not, in fact, mortal at all.

Pure ecstasy flowed into her, a euphoria rife with all things Nicolas: passion and strength, gentility, honor, obsession and guilt. He did not resist her, remaining passive as any mortal prey while she drank in the ambient emotions his blood conveyed. So many memories: images both stark and fleeting but in every way the essence of him. Flashes of the mortals he worked with: the police captain, the annoying partner, the little coroner for whom he harbored such affection. But there were also stronger, deeper images of his true nature: soaring aloft in a starlit sky, following the fear scent of a fleeing mortal, striking and taking into himself the life-giving blood. There were memories of a woman called Alyce, of her death at their master’s hand, and then the violent, enraged assault that had pinned LaCroix to the elevator door with a flaming stake. The tinge of guilt she found for this act surprised her, but the image was swiftly replaced with a new barrage of mortal faces, frightened, besotted, mesmerized, most of them women, young and beautiful. Nicolas’ victims. The lost souls for whom he continually mourned.

Finally, and at long last, she found the repressed memory she had known must still be there. Reflections of his love, his devotion, his obsession for her. They were not so deeply buried after all, those memories, and she reveled in the chance, however brief, to relive them.

Apparently, so did Nicolas.

When she at last drew away, already sated with mortal blood and now quite drunk with Nicolas’, she found herself drawn sharply back to him, into a decidedly prurient embrace. His kiss was deep and forceful, the vampire rising swiftly to the fore until his eyes burned a brighter amber than her own.

She sighed with wanton pleasure at the flood of old, familiar sensations – he was still her Nicolas after all – and she waited eagerly for the consummation, the piercing of his fangs at her own throat that would complete the circle and secure their bond.

But she cried out in frustration when instead, she saw Nicolas turn away from her, fighting with all his strength to re-suppress all the glorious urges he had been about to indulge. While her eyes flamed red with vexation at this cruel abandonment, Nicolas’ swiftly reverted to mortal blue, and he turned back to the forgotten human who remained, transfixed, standing beside the waiting car. Her command that Goffman be silent had apparently immobilized him just enough to keep him there. And the look on his face told her that although he had no inkling what he had just witnessed, it had terrified him all the same.

At Nicolas’ approach, he cringed against the car window. “Y-you,” he stammered. “You’re dead!”

The “relentless” Detective Knight actually smiled at him, a wry echo of the Nicolas of old. Mockingly glib, he stared the mortal in the eye and murmured, “Yes. And your point would be?”

Goffman twisted away and made a last-ditch, desperate effort to bolt. Nicolas caught him with one hand, and as easily as one might lift a puppy, hoisted him back into place against the car. “You never saw this,” he said, the vampire’s tones deep and irresistibly commanding. Janette could hear the mortal’s fluttering heartbeat steady itself as Nicolas captured both his gaze and his will. “You killed Boyer after learning he was part of a syndicate plot to betray you. You’re going to get into this car now, drive straight to the 27th Precinct and cut a deal for a reduced sentence in exchange for your testimony. Then you tell them everything, Goffman. All the names, all the connections, and where all the bodies are buried. Including Boyer. Tell them they’ll find him floating in the lake.”

With one small modification, Janette mused to herself. She would very much enjoy cutting that one’s throat.

His dull eyes glazed, Goffman nodded dumbly at each of Nicolas’ demands before climbing obediently into the car and driving away. And good riddance to him.

As though spent from his efforts with the human, Nicolas retreated a short distance into one of the narrow alleys and pressed himself against the cold, gray concrete of a wall there. She followed, hesitant, fully expecting that he would dismiss her now and summarily return to his bleak and colorless mortal world. Instead, when he turned to look at her, it was with eyes that burned a smoldering vampire gold.

Even with the blood bond only half formed, she sensed affection, gratitude, and the merest tantalizing hint of eros.

“You didn’t have to...” he started to say, but she moved rapidly back into his arms to silence the objection with a kiss.

“Come back to me, Nicolas.” She kissed him again before he could answer, then whispered the more plaintive question – the one LaCroix had entreated of his errant son so many, many times – into his ear. “Come back to us.”

“No.” Though he said it with the usual stubborn conviction, he plainly did not extend the denial to their current embrace. He held her pressed tightly against him, and began to caress her hair, her cheek, her throat, just as he had done so very long ago, all those nights in Vienna.

“I love you, Nicolas.” There. She had said it. Let him make of it what he would. “I loved you from that very first night in Paris. And no matter what has happened between us, no matter what foolish things I may have said or done, I have never stopped loving you. You must believe that.”

It was true. LaCroix had once called her a fool for never extinguishing that persistent flamme de coeur, – yet for just as many centuries, LaCroix had harbored it as well. Nicolas was a flame that would not be easily vanquished.

“I never stopped,” she said again, this time in the medieval French tongue they had once shared. To her delight, he responded in the same language with words that made the fire in her heart burn brighter than it had in many centuries.

“Nor did I.”

His next kiss left little doubt that more – much more – was yet to come. This time when his lips strayed to her throat, he gave the vampire free rein to complete the bonding circle. The exquisite pain of his kiss flooded her anew with his thoughts, his essence, and unmistakably, his desire for her. The latter emotion she lustily welcomed, and through the same bond, returned to him the shamelessly prurient invitation to spend the night and coming day with her in decidedly carnal pursuits.

His blood, still fresh in her veins, coursed a fervent and eager assent.

She seemed to recall leaving a bottle of a most rare and excellent vintage on the roof of the loft. Another treasure old lovers might share, once that bothersome bit of house-cleaning had been dealt with? Well, one could hope.

Tonight, if only for one night, she would have her Nicolas back again.