Nick was late.

Natalie paced the loft floor and checked her watch for the eighth time in as many minutes. 9:24 a.m. The sun had been up for nearly four hours. The injection would be wearing off by now.

He was definitely pushing it this time.

When at last the garage door's vibration and the sound of the Cadillac's engine both echoed up the stairwell, she narrowly resisted the un-doctorly urge to fling open the door and race down the steps. Instead, she put on her best seriously-professional face and waited, mentally preparing the lecture she would shortly give her misbehaving patient. He knew better than to test the new serum this severely! What good would all their months of preparation and this past week of field testing do if the stuff wore off in mid-boulevard cruise and he staggered home with third degree burns from head to toe?

When he came through the door, she opened her mouth to read him the proverbial riot act - and promptly forgot everything she'd been about to say.

It probably had something to do with his look of absolute euphoria, that charming little-boy grin, and the one dozen perfect red roses he carried in one hand.

"Good morning!" His cheerful words were almost a laugh. He crossed the kitchen floor and caught her up in an embrace that danced them into the window's pillar of bright light and nearly crushed the roses. "Have I told you lately how beautiful you look in the sunlight?"

"Nick..." Natalie couldn't help laughing. His enthusiasm was infectious. "We need to-"

"Seven hours and twenty-six minutes," he said giddily, "and it's only just started wearing off." He moved away to pick up one of the serum vials from the table, leaving her holding the flowers. "No side effects, no addictive properties. You did it this time, Nat. It really works."

Putting the doctor's mantle back on after that greeting was next to impossible, but somehow she managed. "We still have a _lot_ of work to do," she reminded him. "The LV2 is only repressing the symptoms. That's a long way from a cure."

Nick wasn't about to be daunted. "I have faith in you," he said, and proffered the labeled bottle.

For the moment, Nat detoured around him, hunted down the crystal vase he kept on one of the bookshelves and filled it with water from the tap. Only when she'd given the roses a suitable home did she turn back to take the vial from him and begin preparing the injection.

"I don't mean to rain on your parade, Nick, but you know this _might_ be as good as it gets. I won't stop looking for a cure, but if this is the best we can do..."

"Then it's enough." He didn't even blink as the needle slid into his forearm. "I could do worse than having to take a little shot three times a day, couldn't I?"

"We'll have to keep tabs on the duration, study the long-term effects. And we'll need to procure a steady supply of the ingredients."

"Not a problem. Just give me a list."

"Could be expensive."

"That's not a problem either."

She laughed. "No, I guess not." Injection finished, she disposed of the hypodermic and started cleaning up the clutter on the table. "I should be getting home. I've got a seven o'clock shift tonight and I'm an absolute bear if I don't get my beauty sleep."

She'd just closed the clasp on the medical bag when a pale hand slipped in and covered hers. A week ago that hand had been deathly cold. It was warm now. Not quite up to a healthy human 98.6, but definitely warm.

"We shouldn't-" she started to say, but his lips on hers effectively quelled the protest. She found herself returning the kiss with an eagerness that surprised her. It wasn't that she hadn't known it might come to this. The attraction had been there from the beginning, hadn't it? Ever since that incredibly handsome 'corpse' had first come back to life on her exam table three years ago. But until they found a cure...

The kiss deepened, an invitation without need of words.

And with annoying persistence, the doctor's voice inside Natalie's head warned that there was still a risk. The vampire may have been suppressed for the past week, but it was far from gone. No way to tell what might force it to the surface again, the LV2 notwithstanding.

Nick's kisses strayed from her mouth, covering her forehead, her cheek, and finally her ear, where he whispered a one-syllable entreaty. "Nat?"

Reservations fleeing, she gave him an equally brief reply. She managed an emphatic "Yes" before he smothered her with kisses anew. Then he swept her quite literally off her feet and carried her up the stairs...

* * *

Nick woke to the celestial vision of Natalie Lambert nestled against his shoulder, her auburn hair bathed in afternoon light that streamed in the unshuttered bedroom windows. He watched her sleep for several minutes before he reached to lovingly stroke her face with the back of his hand.

"I guess you know," she said suddenly without opening her eyes, "that we just blew the doctor-patient relationship thing all to hell."

"About time, don't you think?" he quipped, pulling her closer. "In fact, what do you say we blow that particular relationship one more time, for good measure?"

"I think we can arrange that."

Precisely eleven seconds into the kiss, Natalie's cell phone, currently residing in her jacket on the chair beside the bed, began shrilling for attention.

She sighed. "Rain check?"

Nick nodded and released her, noting with some amusement that she draped the silk bed cover around herself before getting up to locate the phone. She summarily carted bedspread, clothes and ringing jacket all into the bathroom, and turning back to smile wryly at him, closed the door.

Nick got up to collect a clean set of clothes from his closet and bureau, then trotted downstairs to avail himself of the first floor bath facilities. By the time Nat appeared on the stairs, he'd already administered his own injection, and had assembled a fairly impressive breakfast for two consisting of toast, juice, cereal and coffee. He'd had one week's practice cooking mortal food, and he hadn't burned anything yet. Okay, so it wasn't the Waldorf-Astoria. These things took time.

"Now I've got a _five_ o'clock shift," Nat moaned. She glared at Nick's sunburst kitchen clock as though it were to blame for the phone call. It read 4:10.

"Just enough time for milady to dine," he said, pulling out a chair and making a grand gesture at the table. Their waiting repast sported the elegant centerpiece of a dozen red roses in a crystal vase.

"Barely," Nat sighed, and sat down. "I have to stop at home, feed Sydney and change. Caruthers got called in to testify on the Willis case, so they've been short-handed all day. I'm going to have to-" She stopped in mid-sentence, looking mildly embarrassed. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm chattering." She picked up the steaming cup of coffee and blew on it once before taking a sip. "It's a lovely breakfast, Nick. And I never thanked you for the roses."

He grinned at her. "Actually, you did."

She made a face at him in mock disapproval of the joke. "You're terrible," she said.

He feigned a hurt look. "Well, I admit I'm a little out of practice, but..."

She laughed, and he reveled in the sound. Their banter went on throughout breakfast, ending all too soon when she gathered up the medical bag (and at his insistence, the roses) and with a brief see-you-later kiss, vanished into the creaking freight elevator that served as the loft's front door.

Nick busied himself with yet another new wrinkle in his learning-to-be-mortal existence - washing the dishes. That task completed, he'd been drying his hands, preparing to head upstairs for a shower, when he felt a strong vibration in the one vampiric sense Nat's drug had not quieted.

"Well," an all-too-familiar voice said from above him. "I'm delighted to see you haven't lost _all_ touch with what you are."

With a whisper of displaced air, LaCroix flew from the landing to alight in front of him. Nick could feel anger - something actually closer to rage - simmering across their link. For once that displeasure was not directed entirely at him. Beneath the rage he sensed fear, confusion, uncertainty - all emotions he had seldom encountered in his sire.

Cornered though he was by counter and sink, Nick stood his ground and asked the expected question.

"What do you want, LaCroix?"

Distrust seethed across the link like slow poison. Involuntarily, Nick recoiled.

"Your word," the master vampire's deceptively soft voice crooned, "that you had no part in this."

Nick had no idea what that accusation might mean. "No part in what? What are you talking about?"

The cold eyes studied him, _probed_ him, until, finally satisfied, LaCroix turned away. "Have you really been so preoccupied with all of this playing at mortality that you are truly oblivious to the fate of your own kind?"

Nick followed the elder vampire into his living room, choosing his next words with care. "I no longer have a 'kind,' as you call it. And yes, I've been out of touch. I meant to be."

"And thanks to Doctor Lambert's tender ministrations, I suppose you have been deaf and blind as well." The cruel eyes scrutinized him once more; it took all of Nick's willpower not to squirm under that gaze. If he had been 'deaf' to other vampires, it was solely due to a conscious effort _not_ to use the link. The LV2 notwithstanding, he'd felt LaCroix's presence readily enough. And the unaccustomed flood of emotion presently crossing that link was threatening to drown him.

"I don't-" he started to say.

LaCroix cut him off. "You've felt nothing of their deaths, have you?"

Nick stared at him. "Deaths?"

The anger surged again. "They are dying, Nicholas. _All_ of them. Somewhere, somehow, an uncommonly perspicacious mortal has found a most efficient means of poisoning our food source. Within the past two weeks, the blood of every human being on this Earth has been infected with a viral pathogen. Harmless to them. Lethal to us."

For the first time in over a century, Nick felt a pang of regret for eschewing the vampire community. They couldn't die. It wasn't possible. "How?" He whispered the question, still trying to grasp the inconceivable.

"Through a carefully orchestrated contamination," LaCroix said, "of the water supply. Once infected blood is ingested, the virus kills within hours. A few have proven resistant. But they, too, are dying."

Nick dreaded the answer to the next question he must ask. He had spent years - centuries - trying to believe that she meant nothing to him anymore. Now, if only for a moment, she meant everything.

"Janette?"

LaCroix's gaze burned into him. "Why Nicholas. Anyone would think you truly _cared._"

At any other time it wouldn't have been so, but the unsheathed pain in Nick's eyes seemed to move even LaCroix's cold heart. "She is alive," he relented, "if not precisely well. True to form, she has taken the remnant under her wing, and gathered them - here."

"And you?" LaCroix did not appear at all ill. If this was another of his sadistic tricks...

"I..." Nick's sire glanced pointedly at the scorch mark on the elevator door. "...am rather more difficult to kill. When this plague struck, I was in Paris, visiting our old friend, LiMors." Nick remembered the name: an effete vampire with a penchant for science - and bad aliases. "He has divined," LaCroix went on, "that I am immune, though a carrier. And you, by virtue of your bizarre bovine diet, have doubtless been spared because this virus affects only the _human_ bloodstream." LaCroix began to circle him, the perennial predator assessing its prey. "So while you've played at being mortal, the last of my children have been perishing, right here in this city, quite literally under your nose. And you felt nothing."

"I'm sor..." Nick swallowed the apology, feeling suddenly angry at having been manipulated into feeling it. "I didn't know."

"Or care?" LaCroix completed the circle, coming to stand directly in front of his 'son.' "Then consider the rather monumental duty that now befalls you. We are the last, Nicholas. You and I."

Precisely what that meant was slow to dawn on Nick's confused state of mind. When it did, he looked back at his one-time mentor in utter horror. "You can't be serious."

"My dear Nicholas, I have never been more serious."

"You expect _me_ to perpetuate the species? To recreate the race of..." He hesitated, then choked the word out. "..._monsters_ I've spent eight centuries trying to disavow?"

Uncharacteristically, LaCroix ignored the insult. "More than that," he said. "We can make no others. Not until the mortal who created this virus is found and the pathogen destroyed. I am asking-"

"No." Nick stalked away to stare blindly at the carved dragon rampant on his mantel. He would not be drawn back into LaCroix's clutches. Not now. Not after all that he and Nat had accomplished. He had tasted long-coveted mortality again, and not for anything would he re-embrace the darkness. Not even for...

"You would allow them all to die," LaCroix said, obviously sensing his thought. "Even Janette."

Nick spun to glare at him, unashamed of the tears brimming in his eyes. "It's too late to help them. You said so yourself." But even as he mouthed the words, memories of a sultry, ravishing Janette were overwhelming him, and he knew that LaCroix shared those same thoughts. She couldn't die. He wouldn't allow it. Not his beautiful Janette...

By sheer force of will, Nick subjugated the wave of emotion. He thought of Natalie, of the pleasures they had shared just hours ago. He thought of being mortal. "I... can't." He bit the words out in short, bitter syllables. "Please, don't ask that of me. I _can't._"

"You cannot-" LaCroix's remonstration died in mid-word when a mental scream - Janette's -- reverberated across the link. It was a shriek of rage more than pain, but through LaCroix, Nick could feel her anguish as clearly as if she'd been standing in the room. The master vampire's eyes went instantly gold, then red, and with an animal growl, he strode back across the floor to a point just below Nick's skylight.

"_Come,_ Nicholas!" he commanded.

Then he was gone.

Janette's scream still echoing in his head, Nick moved to obey, only to find himself standing under the skylight staring helplessly up at the high open window.

It might as well have been on the moon.

He stood, statue-still, and mentally fought to quell the echoes of Janette's cry for help. LaCroix, he told himself, would deal with it. LaCroix had always dealt with everything. Nick was no longer a part of their world, no longer one of their family. And he could do nothing to help.

Age-old habit drove him to the refrigerator, to the single green bottle still lurking (for emergencies) in the back corner. He had it in hand, uncorked and halfway to his mouth before the smell of its contents made him wretch. That triggered a coughing fit that lasted a full two minutes. With a frustrated sigh, he re-corked the bottle and put it back in its corner.

A shower. He'd been about to take a shower, get dressed, head for work. Concentrate on the mundane, the droll, the _mortal,_ and leave everything about that other life behind.

Including Janette.

He'd loved her more than the world, once. Now...

Nick slammed the refrigerator door with enough savage force to rattle all the contents. Then he headed upstairs, still trying desperately to convince himself that he didn't care.

By the time he returned, the reverberating scream had faded to a dull roar. He went about his usual preparations by sheer rote: watch, car keys, badge, holster, gun, cell phone. He opened the refrigerator again, and to an inside coat pocket added two hypodermic packets and two bottles of LV2, labeled in Natalie's precise handwriting.

That was everything.

It was time to go to work.

* * *

Natalie checked her watch on the way up the precinct station's concrete steps. Nearly seven. Nick should be here any minute now. She wondered if he was enjoying the two weeks of comparative peace and quiet that had started with Schanke's vacation yesterday. No teasing, no continuous chatter, no souvlaki with extra garlic smelling up the Caddy. To Nick, two weeks without his partner was probably just this side of heaven.

She balanced two stacks of reports under her arm: one pile for Nick and another for Captain Cohen, courtesy of the absent day-shift coroner, Caruthers. She could have sent them over with a lab assistant, but in all honesty she'd needed to get out of the morgue for a few minutes. For the past two hours Grace had been pumping her mercilessly for info. about the roses, and whether this meant that the "handsome Detective Knight" was getting serious at last.

Smiling, Nat pushed through the double glass doors into the usual chaos of ringing phones and babbling voices, heading directly for Nick's still-unoccupied desk. She nodded to Reeves from vice division on the way by. Odd - he looked startled when he saw her and had started to get up and come toward her when two men in dark blue suits moved into his path. Both of them headed straight for Natalie.

"Dr. Lambert?" They flashed shields at her, both closing the covers before she could possibly have identified the badges.

"On a good day, yes," she joked. "Who are you?"

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with us." He said it just like the KGB guys in all those really bad spy movies: no inflection, no emotion.

She laughed, convinced this had to be a prank of some sort, and started to walk around them. A strong hand gripped her by the arm, and then several things happened at once. Someone shouted a word (it sounded like "target!"); the squad room went suddenly, unnaturally quiet; one of the blue suits pulled her violently to one side and slammed her against a glass office partition. Her outraged protest died unspoken when she saw the strange weapon that had simultaneously appeared in his other hand. It looked like an antique dueling pistol - until he touched something that snapped two metal 'wings' out from its sides. That was when she noticed the six-inch wooden bolt that rested on its top.

"Oh my God." They knew about Nick. They were waiting for Nick.

Three more crossbow-armed suits hustled across the floor toward the front desk. Two phones went off at once, but no one answered them. No one moved at all. Then the front door came open, admitting a familiar blond figure.

"Nick!!!"

The man who'd nearly broken her arm a moment ago clapped a hand over her mouth. But she'd been too late to warn him anyway. Three of them had seized Nick the minute he was in the door, stripped off his coat and pushed him to the wall. They were now making fast work of everything in his pockets and efficiently relieving him of his service weapon and holster.

The captain's office door swept open. She came out with a tall, grey-haired man wearing yet another blue suit. He looked, Nat thought, uncannily like the star of one of Nick's favorite old movies - Michael Rennie in "Day the Earth Stood Still." He and Cohen marched straight for Nick. Nat tried to follow, only to find herself grabbed and again pushed against the partition.

The three men who had just cuffed Nick's hands behind him now spun him to face the room, making certain that the armed crossbows pointed at him were well within view. He barely glanced at them. His gaze found Natalie instead, and the poignant regret in his eyes made her own begin filling with tears.

"I want him in lock-up until the truck gets here," the Michael Rennie clone said. To Cohen, he added nonchalantly, "I trust you can arrange that."

Amanda Cohen frosted him with a cold glare. "Mr. Charon, a Crown arrest warrant does _not_ give you free reign to turn my precinct into a circus."

Charon? Natalie squinted, putting the name and now-familiar face together. Emil Charon? What the hell was a billionaire industrialist doing arresting Nick?

Another phone warbled for attention it wouldn't get. Ignoring Cohen's protest, Charon made a sharp gesture at the flock of blue suits. "Take him downstairs."

One of the men who'd cuffed Nick hesitated before carrying out the order. "Sir... Something's not-"

"Later, Majors. Downstairs."

As though someone had thrown a switch, chaos broke out in the bull pen, a loud cacophony of protests and unanswered questions. Nick was marched unceremoniously past the curious and accusing stares of his co-workers, and Nat found herself being ushered along. "Are you arresting me, too?" she demanded. "Because I haven't seen any warrant. Just who the hell _are_ you people?!"

Predictably, she received no answer. The parade ended down in lock-up's cinder block corridor. More chaos as Nick, still cuffed, was shoved into a holding cell. Cohen and the uniformed lock-up personnel were hustled away somewhere. Nat found herself against the wall facing the cell with Charon's men on either side, their miniature crossbows still pointed through the bars at Nick.

Majors was still trying to say something to his boss. "I'm telling you he has a pulse!" she heard him insist as he followed Charon into the cell block. "A _normal_ pulse."

"Impossible." Emil Charon glowered into the cell at Nick, who had thus far not uttered a word. "This target was under surveillance for a full six weeks. Sun avoidance, garlic aversion, liquid diet and known associations with other identified targets. There's no doubt he's one of them. No doubt whatsoever."

"I'm not disputing that, sir," Majors persisted. "But _he has a pulse._"

Charon cast a cursory glance at Natalie before turning back to the cell and growling a one-syllable demand at Nick. "How?"

Nick answered in deep, chilling tones Nat had seldom heard him use. The vampire's voice. "You've already made up your mind," he rasped. "I doubt that anything I have to say will change that."

"No," Charon agreed, then immediately began issuing orders. "Majors, get a lab team in here. I want a blood panel on this one, stat. And stand by the transport."

"Yes sir." Majors handed him the manila effects envelope containing Nick's possessions and promptly disappeared.

From the envelope, Charon produced two familiar medical vials. "This wouldn't, by chance, be how?" For the first time, he turned to acknowledge Natalie's existence. "Your doing, Dr. Lambert?"

Nat wanted to spit at him. Instead, she forced calm into her voice and said, "You've got it all wrong. Nick isn't-"

"I know exactly what he is. Your association with Detective Knight has been thoroughly documented. And the evidence suggests-"

"Leave her out of this," Nick demanded from inside the cell. "She's done nothing wrong."

"The evidence suggests," Charon continued as though no one had spoken, "that you knew of his condition, and that you did, in fact, falsify coroner's reports to cover for it. Which makes you an accessory, Dr. Lambert. To murder."

Nat felt the color drain from her face. "Who are you people?" she asked again. "Why are you _doing_ this?"

Something dangerously close to fanaticism came to life in Charon's pale green eyes. "We are your saviors, Doctor. And as to your second question, we are completing a ten year mission to eradicate an ancient scourge from the face of the Earth. You may have heard of it. It's commonly referred to as the vampire."

"Leave her alone!" Nick's shout literally rattled the cell door.

Charon turned on him with a vengeance. "Your pathetic race of blood-sucking parasites is dead," he seethed. "And the last seven, other than yourself, who have proved temporarily resistant to the pathogen are dying. They are all in my custody, save one. And I'm more than certain that you can tell me where _he_ might be."

Nick pressed against the bars to fix Charon with a look of unadulterated malice. "Looking for _you,_" he breathed. Nat had never heard so malevolent a threat packed into just three words.

Charon responded with a grim smile. "Oh, then I do look forward to our meeting. It's an ancient honor, isn't it? To be awarded the final kill?"

Natalie was only beginning to piece this confusing mess together. "You killed the vampires?" she accused. "All of them? What _right_ did you have?"

"A right granted me by the government of every country on the globe, Doctor. We have worked for more than a decade, in total secrecy, to develop a means of destroying this abomination." He looked at Nick when he said that. "Two weeks ago, our efforts finally came to fruition. The results have been more than satisfactory."

"And you're proud of it." Natalie loathed him in that moment. "You've murdered thousands, and you're actually proud of it."

"You'll find their kill rate considerably higher," Charon answered without taking his eyes from Nick. "Or haven't you ever done the math? Tell me, _Detective_ Knight..." On his lips, the title became an imprecation. "...how many have _you_ killed? Or like most of your kindred, did you lose count of the corpses long centuries ago?"

Nat saw that attack strike home, watched a familiar pall of guilt descend over Nick like a cloak. He sank back against the cell wall and made no further effort to answer Charon's charges.

"You're wrong," Natalie insisted again. "Nick is nothing like the others. He hasn't killed for blood in over a century!"

"How commendable." Charon remained unmoved. "And before that? We are speaking here of mass murder on a grand scale. Are we simply to forgive and forget all the rest?"

Nick's voice and face were both a study in misery. "I have neither forgotten," he said bleakly, "nor forgiven."

"Quite noble, I'm sure," Charon scoffed, then abruptly sobered again. "Tell me honestly, _vampire._ In my place, with the survival of the human race in the balance, what would _you_ have done?"

Nick's reply carried the full weight of every one of his eight hundred years. "I'd find a way to protect my own," he said, looking straight into Charon's eyes. "...and to finish what I'd begun."

"That isn't fair!" Nat's temper got the better of her. "You don't know Nick. He's spent centuries trying to become human again!"

"Ah." Charon held one of the LV2 bottles aloft. "The latter part of this one with your help, it would seem. I'd like to know more about that." He motioned to one of the suits, who promptly took hold of Nat's arm. "This way, Dr. Lambert. We have a great deal to discuss."

* * *

Four hours had passed since Nick had walked into the precinct. Four hours filled with threats, humiliation, and worst of all, Charon's bullying treatment of Natalie. For that alone, Nick might willingly have broken his century-old oath and unleashed the vampire to snap the man's neck and drain him dry.

His wrists and arms were aching from prolonged confinement in the handcuffs. Three hours ago they'd come for a blood sample, which he'd quiescently permitted, but the cuffs had remained in place throughout. No one had come near the cell since, though two men with crossbows still stood vigilant guard over its occupant.

Nick sat awkwardly on the cell bunk and tried not to think about the fact that Charon was interrogating Natalie. Nor did he want to dwell on the man's claim to have captured the vampire remnant. It would explain Janette's scream of outrage. But he could no longer feel anything from her. LaCroix and Charon had both said she was dying...

His morbid reverie was interrupted by Majors' re-appearance outside the cell, two more of the crossbow-toting thugs in tow. "Up," he ordered.

"Where's Natalie?"

A key clattered in the lock and the cell door opened. "No questions." Majors gestured sharply toward the cell block's back door. "Move."

Nick was tempted to defy them, but refusing to go along (and very probably getting himself shot in the process) would do nothing to help Natalie - - or Janette.

He moved.

They took him out the back and up the concrete stairs to the precinct's back parking lot, where an unmarked armored truck waited. Nick was herded into the back with three of the gunmen, one of whom sat him down and secured his handcuffs to a metal bar.

The drive lasted nearly forty minutes, if his internal clock was any indication. When the truck's doors opened again, letting in chill night air, he was ushered out onto the tarmac of a floodlit airfield. They'd parked in front of a hangar bearing Charon's corporate logo, alongside a black limo from which Emil Charon and another of his soldiers had just emerged, along with Natalie.

Nat started toward him the moment Nick, hands still bound behind him, reached the blacktop. One of the gunmen held her back. She looked as though she'd been crying. Charon's face reflected determination, and a hint of anxiety.

When his escorts urged him toward the limo, Nick began to feel vibrations from inside the closed hangar. One in particular filled him with both dread and relief at the same time. It was weak, but it emanated both fear and pain.

Janette.

"Well now." Charon's blatantly patronizing tone stirred Nick's latent vampire to new heights of homicidal desire. The industrialist folded his hands in front of him like a wizened college professor about to deliver a lecture. "You did pose us with a bit of a dilemma, albeit briefly." He glanced aside at Natalie. "Because you no longer feed on humans, Dr. Lambert was certain our test would find no trace of the pathogen in your system. I'm delighted to say that's not entirely true. Thanks to her efforts, you have lived as an ersatz mortal. And you have contracted the virus by harmless, mortal means - - through the water."

On the heels of that damning revelation, Nick sensed yet another, far stronger vampiric vibration from somewhere nearby. He knew that signature all too well. But now, for the first time in his very long life, he welcomed it. LaCroix was here somewhere. Waiting. Watching.

"My dilemma then became how best to deal with you," Charon was saying. "Water ingestion merely introduces the proto-virus. Its lethal mutation occurs only when the proto-virus is in turn ingested - - in human blood. I considered locking you and the good doctor away together until this suppression drug had worn off and simply allowing nature to take its course..."

Nick interrupted the somber discourse with an entreaty. "Please... Let Natalie go. She hasn't done anything."

"We'll be the judge of that." Charon immediately resumed his lecture. "It would of course be easy enough to employ any one of the traditional methods: decapitation, immolation, a hawthorn stake through the heart. But these days, we usually prefer a much _cleaner_ kill. It's why we engineered the chimera virus to begin with. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe it's true that confined together and deprived of human prey, vampires will feed upon each other."

"Stop it!" Nat's sobbing plea came from beside the limo, where one of the gunmen still held her fast against the car. "Please... Don't do this."

Ignoring her, Charon nodded to the men on either side of Nick and stabbed a thumb toward the hangar. "Put him in with the others."

"No!" Nat broke free and ran the short distance between them to desperately embrace Nick. He'd have given anything in that moment for the vampire's strength to break these damned handcuffs and put his arms around her. But he couldn't.

Charon's army dragged her away and propelled him toward the hangar. Its bays were sealed, but a small office door on the far end stood open. They went through it into a tiny, featureless room, where the two men closed and locked the door, pushed Nick to the wall and at last removed the cuffs. There was an inner door, heavily barred and padlocked. One man released its lock while the other stood ready with a crossbow, prepared for anything that might try to come at him from inside.

With an ease clearly born of practice, they swept the heavy barrier aside, shoved Nick through and slammed it shut again with a resounding _boom._

Darkness. Silence.

Odors of grease, plane fuel, grime and - - Nick closed his eyes and fought to shield his senses from the onslaught - - death.

Two corpses lay just inside the door. He'd nearly stumbled over them in the dark, and now that his drug-diminished vision had adjusted he could see the grisly scene more clearly. Two vampires - - one a blonde woman, the other a 'young' black male - - lay sprawled in grotesquely twisted positions on the concrete floor. They were emaciated, almost skeletal, but neither had died from the ravages of Charon's virus. Each had been shot cleanly through the heart with a six-inch wooden crossbolt. So, at least two of the condemned had indeed tried to rush the door.

Something moved in the shadows, and the faintest whisper of vampire presence teased at Nick's senses. He stood still, listening, searching for the signature he'd recognized from outside the hangar moments ago. When he didn't find it, Nick stepped carefully around the fallen vampires, moved out onto the empty floor and turned a circle, this time searching with his eyes.

"Janette?"

His voice echoed off the high metal walls, coming back to him once, twice, three times. Again, movement rustled in the dark corners. Vibrations assaulted him from every side, a muddle of fear, confusion and raw-edged hatred. Nick turned again, trying in vain to separate the identities, to find Janette's somewhere in the chaos. There was nothing.

"Nicola..."

Her voice. Frail and barely audible, but unmistakably hers. Nick ran toward the sound, skirting fuel barrels piled three deep on the floor. He found her huddled in a filth-strewn corner, and he barely restrained a gasp when he drew closer. This was not Janette, but a gaunt and hollow-eyed shadow, a cruel parody of the woman he had known. The woman he had cherished for centuries as his lover, companion, confidant... wife.

"Nicola," she said again, and the pain in her voice cut through him like one of Charon's crossbolts. "_C'est vraiment toi...?_"

"_Oui._" He sank to the oil-stained concrete and gathered her into his arms, shocked at how little she weighed, at how horribly thin she'd become. The vampire he had struggled eight centuries to overcome stirred so violently that he was sure his eyes must be glowing. It raged at him to avenge this horror, this genocide. It clamored for Emil Charon's blood.

"I hoped you would come." Janette clung to him, childlike and terrified. "I hoped..."

"Shhhh." Nick cradled her, kissing her forehead. "Don't talk. It's all right. I'm here now."

Empty words. Platitudes for the dying.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he allowed his tears to fall into her raven black hair. "_Je suis desole._"

Abruptly, the vibrations surged. Nick looked up to the unwelcome sight of four deathly-thin vampires. One of them turned smoldering red eyes on him and spoke in heavily French-accented English. "As well you should be," he hissed. "You are the one who brought this plague upon us."

Nick knew that voice. LaCroix's very old friend, LiMors. And his words brought to mind LaCroix's veiled accusation of hours before. _Your word... that you had no part in this._

"No," he said, unashamed of the tears that made his voice break on the word. "I wanted to be free of you. All of you." He stroked Janette's hair and rocked her gently in his arms. "But not like this."

Janette stirred weakly in his embrace. "_Affame,_" she murmured. "The hunger..."

Nick unbuttoned his shirt cuff and pushed back the sleeve.

"Go ahead, deBrabant." LiMors moved a step closer, and the hungry remnant followed suit. "Feed her. And when she has taken her last meal from your veins, we will take you and feast on what remains."

Ignoring him, Nick offered his bared wrist to Janette. "_Boire,_" he urged, and pressed the vein to her too-cold lips. "Drink."

And she did.

* * *

Natalie fought with all her strength, swearing at the men who had pulled her away from Nick. Emil Charon seemed to find her outrage mildly amusing. He waited until Nick's escorts had taken him through the small hangar door before switching that patronizing smile back on again.

"Get into the car, Dr. Lambert," he ordered. "You and I have an appointment with the Crown Prosecutor."

Still gripped by blue suits on either side, Nat struggled to regain some small shred of dignity. "I'm not going anywhere," she started to say, but before she could get the words out, something whistled past her; a peculiar, humming sound. The man on her right immediately jerked, clutched at his heart and fell forward. With a startled gasp, the second one shortly joined him on the pavement. There had been no audible shots, but Nat recognized the sickening sound of bullets striking flesh when she heard it. Instinct screamed at her to drop and find cover, perhaps behind the car, but her feet adamantly refused to budge.

Both men who had entered the hangar with Nick re-emerged, only to be rapidly dispatched, as was another who had leaped from the armored truck with his crossbow in hand.

For several seconds then, nothing. Calm, eerie silence.

Charon stood holding another of the crossbows near the front of the limo and Nat near its back door, where the suits had been about to force her into the car. In less than a heartbeat, yet another whistling sound presaged a vampire's flight from behind the floodlights to a point no less than three feet in front of a startled Emil Charon. The billionaire fired his weapon, but a hand that moved faster than mortal vision could track snatched the crossbolt from the air and ground it into splinters. If Charon had been counting on his virus to slow his adversary's reflexes, then this was one vampire he had obviously misjudged.

Pale eyes, white-blond hair and a demeanor every inch the Roman general he'd once been: Natalie knew this must be LaCroix. From beneath his still-fluttering black coat, the vampire drew a long-barreled, silenced pistol. The thing looked completely incongruous in his hand. No mortal weapon could possibly be more intimidating than those cold, utterly ruthless eyes.

"Crude..." The vampire stroked the gun's muzzle with amazingly graceful fingers. "...but effective." With a cavalier shrug, he tossed the weapon over his shoulder to skid away behind him. "But as you say, I prefer a much _cleaner_ kill."

Charon's eyes had begun to take on the glazed look Nat had seen in more than one mortal under Nick's influence. "You're the one," he said dully. "The one we couldn't find. The last one."

"Yesss." LaCroix made the word sound like a sexual caress. "The last, thanks to your diligent efforts - - the benefits of which you shall now learn to appreciate first hand."

When the vampire took a step toward him, Charon made a last-ditch effort to escape. He bolted for the open truck, apparently hoping to lock himself behind its armored doors.

He didn't make it.

LaCroix caught him like a cat clamping a fleeing mouse, and lifting him effortlessly off the ground, held him aloft by the throat. "You will know the agonies your scourge has inflicted on my children," the vampire snarled. "And then, as they have done, you will wither and die. Very, very slowly."

As though Charon were no more than a rag doll, LaCroix tossed him into the very truck in which he'd tried to seek shelter. Charon landed with a sharp cry of pain, and in another moment the vampire was on top of him.

Nat couldn't watch anymore.

She turned away, nearly tripping over one of the bodies on the ground beside her, and began running toward the hangar. She had to find Nick....

Praying it wasn't already too late, Natalie stopped outside the door long enough to wrench a set of keys from the hand of one of Nick's erstwhile guards. On an afterthought, she snatched up one of the crossbow guns as well, then hurried inside.

The inner door opened onto total blackness. Where were the lights? She stepped back to hunt for some form of light control on the cable-and-wire-strewn anteroom wall. She found a t-switch and threw it.

Multiple banks of incandescent light tubes buzzed and flickered to life inside the hangar. Natalie stepped through the door.

"Nick?"

Two badly dehydrated corpses on the floor. Large expanse of oil-stained concrete. A pile of aviation fuel barrels over here, and... She rounded the fuel dump and froze, unprepared for the ghastly tableau on the other side. Four emaciated vampires turned on her with animal snarls, startled from what had been - - or was about to be - - their prey. Two figures, entwined, were curled together in the corner. One of them was Nick, and there were bright crimson blood stains covering the front of his shirt.

She moved forward without thinking, and cursed herself for a fool a moment later. Four pairs of bony hands clutched her, knocked the little crossbow away and sent it literally flying from her grasp. Skeletal fingers clawed at her, and pulled her hair back to bare her throat...

Natalie opened her mouth to scream, only to utter a surprised yelp when she was suddenly pulled violently aside. A feral growl drove all four vampires back, and they hissed their displeasure at this intrusion. LaCroix released the vicelike grip that had yanked her free and snarled at her as well. "You take foolish risks, Dr. Lambert."

There was no denying that, but at the moment she didn't really give a damn. Natalie brushed defiantly past him - - past all of them - - and rushed to kneel at Nick's side. The woman in his arms was cadaverously thin, like the others, but something about her hair and the torn, soiled gown she wore reminded Nat of... God, no. That _couldn't_ be Janette!

Nick didn't stir, didn't move at all when she reached for his wrist. She encountered an open wound and more blood. His skin was cool to the touch, and there was no discernible pulse.

"Nick?"

He moved at last, slowly lifting his head to stare at her with glowing, amber eyes. "Too late," he grated in the vampire's bass tones. "I was too late to save her."

Nat became aware of LaCroix standing over them, the four skeletons hovering behind him. She looked up into those arctic eyes and could have sworn she saw the barest hint of grief reflected there. Turning back, she took hold of Janette's arm, intending to gently separate Nick from the body. She abandoned that idea a moment later, when her hand registered the fact that Janette's flesh was warm. Two fingers pressed to the neck summarily found a nearly-human pulse in the carotid artery.

"That's not possible," she muttered. But another once-over confirmed that it was. Even as Nat watched, the death pallor had begun to withdraw from Janette's drawn features, becoming a soft, mortal pink. There was blood still staining her lips. Nick's?

"You weren't too late, Nick." The words came out halfway between sobbing and laughter. "You weren't too late at all. I should have seen it before. I should have realized."

Nick seemed to come to himself. His gold eyes fading to blue, he pressed a hand to Janette's throat and looked at Natalie in wonder. "How?"

"Charon said the virus attaches itself to vampiric nucleotides. Nick, the LV2 _suppresses_ those nucleotides!"

LaCroix moved closer to them. "Your mortal potion can destroy this virus?"

"It might. Or it could just subdue it along with the vampiric traits it's designed to suppress. I won't know which until I can run tests."

"What potion do you mean?" one of the vampires demanded in a thick French accent. The others hissed in unison, like some macabre vampire chorus.

"In the limousine, outside," Nat told them. "There's an effects envelope, with two serum bottles and some syringe packets."

The quartet started for the door as one, but the French vampire turned back to LaCroix for a moment. "And Charon?" he queried.

The Roman general's smile sent literal shivers crawling up Natalie's spine. "...has crossed the River Styx for the last time," he replied. "Albeit he is about to awaken to the darkness locked in his own armored transport. He will shortly be spirited away to some remote locale so that he may languish in peace from the ravages of his own poisonous creation."

Snarling approval, the vampires went to fetch their salvation from Emil Charon's limousine.

"'My only love sprung from my only hate,'" LaCroix quoted, his voice a sibilant purr. "It would appear, Dr. Lambert, that we are in your debt."

Before Nat could answer, Janette moaned in Nick's arms and opened her eyes. The way Nick held her sent an unavoidable pang of jealousy coursing through Natalie's veins. She tried to squelch it with the medical observation that despite her dehydrated state, Janette's color had never looked healthier. Obviously there had been enough of the LV2 left in Nick's blood to affect her, even though his own suppression symptoms had abated and again released the vampire.

Janette queried something in medieval French. Nick answered in the same tongue, then pulled her slowly, gently to her feet. Nat rose with them, wondering where this rather tender scenario would lead next. The answer surprised her. In a gesture born of another age, Nick grasped Janette's arm, and with all the grace and elegance of dancing a cotilion, stepped forward and placed her hand in LaCroix's.

No words were exchanged, yet the formality of it convinced Nat that something more had indeed just passed between them. When Nick returned to stand beside her, he looked at her and smiled, and his eyes were blue.

The LV2 vials had contained more than enough to inject the quartet, Nick _and_ Janette (just to be on the safe side). LaCroix, not unexpectedly, had declined the treatment.

"I don't suppose you'd be willing to give me a sample of _your_ blood," she boldly asked Nick's sire when they had re-emerged into the cool night air. "If you really are immune to this virus, then your cells could be the key to a permanent cure."

"Indeed?" LaCroix seemed surprised. Maybe microbiology sounded like little more than witchcraft and alchemy to him? "Then I suppose," the one-time general said, "you shall have my full co-operation." He still held Janette's arm protectively in his own, and he and Nick again traded a look that would have spoken volumes - - if only Nat had known the language. Why did she have the uncomfortable feeling that she and Janette had just unwittingly taken part in a hostage exchange?

All around them, the quartet had been busy loading bodies into the limousine's spacious trunk. Nat didn't want to know how they usually disposed of inconvenient corpses, but she supposed that being rendered 'mortal' by the LV2 had put a certain crimp in the procedure.

"We'll find an answer," she promised, handing an LV2 vial that still contained fluid to Janette. "And until we find it, we'll keep you supplied with with this."

LaCroix glanced at the armored truck and smiled thinly. "I believe my latest progeny might also be of some help toward that end," he said. "After all, if there is a cure, he will now have a vested interest in providing it to us."

Under other circumstances, Nat might have objected to that. Might, had she been able to garner any shred of sympathy for Emil Charon. As though to confirm her suspicion that contradicting LaCroix was less than wise, Nick's hand, warm again, closed over hers and squeezed gently. Nat squeezed back, a non-verbal 'I know,' and held her tongue.

"I am in your debt as well, Natalie," Janette said gratefully. "And I too will offer any assistance you require."

Natalie nodded her agreement, but couldn't help wondering just how much any of this would really change Nick's tempestuous relationship with his 'family.' And after that humiliating scene in the precinct tonight, how could he possibly go back to his everyday life?

Again, Nick seemed to read her thoughts. "There are many other mortals who know the truth now," he said, leaving the rest of the question unspoken. LaCroix apparently needed few words to discern a meaning, especially where Nick was concerned.

"Mortals have known of us before," the elder vampire answered. "We do what we have always done. Move on and begin again."

Natalie felt Nick tense at LaCroix's use of the word 'we.' "Well, it's not quite the same this time, is it?" he said. "And I'm still not going with you."

This was, Nat knew, an age-old argument between them. But for once, LaCroix seemed disinclined to pursue it. "Well then," he intoned, every inch now the longsuffering parent, "your mortal playmates shall simply have to be 'convinced' that Charon was wrong about you. Obviously, he mistook your 'allergies' for a condition far more dire."

Nick held the ancient vampire's gaze for a prolonged moment before he spoke again, and when he did it sounded almost like an invocation. "Thank you," he said.

That sounded as if LaCroix were agreeing to loose the chains that had bound Nick to him for eight centuries. Had it somehow been implicit that the price for saving the rest of LaCroix's children would be Nick's freedom? Silently, Natalie prayed it was true.

"We appear to be finished here," LaCroix said matter-of-factly. Two of the four vampires had boarded the armored truck and started its engine. The other two had started the limousine, and it was to this vehicle that LaCroix now made a sweeping gesture. "Shall we?"

At once, Nick's hand slipped from Natalie's and with casual familiarity, went around her waist instead. "If it's all the same to you," he told LaCroix, "I think we'd rather walk."

Walk? Nat understood the principle well enough, but they were miles from anywhere out here. Maybe if they could find a cab...

"As you wish." LaCroix ushered Janette into the car. "We will speak again soon. Nicholas. Dr. Lambert."

It was both a farewell and a dismissal, and Nick responded by nodding once. Then he guided Nat deliberately away. He walked slowly but resolutely, and he didn't look back.

"Right now," he said when the sound of engines had faded behind them, "all I want is to sit somewhere and watch a sunrise... with the woman I love."

Nat laughed and put her arm around him in turn. "I think we can arrange that," she said.

- - The End - -