'the last cold ray of sunshine slowly disappears
round the corner of the building and leaves you alone
the darkness covers the city and the streets are silent too
what would you turn to?' (1)

prologue

A long time ago, a very long time ago, I gave a speach. Of the words, the phrases, sentences and paragraphs I remember nothing. Yet the room in which I stood I could describe to you in minute detail. It was packed with seated dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies. Royalty surrounded me on all sides. I was so nervous. I remember the exquisite decor of the ballroom in which the gala was held, the expensive jewellery around the perfect necks of the ladies, the coloured sashes tied around the waists of the gentlemen.

I spoke well, I recall, and as I took my seat once again, LaCroix leaned over to me across the table and said quietly, 'Sheer poetry, mon frere.'

The dawn that followed found the two of us together, making love as we hadn't for many, many years, and didn't for more years afterwards. Something in my voice, he told me, in the words I'd spoken had ignited his passions as nothing had in centuries. He'd have taken me then and there, he said, had it not been for the company we'd been in.

Why am I telling this now?

For no better reason than tonight, during his nocturnal broadcast, LaCroix used a line from that very same speech in his monologue. However he remembered it, a line from something written over a hundred years ago, spoken once and then forgotten, I do not know. But I knew immediately from whence it came. I even recalled saying it as he spoke the words over the city airwaves. Just one line.

'What you show, dear friends, when the masks are gone, are your true colours.'

--

Who would have believed it could be so easy to stop the fighting?

The cenobite's attack, which I survived, honed everything - my whole life, my long existence - to one point in time; one moment of the most intense pain, the white hot rape of my body, mind and soul. According to LaCroix, I came closer to a mortal death that night than I had ever come. I don't remember looking into the light for a second time, but perhaps... perhaps that's what he meant. I lost everything that night. Everything that made me who I had become, everything I loved and cherished, my mortal ambitions and duties, my immortal morals by which I had lived for longer than any one person has a right to. It had all gone when I finally awoke from that endless, terrible dream of a jewelled monster and the macabre chains he controlled.

I have to start again from scratch.

My attacker had apologised to me. Had offered me his eternal protection. I must be the most closely guarded vampire on the earth.

Not that it changed anything that had happened. Or anything that was happening.

The nightmares of metal and blood still haunt me as I sleep. I feel as an empty shell, a mere shadow of the person I was only nights before. It was as if what I'd been had bled out with the source of my eternal life, and my thoughts and ideas were as mixed and confused as those of the mortals in whose blood I'd been bathed while lying unconscious at the mercy of my master.

Schanke, Vachon told me, visited the Raven every night for a week after the attack. LaCroix, even more surprisingly, spoke to him on each of those nights. Tracy too put in an appearance more than once, even after - according to my private nurse, Ellast - I had tried to attack her when I awoke a starving, frightened vampire from my healing slumber. Nat hadn't, as far as I knew, been near the club. There might have been many reasons. There was probably one.

Vachon returned to the church in the daylight hours, yet his presence at the Raven through the night was constant. I know we had history, albeit very recent. But I couldn't follow that up. I still can't.

Because the blood in my veins isn't mine. And the memories that are held within me are of the most terrible violence, such aching pain that I don't want to share them with anyone. Almost anyone.

One evening, a couple of nights after he'd disposed of Linque's puzzle in the usual way - following the agreement they have which frightens me still - LaCroix sipped from me. He asked to share my experiences so that he might better understand my nightmares and my fears as they assaulted me. He didn't take much. He didn't need to. It is all so close to the surface even now. He drank from me with reverence, sliding the sharp points of his teeth into me with such tenderness I could barely feel him. Afterwards, he soothed the tiny wounds with his lips, a small sensual gesture I was strangely grateful for.

For it meant so much to me, I realised, to know that I was still attractive to him. He'd been in my mind as I'd been ripped apart. He had been there with me for every scream, every tear and snap of my shattering body. He'd seen me immersed in blood, my insides laid bare for him. Yet still he regarded me with the simmering desire that had always been visible to me in his ice-blue eyes and clear to me through the mental connection that binds us.

I can only thank him for that. Thank him, and repay him somehow. Sometime. But not yet. For there is still nothing I can give. I have nothing. I am nothing. My soul has been torn from me and I cling to the tattered remains. These passed weeks I have remained at the Raven. Returning to the loft is something I haven't yet been able to face. I am welcome here for as long as it takes, I know that. Vachon has sat with his arms around me while I've cried. LaCroix... has fed me, protected me, given me a safe haven where I can hide from the pain and the fear. It isn't just a building, an apartment, a room and a bed. He has given me security. At the Raven, with his presence close by, I feel safe. Even knowing that Linque has gone and Edwarldo is dead... the images in my memory still return when I least expect them

LaCroix... he scares away even the horror.

* * *

chapter one

Tenderly he stroked the soft blond hair from the back of the head dropped forward in front of him. So soft to the touch, so beloved this one would be in somebody's eyes. With a slow, sensual movement he closed his fingers around the exposed throat, making a split circle of his thumbs and index fingers. Closing that circle around the neck of this mortal, he constricted first the airway and then the passage of blood to the brain. It was all over in but a few precious moments and he removed his hands, letting the lifeless body slump uselessly to the ground. The blood would be tainted, and every second that ticked passed, every moment the heart was still and the blood's movement slowed would poison it a little more until finally time would render it polluted and undrinkable.

He waited. Hours passed. And only after the sun had risen and set once again did he cut open the body and drain the contents with considerable skill.

Killing in this manner had brought him a satisfaction he could only have imagined before. For so many hundreds of years he'd torn into the necks of his victims with fervour and delight, ripping them open as he let his will fall from them and forced upon them in its place the agony of a slow death.

Yet to feel their hearts stop under his fingers, to crush the life out of them had been so much easier, so much more enjoyable than he had ever believed it would be. He had held this one under his own spell through the final moments. Next time, he would release his victim as his hands squeezed their existence from the earth.

Next time. He did not need to do this again for he had what he wanted. But he had taken so much pleasure from it. He vowed silently that there would be a next time.

* * *

chapter two

"I see your true colours,
shining through...." (2)

Standing in the candlelight, gazing out of the window at the darkened city beyond, Nick sipped at the ruby liquid that filled the glass in his hand. The moon was rising slowly into the black sky, illuminating Toronto in an eerie light.

'I am thy father's spirit; doom'd for a certain term to walk the night.'

The line came back to him before the memory, and he strove to recall where he had heard it before. He smiled as he remembered. A quote from Hamlet, used by LaCroix as a gentle rib during his Father's Days broadcast two years back.  He loved Shakespeare, could remember watching the play performed one night on the banks of an English river. He and LaCroix, sitting in the select audience as the masterpiece was enacted before them, the actors themselves leaping about on scaffolding built between the trees and the water. A magical night, one filled with the promise of something subtle. They had returned to their rooms that night arm-in-arm, swapping critique, simply enjoying one another's company.

Nick mused on the stray thought. A pleasant time indeed. An easy time between he and his master. There had been easy times, as unbelievable as it often seemed. Some memories were more difficult to recall when they were openly at war, through their periods of vicious fighting.

"Est-ce que tu va bien, mon fils?" LaCroix stepped up to his son's back, barely touching, leaning forward the final inch to place a single kiss into the blond hair.

"Oui, mon pere." Nick turned his head slightly. "Just... thinking of other times, other places."

"Anything I might recall?"

He sipped his drink. "'Hamlet', when we were in England last."

LaCroix thought for a moment, and then the icy-blue eyes lit up. "Ah, yes. The 'Oxford Players', a talented band of youngsters. What made you remember that?"

"The line you favour from the play."

LaCroix repeated the words that had only minutes before echoed in Nick's mind. "It often seems... appropriate."

Nick stepped away from the ancient, turning in front of the window. "I was considering perhaps... dropping into the station tonight." He wasn't sure what reaction to expect but he was relieved when LaCroix smiled.

"I never thought I would say this, Nicholas, but I'm glad. I think perhaps some time at your mortal job would... assist your healing."

"You don't mind?"

He smirked in jest. "I didn't say that, now did I? But as you ask, no, I don't mind." He turned to return to his broadcast. "Shall I expect you back?"

"Before sunrise," Nick assured with more than a hint of panic in his tone. Was his master suggesting he go home?

LaCroix's expression calmed his unease, and his words settled him further. "I'll wait up."

~

Wearing one of his father's little-worn black linen jackets, jewelled pin secured in his lapel, Nick slipped the key into the Caddie's ignition for the first time since the attack almost three weeks ago. As the engine fired up, the passenger door opened and Vachon slid into the seat next to him.

"What are you doing?"

Vachon stretched his arm over the back of the seats, fingering the dark collar of the jacket his friend wore, dark eyes raking over the other's form. "I'm coming with you."

"You know, Vachon, I can..."

"...look after myself, yada yada yada. I've heard it, Nick. I'm still coming along."

Schanke's delighted greeting raised a few heads, including Nat's as she leaned over the body. Her heart started to beat faster at the mere sight of him. Three weeks. She'd honestly started to believe that she would never see him again. The last thing she'd seen... it had been neither hopeful nor pleasant. She watched him from a distance, watched him accept the bear hug from Schanke, the multitude of questions that ended in just a happy smile.

"You're... you're back." Schanke still clasped Nick's shoulder if as to reassure himself that his partner was really there. "You look well." The words were said with genuine relief, one that threatened to overwhelm the other.

"You... know." Nick stated uselessly.

Schanke didn't have to wonder what was meant by that. "Yeah. It was kinda... odd, for a while. But if you were a mere mortal like the rest of us you wouldn't be standing there now, and I can't not be thankful for that." He grinned. "Besides, whatever you are, you're my partner. You've saved my ass on more occasions than I'd like to think about and I owe you plenty. Besides, human, vampire, you're still my friend, right?"

"He was strangled, and then drained. At least I think that's what happened."

She watched him, watched him look down at the corpse with less than enthusiasm. Schanke came to stand next to him, asked all the right questions and gleaned from her all the information he needed to start his investigation. Just as Schanke nodded his final thanks Nick started away from them without a word, back to where Vachon waited. His mortal friends watched his retreating back; Schanke in empathy, Natalie with concern.

"He's different, Schank," she murmured.

"Of course he is, Nat." He frowned, turning his attention to her. "You saw the loft. I doubt even his... species can endure something like that and not have it change them." He considered his own words, gazing back at his retreating partner. "The memories he must have," he murmured more to himself than to her, "the pain he's been through." Shaking his head, he couldn't help but smile as he watched Nick join the other at the Caddy, saw Vachon touch the other's back in reassurance.

"Too much?"

Nick steadied himself against the car. "I don't know. I don't... I'm not sure I can do this anymore."

"It's too soon, Nick. You haven't found yourself yet, how do you expect to masquerade as a mortal when you can't remember who you really are?"

The blond shook his head, aware of Schanke's concerned gaze on him but unable to find the reassurance for either of them - Schanke or himself. Vachon didn't need that reassurance. He had the confidence that Nick would eventually pick up where he left off, or at least find some other way to live that he was comfortable with.

"Let's go."

~

Since Janette had left Toronto the gaping hole in his life had ached to be filled. Nick had been relieved - once he'd accepted losing her - that at least another familiar face was still around. Throughout history there had usually been at least one member of his family close by. City to city, century to century, either or both, Janette or LaCroix, had been by his side or living at least in the same town, living the same mortal incarnation as he.

What hadn't impressed him had been the changes wrought in the Raven. 'The sex is back', LaCroix had told him. Indeed. Since the attack, Nick had noticed, the chains were gone. But the two strippers on the stage when he and Vachon returned that night were well into one another, and LaCroix was nowhere to be seen. They leaned on the bar and waited only a moment before Miklos was standing before them making eyes at them both.

Vachon gestured at his companion who shrugged. "Whatever."

So the Spaniard ordered. "Two usual, thanks."

Most of the club's clientele were engaged in voyeurism. Javier glanced at the Belgian, amused by the expression on his face. "You don't approve of any of this, do you?"

"I've never been... interested in watching."

Dark eyebrows lifted. "Oh."

Miklos put the two glasses down on the bar as Nick turned back. "Where's LaCroix?"

There was an edge to his voice that served as a warning. "He went to the back rooms a while ago."

Nick closed his eyes for a moment, locating his master. The bloodlust was as its peak, arcing through the link between them. He pulled back, grasping the stem of the wineglass and throwing the drink down his throat. It wasn't enough. Without controls, without his usual human constraints in place, the bloodlust communicated to him unintentionally from his sire took an immediate and unforgiving hold. He looked up at Vachon, golden flecks shining in his bright eyes. He didn't have to ask, didn't have to speak. The other just knew.

Slamming the door behind them, they landed heavily on the large, kingsize bed in one of the spare rooms behind the Raven. Kisses became nips and bites. Touches became caresses. Twice Nick tried to rein in what so obviously wanted to be released, and twice Vachon coaxed him into freeing what he was, into taking what he needed. Soon they were beyond thought, beyond controlling their natural instincts. Nick made tiny welts in the Spaniard's skin, drawing from him tiny droplets of blood that only hinted at what Nick knew was there.

Nick tore open the collar of Vachon's black shirt, scraping fangs over the collarbone, piercing deep enough to scratch it. The other spasmed in his arms, wrapped a strong arm around Nick's neck and pushed long fingers into the blond mane. He let loose a cry of pain mingled with a consuming pleasure. Nick's tongue swept over the bone, clearing the flesh from it for just a moment before the wound healed over. Red gold eyes met burning ochre. Vachon curled his lips back over his teeth, baring the sharp points of his fangs, a warning of retribution. Nick was fine with that.

"Javier."

"Nick...." Using the hand twisted in the blond hair, Vachon pulled his lover's mouth down on to his own, tongue plunging deep between the welcoming, ravishing lips. Teeth battered against teeth until neither could stand it any longer. Pulling back from one another, Nick struck at Vachon's throat, just over his jugular. When Vachon twisted to strike the other, he tore his flesh on the fangs in his own neck. His deep rumble of reaction matched Nick's own muted cry as he buried his teeth in the other's artery.

And then all that could be heard was silence, pierced only by a soft sucking noise.

Their orgasms were lost in the exquisite delight of feeding.

Nick poured his very self into his blood, his confusion and pain, his anguish and bitterness. Above all, the emptiness in his heart and soul. Vachon too let his whole being infect his blood, attempting to show Nick that he was loved, that whatever he needed to ease the void within him was within his grasp.

The intimate exchange went deeper. Vachon tasted more of Nick than he ever had before. He was flooded with memories and experiences, thoughts and emotions not his own, centuries older than him. Agonies that stemmed from chains physical and emotional. Linque's vicious attack simmered at the surface, some of its power gleaned from it by another, more powerful influence. Further down, other times, other beatings administered by those stronger and older than himself. Yet there was happiness, contentment intermingled with everything before his metallic crucifixion. He had known peace in his long existence, had known desire and affection, laughter and joy. His life was a pattern of intertwined experiences of pain and pleasure in all its guises.

Vachon found himself in all the confusion and held to that which he recognized flowing through his own veins. Yet he didn't break the circle. There was one emotion more powerful than any running like a thick flowing river in his lover's blood.

Love.

A love so powerful it overrode everything else. Buried so deep that even Nick could only feel hints, only be aware of a strong pull toward what it meant, nothing more. But it was there, put there at the very beginning by the one that made him. LaCroix's blood was the first Nick had tasted, the remedy of the first hunger. There would always be that current in Nick's blood, however long he lived, if he never fed from LaCroix again.

Vachon wondered at that, wondered if his signature marked the vampires he had made or whether this was what made Nick LaCroix's son, and not just another mortal brought over to the other side. The ideas passed by him, through him and were communicated to Nick who simply accepted them as he had learned to accept others' thoughts as he fed.

He lost himself in the other vampire. The pain and fear of the last few weeks became a blur, a tiny, tiny part of a so-much larger picture. Time became nothing, an irrelevance. Deeper and deeper they went into one another until they became one entity, one being, one heart and one soul.

Tears welled in Vachon's eyes before he knew why. And as they ran over his face he withdrew from the deep connection the blood circle had established, easing the intensity. He felt his lover do the same. Very slowly they withdrew from each other mentally, fangs retracting. Vachon tightened his embrace, hugging the other vampire against him, nuzzling the blond head tucked into his shoulder. Nick's hands smoothed down his curtain of dark hair, soothing.

"I saw you, Nick," he murmured so quietly a mere mortal would not have heard it. "You're beautiful."

Settling into the arms that held him, Nick closed his eyes, his own tears leaking from under the lids. A desperate passion had unleashed within the two of them something wild and powerful. He hadn't meant to pull Vachon into his nightmare, hadn't meant to share his experiences with anyone but his father.

"I'm sorry," he managed after some time.

"Don't. I'm not. I'm glad." Vachon dropped a reverent kiss to the pale neck. Then he settled himself onto his side and tucked Nick in below his chin, holding him as he needed to for a while.

~

LaCroix finished his nightly broadcast and stepped into the club. The short interlude had invigorated him and he was in debited to the old friend who had sent the willing mortal to him. She had been precious indeed and had now gone on her way with little more than vague recollections of an erotic encounter with a tall, pale stranger she would never again lay eyes upon. Sometimes his mastery of his art impressed even himself.

He had sensed his son's probing for a moment at a point when it would have been... difficult to stop. Luckily Nicholas had not made a further enquiry and for some time now their bond had been thrumming deliciously. He recognised Vachon's chord in Nicholas' mind and therefore hadn't felt the need to seek them out. They were close by and participating in activities that LaCroix deemed suitable and indeed healthy for two young, vibrant vampires.

That wasn't to say that he didn't feel some spike of jealousy. It erred him a little that his son was willingly sharing his body and blood with Vachon when their own relationship had been so barren for so very long. But attempting to stop Nicholas' relationship with the Spaniard would be petty and would cost him dearly. Nothing would cause him to jeapodize what he had rekindled in Nicholas, albeit that the seeds were sewn in a near-fatal attack. They had been sewn. And Nicholas was coming back to the fold, to his family. To him.

Miklos handed the ancient a glass of the Raven's finest. "Nichola was asking for you earlier," he informed LaCroix needlessly. "He went to the back rooms with Javier Vachon."

LaCroix inclined his head, a silent mix of 'I'm well aware of my son's movements' and 'thank you'. Easily he tuned the club's heady music from his senses and carefully touched the place in his mind where his son existed. Nicholas was sated, resting now, emotionally raw from what had obviously been an intense encounter. He reached for his son and was in turn reached for.

A wave of repose washed over him, the first hint of calm that he'd felt from his child since that fateful night. For now he would leave them to one another. Nicholas was returning to them, perhaps had already done so. But the worst thing any one of them could do at this moment in time was to push. He was still far too close to the edge.

~

The club was empty and closed by the time Vachon and Nick wondered back in. LaCroix was supervising the restocking of the beer fridge.

"Raiding my wardrobe again, Nicholas?" he enquired lightly, seeing his son in his own cream silk shirt, one far too long for Nick. Vachon also looked more relaxed, scruffier than when he'd left to follow the older vampire to his mortal employment.

Nick flashed LaCroix a smile of innocence that made the ancient react in kind. Taking a liberty Vachon had dared not take tonight, Nick leapt over the bar and grabbed a bottle from the selection under the bar, picking up two goblets and making it three when LaCroix glanced up.

LaCroix joined his son at the bar. "An eye for a eye tonight, Nicholas? Or... a neck for a neck?"

"I... reached for you and you were with someone. The bloodlust... was too much."

LaCroix inclined his head in apology. "A lovely, willing mortal, Nicholas. A... gift from a friend. She is absolutely fine." He added the reassurance, keenly aware of his son's edgy state. "I'm glad you found... a willing partner."

"Are you?"

"Of course. All I want, mon petit, is for you to find yourself in the confusion of your mind, to recover from what was done to you. If Javier is a part of that, so be it. I... would like to be a part of that too."

Touched, Nick nodded easily. "You already are. You've done so much."

"Perhaps. Perhaps, not enough." His eyes clouded over for a second, and he looked away for that moment. Hesitantly, he covered Nick's hand where it rested on the mahogany of the bar. "You are so precious to me, mon fils, so very precious."

** flashback - Paris, 1228 **

LaCroix sat down quietly on the edge of the bed. Raw silk sheets covered his new-born's body while satin pillows cradled him. In the last thousand years he had brought across many others, many vampires. But here was his son, his prot�g�. This one would be at his side for eternity.

He swept the backs of his fingers over the thick blond hair, watching intently as his precious creation awoke. Gold-flecked blue eyes shone with life and the reddened lips curled into a glorious smile.

"Tu es mon triomphe!" he spoke softly. "Mon enfant d'or."

"Per�...." Nicholas tucked his bottom lip under his fangs, his grin positively obscene.

LaCroix's delight was untold. He cupped his son's cheek in his palm, running his index finger over one of the long, sharp canines. Gently, playfully, Nicholas opened his mouth, sucking that finger between his lips, scraping his front teeth over the flesh, scratching his fangs into the pale, cold skin. Two shallow trails of red welled up against alabaster. LaCroix's eyes widened and his nature came to the fore. But the tender smile on his little one's face, the love and reverence with which he licked the blood from the already-healed wounds stopped him from exacting any punishment. Nicholas looked up at him, still holding his finger lightly in his teeth. LaCroix heard himself gasp softly. The swell in his cold, dead heart shocked him. He was feeling for this knight things long forgotten, things he had believed he would never again experience.

"Si beau." The ancient surprised himself with the strength of his feelings, of his passion and desire for his new son. "Tu es � moi, pour l'�ternit�." He retrieved his finger from the strong teeth that held him before lowering his head and touching his lips to the other's. "The fire that burns within me burns only for you."

** end flashback **

"Everything I've done...."

"You've done because of how you feel for me." LaCroix nodded. "I know." Turning his hand Nick stroked his fingers over his father's palm, taking his hand into his own. "Perhaps I have had... similar motivations."

LaCroix smiled, returning the gentle grip of his son's hand. "Perhaps, Nicholas. Or perhaps you were just defending yourself in the only way I had taught you. And when my lessons were no longer enough, you drew on your own imagination, your own courage. None can blame you for that, not even I."

Vachon looked across at the two regarding one each other intimately over the bar. He snagged one of the wineglasses and the bottle, pouring himself a drink and knocking it back. He had heard stories about vampires who had attempted to come between LaCroix and his favourite son. Getting involved with Nick had been a risk, a big, foolish risk. But it was also, he knew, something he could not have resisted for long. From the first moment Nick Knight had gathered his shirt up and thrust him bodily against the wall at Screed's place he had been inescapably in love. He'd always been a sucker for blondes.

The passion in the blue eyes, the sincerity in his words, in his statement that 'eternity is a long time to keep running'. Javier had stayed in Toronto in the hope that somehow he could get to know the strange vampire better. And then, one night at the Raven, he'd spotted him talking quite feveredly to the club's owner. In the short time he'd been in the city he'd never seen anyone speak to the tall, pale ancient in such a way, and had never met anyone who would have been willing.

** flashback - Toronto, 1997 **

"What can I get you?"

Vachon leaned forward, meeting Miklos' eyes and casting his glance at the two vampires standing talking at the end of the bar. "Whatever he's having if it gives you balls of steel."

Miklos smiled as he reached for a bottle of the usual. "That is Nichola De Brabant, LaCroix's favourite."

Vachon's eyes widened. "Favourite? As in...."

"As in, son." Miklos let his eyes wonder over the vampire in question. "Such a dark beauty," he murmured. Returning his attention to the Spaniard, he poured a refill. "Be careful, my friend. LaCroix does not take kindly to anyone who messes with his family, *especially* Nichola."

** end flashback **

LaCroix's cold breath raised the tiny hairs on Vachon's neck... but he backed off. He was still unsure of Nicholas' mind. He could not push at this time. Nick's relationship with Vachon was borne of vampire lust, of pure desire for another vampire's blood. His relationship with his master was so much more complex, so much more entirely. Its happy ending could not be rushed.

"May I suggest retiring to the back rooms?"

LaCroix took the glass from the bar where Nick had set it. Vachon turned to follow the ancient but his eyes locked with Nick's when the club's main door opened and for a couple of seconds sunlight streamed in. Then darkness prevailed once more. All three turned as vampires, ready to attack.

Natalie took each step down to the dance floor deliberately, one by one, looking not at the occupants of the bar but at the wooden boards under her feet.

"Sun's coming up," she said, matter-of-factly. "Shouldn't you be getting home, Nick?"

LaCroix's angry growl joined with Nick's yet he held back, standing in the shadows with Vachon while Nick vaulted the bar and strode toward the centre of the dance floor.

"What are you doing here, Nat?"

She faced him determinedly. "I'm here to take you home." She looked passed him to the other two. "I'm taking him home. If you want to stop us you'll have to hurt us and I don't believe you want to do that."

"Nat!" Nick shook his head, blinking in an attempt to clear his eyes. It didn't quite work. He was hungry, tired. The vampire had been wakened by the passionate blood exchange and it hadn't been sated. Now it could sense mortal, human blood. It wanted to feed. "What are you doing? What makes you think...."

She reached for his hand. "It's okay, Nick. They won't stop us."

"What are you talking about?"

The first grain of uncertainty crept into her voice. "This evening, I saw Vachon with you. He was keeping an eye on you."

"He's being over protective, that's all." He stared at her. "Nat, I haven't been home since the attack."

"I know, Nick! And I'm here to take you home."

His eyes shone. "I don't want to go home! Why should I want to return to that horror scene?! I'm safe here, Nat."

She stared at her. "They're changing you, Nick, using this is a excuse to drag you back. Can't you see that?"

"They haven't changed me, Nat, I have. I can't go back. At the moment, I can't go forward." He took her arm, leading her back toward the entrance. "Leave." Spinning from his grasp, she strode toward the other two. "Nat!"

Glaring at LaCroix she stopped feet from him. "You can't have him back! I won't let you do this."

He regarded her with something close to amusement, although Nick could feel the underlying anger simmering beneath. "My dear doctor, my son is a vampire. He does what he wishes. No one can keep him trapped where he does not want to be."

"You're lying, LaCroix. You've kept him a captor for eight hundred years. And you," she turned on Vachon, "you're just helping him! It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this attack was set up to bring Nick here, to make him reliant on you again."

LaCroix wasn't famous for his patience. "I think you have said enough, Doctor." His genial tone was gone, replaced by a deadly quiet. "Leave here now and do not return."

Whatever determination she had crumbled under his glowing eyes and threatening stance. She stepped back, turning to regard Nick again. He didn't look trapped, she had to concede, he looked... settled. "Please tell me you're okay."

"Nat... I belong here."

She left.

* * *

chapter three

"I see your true colours,
and that's why I love you...." (2)

So beautiful. LaCroix stepped into the room, closing the door behind him as he went. His eyes did not stray from the figure of his beloved son, lying almost diagonally across the bed, his bare feet on the pillows. His arms were crossed over his chest, hair ruffled still, probably from his encounter with Vachon hours ago. As he had taken to doing in the passed weeks, he wore a pair of his sire's silk pyjamas - deep blue silk tonight. The ancient was surprised that Vachon was not here with Nicholas, and he reached out with his senses, finding the Spaniard already up and fixing himself breakfast.

He smiled to himself contentedly. Although he hadn't yet managed to close the gap between them, Nicholas was allowing a physical and emotional closeness that he had denied his father for a very long time. For now, that was enough. It would be enough for the rest of eternity if that was all Nicholas could find to offer. So close... he'd come so close to losing his prot�g�. This time he'd been truly frightened.

** flashback - Raven, five nights after the attack **

Letting his natural reaction to his son's bite flow over him, LaCroix took up the first of the three bottles lying on the bed beside him and uncorked it with his teeth. As Nicholas drank from him he replenished his own system from the bottle - fresh human blood, bought in for this purpose. Nicholas could well drain him if he allowed it and he couldn't do that. But the traumatised vampire needed to feed; Nick was still bleeding out at an alarming rate and without regular feeding he would simply die from blood loss. LaCroix's blood would always be a better healer than the bottled blood, even freshly bottled, with which they were supplementing his feeding.

Finding a peace within himself LaCroix closed his eyes, resting back between the headboard and the corner post of the bed. Nicholas was held in a feeding embrace, teeth buried in his father's throat, LaCroix's arm rested very gently around his shoulders. For several long minutes they would remain like this, utterly still save for the swallowing motions in Nick's throat as he drank down the life-blood he shared with his sire. And then he would force his son's teeth away from the source and look into the terrible expression of fear and sorrow on his beloved's face.

Tonight, though, LaCroix could hear a commotion in the corridor outside. Vachon had a strict command not to allow anyone up to the private apartment. Yet there was someone out there... a mortal. LaCroix kept a tight lid on his anger lest it be threaded through to his son. Nicholas was on a narrow enough ledge of sanity as it was. LaCroix would prevent him from falling at all costs.

The door opened suddenly and Natalie Lambert took two determined steps into the room before Vachon's painful grip bit into her shoulder. Yet this was not what stopped her in her tracks. LaCroix was snarling at her, eyes a furnace of red and gold, long teeth bared. It also was not the sight that stopped her dead.

Struggling to escape his father's hold, Nick was howling in his desperation to reach her. She had come here to rescue him, she had told herself. To take him from the vicious presence of his feared master into her own care. Yet his desperate fight to get to her did not look like one of escape. It looked like one of attack. She found herself rooted where she stood, staring into the blazing eyes of a starving vampire who did not seem to recognise her.

"Nick..." Her voice came out high pitched, an uncertain squeak of fear.

Behind him, LaCroix closed his eyes, bringing his own nature under fierce control. When he opened them, they were once again their human blue. Keeping a firm, painful grip of one of his son's arms, he let go of the other to slide his hand to the back of the blond head.

"Nicholas.... Ssh, mon enfant, come back." He stroked the hair softly, soothingly, recognising this as what it was; not an attack as their uninvited guest obviously imagined, but defence of his food and thus of his own life. "Viens, mon arc-en-ciel, tout va bien."

Nat could do nothing but stare. The dark blankets in which Nick was wrapped had fallen from his shoulder in his sudden movements. They revealed a deep gash, raw still to the bone that looked splintered. She knew how badly hurt he'd been in the attack. The blood coating his loft walls had been an initial clue and Tracy's description of what she'd witnessed had not lacked detail. But he hadn't healed. Why hadn't he healed?

"Nicholas." LaCroix's voice was as low and hypnotic as she could ever remember hearing it. "Calmes-toi, mon enfant. Reviens � moi.."

Slowly, Nick desisted in his growling and turned, raising himself up painfully to fall back into his father's arms. LaCroix allowed him to settle, his expression alone commanding them not to move while he continued to calm and soothe Nick, keeping up the stroking of his hair as the vampire moved back against his father.

Yet the coiled tension in Nick's body remained clear for all to see. He might have returned to LaCroix's side, settled in his arms, but the inherent danger was present. Nick's confusion, his need to protect himself and his source of food, the trauma he'd already endured were all keeping his vampire nature simmering close to the surface.

"Nicholas, you must feed, mon petit." With infinite patience, LaCroix started to direct his son's head back to his shoulder, mouth to his throat. But the slight pressure drew forth a short, panicked yelp from his child and he immediately relinquished his hold.

They waited. A full five minutes of LaCroix coaxing his son back to the feeding, five minutes of Nat staring at the scene being played out in front of her, of Vachon standing wondering what punishment LaCroix would exact from him for this interruption.

Finally, Nick calmed. He tucked himself back into the offered embrace. Lapping at his father's throat twice before striking, settling his teeth into the flesh and drinking of the red elixir that greeted him.
C'est ca, mon fils. Tu es en s�curit�." Sitting back, LaCroix once again closed his eyes, savagely banishing his anger lest it should once more be communicated to his son. To Vachon, the message was clear. He propelled Natalie out of the room as fast as he could and closed the door.

** end flashback **

LaCroix eased himself onto the edge of the bed, still unwilling to wake his sleeping child. He looked so at peace now, such a contrast to his current state of mind. The restlessness that seemed to have consumed him yet the constraints of fear remained. LaCroix reached out, but caught himself just before his fingers brushed the blond hair of his favourite.

He had sensed, over the terrible weeks that Nicholas had been living at the Raven, a willingness from his son, a need to be drawn back to his nature, to the fold as it were. LaCroix was not about to turn his child's suffering into an opportunity, but neither would he prevent some good, as he saw it, coming from this.

Nick moaned softly and his eyes opened, flashes of red gold beneath the lids. No danger perceived, the usual cornflower blue returned to his gaze and he smiled up at LaCroix. "Is everything all right?"

The ancient nodded. "I was just... watching you sleep. How do you feel?"

"Je ne sais pas." For so long it seemed, he had not known. "Last night.... Javier and I... it was... intense. We went too deep I think. He saw too much."

LaCroix swept his hand over his child's hair as he'd wanted to. "Nonsense, mon fils. He loves you. He wanted to know, wanted you to share with him. I doubt it would ever be too much."

LaCroix's easy acceptance of what had occurred warmed Nick. He'd found himself so much closer to his father recently. Maybe it was because this was safety. No one would or could touch him while he remained here, remained protected. It made him feel worth something. Much more than he'd felt worthy of in the last decade or so.

He reached out beyond this room, stretching his senses, exercising a power he usually reserved for assisting him in his crime-fighting career. For a long time he had kept most of his special 'abilities' only for use in emergencies, when someone was in danger or he needed to be somewhere faster than the Caddy would allow him to go. Now, though, he felt he wanted to surround himself with his power, surround himself with the darkness that came with embracing his nature. For this was safety. But it was also death. Was he so willing to turn his back on his quest for mortality?

He drew back in on himself. At the edge of his consciousness he could not only hear the music and underlying voices from the club, he could feel the presence of the vampires and sense the presence of mortals. He was starting to find himself locked in a constant battle with his nature. He would not kill. But were there not other ways to get human blood? Vampires these days killed rarely. It was their nature, but it was also difficult to hold back the mortal world they lived in. Killing meant bodies. And bodies meant trouble. Whereever LaCroix's steady supply stemmed from, Nick knew for a fact that his sire didn't kill his sources.

"A penny for them, as they do insist on saying." LaCroix watched carefully as Nick's gaze focused upon him once more. He reached out to stroke his son's cheek. "What's going on it that complex mind of yours?"
Nick smiled a weak smile and sat up, stretching with a lithe grace that struck a note somewhere within his ancient master. "Everything. Nothing." Sadly, he shrugged. "I haven't been able to get a clear fix on any particular thought since...."

"Since Linque took them from you."

"Yes."

"If I could go back and make if different, mon fils.... In all our bitter fighting I wouldn't have wished the cenobite on you for a second."

"I know." Nick scratched the back of his neck somewhat nervously. "LaCroix... I'd like to get a few things from the loft. My paints, my laptop computer, perhaps some clothes."

LaCroix chuckled. "And here was I thinking you had grown attached to my wardrobe."

"I'm sorry...."

But he was cut off in his apology. "Nonsense, Nicholas. You are welcome. Would you like me to have someone get your things for you, or do you wish to return yourself? You are not a prisoner here as you know."

Nick looked away. "I know, and if you want me out of here...."

Again, he was cut off. LaCroix grasped his arms lightly. "You are as welcome here as you are to my wardrobe, mon fils. You may stay for as long as you wish. You, Nicholas, will never outstay your invitation."

"Merci, mon pere." He spoke quietly, thankfully. "I think I would like to return to the loft." He hesitated. "Has... anything been done about it?"

** flashback - Nick's loft, a few minutes after the attack **

Had there been anyone at the loft when he'd arrived, LaCroix would have torn them in half, guilty or innocent.

When his eyes set upon Nicholas - what remained of him - his anger became a rage he could barely see passed, let alone control.

Nick lay half-on, half-off the black couch before his fireplace. His head and shoulders had slid from the leather and hung off the cushion, inches from the floor. One hand rested on the wooden boards, hanging from the end of a limp arm. The other arm was thrown across his stomach, the hand sunk into the massive wound there. For the first time in longer than he could remember, LaCroix felt physically sick.

He stood over his son for a second, barely able to believe what was before him. One of his bare feet had been splintered; something driven between the bones and pulled so that they snapped completely apart. His legs and thighs looked like patchwork quilts, made from blue denim and red velvet. His stomach was gouged, turned almost inside out. His heart could be seen, so still within the protective cage that had been smashed around it. LaCroix whispered words of hope to the unhearing room, hope that the heart was undamaged. So weak, Nicholas would certainly be unable to heal his own heart. Without the heart, the vampire was dead.

Only their bond reassured LaCroix that his son was not beyond that hope. There was no discernible vampire in the ancient's mind where Nicholas could always be felt, but neither was there death. He walked around and crouched down next to his child's battered head. His left shoulder had an inch-wide hole punched into it, straight through the bone. The right side of his skull was crushed, the eye bloated and visible even under the closed lids. If there was bruising, which there very probably was, it was hidden under the blood and flesh that matted his son's entire body.

But not just his body. The walls, the couch, the carpet, the floor... blood had been splattered across the surrounding area. LaCroix had felt it all, but seeing this, seeing the results of the brutal attack brought home every tear, every crack. He closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed back the bile from his throat. Nicholas needed him now. Picking up the telephone handset that lay on the floor boards, he dialled a number he had not used in many years, yet one he knew by heart. It rang eight times and was transferred automatically to a mobile phone. Finally, it was answered.

"Ellast speaking."

"My dear....."

"Lucien," her voice filled with joy. "Lucien, it has been too long! How are you?"

Even as desperate tears rose in his eyes, Edwarldo's name was on his tongue. LaCroix's fury would get its release, he would have his revenge. And if Nicholas didn't live.... He banished the thought from his mind. His son would live. He had to live.

Ellast swore brightly as she descended into the loft. She afforded her old friend Lucien a reassuring hand on his shoulder. But that was all. She wasted no time, and realizing there was nothing to be done here she scooped the shattered body up in her arms and demanded LaCroix lead the way back to where ever he was living. They needed space, peace, comfort, a bath and above all, privacy. So he surprised her by leading her to one of Toronto's most popular "edge of the fringe" clubs.

She made phone calls. Within fifteen minutes she had the supplies she needed.

She even sent LaCroix out to pick up some things. Not because she needed them but because she needed him out of the way.

But more importantly than anything, she saved Nicholas' life.

** end flashback **

"I must have scared you," Nick spoke gently, taking one of LaCroix's hands into his own.

"In two thousand years I have never felt so helpless, and so alone." The ancient came back to himself belatedly. "I apologize, Nicholas, you do not need reminders. Suffice it to say you are perfectly safe to return to your home and you are perfectly welcome to bring back with you whatever you want."

~

He hadn't meant to go anywhere but to the loft and back to the Raven. Yet somehow he found himself standing in Captain Cohen's office, explaining to her that he was not yet fully recovered. She reassured him that however long he needed, he should take. What they'd seen at the loft had obviously shaken her too.

Schanke offered to accompany his partner and Nick accepted. He honestly hadn't wanted to return to the loft alone, but for a reason he didn't understand he hadn't wanted LaCroix to go with him. He felt, he thought, that perhaps this was a goodbye to one life and a stepping stone into another. At the moment, he was in limbo, feeling not that he belonged in the mortal world, not in his own kind's world either, although he believed that was where he was headed. The only thing that rooted him anywhere was the jewelled pin he wore in the lapel of his father's black linen jacket. And it scared him to think what that meant.

Schanke breathed a huge sigh of relief as they stepped into the loft. There was not a spot of blood anywhere.

"LaCroix had it cleaned," Nick offered as he stood staring at the scene of his attack. And suddenly he wasn't sure if he ever would be able to live here again. He was eternally grateful for his father's generous offer of sanctuary, whatever ulterior motives the ancient might have. He found he didn't care at the moment, it didn't matter to him in the least.

"LaCroix's... done good... in looking after you." Schanke hoped it was the right thing to say. For a reason he couldn't grasp, Nat seemed to be anti-LaCroix. Yet it was the pale man who had undoubtedly saved Nick's life. "Nick...." He desperately wanted to asked questions, a lot of questions. But he wasn't sure they were appropriate and in some cases he wasn't sure that he wanted to know the answers.

Nick's attention shifted to his partner. "Schank?"

He hesitated, but shook his head. "No, I... it's fine."

"Ask, Schanke. You must have so much on your mind."

"It's just... well, you know. You're a regular guy." Schanke shrugged. "I mean, the blood in the fridge, the sun allergy, the fact that you're a... a vampire. But...."

"You always imagined vampires to be Dracula."

Schanke's eyes widened. "Yeah, actually. I mean, LaCroix's more the type, you know. But you...."

"I don't kill. I try to live well, humanely. In the past I've... killed, but not any longer, not for over a hundred years."

His partner frowned. "A hundred years? How many...."

"Seven hundred and sixty nine."

"Jeez." Shaking his head, Schanke looked about, waiting for Nick. He understood how painful the memories must be here. "You're not thinking of moving back in yet, are you?"

Nick shook his head. "I'll be staying at the Raven for now. Afterwards... I don't know." He headed up stairs to pack some clothes. Schanke wondered further into the loft, looking around him as if this were the first time he'd ever been here. He perched on the arm of the chair, his eyes setting upon a box on the coffee table. Reaching over, he picked it up. It looked old, intricately designed. The gold pattern, the delicate inscriptions seemed a part of the wood out of which the box had been carved. There were barely visible lines across the surfaces of the wood, lines that made him think perhaps it was split into sections, like a puzzle. He liked puzzles.

Nick threw some clothes into a case. As he opened a drawer his eyes caught a photograph lying under his socks. Slowly, he pulled it out. It was of LaCroix, taken some years ago. The colour was faded, the sapia paper curled at the edges. Yet its subject was still clear. LaCroix dressed in black, a rare smile tilting his lips. He was seated in a high chair, glass hanging from one hand, legs crossed. Nick had taken the photograph himself, when the technology had first been available. They'd had so much fun with that first camera.

Smiling to himself, he placed the photograph in the case. With all he needed from his room, he headed downstairs to pick up his canvas and paints.

"Don't!" He was knocking the puzzle from Schanke's hands before the detective saw him even step onto the mezzanine.

"Hey!" Schanke looked up at his partner, scowling. "I'd almost worked it out!"

Nick stared at the cube where it came to rest on the carpet before the couch. But nothing happened. LaCroix had said that Lermarchand's configuration was only accessible to those mortals who wanted it and those of his kind. Schanke doubtfully could ever have solved it. But he was so unsure, he continued to stare. "Nick? What's up?" Nick glanced at Schanke, his distress becoming obvious. "Hey, Nick." He stood, hand resting on his partner's shoulder. "What is it?"

"Where did you find that?"

"Just on the table there. Isn't it yours?"

"No. No...." He shook his head. "I have to get out of here."

"Okay, Nick. Okay. Just... calm down." Crossing to the stairs, Schanke climbed them and lifted the bag Nick had dropped in his hurry. "It's all right. Come on."

He'd never seen Nick this undone. Never seen him so scared. What the hell had shaken him up?

With his hand on Nick's back, he followed the other back into the elevator. "Nick," he stopped them both just inside. "Your paints?"

But Nick shook his head, grasping Schanke's arm and pulling him in. "Please."

Schanke nodded, concerned now, and closed the door, pressing the button and starting the elevator on its decent.

~

Schanke had to drive. Nick was a mess by the time they reached the Caddy. He kept glancing back in the direction of the warehouse as they headed away from it. Schanke wondered what his partner thought was going to happen there. He drove back to the Raven as quickly as he dared. Nick sat in the passenger seat slowly, it seemed, losing his mind. He kept glancing out of the back window and then at Schanke. Finally, desperately, Schanke turned on the radio.

"Ssh, my little one." LaCroix's welcome voice came over the airwaves, soothing and calming. Somehow... well, Schanke had hoped at least. And a glance at Nick told him he'd been right in that hope. "I feel your fear, but there is nothing to be afraid of. You know you are perfectly safe. I watch over you, as do others. Come home, mon enfant."

"C'est ca, mon fils. Nothing can harm you. I feel you... I know what you need. Come back to me and I will be your balm."

Schanke indicated the radio. "He speaks straight to you. It's little wonder you listen so often. To have a whole radio show dedicated to you, done just for you. It's so...." Again he was lost for words.

Nick forced himself to relax. "He's... when he first got here it was the only way I'd listen to him."

Schanke smiled over at him, "Parents, who'd have 'em?"

They reached the Raven and Schanke followed Nick inside, carrying the bag they'd brought from the loft. The dance floor was packed. But Nick headed straight to the left of the bar where LaCroix awaited them. He wrapped a paternal arm around Nick's shoulders when he came to stand at his side, feeling the fear pulsating through his favourite, could read the uncertainty in his stance.

"What happened?" He asked so gently, so softly that Schanke wasn't sure he'd heard. But Nick just shook his head and ducked out under his father's arm, heading for the back rooms. LaCroix looked after him before regarding his son's mortal partner. Schanke swallowed.

"I dunno. We... we went over to the loft. Nick went upstairs to pick up some clothes and I... I found this puzzle on the coffee table. When he saw me playing with it he freaked."

LaCroix's eyes hardened. And suddenly Schanke knew why Nick had shied away from his father for so long and why Nat was so concerned about the man she loved. "Describe it to me."

"Kinda old. Made of wood with these intricate gold patterns...."

LaCroix was seething. He turned from Schanke, following in his son's footsteps.

The ancient found his child standing in the living room, his back to the door, his shoulders trembling. "Nicholas?" Nick tilted his head slightly, but he didn't turn. A single sob escaped him despite his best efforts to keep his emotions reined in.

LaCroix stepped up to his son, wrapped his arms around the shaking shoulders and pulled Nicholas to him. The young vampire went into the offered embrace, burying himself in his father's chest, releasing his sobs into LaCroix's silk-clad shoulder. LaCroix smoothed his hand over his child's hair, soothing. "Ssh, mon fils. �a va. I know, mon cher, you were scared." He felt Nick nod against him. "You thought your partner would release the cenobites."

Nick pulled back slightly, sniffing, his eyes awash with blood-red tears. "If he brought them... they would have hurt him. They might...." Another choking sob caught in his throat. LaCroix shook his head.

"Non, mon enfant." He fingered the pin through Nick's lapel. "This will protect you. No cenobite will harm you or any close to you."

Nick looked despairingly up at his master. And he was taken again into protective arms, held tight against LaCroix's solid form. He fought to regain his control, embarrassed that he'd lost it, not in front of Schanke but in front of LaCroix. He'd had an acute desire to remain the master of his emotions in the presence of his sire. But to see that thing again in his own loft... it had scared him beyond belief.

He viciously checked himself, pulling away slowly. "I'm... all right."

"No you're not. But you will be." Regretfully, he added, "Nicholas, I must go to your loft and retrieve the box. I must know how it got there."

Nick nodded, just as reluctantly. But he understood. "I'll remain, if that's all right."

"Oh, Nicholas." LaCroix sighed, touching his son's hair, his cheek and shoulder. "My Nicholas, I must find out who means to harm you. I will not allow this to continue."

Nick nodded. He had imagined the nightmare over yet clearly it was not. Once again he reassured his father that he would be all right and LaCroix left him with a chaste kiss to his forehead.

Stepping back into the darkness of the club LaCroix looked about until he found Vachon in a small group standing at the bar.

The scruffy Spaniard started when he felt the ancient presence standing behind him. "LaCroix...."

"I need you to look after Nicholas for a short time."

Vachon stepped away from the group, more concerned for his friend than angry at LaCroix's commanding tone. "What's happened? Is he okay?"

"He's... unsettled. I have to go out." He reined in the fury he felt. "Would you mind, Javier?"

"No. No, of course not."

Schanke stopped Vachon as he went passed. "Err... I have Nick's stuff here." He hadn't had the courage to interrupt LaCroix's quiet rampage. Vachon took the bag from him and nodded. That was all he was going to offer, but something stopped him and he turned back.

"Listen, Detective. Nick needs you to be there, needs to feel connected to the mortal world by his friends. But at the moment, he needs us more. That will change. Don't hold his... strange actions against him."

Schanke was touched by the Spaniard's words. Vachon made him almost more nervous than LaCroix. At least LaCroix's relationship with Nick was clear. Schanke wasn't too sure where Vachon fitted in. He seemed to be some sort of babysitter. But why? He nodded. "Nick's my partner. I don't know if you understand what that means, Mr...." He hesitated. "I care for him."

"Believe me, Mr Schanke, you're not alone."

*

"Nick?" Vachon dumped the bag just inside the room and stepped to his friend. "What's happened?"

Nick didn't turn. Instead, he remained staring out of the window, up at the pillar of the CN Tower that rose over the buildings between it and the club. Sometimes he would go and sit on the top of the upper viewing pod, just sit and stare out over the city. And once or twice while he'd been living in Toronto, he'd considered sitting there until the sunrise and greeting the deadly morning light with an open embrace. Again, that thought brushed the edges of his mind. He wanted nothing more than to find an end to this painful interlude and to recover some routine. If that routine was to be an eternity of damnation then so be it. Perhaps there he would be safer than he was in his immortality.

"Nick, talk to me!" Vachon took a step around the older vampire, seating himself on the narrow window ledge and following Nick's gaze upwards to the tower beyond. "What mortals do aspire to create," he murmured almost to himself. He turned his head belatedly when he realized that Nick was watching him now. That staring gaze was more worrying than the silence that had gone before for it was golden, not blue. "What?" he demanded.

"Why do mortals create such hellish things?" Nick mused, voice roughened by the natural change wrought in him. "Why do they strive to make their lives more painful than they are?"

Vachon frowned. "You've lost me, Nick."

"There's too much to deal with already yet they make more. And then they drag us into their nightmares, as if we weren't enough." Nick blinked the red gold from his eyes, concentrating on returning his human mask to his face. When he looked back up at Vachon, his regard was through blue eyes that burned as if... as if the vampire was still so close to the surface that the fire remained.

Vachon reached out and touched fingertips to Nick's arm, attracted to the irresistible power and danger that the other was exuding. It was like a moth to a flame. Nick smiled and dropped his mouth to Vachon's, effectively blowing rational thought from his mind.

As they kissed, Vachon released his own nature. His fangs dropped, piercing Nick's bottom lip and releasing just enough blood... to read. Nick pulled back, impressed despite himself. "You little demon." His eyes widened but he had to admire the other's audacity. Vachon may have smiled, but what he tasted, what he read in Nick's essence, scared him when he realized what it meant.

He stood, fingers reflexively gripping Nick's arm. "No...."

Nick knew immediately what the Spaniard knew, what he had in his mind and heart and thus in his blood. He covered his friend's hand with his own, gently rubbing his thumb over the cold skin in belated reassurance. "I'm sorry."

"You can't...." Part of Vachon wanted to pull away while another part couldn't let go, couldn't release Nick to his own deep desires. It was one thing to say it, but there was only truth in blood.

"Javier...."

But Vachon was shaking his head. "Don't.... Have you any idea how we would feel if you... you took your own life?"

"Javier...." He tried again, but Vachon wasn't listening. He paced away and back.

"I know... you've had a rough time of it but I love you, Nick. And LaCroix... I hate to say it but I think it would destroy him to lose you."

Nick lifted his hand from Vachon's, moving it to grip the other's shoulder. "Javier, stop." He grip became gentler. "What you tasted, what you read.... It's all right. I'm not about to commit suicide. I've survived so long, through worse than this, I didn't end it then and I won't now. And as for LaCroix... I couldn't do that to him. You're right, it would shatter him." He winked. "Don't tell him I said that, he doesn't think that I know."

"So why... why was that thought...."

"Don't you ever have fleeting thoughts? Don't tell me you've never wondered how it would feel to embrace the sun?" He turned back to the window, not seeing if Vachon nodded or shook his head. "I have, many times. But I wouldn't do it. At the moment..." he pressed his hand to the glass, "...I'm trying to find a way to deal with this. But I won't take my life."

Vachon moved behind Nick and in a moment of wild abandon wrapped his arms around the other's waist, resting his chin on the shoulder. Nick hummed softly. "If there's anything I can do."

"Already done."

"I'm worried about stepping on LaCroix's toes."

"I know. But he won't hurt you. He sees my relationship with you as a healing one, one that's bringing me back into the fold, as it were."

Vachon turned his face into Nick's throat, kissing lightly. "Glad to be of service."

Nick smiled, but the misery and uncertainty remained in his eyes. "Two years ago, our fighting came to a head, LaCroix and I. I... staked him, thought I'd killed him. A year later he came back. We met in some pottery warehouse on the docks. We fought, as usual, but before we did we just... stood there, looking at one another. And the relief, the absolute, utter relief of knowing he was alive, knowing I hadn't killed him... it was almost more than I could bare. We threw each other around, more at play than anything more, anything meaningful. I can still remember that overwhelming gratefulness at seeing him standing there. After that things changed. He... took up a life in Toronto and by and large let me get on with mine. And slowly..."

"...you became closer."

"Yeah." He sighed. "Like a peace settled between us, one that hadn't been there in such a long time. I thought we might be heading to something nearing friendship, picking up on what we had. I'd missed it. I hadn't realized how much until then."

Neither of them had to voice the 'but'. "And now?"

"Now... I don't recognise myself. How can I give either of you a part of me?"

Vachon tightened his arms for a moment. "I'm not asking for anything of you, Nick, and I don't think LaCroix is either, not at the moment, not this time."

"You're being very... easy on him. Our relationship began after a row between you two, remember?"

Vachon shifted his gaze to outside the window. He didn't need to give an explanation. LaCroix had done everything he could to save his son's life and his sanity. That Nick was standing here in his arms was testament to LaCroix's devotion to him. He felt Nick lean back slightly against him, accepting the weight gladly.

They remained there for a time, Nick's mind a whirl.

~

LaCroix descended from the skylight, spotting the puzzle lying on the floor where he guessed Nick had thrown it, or knocked it from Schanke's hands. Bending, he picked it up and with only a slight hesitation he completed the configuration. The loft vanished, replaced by an ever-shifting scene of blue and white accompanied by the almost nauseating scent of flowers. The bells were sounding all around him and from beyond the dimension in which they existed a figure stepped into his world.

It wasn't Linque. This cenobite had its pins as Linque did but they weren't jewelled, simply metal, and they protruded out from the intersections of the scores in his patchwork face. He wore a long flowing gown of black leather, with wide slits down each side that revealed his flesh from nipple to waist. Hooks attached to the waist line pierced up into his stomach, pulling on the skin, disfiguring it with every movement. And yet all LaCroix could stare at were its eyes, big and soft, of the deepest brown. There was no violence in those eyes, no hatred or desolation. There was only something imperceptible, something far beyond the ancient's understanding. It was something he thought he might be happy living out the rest of eternity not knowing.

Without warning, a thick, hooked chain shot from the cenobite and bit into the back of LaCroix's hand, pushing its way through the flesh and cracking the bone. Neither the soft eyes nor the set expression altered in the slightest.

"Ouch!" LaCroix pulled his hand off the chain, raising it to his mouth, sucking at the wound. He frowned at the monster standing before him, almost mirroring the expression on the other's ruined face. "Who are you?"

"I...." The figure took a single step forward, and LaCroix might have seen some curiosity cross the unwelcoming face. "You're not mortal."

LaCroix shook his head. "I was looking for Linque."

The pin-headed figure seemed to sigh. "Another wrong number." LaCroix wasn't sure if he should laugh, he'd never heard of the cenobites making jokes before. "So you are an immortal?" LaCroix nodded, rubbing his hand. "Sorry about the chain there." The ancient vampire remained silent, wondering. He'd always imagined the other cenobites would be as Linque was, and Linque wasn't known for its sense of humour. "Sorry. I'll fetch Linque for you. I've always been interested, that's all. Always wondered at those who called him."

The cenobite turned to go. "Wait," LaCroix called him back. "Why did you come when I solved the puzzle?"

"A mortal started the solution."

LaCroix nodded once. Schanke. He recalled Nicholas telling him that his partner had been playing with the puzzle. "That one did not understand the nature of the puzzle. He would not have come to you."

"Ah, but would I have given him that choice?" Pinhead let the question hang for just a moment, then he shrugged. "I'll call Linque."

It didn't take long. A few seconds after the first figure vanished Linque was standing before him. "Lucien... a pleasant surprise." He looked around him, the questions hanging between them.

"Someone left the puzzle here once again, I was hoping you would be able to tell me who."

Linque shook his head. "I'm sorry, Lucien. I haven't been called upon since I spoke to you and your young one. I believe... the other's have. I could enquire if it's important." LaCroix inclined his head in thanks and waited.

He was left for a few minutes and the longer time went by, the more acute, more defined the scent of sweet flowers and vanilla and the distant sounds of bells became. He listened more carefully, and beyond the veil of the gateway he could hear more, terrible sounds. Screams the likes of which he had never before heard. Cries of agony as torn flesh and cracked bones suffered abuse that even LaCroix loathed to imagine. He shook his head, trying not to hear now what was getting louder and louder, what was seducing him despite his repulsion at it.

Before he could be pulled in further Linque was once again standing before him and the awful sounds were gone.

"Lucien.... The Engineer has spoken to one of your kind just a few cycles ago. Usually the others do not bother with immortals, but The Engineer likes to strike out now and again. She can be... adventurous. She demands a sacrifice. Of the immortal she demanded a mortal's blood taken at the moment of death. That is all she will say."

LaCroix digested the information. "Is she a threat to Nicholas?"

"No. None of us are, Lucien. He has our protection."

"And she would recognize that?"

~

Nicholas started when he heard the back door of the club close and lock. The sun had risen and although not high it was still enough to be a threat in a cloudless sky.

LaCroix opened the door to the living room and stopped dead in his tracks. "Nicholas, I expected you to be...."

Nick stood, unexpected rage taking him in its claws. "What, LaCroix? In bed with Vachon? While you played with the monster that haunts me?" Even if the box had not been in LaCroix's hands, the splashes of blood on his skin, the tell-tail tears in his clothing and the echoes of orgasm vibrating through their link would have relaid the truth to Nicholas without a word being spoken.

"Nicholas, it is not want you are imagining."

"You want to tell me what it is?" He stood, striding across the room, taking the box from his master's hands. LaCroix watched lest he should attempt to solve it, yet he just held it, staring down at the carvings. "Do you understand how painful everything still is? How scarred this thing left me? And yet... yet you still play with it! Still bring it back here where you promised me I would be safe!"

Nicholas was dangerously close to the edge of his mind, skating very thin ice. LaCroix knew he had to stop the rising hysteria before it gained control. "Nicholas, listen to me. I went to pick up the puzzle. I summoned Linque there so that you would not be around, I did not want to do it here. I spoke to him and we... touched. That is all, Nicholas, I give you my word."

Nick blinked, wanting to believe him. Without this place of safety he would be left flailing. But he knew LaCroix was lying, he couldn't ignore what was so blatantly obvious. "You did more than touch! I can feel it emanating from you in waves." He swallowed the tears and emotion. He'd lost it the last time they'd stood here earlier this night. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

LaCroix bowed his head slightly. "Mon fils. Excuses-moi. It had been so long and he deserved recompense for being drawn into our war."

"Our war?! So it's my fault now? You said... you swore it was Edwarldo who planted the puzzle the first time... how can that be our war? Or was it... was it you?"

"Nicholas...." LaCroix reached for his son physically and mentally. "You know it wasn't me. I would not have done that to you in all our bitterest fighting. In this time of peace between us... do you not know how much it means to me to have you look upon me with some trust, dare I say affection in your eyes? There is nothing I would do to risk losing that. Nicholas, my son, I love you."

Nick reached out his hand, entwining his fingers with those freely offered. Hearing that difficult confession wiped away the anger with one swoop. After everything LaCroix had done for him recently he could only berate him for taking what was rightly his own pleasure. "I'm sorry, LaCroix, I... had no right."

Nicholas managed a small smile. "More?"

"According to Linque, Edwarldo is alive and was probably the one to leave the puzzle in your loft again."

Nick held tighter to his master's hand, drawing safety and strength from that source. "I thought you'd killed him."

"It seems I made a mistake. I left him staked, dead, I believed, but in the hands of the Enforcers. They must have brought him back."

Nick considered this, trying not to let the fear and repulsion take control of him. "He could not have thought I would solve it again, summon Linque after the last time."

LaCroix acquiesced. "I hope he would not be so unimaginative."

"Perhaps he imagined," Nick offered, "I would ask you to take my memories from me."

"Then he didn't count on your courage, Nicholas. Frere." LaCroix rubbed the back of his child's hand with his thumb. "You are safe here, there is no threat to you."

"Thank you." Nick took a single step forward and reached up to kiss LaCroix's cheek. He felt and sensed LaCroix's intake of a breath and the action found an equivalent reaction within himself. He hesitated, but needed to ask. "The night we spoke to Linque, you allowed me to sleep in your bed with you. Could I beg that favour once more?"

LaCroix could not help himself. He wrapped his arms around Nicholas, clasping his precious child to him. "Oui, mon cher. Mais oui."

* * *

chapter four

A dream perhaps, or a dream within a dream.

He was standing in the sunlight, in a street he did not recognise. A woman was standing before him, naked, blood running over her breasts from wounds slashed down both sides of her throat and across both collarbones. He licked his lips, vampire at the fore. He hungered for the blood streaming over the pale skin of her body. She stood hands on hips, apparently oblivious to the cuts. She beckoned him forward, walking to meet him half-way. As he got closer, she reached for him, wrapping her strong hands around the back of his head and pulling it down to her breast.

He lapped at the blood with ardor, sinking his teeth into the soft flesh, hearing her sigh of pleasure as he did so. He drank his fill, lifting his head to see her smiling at him, completely unheeding of the blood he'd taken. She should have been drained yet she remained standing, smiling, holding his face in her hands.

"Kiss me." Her voice was a deep rumble that seemed to come not from her throat but from all around them. It was like a command, a jolt along his spine that he could not ignore. He shuddered, pressing his mouth to hers and tasting... decay, death. He tried to pull away but she held in place, kissing him deeply, her tongue snaking between his lips, over his teeth and down his throat, choking him. He stopped breathing - a mortal habit anyway - and bit down hard into her tongue. She pulled away from him, yet when he looked at her face her expression was one of satisfaction rather than pain. "You know me." The words echoed around him and he turned from her.

He ran, ran back in the direction he had come. He could hear her laughing, the macabre sound greeting him, closing in on him. And then he heard chains, the metallic chinking of metal on metal, colliding against one another as they came for him. Not like the brutal chains Linque attacked him with. Tiny hooks on the ends of these buried themselves in his back, tearing open the skin. One and then another, and then another, coming faster and faster until all he was aware of was the pain of his flesh being torn from him as he continued to run. Even if they laid his back bare they would not have him, they would not draw him into the agony of their territory....

He woke, blood sweat covering his body and face, sticking him to his pyjamas. LaCroix lay beside him, unmoved by his son's distress, dead to the world. Nick threw the covers away from him, leaving the room and heading for the shower in the separate bathroom rather than LaCroix's en-suite. He stripped off and stepped into the running water, letting the harsh drops batter him. He watched as the blood sweat merged with the water and streamed off him, running in small deltas over his skin. The images from the nightmare were still close, flashing in his mind, their hooks already into his sanity.

He was losing it. Either that, or someone was playing with his mind. LaCroix was the only one with enough skill and influence over his consciousness to manipulate him in such a fashion and as he seriously doubted his own state, he doubted his master would inflict this suffering. And so... he was losing it. He grasped at the strings in his mind, trying to discover the one path that would free him from his confusion and indecision. This was worse than being stuck in one life or another, this was purgatory. This was hell.

Wiping the blood from his body, cleansing himself as best he could, he stopped the water and stepped out of the shower, throwing one of the big towels over himself. He rubbed himself dry, nipping back into the bedroom to steal another pair of LaCroix's pyjamas before heading for the living room.

Quietly, Nick closed the door behind him and leaned back against the hard wood. His eyes fell upon the antique puzzle set on the heavy desk across the room. He stared at it, and for a short time he battled inwardly with the insistent voice in his head.

'There's only one way out, one way through.'

"I won't survive!" He was only vaguely aware that he had spoken out loud.

'That is of no consequence. This is the only way.'

He stepped forward, one foot before the other, approaching the desk slowly, uncertainly slowing his movements. Reaching out, he took the puzzle from the desk and turned it in his hand.

'The only way.'

The box only bought painful, fearful memories, images of horror more than he'd witnessed in his long life. But something within him was telling him to confront that horror and to know, not to have the pain simply in recall but to have it in reality. He spun the corner of the cube, its sharp edges pressing into his palm. The first tilt, the first cut into his skin. He bit down on the scream, savagely reining in the vampire instincts called out by the scent of his own blood. He watched for a moment as the red droplet ran over his hand, down across his wrist. Turning the puzzle he flicked the second piece out, and heard the soft chiming of bells from far away.

He held the box and watched as the centre piece rose and turned with a soft click. The sound of bells became louder and as the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place he threw the cube to the floor. The room became the gateway, the sounds beyond almost more than he could bear. And then Linque stood before him.

"A surprise indeed. What can I do for you, Young One?"

Nick stood straight, seeing the powerful figure for a third time, and this time making a study of this unearthly monster. "I want to know. You did more than... physical damage that night. You took away from me everything that I am."

Linque regarded him with eyes bluer than his own, brighter than a star in a clear night sky. "I can only repeat my deepest apology, Young One. I cannot undo what I have done. I believe... you yourself have that very same problem."

The vampire flared; instincts honed for survival preparing for the fight. "I know you can't take it away. I know you can't undo it. I want you to show me more."

Linque drew himself up. "You do not want that, Young One. What I showed you, what I did to you that night was only a violent taste of what is possible. Your... father has seen more. If you truly need answers, you should turn to him with your questions."

"It's not enough." Nick slipped his jacket off his shoulders, placing it over the back of the chair in the corner. "You owe me, Linque. You have destroyed my life such as it was. I'm stuck here. My only way out is through the pain you can give me."

"You aren't talking sense, Young One. If I injured you... your father would not be pleased with me." Yet a single chain wormed its way from the blue suited body, stopping a little way from Nick's torso. Waiting. Nick watched it, reaching down to touch the cold metal with trembling fingers.

"Last time, when LaCroix brought you to us, I begged him to promise me you wouldn't touch me." His eyes glowed golden in the candlelight. "Now I am asking you to show me."

Linque still hesitated. But the golden child was so beautiful to him. Never would he be able to possess him... if he were mortal what a cherished prize he would be. But mortality eluded him and always would. This was the only way he could ever share LaCroix's treasured son. He reached out with the single chain that had escaped him and swept the blunt edge of the last link over Nick's hand, up his arm.

"You're playing with fire, Young One."

Nick smiled a half-smile. "And you are not?" The jibe served as a reminder to Linque, and he pulled the chain back within him, stepping away. "Don't!"

Facing the window, the cenobite let its arms fall to its sides. "I cannot, Young One. I have caused you enough pain."

"I should be the judge of that!" Nick stepped to the monster's back, desolation creeping in under the anger in his voice.

Linque turned, find the vampire inches from him. "You are not talking sense, Young One." Lifting one hand, he touched the smooth face with the jagged points of his knuckles. "What I can show you is not an experience you want nor need. I have offered you my protection, our protection. The cenobites, my companions, they see as I see. They do not bother with your kind yet they also, through me, pledge their protection. That is the best I can give you now."

"I want more."

"Why?"

Shaking his head, he turned, moved away. "It's the only way out I can find."

"It isn't a way out." Linque watched as its quarry dropped down into the armchair on the other side of the study. With graceful movements it followed, crouching down before the vampire. "Young One, no other has reacted to me as you have." It lowered its shoulders, allowing the chains pushing at their control to break free. They snaked from him, blending with the blue material sewn into flesh. Yet instead of pushing through the body before them, they went around. Nick tensed as the chains surrounded him. They touched his body, rubbing over his arms and down his back. Yet far from hurting him they gave the impression of enveloping him, of embracing him.

"Last time, I raped you, Young One. I pierced your body with my own, over and over. When you screamed, I silenced you by putting myself down your throat. I forced you to your knees and tore you apart." One chain curled under Nick's chin and lifted it. Blood-tears ran from the gold-specked eyes. "I am an artist, Young One. Pain is my medium and the mortal and immortal body my canvas. I do not give pleasure as even you would understand it. I am only for the sadists among your kind. You are not one of those. Do not wish it upon yourself."

The chains around Nick chinked together, and the sounds alone sent a chill down his spine.

LaCroix woke, turned to take his child into his arms and found himself with only a pillow for company. He reached out with his mind, searching for Nicholas. He found him nearby, a thrum of commingled excitement and fear arcing through their bond. In an instant he was out of bed.

"You are unique, Young One. I deeply regret what I did to you, how very badly I hurt you. That is what we are, what I am. Do not think I am the way back because I am not. You yourself are the only way."

The door opened, slamming back against the wooden panelling. "Get away from him!" LaCroix's voice roared into the quiet of the room, surprising Nick with its vehemence, snapping the young vampire's head up but not raising a reaction from the cenobite.

"He's... not hurting me, LaCroix," Nick's shaky voice reassured. "I called him."

The ancient vampire stepped into the room, vampire primed for attack. Despite the odds he would fight Linque for Nicholas' safety, for his sanity. He stalked around the two, regarding them carefully. The chains from Linque settled around Nick on the chair but they did not retreat. The macabre head turned, sparkling eyes meeting ice blue.

"He solved the puzzle, found the configuration and opened the gateway. He asked me for a way out of the pain I inflicted."

LaCroix's face fell. He sat on the arm of the chair in which his beloved son was sitting, his eyes closed. "Mon fils, I am sorry. I have neglected you. I should have been more thorough in your healing." He backed up his words by wrapping his fingers around the back of Nick's neck, stroking gently. "What is it that you hope to gain from Linque's presence, Nicholas?"

Nick's expression when he glanced up told his father more than was adequate to answer his question. And then... he dropped the block he had built mentally between he and his maker. LaCroix sucked in a deep breath, reeling from what his son had shown him. Nick's confusion was all-encompassing and LaCroix didn't quite understand how he had not see it before. Had his child really been keeping this from him all this time? Was that possible?

"What Linque can give you isn't what you need." LaCroix was absolute on that.

"I want to know."

"After all you've been through, Nicholas, all you've suffered.... Why?"

"Because there's nothing else!" Nick looked from one to the other. "I am nothing!" Putting his hands down, he grasped a handful of the chains resting next to him. "I want something! I want to feel something!"

LaCroix tensed when his son roughly collected up the cenobite's extensions but Linque seemed not to mind. "Something, Young One, but not this." His gentle voice intoned.

"All I have are the nightmares, the taste of metal in my mouth, the memory of your rape in my mind."

"I can banish those, Nicholas," LaCroix insisted. "Let me, mon petit, s'il vous plais."

"No, LaCroix!" He shook his head, pulling on the chains in his hand. "I want these."

Linque expected the argument to continue. But LaCroix let up. "All right, Nicholas." The cenobite stood, unsure of what the ancient was doing. "You do want him, don't you, Linque?"

"Lucien...." Never in all the thousands of visits made to this dimension had he been so uncertain in his duty and service to his chosen kind. "Lucien, I do not want to cause him further harm."

"If he is, indeed, harmed further by this then I shall wipe it from his mind."

"I'm not sure, Lucien."

"I know. But it is what he wants and as I have learned over time he is a very stubborn vampire." There was love in the voice, giving initial permission.

Linque conceded. "Very well."

In one very parental move, LaCroix lifted his son from the chair and dumped him on the floor on his knees, moving to kneel behind him and wrap his arms around him. "I am here, mon fils," he murmured into a pale ear, "it stops as and when you say so."

Nick turned his head slightly. "Thank you."

LaCroix refrained from telling his son to save his 'thank you's for later, for afterwards, for when he could mean it or not.

Linque knelt before them, facing Nick. He glanced at LaCroix, whose chin was rested on his son's shoulder, seeking the permission he required to start. LaCroix inclined his head just slightly, giving his consent, placing his lips against Nick's throat. Deliberately, he dropped one wrist into his child's lap. "If you need to bite, bite me, Nicholas, not Linque."

Nick frowned at the unspoken suggestion that maybe he might be able to get his teeth into a neck surrounded by a collar of pins. But he nodded, wrapping the fingers of one hand around the proffered wrist.

Linque reached up, cradled Nick's right cheek in his palm. With no change in his expression, he pushed a single thick-linked chain through Nick's abdomen with such force that it burst open his intestine as it drove out through his back and straight into LaCroix.

Nick screamed, one long howl of pain and memory, more than LaCroix could endure. Reaching down, Nick pulled on the chain, desperate to get it out of his body, to be free of the pull of the chinks of metal. Blood was spilling from the wound, soaking through the silk that covered his body. His attempts to remove the chain were failing, his desperate cries escalating in pitch.

LaCroix caught Linque's attention and nodded. The cenobite withdrew the chain in a swift motion, watching as LaCroix drew his son back to him and took a careful hold of his tattered mind, soothing it, calming it. The touch direct to his mind was more than he could withstand and Nick's head dropped heavily against his father's shoulder as he blacked out.

Linque watched with sorrow in his usually stoic features. "I'm sorry, Lucien."

LaCroix shook his head, "He asked for this, he wanted to know. I will take care of him, and I will find Edwarldo, take care of him also."

"I could... take Edwarldo off your hands...."

LaCroix placed his palm over the closing wound in Nick's abdomen, merely assisting the healing. "Is it possible for vampires to be... held in your world?"

"Oh yes. But they tend to have more control of themselves. One or two have crossed back into your dimension."

"I do not want to take that risk." He shook his head. "This time I will ensure that he is dead and remains dead."

Linque inclined his head. "As you wish, Lucien. If you could... as per our arrangement, when you have a free moment."

"I will, Linque, I apologise for this... break in your travels."

Gently LaCroix lay Nick on the bed, stroking the hair back from his face. Silently, he probed his son's mind, easing the turmoil he found there. When he retreated, he left the memory but not the pain, not the guilt and self-loathing. Nick would be able to make his own decisions based on his experiences. But the nightmares would fade now, hopefully his options would be clearer.

Settling, he pulled Nicholas into his arms and watched him sleep. Only one more problem left in this intricate puzzle.

*

Vachon poured himself a drink and readied the sound system. He found himself glancing back at the door that led through the back rooms. LaCroix was usually around by now, and he hoped everything was okay. Nick's healing had been a time of worry for them all. He thought back, on the night Doctor Lambert had come to call.

** flashback - Raven, five nights after the attack **

Vachon dragged Natalie out of the bedroom and pulled the door closed behind him. She fought his grip on her arm.

"I came to see how Nick was doing!"

Vachon spun her, sending her colliding softly with the corridor wall. "How did it look like he was doing, Doctor?" His own anger surprised him.

"That wasn't Nick! He didn't know me!"

"You don't say! He doesn't know any of us."

She shook her head, trying to think about what she'd seen. "He knows... *him*!"

"Of course he does! LaCroix's been feeding him for two nights. He recognises his own master."

"Why? Why... isn't he healing? Why is he like this?"

Vachon sank back against the opposite wall, dropping his head against the dark stone. "He's in pain. He's bleeding out almost faster than LaCroix can feed him. He will heal, it'll just take time."

"But... there was nothing human there."

"He isn't human! He's a vampire. His nature is asserting itself to protect him from whatever threats it perceives." He looked at her, and had she wanted to she could have seen the pain in his eyes. "He's fighting for survival."

** end flashback **

He sighed, dragging his eyes away from the door for the hundredth time.

*

When he woke, it was to a dark room. He was wrapped in the warmest blankets and lay amongst the softest cushions. He remembered waking like this after his first night as a vampire, as LaCroix's son.

Tentatively he opened his eyes. His senses had not lied. He was so comfortable that he might have fallen back into the clutches of sleep had his father's voice not called his name.

"Nicholas." He turned from his side to his back, looking up at the ancient who sat on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling?"

He thought about the answer to that. "Fine." It was the truth, he was surprised to find.

"We should talk, mon petit."

"Oui." It surprised him also that he remembered, that LaCroix had not taken the night's events from him.

"You do so hate it when I do that," his master quipped. And Nick nodded.

"Thank you."

LaCroix's slight shrug of his shoulders, his seeming lack of concern in that matter confirmed only that he cared a great deal and that he had not taken his decision to leave the memories lightly.

"Vachon tells me, belatedly I might add, that you were... musing last night about suicide."

Nick rolled his eyes, "I was doing no such thing. I kissed him, he bit me, he picked up on a stray thought."

"So the thought was there."

"No!" He scowled at his master. "It was... an idea I'd had, when I was low. I just... I was standing at the window looking up at the tower and it just came back to me. I wasn't considering suicide!"

LaCroix inclined his head, accepting his son's explanation. "If that is the case, would you mind telling me just what it was that you were trying to accomplish last night." It wasn't a question.

Nick looked away, staring at nothing. "I don't know. I thought... perhaps if I could feel the pleasure the pain would go away."

LaCroix's expression of mock-detachment vanished. He frowned, mouth twisting in disbelief. For a second he couldn't find the right question. "Nicholas... what pleasure did you expect to feel from having a thick chain thrust into your intestines?"

Nick looked at him then, pinned him with an unwavering gaze. "The same pleasure you find when you're with him." There was bitterness in the answer, anger too, tempered by some deep emotion LaCroix couldn't fathom. He was appalled, with Linque for ever granting the boy's wish and going ahead last night, but mostly with himself for everything that he'd done on this path he'd taken. He shouldn't have spent time with Linque in Nicholas' loft and certainly shouldn't have returned home with the evidence on his body and clothing and the remnants of orgasm in his mind.

"Nicholas...." He shook his head, reaching for his child's hand and holding it unresponsive between his own. "I am at fault. Forgive me. I should have told you more, explained more. What I feel, what I want is different to what you feel, what you want. Linque offers our kind the extremes we cannot experience elsewhere. Only those of us who have felt pleasure in pain in the past feel pleasure in what he does. That is not you, Nicholas. You are a being of pure pleasure. Pain has never attracted you and thus what you will feel with Linque can only ever be torture."

Nick digested that. "I remember seeing you... with him. It scared me so much. That you'd let something take you to such a place, inflict such terrible injuries."

"Why does it bother you so much what Linque does to me?"

"Because I...." He stopped, tearing his eyes from his sire, knowing the question had been asked in sincerity yet uncertain if the answer that came from within was a truth that he was willing to face quite yet. "You are my father," he whispered eventually, as if that could be everything.

To hear his wayward child use such a term of endearment after so very long cracked open the ancient's heart, although he wouldn't admit that. Again, he mused on how different eternity would be if Nicholas knew truly the hold he possessed over the one who had made him.

"I am indeed," he murmured after a time.

Between his own two hands, Nick's had turned, fingers linking with LaCroix's. "I can't feel anything." He spoke quietly. "I mean, inside. I'm... numb. You know as well as I do that usually I feel too much."

"You have always been one for extremes, Nicholas. You either give nothing or everything. It's the fire within you that burns for only a select few. I regret to say that the flames within you that were once mine were extinguished long ago."

A sudden, unexpected lump caught in Nick's throat. "And the fire that you once carried for me?"

"Will burn for eternity, mon cher."

"What makes you think we're so different then?"

LaCroix stared at his son, trying to work out what the question meant. "We are different. In every way." The was a sadness in his tone he could not suppress now.

But Nick's smile, in contrast, was suddenly radiant. "But we're not. The fire within you burns only for me. And the flames of your blood that once consumed my heart consume it still." The phrase seemed familiar to the ancient, but he could not place it. "We're opposites. We're drawn to one another because we see in each other what we cannot be. For the same reason we fight so viciously."

LaCroix could not recall a time when his son had... shocked him. Yet there was a darkness in his eyes and in his tone that the ancient couldn't quite interpret. "Nicholas...."

Bringing LaCroix's hand to his lips, Nick kissed the knuckles, never taking his eyes from his father's incredulous expression. "Never question if eternity is ours, for it is and always will be. However hard we play."

* * *

chapter five

Natalie put the plastic cup down onto the desk and hung up her coat. When she turned to pick up her coffee again he was standing next to her desk. She stepped back, ready for flight. But he held up his hands.
"Doctor Lambert, there is no danger here, I merely wish to talk."

"Who are you?"

"My name is... Edwarldo. I am an ancient vampire and I have dedicated my very long life to finding... a cure for this affliction."

Nat looked at him, scepticism written across her face. "Forgive me for being... cautious. Why would I be interested in this? Why would I even believe you were... a vampire?"

Her visitor smiled. "The stuff of nightmares and horror tales. I know you have worked with Nicholas De Brabant, Doctor. I know you have come close to a cure."

She remained suspicious. "What exactly is it that you want?"

He stepped out from behind the desk, leaning back against the slab of stainless steel on which she performed her autopsies. "Like Nicholas, I too wanted to chance to die as a mortal. I searched for fifteen hundred years, following each and every lead, as Nicholas did. Only I succeeded where he failed. I found the Abhorat, the book of cures."

Nat stared at him. She recognized the name from what Nick had told her about his adventures in Germany decades ago. So it did exist.

"If you found the book, why not cure yourself?"

He smiled up at her. "I did, Doctor."

She took his outstretched wrist with a trembling hand and held two fingers to his pulse. It was there, it was real. He was warm. "You're alive." She approached him, touching his face. "How do I know you were ever dead?"

"If I hadn't been a vampire, Doctor, I wouldn't have had the necessity to search out the book that provided my cure, that will provide Nicholas' cure." He watched her interest grow in leaps and bounds. "Isn't that what you want, Doctor? A cure for Nicholas' vampirism?"

Her heart started to beat faster. 'More than anything in this world', she thought to herself, but kept it to herself. "Why? Why are you offering him this? What do you want in return?"

Edwarldo offered her a smile of confession. "I admit, Doctor, to having an... ulterior motive for making this available to him. His master, Lucien LaCroix, and I have... a debt that requires payment. I will accept his son's immortality as that payment."

"Take him from LaCroix?"

"Yes. It would be delicious indeed to watch Nicholas walk in the sun while Lucien must hide in shadow."

Nat had to admit that the idea did hold a certain appeal. "What do you need?"

"Just Nicholas. The ritual of the cure must be performed before the sunrise and on natural ground."

It made her remember her comment to Nick some time back regarding 'Old Wives Tales'. "Where?"

"At the east end of the island, at the edge of the Lake. It's ancient sacred ground where some vampires are buried."

"I'll bring him."

But Edwarldo shook his head, taking her hand in his, locking her heartbeat into his consciousness. "He will come alone." She did not notice the change in his tone, the subtle shift from conversation to hypnosis so smoothly done that in recalling this encounter she would find no confusion in what she heard. "It is necessary." He allowed her pulse to fade from his mind. "It is an ancient cure with strange annexes. I performed the right on myself with every detail correct. If I change just one thing I would not be able to guarantee the success that I had."

Nat nodded her understanding. "There's... a slight problem." She turned from him, hoping he could work around it but not willing to see the disappointment in his eyes if he could not. "He's... with LaCroix. I've tried to bring him out but he won't come. I don't know if he's thinking clearly at the moment."

Edwarldo smiled. All the better to play to her neurosis. "You think LaCroix has some control over him?"

"I know so."

"Then... perhaps you should make up some reason for him to go the island, some pretence. He is a policeman, I believe. How about... a crime?" He paused, as if working out a solution. "You could telephone him at LaCroix's club. Tell him... there has been another murder, like the one a couple of nights ago. Tell him... his captain and his partner have requested his presence if he is feeling up to it."

"Yes." She turned back, the smile lighting her eyes with triumph. "Yes, that would work. He's dedicated to his job, even if he can't see it right now."

Job done, Edwarldo pushed off the metal counter. "I shall see you... after the fact, Doctor Lambert. I am interested in medicine, perhaps we could compare notes sometime?"

"Anything." She took his proffered hand, not noticing the momentary chill that passed through her before she felt his human warmth. "Thank you. You can't know how much you've done for me, for... us."

"It will be a pleasure, Doctor. For now, I say goodbye."

~

Nick parked the Caddy by the ferry port. Looking about for witnesses and finding none, he flew. He had meant to hand in his resignation this evening. If Cohen asked him to reconsider his plans, he would have asked for time. How much, he did not know. But this play-acting had to stop, for now at least. His recent experiences had left him with one overwhelming need, to relearn everything he had forgotten regarding his own nature. He needed to feel strong again, powerful, master of his own being, his own emotions and control. With such knowledge he knew the fear would dissipate, for his kind should not know fear.

As he neared the island he could see no lights, no police crime scene. Yet Nat's call had been genuine. Hadn't it?

He landed close to the spot where she had said she would meet him. Instead, he could only sense... another vampire. Red gold eyes flashing in the darkness, he growled, reaching out with his senses. If this one wanted to play, they could play.

"Hello, Nicholas."

He turned quickly and looked into the dead eyes of an Enforcer. Of Edwarldo.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?" All thoughts of play were wiped clean from his mind and he reached mentally for LaCroix. Something... was in his way! Something was preventing his from clearly finding the bond with his father.

Edwarldo smiled sickeningly as his mind fluctuated with the impact of Nicholas trying to break through. "No use in struggling, little one. I am exponentially more powerful than you, more skilled. I know ways of playing with the mind that you can only dream of."

"Natalie..."

He smiled, waving his hand in dismissal of Nick's coming accusations. "Is perfectly all right. I believe... she's on her way to the Raven to gloat. She believes I have a cure for you, believes I have brought myself back across and will bring you back too, for her."

"But how...?"

"As I said, tricks of the mind. She felt my heart rate as I speeded up the beat, touched my chilled skin as a flushed it with blood. Tricks. She wanted to believe what I was telling her."

"What do you want?"

"Not everything I told her was a lie. I have a debt to reclaim. I will take your life, Nicholas. And LaCroix will pay with your loss." He turned his hand and the flat edge of a silver handle caught the moonlight, bouncing between them.

In the next moment the enforcer flew at the younger vampire, planting the other end of the weapon into Nick's stomach. Nick collapsed back to the dirty ground with a low groan. A short stake of oak protruded from his abdomen, held there by the one that leaned over him, straddling him, free hand placed at the side of Nick's shoulder. Edwarldo grinned as he pushed harder and twisted. Nick bit back the yell of pain.

"Now, at last, I have you."

"What do you want?"

Another grin, and with a single snap Edwarldo broke the stake off from its metal handle, leaving the wood planted in Nick's body. "I want you. Now I have you." Sitting up he turned the handle in his hand and pulled the cover away to reveal a wicked blade that glinted in the moonlight. "LaCroix would never let me have you, and so I sent Linque to show you. Did you enjoy my little present?"

Nicholas snarled at his captor. "You won't kill me."

"Oh I will, Nicholas. But not yet. Not until I've tasted you."

Leaning over his prey, Edwarldo flicked the tip of the knife across Nick's throat, immediately ducking his head to lick at the wound. Nick tried to fight but the wooden stake in his stomach was weakening him quickly. In an exerted effort he ripped the head from his throat, snapping it back. But Edwarldo only laughed, shaking his head to click his spine back in to place. He watched his victim's hands clutch at the stake lodged inside him and snatched them away.

"Now, now. None of that."

Taking the slim wrists he pushed them back to the ground, to his sides, leaning on them hard. Too hard. With one easy movement the bones snapped. Nick cried out at the sharp pain, dropping his head back to the dirt beneath him. Taking the blade from between his teeth, Edwarldo slammed the metal deep into Nick's heart without warning. Nick arched up, teeth gnashing together, the pain intense. A low gurgle escaped his throat.

Over him, Edwarldo lowered his head to the wound, pulling the blade out slowly, licking the blood from the slash it left in the vampire's chest, from the metal of the knife.

"Nicholas... oh, yes." The enforcer's eyes flashed with excitement. "Delicious." He removed the blade completely, replacing it with the tip of his own tongue, worming inside the deep gash, inside the slowly beating heart. Nick's scream angered him and with one flick he brought the blade down hard, past the open lips, straight through the back of the throat, severing the tonsils, piercing muscle and bone.

*

"I thought I told you not to come back." LaCroix stood at Natalie's shoulders, glass in one hand, the other wrapped loosely around her upper arm.

She turned, triumphantly. "He's not yours any more."

LaCroix's small smile was one of patience. He had much of that tonight. "Really, Doctor?"

"I found someone who has cured him. By now..." she shrugged, "...he's back among the mortals."

She was eyed suspiciously. But LaCroix reached for his son through their bond... and got only a block, a harsh block not of Nicholas' making. Someone was shielding him from his child or shielding Nicholas from him. His anger blazed within him as he pushed at the block, ages of experience enabling him to search quickly for a way through. The shield was strong. Yet as he pushed he felt.... "Gods."

He tripped back, steadying himself on the bar. Eyes glowing with Nicholas' own fury, his pain and terror, LaCroix turned his attention back to Natalie. "Who was this... miracle doctor?"

She almost sneered. "Like I'm going to tell you!"

"Doctor," he rasped, "Nicholas and I are linked. He feels me, I feel him. At the moment I feel his agony, white-hot, and someone is trying to kill him. Tell me who this person was or I will snap your neck where you stand." Her gloating ceased, as she slowly became unsure of what she'd really done.

"His name was... Edwarldo."

LaCroix had to savagely control the beast that howled with fury and the growl that escaped him was audible to the other vampires in the bar. There was a distinct change in atmosphere as they unconsciously gave him a lot more space. Vachon was the only one to close in on the two. His eyes questioned LaCroix carefully. The only thing that ever got this kind of reaction from the ancient in public was Nick. And the blonde had left tonight without a word.

"LaCroix?"

He ignored the Spaniard. "Where, Doctor?"

"You're too late." But the tone of Nat's voice had become less arrogant, less certain. Had LaCroix been telling the truth about what he'd felt from Nick? Surely that could just have been the cure working, taking him from one side to the other.

"Oh, for your sake I hope not. If he is dead, Doctor, I swear that you will not see another sunrise. Where?"

She swallowed. "By the lake, on the island."

LaCroix took off faster than she could see, faster than any mortal could see. She turned, looking up at Vachon for an answer. "Who is Edwaldo?"

"Edwaldo?" His heart sank. "Tall, scary looking?" She nodded. Her own heart was heavy now. What had she done? "He was the one who instigated the attack that almost killed Nick." There was no sorrow or forgiveness in the soft voice. Instead she could hear an echo of LaCroix's anger. And then a moment later she stood alone.

*

He could taste metal and his own blood. He was weakening, the stake in his stomach slowing his healing. He would bleed to death like this. Edwarldo had pulled the blade from his throat and thrust it once again into his chest, narrowly missing his newly healed heart. Lapping at the blood that came from the wound, tearing at the silk around the blade, he twisted the knife, opening the laceration further. Nick's screams now were nothing more than choking noises, gargles around the liquid that filled his throat and was slowly filling his lungs as they were pierced.

Leaning down greedily, Edwarldo sucked at the open wound he was creating. Twisting the blade again before pulling it out he buried his face in the torn flesh. He could taste the panic and the fear, the impending death of the vampire held below him. The dark terror overlaid everything else that made Nicholas De Brabant who he was. Eight hundred years were laid bare in his blood, desires and passions of his kind tempered by the tatters of his soul and the light that shone from deep within him. This light, this was what LaCroix prized and treasured so deeply, so fondly because of its rarity. It made Nicholas special, even within their species. It made him something that would only be found once in a thousand lifetimes.

"Oh, I am enjoying you, Nicholas." He moaned the words, as heartfelt and as sincere as he had ever been. Nick's head was turned to the side, blood dripping in a steady stream over his lips onto the ground below. Reaching up, Edwarldo stroked his hand over the blond hair. "I wish you did not have to die for this. But there is no other way. You would not come to me willingly and LaCroix would never give you up." He grinned, lips, teeth and tongue stained with his victim's blood. "Perhaps he could take the blame for my actions."

He took up the knife for a final time, sitting up where he straddled the plundered body beneath him. "Finally, Nicholas, I will have you for all eternity."

He stabbed the blade deep into the already traumatised heart.

The sound of the enforcer's neck snapping echoed gruesomely around them. His scream was cut off as a powerful arm was wrapped around his throat and the hold tightened until he couldn't make a sound. He was pulled away, off the ruined body of the dying vampire, thrown back hard against a nearby tree trunk. He knew who his attacker was. Now... now he would not escape. He forced himself to glance across at what remained of Nicholas De Brabant. The shield was gone and he knew the son would be flooding his sire unknowingly. Despite LaCroix's need for revenge, he would also be desperate to go to his child's side. Perhaps he could use that. It was surely his only hope.

Vachon landed on both feet and hit the ground running. LaCroix was engaged with a struggling enforcer and Vachon didn't think twice. He dropped at Nick's side, digging his fingers into the vampire's stomach wound, getting a good grip on the thick wooden stake and pulling it up, hard. Brought back to consciousness by the razor-sharp pain that drove through him, Nick raised his head and tried to scream, managing only a terrible choked moan. Vachon extracted the knife too, sliding his hand under Nick's neck and turning the head to study the face.

"Nick...." Dragging the barely aware vampire up onto his lap, Vachon ripped into his own wrist and put it under Nick's nose. "Come on, drink, feed from me. Come on, Nick."

LaCroix clawed his hand and tore his fingernails into Edwarldo's throat, slicing through the jugular. Baring his fangs, he howled as he threw back his head and attacked viciously. The enforcer struggled as hard as he could but LaCroix's desperate need for revenge was being enforced by the pain he was feeling from his child as he fought to live. In the blood he swallowed, the ancient saw everything. Knowing exactly what Edwarldo had done only fired LaCroix's anger further.

He wouldn't drink - or couldn't. Vachon could hear the gurgling sounds rising from Nick's throat, could see the fear plastered across the features. The Spaniard was close to panicking. Nick was going to die there in his arms, die when he should have had centuries, should have had forever.

"LaCroix!"

Through the red haze of fury, the ancient heard the desperation in Vachon's call. He reached for his son and found only a dying flame of what Nicholas had been. He wouldn't lose his child now! Not to some enforcer whom he should have killed the last time.

"This time, Edwarldo, you will die. I will kill you." LaCroix flew back and grabbed the stake that Vachon had ripped from Nick's body. Edwarldo made a run for it but he knew within him that he wasn't going to get away.
LaCroix's hand curled around his bloodied throat, pulling him back against the tree. A moment later the ancient had thrust the short staff into the enforcer's heart.

Edwarldo clutched at the place the stake had entered, but the LaCroix grabbed the other's wrists and yanked them hard away. "You will die." The enforcer hung on for as long as he could but already the death was starting to gnaw at him.

"Lucien...." It was rasped, painful to hear and music to the ancient's ears. And then the enforcer dropped to his knees.

"LaCroix!" Vachon caught the other's attention now, and he knew he'd wasted enough time. He flew to where the Spaniard sat, Nicholas held loosely on his lap. "He won't drink. I think his throat's blocked. LaCroix, I think he's drowning."

Reaching back, LaCroix grasped the knife that lay on the ground where Vachon had dropped it. Wrapping his arm around his son he lifted him gently against him and in one movement he slit the pale, broken wrist down through the main artery. Inflicting a mirror-image slash into his own wrist, he joined the two wounds, linking his fingers between Nick's. Cushioning his child's head against his shoulder, he wrapped his free arm around him. "We must get him home now." Vachon nodded, the ancient's certain actions giving him a little time and confidence to pull himself back from the edge of panic.

With a firm grip on the vampire clasped to him, LaCroix took to the air. Vachon waited a beat, approaching the quickly decaying form of the enforcer. He was dead. Vachon had had to be sure. A second later he followed the ancient back to the Raven.

Two enforcers stepped out from the shadows. 'George' and 'Tim' stood passively over Edwarldo's body. They waited. After a minute or two, he sat up with a struggle.

"Why are you waiting?!" His voice was a gavelled rasp.

"We will not save you again, Waldo." Tim crouched down by the dying form.

"LaCroix is powerful enough to hurt even us if we push too far." George squatted by his companion's side.

"He will know we brought you back the last time."

"He will not stand by if we bring you back again."

"You damaged his son."

"You almost killed Nicholas."

"You know how he is with that one."

"You brought this upon yourself, Waldo."

And they waited longer. Until he died.

*

They flew in through the back of the club, straight into the private apartments. LaCroix dumped the both on the bed in the master bedroom. "Vachon, the phone."
The Spaniard grabbed the handset and waited. "The number?"

"416-932-8799." Vachon dialled and handed the phone to LaCroix. He still held his wrist tight with Nick's, and Vachon wondered if by now the two wounds had fused together.

It rang and was picked on the first call. "Ellast Reed."

"Ellast, Lucien."

"Hello, old friend. How's Nicholas?"

"There's been... he got into a fight."

She could hear it in his voice. "I'll be right over."

* * *

chapter six

"don't be afraid,
just let them show.
Your true colours are beautiful like a rainbow." (2)

Vachon looked up as the living room door opened and Ellast peered in. "Javier." He stood. "Father and son are doing fine." The smile that touched her lips brought relief to his heart.

"Gracias Dios." He stepped to her. To lose Nick after everything they'd been through would have been... tragedy.

"Would you like to see him?"

Ellast opened the bedroom door quietly. LaCroix was lying on his side, Nick on his back next to him. Their wrists were bandaged together where they were presumably still joined flesh-to-flesh. LaCroix's head rested lightly against the top of Nick's, his free arm lying across the pillows above them. There was a bandage around Nick's chest, presumably over the wound there. The white was visible under the sides of the open pyjama top. The rest of him was covered by blankets.

All Vachon could feel was relief, and a certain sense that they'd been here before. This time Edwarldo was dead. This time he'd seen it with his own eyes.

"Nick's had a tough time. We had to drain his lungs of blood and continue to while LaCroix fed him. His insides do seem to have healed but I'll keep him under close observation for forty-eight hours. He'll be out of action for a couple of days so you might want to ring his partner." Ellast remembered the last time.

Vachon nodded. "Why the continued blood share?"

"LaCroix's trying to settle him mentally. He thought the physical bond would help and I have to agree. Nicholas is very weak." She stepped around the bed, eyes on her patient. "Besides, the wounds have closed together, to separate them now would require a cut and I don't think Nicholas could take much more at this moment."

Ellast looked up finally. "Would you fetch some fresh bottles from the cellar? Pure mind, not laced."

Vachon nodded, heading downstairs.

With five bottles laid on the pillow where LaCroix could reach them without moving too far, the doctor decided they would be all right on their own for a couple of hours. There was nothing to do now but wait and watch over their ward.

~

LaCroix opened his eyes as the bedroom door finally closed. He felt exhausted and a little short on bodily fluids. Reaching out with his free hand he took a hold of one of the bottles Vachon had brought up. Unceremoniously, he pulled the cork out with his teeth and upended the bottle between his lips. In five gulps he'd finished it off. Not exactly vintage but it was human and it was food.

He'd been able to soothe the terrible confusion and fear in his son's mind. The physical bond, as well as their wide-open mental link had given him a clear view of the chaos in his poor child's head. He'd worked carefully, picking through images and vague suggestions. It was akin to ordering his own thoughts, only with no control over what came next and in which direction they headed. He had to be careful. The mind was a sensitive thing and Nicholas' had most definitely had enough for one lifetime. He had to ensure that the bindings of his child's sanity were strengthened and not severed. There was no place for error.

In doing this, he unavoidably wound himself in what Nicholas was, in the light and the dark, the paradox that was his most beloved creation. As he gently pulled back and his thoughts became his own once again, he was aware of tears sliding down over his face. Sighing, smiling, he shook his head. Only Nicholas had the power to reduce him to the vulnerable state he found himself in now. At least, thank the gods, he didn't know it.

Kissing his own tears from Nicholas' forehead, he dropped the bottle noiselessly to the floor and closed his eyes, settling down again. It wasn't his son's memories he sank back into, but his own.

** flashback - 'The Spice Club', Chicago, 1982 **

It had been a very long time and it would be a very long time. But for now, just for tonight, Lucien would delight in having his Nicholas so willingly close to him. Their paths hadn't crossed much while here in Chicago. He'd backed off slightly, finding other ways to amuse himself while his son played law-enforcement officer.

And tonight, that cautious approach had paid off.

Under the low lights of the back-street club, with its lone female singer, her voice like the wind, Nicholas swayed in his father's arms. Together. Just for tonight.

She started a new song, one whose words rang through Lucien's mind and stayed there, so that fifteen years later he would remember it when he needed to.

You with the sad eyes
Don't be discouraged, 'though I realise
It's hard to take courage
In a world full of people
You can lose sight of it all
And the darkness that's inside
Can make you feel so small

"I can't thank you enough for this, Lucien," Nicholas murmured into his companion's neck as they danced, clasped together for in this empty club there was no one to see.

"I would do anything for you," the ancient told him in a rare moment of confession. "You must know that by now."

Against his neck he felt the soft blond hair tickle him. "I imagined I might have forfeited that privilege by now."

"Never, my precious one."

But I see your true colours shining through
I see your true colours and that's why I love you
So don't be afraid, to let them show
Your true colours, true colours are beautiful
Like a rainbow

Whatever crisis had occurred in Nicholas' mortal world to bring this about, Lucien could be only thankful for it. Moments like these, scattered throughout history, made his long eternity worth every drop of blood spilt. How long would it be before this golden crusader realised the hold he had over his sire? Nicholas had called him master yet it was the young man brought across in the warmth of a Paris night who was the true master in this.

Turning his head, Lucien placed a kiss in the golden locks. This was as close to a fairy-tale as he would ever come. As close as he wanted to come. Nicholas as the hero, he as the villain, chasing his prey over the continents, over time. And yet there were the pages of their lives that parents would have to skip when reading to their children. Pages when he and Nicholas soared together to the great heights Lucien had promised his child. Lovers, hunters, killers... dancers. Great power and strength, the finest honed hunting skills of any vampire family. And yet... in this peace that now was between them Lucien found the same joy as in their shared conquests.

Nicholas lifted his head from his sire's shoulder and touched his lips to those about to question him. Lucien's heart soared indeed.

Show me a smile then don't be unhappy
Can't remember when I last saw you laughing
If this world makes you crazy
And you've taken all you can bear
You call me up, because you know I'll be there

They kissed one another deeply, Lucien's fingers tangling in Nicholas' hair. Throwing open the place in his mind where they were bonded, the ancient accepted his son once more, his decayed soul singing with the joy he read in this child's heart.

And I see your true colours shining through
I see your true colours and that's why I love you
So don't be afraid, to let them show
Your true colours, true colours are beautiful
Like a rainbow

It had been a very long time and it would be a very long time. But while there were still moments such as this one to be embraced and remembered, he would continue to follow his Nicholas through history.

** end flashback **

~

The club was closed but the doors remained unlocked, waiting, unusually, for the arrival of a mortal. The sunrise had barely begun when he arrived, Natalie in tow. Schanke hadn't needed Vachon's telephone call to inform him that something had occurred. Nat had eventually found him at the precinct and had sobbed out her tragic story into a mug of sweet tea. Knowing what Nick was now, Schanke was surprised, perhaps even shocked, to learn that apparently his partner didn't want to be a vampire at all. But for reasons he couldn't fathom, he was disgusted by Natalie's deception.

Vachon was waiting by the bar. As the two pulled open the door he spoke. "If you value your existence, Doctor Lambert, I would remain outside."

She stepped into the darkness, but didn't completely ignore his warning. She stayed close to the doors while Schanke crossed the empty dance floor to the bar. "Where's Nick?"

"He's going to be out of it for a while."

"But he is all right?"

Vachon sighed. Truth be told, he was getting a little tired of being the communications channel between the dark, unnamed life in which Nick belonged and the dull, mortal existence to which he clung. "Doctor Lambert's little plan almost cost him his life, but yes, he's all right."

Schanke leant on the bar, leaning forward, head turned toward the Spanish vampire. "He ain't coming back, is he?"

Vachon hesitated, and then shrugged. "He does what he wants. He's a grown boy."

"And just where do you fit into all this?"

Schanke watched the clear, wide eyes glint for just a moment with something dark. Something irrepressible. "Nick and I are friends. Vampires who... share a common understanding."

"Lovers?" Schanke surprised himself by asking it, but the question had been slowly forming since the first time he had met this other vampire.

Vachon simply smiled. "That word means something very different to us, Detective."

A silence settled between them, broken only by the main door clicking to as Natalie left. Schanke's only reaction was to look up, to scan the array of bottles behind the bar.

"Can I get you a drink?" Vachon climbed off his stool and walked around to the other side, finding a clean glass.

"Bourbon. Thanks. No ice."

"Do you know anything about vampires, Schanke?" Vachon placed the drink in front of the mortal and returned to his seat.

"Only what I read." He took a mouthful of the potent amber liquid. "Sunlight, crosses, garlic, no coffins, fangs, blood. A need to keep moving from place to place." He held his glass up to the house lights, watching the play of the spectrum through the crystal. "Vampires," he said as if quoting a passage, "have the ability to bend the wills of mortal men. They remain close to the community and continue through their long lives an allegiance to their master vampire."

Vachon grimaced. "I'm impressed. Although I think Nick would have something to say about the allegiance bit. LaCroix's not that easy to be around for too long at a time."

"It's odd," Schanke mused, taking another mouthful of bourbon. "I always imagined... that men would... take women and make them vampires."

"As I said, it's different for us. My... master was female. LaCroix brought Nick across for companionship I think, as a brother, a protege."

"And you? What do you see in him?"

The Spaniard thought for a moment. "I'm in love with him." The simple revelation touched Schanke, but Vachon shrugged. "He and I have found some common ground, and he and LaCroix...." He broke off, unsure how much he should really be telling this mortal. But Schanke had latched onto the half-spoken thought.

"What? Nick and his... father? They're... what?"

Vachon sighed, sitting back a little. "It takes great passion to start terrible wars."

~

Nick tried breathing, but it was too painful. He stopped and opened his eyes. LaCroix was watching him, his own eyes wide and close.

"Nicholas." The voice was infinitely gently, coaxing him out of the veil of unconsciousness that enshrouded him. He smiled slightly but he didn't feel like talking. His throat burned. LaCroix touched the back of his son's head, stroking lightly. "C'est bien, mon petit. Je suis ici. You're going to be well. I know it hurts but it won't for long."

The blood his body had lost had been recouped through the physical bond it had with LaCroix's body. Such a bond, such a connection would allow only a balance between them, it wouldn't drain one in favour of the other. But Nick had lost blood, was still losing it as his internal wounds pulled on limited resources in order to heal. The most dangerous thing in the world to any mortal or immortal was a wounded vampire. The survival instincts were so great that any blood was game, whatever the source.

But Nick didn't strike until he was invited. It was a good sign. LaCroix wrapped his free arm around his son's head, tucking Nick closer into his embrace so that his wrist was under the vampire's nose. The fangs that pierced his flesh were surprisingly gentle and that too gave the ancient hope. Because it meant Nicholas was still aware, even if he was seeing the world through the eyes of a starving vampire.

After a time, LaCroix brought his wrist away from his child's mouth and didn't find any resistance as he did so. Nick licked the blood from around his teeth and lips before he lifted his hand and touched it to the bandage that bound their upper arms together. LaCroix watched carefully, reading his son's jumble of thoughts as best he could. But in all the tangle in the vulnerable mind there was no threat, no sense of danger.

His eyes closed as his hand rested over the bandage. The chaos in his head that LaCroix had been trying to sort through started to unwind, eventually leaving the mental signature of a sleeping vampire wrapped in its own natural defences. After a few hours, Nick almost seemed settled. But under it all LaCroix could still read a darkness, an echo of what he knew was in himself.

The darkness of a born predator, of a killer. Had he not been falling asleep himself, it might have worried LaCroix that this darkness was so prominent in his son. For it hadn't been so in a very, very long time.

* * *

chapter seven

Vachon stepped up onto the empty dance floor, looking around, puzzled. LaCroix was seated at the bar, sipping from a crystal goblet oblivious, it seemed, to the lack of patronage tonight.

He leaned on the bar, keeping a couple of feet between he and the elder. There he stayed until LaCroix finally graced him with his attention. "Do you want something?"

Vachon raised his eyebrows, and then held out his hands, indicating the complete lack of people. LaCroix looked about. "Ah." He fished the keys out of his pocket. "Would you be so kind? There might be quite a queue outside."

Vachon took the keys, nodding. He hesitated before asking, "How is he?"

"He went for a walk, just after sundown." Absently LaCroix stared at the coloured bottles staked behind the bar. "He's... unsettled. Edwarldo's attack has coaxed to the surface what Nicholas has spent so very long burying."

"His nature."

"The strength within himself. The power I gave him. He could be so much yet he shunned it all. Now... the cage he created in his mind in which to lock up the vampire has been destroyed. He is as he was over seven hundred years ago."

"He's your son."

LaCroix's eyes flashed once. He pinned Vachon with a deadly gaze so that had the Spaniard been any other he might have paid for the comment with his life. Yet he stood by what he'd said. The cord of tension remained taut for the longest time, and then LaCroix drew back. Vachon shook his head.

"The truth is brutal, as you might say," he told the ancient as he pushed away from the bar. "If you want him back, then take him back. You haven't had a chance like this in decades."

~

Vachon's words to him bounced around his brain as LaCroix flew above the city. There was a truth in them that spoke to a part of himself he had viciously subdued in recent months. He could reclaim his son, use what had happened as a wedge between Nick and the mortal life he yearned for. Yet something deep within him was still telling him not to push. He recalled something he'd said to Nicholas once, not so long ago. 'You used to so much more fun', 'you used to be so entertaining'. What had he been trying to accomplish with those words?

Nicholas was so much more than simply his favourite creation. Perhaps he was so much that the thought of life without him nearby was unbearable and that was why he hesitated to push too hard. LaCroix had made vampires for entertainment. He had made them for fun. But not Nicholas. Nicholas was made for love, made with love. If only he would see that and accept it.

He found his errant child easily, tracking him as he had taught Nicholas to track. He found him in the same place he'd found him the last time, when Edwarldo had been too intent on his prey to notice his own impending demise. Nick was kneeling by the bay wall, one palm flat on the ground, watching the city as the night passed over it.

"Are you all right, mon enfant?" LaCroix crouched beside his son, placing a tender hand on his shoulder.

If Nick was surprised at LaCroix's appearance, he didn't say anything. He nodded in answer to the question he'd been asked. "I needed to get away from the noise of the city, just for a little while. I thought I'd come out here and sit with Screed for a time."

LaCroix was surprised to discover himself touched by his child's gesture. Not one for sentimentality, and certainly not sentimentality shown for a dead carouche, he nevertheless understood to a point what his son was doing out here. He allowed the silence to remain for a while.

It was beautiful here. Quiet, peaceful off-season when it wasn't crawling with tourists. In the twilight hours between light and dark LaCroix often walked on the island, along the boardwalk looking out across the lake toward Niagra Falls, along the road passed the few houses and down the paths that eventually led to the airport. There was a transcendental peace that infused him when he came here. He rarely found places like this. There hadn't been many in all the decades he'd been searching the globe.

He hadn't been aware that his Nicholas shared his pastime.

The darkness slowly became colder. Stars twinkled over head. The moon was full tonight, illuminating them in a haze of bluish white.

"You will settle, Nicholas," he murmured eventually, rubbing his fingers over the linen-covered shoulder. "This pain will fade."

"It isn't physical, LaCroix."

"I know that."

Nick moved his fingers in the soil under his hand but didn't elaborate. He looked across, meeting the ancient blue eyes that in the moonlight were mirrors of his own. He reached up with his free hand and touching his master's smooth cheek. "Thank you for saving my life, again."

Moved, LaCroix took a moment to find his voice. "As always, Nicholas, it was... all I could do." And for a second, time stood still between them. The past was wiped away and the future was a clear slate.

But only for a second. Nick's hand dropped.

"You can stay at the Raven for as long as you wish," LaCroix told his son uneasily. He expected that Nick would say thanks but no thanks.

But instead he nodded. "I appreciate that."

** flashback, Toronto, 1993 **

Nick scrambled to his feet, crossing to the high rail from which the body of his sire hung, the metal spike protruding from his chest. A lung was probably punctured, his rib cage cracked, shattered.

Reaching up, he touched the sharp point at the end of the spike and he remembered.

He remembered that he had loved Lucien LaCroix at so many junctures in their shared history.

He remembered that in their first days they had been lovers, passionate and free.

He remembered that he had stayed with LaCroix, journeyed with him of his own free will time and time again.

He remembered that when LaCroix had asked, he had given his consent. He had wanted this.

So whose fault was it, really, that he was standing here 765 years later?

Moving his hand down over the bloodied metal, he touched the ruptured body of his father, his brother, his master. And a tear formed in his eye, escaping when he blinked and rolling over his cheek.

"Au revoir, mon pere," he murmured.

** end flashback **

The hand that had been at LaCroix's face now found his hand on the cold ground. "I wanted to tell you.... I've never stopped loving you. Even when I hated you enough to kill you, I still loved you." Nick chuckled once to himself. "If that makes any sense."

LaCroix smiled. "It...." He shook his head once, looking away for a moment before he was able to meet his son's intense gaze. "You don't know how much that means to me."

Nick's response was a whisper. "I think I do."

With a sigh, he rose to his feet in one graceful motion. LaCroix followed, dropping his hand from Nick's shoulder to his back.

It was nice. That was all he thought then. LaCroix kept his arm partially around his son as they started to walk, following the bay wall. He was only slightly surprised when Nick didn't object.

"I need to know something." LaCroix's son looked up at his father.

"Anything, Nicholas."

"Why did Edwarldo want me?"

LaCroix nodded. "I should have told you before." He drew in a breath and let it out. "He'd been watching you since your birth, tailoring you, I think, for immortality. When I met him, when we spoke, he told me he saw in you exactly what I had seen. The crusades had changed you, what you'd seen, what you'd endured. Yet still he craved you. After we left Brabant and returned to Paris, I thought he'd accepted defeat." He shook his head. "I should've known better, of course. One night, I returned from the hunt to find him drinking from you, draining you. I was furious but to chase him and seek revenge would have been to risk your life. You were too young to be able to survive such an attack without immediate help. So I remained at your side and that cost you dearly."

Nick shook his head, moving closer to his father, causing LaCroix's arm to come around him completely. "You've never put my life in danger. We might play hard but you've never risked me."

"Never knowingly."

In a moment of simple closeness, LaCroix momentarily tightened his arm around his child, bring them together. He turned and dropped a kiss to the blond hair. "I love you, Nicholas, you must know that."

"I do. Now and again I have to admit that I question it, but in my heart I know it's true."

"It is true." LaCroix slowed them to a stop, turning Nicholas to face him. Finding his son's hands, LaCroix took them into his own. He looked down at the ground between them. "I know that I don't... that I'm not very good at gestures. It seems ridiculous now, almost 2000 years on, to tell you this, but my father taught me that respect wasn't earned, it was taken. When I became a father, when I was still mortal, I passed that to my children, as it turned out, with alarming success. I've told you about Divia." Nick nodded, and LaCroix added ruefully, "She truly was my daughter."

"Where I've never been your son."

LaCroix finally looked up. "You've always been my son. If you weren't, if I didn't hold you closest to my dead heart, do you think I'd have continued to chase you, or to let you live? I've killed for less than you've done to me through the years." He watched the expression on his golden angel's face and was reminded of Vachon's words earlier that night. 'The truth is brutal.'

But Nick recovered quickly. Disarmingly, he smiled. "Perhaps what we have when we aren't fighting is worth the wars."

LaCroix's smile mirrored his son's. "There's no 'perhaps', mon cher. You're worth everything and more. And besides, eternity would be so dull without you."

It felt to Nick then that they'd stepped out of eternity for a time, out of the world's ever changing history to stand together, unheard, unseen, alone. He took a single step forward and kissed his sire on the lips. Then he moved away from LaCroix, continuing his slow walk along the island path.

It took the ancient a moment to realise what Nicholas had done. And in another moment he'd captured his son in his arms and was kissing him with a passion he'd been unable to acknowledge since that one night in Chicago. Nick responded with equal feeling, wrapping his arms around LaCroix's neck, dipping his tongue between the chilled lips.

In the past their unrivalled passions had been unleashed in some odd places. In Chicago they'd made love on a low wall at the edge of Lake Michigan. In England, Stonehenge had been their playground. Through the ages there'd been floors, walls, stairs, roofs, all manner of rooms and forms of transport. Inside, outside, wherever the mood took them. But LaCroix curbed his passion ruthlessly, pulling back from Nick, watching the disappointment on the beautiful face and needing immediately to dispel it. "Not here, mon fils. Come back to the club with me."

Nick closed the gap between them once more and kissed his father's neck. "There's something I want more than sex."

LaCroix returned the kiss. "I too, my Nicholas." Linking their fingers, he murmured, "Come."

Leading him to the edge of the water, LaCroix pulled the small silver dagger from his collar and opened it, exposing the base of his throat. Nick lifted his fingers to touch the pale skin. Closing in, he kissed the hollow of his sire's neck, feeling LaCroix's fingers tangle carefully in his hair, sensing his needless intake of breath. "We always come full circle," Nick said softly, meaning the words to be of comfort. Instead, he felt LaCroix tense for just a moment. He reached across their bond, a rare thing for him, and heard the echo of a cry. "LaCroix?" Standing back, he questioned what he'd found.

"My apologies, mon cher."

"What was that? What's wrong?"

The ancient parted his lips to answer, but instead he reached up and opened his collar wider. "Drink and you will know. If we are to do this you will find out anyway."

Nick's instincts were to back away. Too much was already racing through his mind, too many questions posed by the happenings of the last few weeks. Yet... here was a gesture from one who made them almost never. Could he honestly turn that down?

Lifting his fingers to his own collar, he unfastened his shirt buttons one by one, slowly exposing his throat and chest to his sire. LaCroix hesitated before placing his hand on his son's skin, spreading his fingers, pushing the linen jacket and silk shirt off one shoulder. He drew his fingertips over Nicholas' collarbone and up the column of his neck.

Knowing instinctively that LaCroix wouldn't, Nick made the first move, placing one foot between the other's two and closing his eyes as he kissed his father's neck, feather-light kisses tracing a path over the cold skin to a place just above the jugular. LaCroix held back the vampire, letting Nicholas set the pace and the tone. The desire of only minutes ago had been overshadowed by a deeper passion, a longing that ached in both of them.

Over the three weeks that had passed since Linque's attack, Nick had fed from his father time after time. Yet this would be different. This wasn't for survival, this was sharing, almost love-making. Nick's strike reflected that, piercing his father's throat with reverence, letting the blood come to him. LaCroix waited a moment before mirroring the action and drinking from his son.

Time slipped passed them unnoticed. LaCroix kept his senses primed for any who would intrude on their intimate joining, yet there were no mortals for a mile in any direction and any vampires would know to stay away.

Knowing his father would protect them, Nicholas lost himself in the blood that mixed with his own as he drank. His sire's strength suffused his body, spreading out through him like a blast of pure energy infused with the greatest love.

He'd tasted desire, had it mirrored back at him when he'd taken from Vachon and in that desire he had found the Spaniard's obsession with him, a kind of love that would stretch the ages while allowing them to live their own separate eternities.

It paled in comparison with what he tasted in his father's blood

LaCroix's love for him was so deep that to call it love seemed inadequate. It was in every drop of blood that hit his tongue. It was screamed to him aloud, battered into him on the peaceful tide. He could only begin to imagine how LaCroix had kept this from him in the past. If indeed he had done. Perhaps... perhaps he just wasn't willing to see this before now.

'Tu es mon reflet.' The words were spoken into his mind, surprising and delighting him at once. 'You are me. I am you.'

Remembering a time, a lesson, he brought the words 'We are each other' to the forefront of his mind, unsure if LaCroix would hear them.

Immediately he was answered with a resounding, 'Yes! Yes, Nicholas, we are!'

The answer terrified him while at the same time sending a thrill down his spine. Never had anything felt so intimate as his master's voice caressing his mind. He shuddered lightly, was grasped tighter in the arms that held him.

'Drink. Read. Know.'

Nick drank deeper, looking for the thing that LaCroix had hesitated to voice. The idea of 'full circle' began to form within him, more a feeling than a thought. And everything that was attached to that phrase in LaCroix's mind was given over to him to acknowledge.

// - love - possession - separation - fighting - despair - fury - madness - futility - chase - scheming - lull - unease - friendship - peace - love - possession - separation - fighting - despair - fury - madness - futility - chase - scheming - lull - unease - friendship - peace - love - possession - separation - //

The circle continued as it had swept around and around for over seven and a half centuries, caught up in an impossible spiral that was the conflict between what LaCroix was and who he was. Nick pulled himself back from the drowning sensation he encountered when he got too close. And as he did so, he saw clearly what his master had endured since the moment they had first tasted of each other. Was this the thing LaCroix was scared of? Was this what had remained unspoken since his rebirth to this man?

There was an answer to what LaCroix was so frightened of. An answer so simple Nick couldn't understand why his father hadn't found it himself. But perhaps LaCroix had never looked, perhaps he had never wanted to look because that... would have been to admit defeat and to do what he was so terrified of doing.

'Let Go.'

Nicholas spoke the two words quietly into the maelstrom of LaCroix's mind. It was an easy solution to him. By taking away one link from the chain, it would all fall apart.

'You can't possess me.'

LaCroix pulled his fangs from his son's neck, tearing his own flesh as he turned and dislodged Nicholas' teeth. The painful withdrawal went unheeded by the elder but left the younger flailing for a moment, his source of nourishment, of safety and love suddenly ripped from him.

Nick recovered quickly, touching his father's arm even as LaCroix spun away from him and took several quick steps in the opposite direction. "Stop running from me!"

When LaCroix spoke, his voice was harsh. "If I'm not mistaken, Nicholas, you're the one who keeps running from me."

Nick ignored the statement of fact for now. "You can't possess me, and if you search your heart you'll know you don't want to."

"My heart?!" LaCroix turned now to face him again. "My heart died a very long time ago."

"You need to believe that, don't you?" Nick took a step forward, his tone determined. "Why is that? Does it hurt less if you manage to convince yourself that you don't love, that you can't feel?" LaCroix growled in anger, his body poised for flight. Nick ignored the inherent danger in the situation. "I know you love me. I know you need me to be what you made me. But you've never wanted me passive, never wanted me as your slave. You fell in love with my spirit as I did yours. Can't you see why I have to escape you each and every time?"

LaCroix blinked, viciously reigning in the beast that hurled itself against its bonds. To hurt Nicholas now would be to tear at himself. He stared at his son, fiery eyes slowly returning to blue. "I can't let you go. If you haven't learnt that by now you never will."

"And what have you learnt, over the centuries? LaCroix, I would remain at your side for eternity if I thought for one moment that you would allow me to do so as your equal."

Silence dropped between them like a slab. LaCroix's expression went through a metamorphosis of emotions; shock became disbelief, turned to confusion.

Nick waited for what seemed to be an age. And then, slowly, he extended his wrist to his sire. "Believe me."

LaCroix hesitated, and Nick started to think his father would simply back away rather than know, rather than face an end to the vicious circle that had ensnared him. But as slowly as the son had offered, the father accepted. He took hold of Nick's arm, one hand gripping just below the wrist, the other cradling the back of the hand. Eyes locked with Nicholas' and LaCroix dropped his fangs into the smooth flesh, piercing the artery.

Nick drew in a sharp gasp as he was bitten. He felt his blood escape him in a small fountain that cascaded over his father's lips and tongue. It was pulled from him, an exquisite dragging against the edges of his wounds. And with each pull he knew the truth was pouring into his master. To put words, phrases into his blood, to make something so clear to the one drinking from him that it was like talking, was a skill he'd learnt a long time ago, an exercise in concentration that had been an early lesson.

LaCroix lifted his head, taking his teeth from his son's wrist but keeping his hands where they were. He held his child's arm gently, not looking up. "Nicholas.... Do you even understand what you're offering?"

"I don't presume that I am your eternity, mon pere. I need to live my life the way I want to, I can't be held captive to your wishes."

"Yet you're willing... to be my companion."

"As I have been in the past, but this time there will be no separation."

"If I let you go... you'll stay?"

Nick smiled. "A real puzzle, isn't it?"

LaCroix shook his head, slowly releasing the arm he held. "And in return?"

"I need you to teach me."

The ancient looked up, frowning. "Teach you? I have taught you all...." But he cut himself short on seeing his son's expression. "What do you wish me to teach you?"

"How to be a vampire."

*

They'd walked for miles. When they reached one end of the boardwalk they simply turned and walked back the other way. Sunrise and the danger it would bring was still hours away.

Physically they remained apart, but mentally each could feel the other bright in his mind. It was the greatest comfort for both, something neither was willing to give up quite yet.

"Linque, Edwarldo... they left me with nowhere to run." Nick looked over to the lake beyond the island. "I lost everything. I can't go back to what used to be and I couldn't find a way forward." LaCroix resisted the urge to touch his son, although the intent was communicated to Nick, who smiled to himself, turned his head to smile at his father. "In a way, what happened was perhaps for the best...."

"No." LaCroix shook his head emphatically. "To lose you would not be for the best."

"But you haven't lost me." This time the need for physical contact passed the other way from son to father and LaCroix mirrored Nick's ironic smile. "One could say you've reclaimed me."

"One could. But I wouldn't. For as long as you wish to stay at my side, you are more than welcome. And I will... teach you to be a vampire."

"You sound sceptical."

LaCroix gazed up. "Believe it or not, Nicholas, I have always considered you the greatest of my creations, my only son."

Nick bowed his head for a moment as if wilting under the praise. "Perhaps... I just need a refresher course."

LaCroix chuckled at that. "Perhaps." He nodded. "Perhaps you're right. Where would you like to begin?"

In a gesture picked up from mortals, Nick linked his arm with LaCroix's. It surprised the ancient but he didn't try to pull away. In fact, he found he liked it. But now Nicholas had initiated that slight contact he quickly became of the clothing that was between them and soon it wasn't enough. LaCroix dropped his arm and caught Nick's hand in his own. They carried on walking.

"I want to return to drinking human blood, but I won't kill."

LaCroix nodded, unable to keep his thrill from his child, knowing somehow, that he didn't have to. "That is easy in these times, Nicholas. As you know."

Nick nodded, grateful that the first hurdle was out of the way. "I want to... know myself better, accept myself." He looked over at LaCroix. "All of myself."

"I would be honoured to show you how to find all of what you are, but only you can discover who you are."

It made sense.

"I'd like... to stay at Raven a little longer. You said that was okay," he glanced over for confirmation. "I will return to the loft... to my job eventually."

"When you're ready, mon fils." He paused. "Is that all?"

"Almost."

LaCroix closed his eyes for a moment, reading what was so clear between them. And then he said, "I won't hurt you." His voice was hard, tone determined.

Nick stopped them in their tracks, turning his father toward him. "I'm not asking you to hurt me. I'm asking you to show me some of the pleasures that are mine by right."

The slight edge in his creation's voice excited him, a reaction that surprised him. Nicholas read it as if it were his own emotion. He smiled, almost predatory. "You know you want to."

The tease was just light enough.

* * *

chapter eight

"Whoever said vampires couldn't be romantic?" Nick looked around the candle lit bedroom his master had prepared for them.

LaCroix glanced across at his son, frowning slightly. "It was you, I believe, Nicholas, one Valentines Day, somewhere around the fifteenth century."

Nick laughed gently, taking his father's hands into his own and squeezing them lightly. "You didn't have to go to so much trouble," he murmured, rising on to the balls of his feet to place a solid kiss on his sire's lips. "I'm not a new-born."

LaCroix accepted the kiss, feigning indignance. "I don't require a reason to provide the best for my children, Nicholas, you know that."

Tonight had been agreed upon, after much talking and teaching. A month had passed since Edwarldo's attack, his death on the island. Since then, LaCroix had nurtured those things in his son that Nicholas had wanted to develop. Two weeks previously, Nick had returned to living at the loft and was still working the nightshift beside his faithful partner.

But some things had definitely changed.

Nat had blamed everyone but Nick, when in the end it had been his decision and his alone. She hadn't been able to accept that LaCroix had a human side, and Nick in part blamed himself for that. He'd painted his sire in the worst light during his long conversations with her. He'd regaled her, over the few years, with stories of his past. But he'd only told the ones in which LaCroix had been the villain. The truth was the truth. Like everyone Nick had ever met, LaCroix had his good points and his bad. Nat wouldn't have wanted to hear the stories in which the ancient vampire became the hero. In time, Nick hoped, she would come around. Until then... life went on. He had learnt ago that time - history - didn't stop when you needed it to.

Tonight was the culmination of those weeks spent discussing and teaching. LaCroix helping his son to hone his skills, perfect those gifts that had been given to him in a castle in Paris in 1228.

Tonight was the resumption of a relationship Nick had missed dearly, yet until now had not been ready to resume.

"I can be gentle," LaCroix told his son as they broke from a long, deep kiss.

"I know you can." Nick shook his head. "That's not what this about."

It seemed ironic to the ancient that for the first time in ages, he was the one to be so uncertain, to be holding back. How long had he yearned for his son's return to him? How many times had he touched Nicholas, longing to take more yet knowing the violent war it would start if he tried. He'd never forced Nicholas. Perhaps he'd pushed the issue when his son had been less than willing, but they'd always ended up consenting to one another once the fire of bloodlust and passion had been lit.

Nick reached up, drawing LaCroix's head down to him and beginning another kiss, prolonging the contact this time. He swept his tongue over the tips of his father's teeth, teasing ruthlessly, pressing his groin against the other's. LaCroix growled into his son's mouth and wrapped his arms around the slim body straining to get close to him.

Both vampires held their natures at bay for the moment. LaCroix released his child long enough to remove his clothes and push him back onto the silk sheets of the bed while he undressed. Nick's eyes roamed his pale, sculptured form with an hunger equal to his own.

"Tu est delicieux," LaCroix told Nicholas as he lay himself down at his child's side, one elbow supporting him while he smoothed his other hand over Nick's chest. "Est tu sur, mon fils?"

"Oui." Nick conveyed his certainty in that one syllabal.

And LaCroix nodded. "Tres bien."

Sitting up, the ancient straddled his son, leaning down to kiss the lips that were slightly swollen from earlier attentions. This night had not started as they stepped into the bedroom. It had started in the Raven's cellar as they had chosen some... special bottles for later on. They'd crashed together into the stone walls, gasping between kisses, groping like starved teenagers. Their natures had asserted themselves in the excitment, the need for each other's blood driving them to nip at one another, at any flesh accessible. It was LaCroix who had stopped them. Nick hadn't the will. They'd each fed, not on one another but on the choice vintages the cellar offered. LaCroix was preparing him, Nick had realized. Lessons couldn't be taught nor learnt between hungry vampires.

LaCroix's attentions shifted to Nicholas' neck. He extended his fangs, scraping them along the sinew of the throat, drawing small moans from his child. He tongued at a certain place over Nicholas' jugular that he knew to be the cause of many an orgasm taken in haste. The gentle sensation of LaCroix's tongue over such a spot sent shivers over Nicholas' skin. He hoped his father would oblige, would bite, would give him more than that agonising wet caress. But LaCroix moved on, nibbling his way across Nick's collarbone, down to suck on one nipple, and then the other, but on neither for long enough to even harden them.

Nick's hands clawed at the sheets. Bright words of an ancient dialect, words which themselves had been forgotten by history, escaped his reddened lips. LaCroix lifted his head at one particular phrase which in the dulled modern languages of today could only be roughly be translated to 'you have the mouth of a Parisian whore'. The ancient met the unbelievable expression of innocence that adorned his child's face.

"Demon."

"Diable. Je tu desir."

LaCroix smiled luxuriously and ducked his head to return to swathing Nicholas' body with the long torturous strokes of his tongue. Such sweet agony left Nick awash with need. The sharp points of his master's fangs were being used to drive him slowly insane. LaCroix licked and nipped a myriad of points on his chest, stomach, thighs and any other area of flesh he could reach with a couple of exceptions. Nick's straining cock, his aching balls and his long-neglected ass were ignored, passed over for other areas.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Nick was reaching his limits. "Enough teasing! Bite me... please, LaCroix!" And after so long driving himself as mad as he had driven his son the ancient obliged, moving swiftly up his child's body to slice his fangs into Nick's shoulder. He lifted out just as quickly to lick the wounds before they healed. Nick's fingers gripped his shoulders. "More! I need more!" LaCroix rose up onto all fours, straddling Nick's naked form, admiring the raw beauty that lay beneath him.

Even after all the talking, all the reassurances and promises, LaCroix was unsure. Pain was something his beloved child had endured much of recently. He would not add to those experiences. "I will not hurt you...."

But Nick shook his head, trying to understand yet at the same time trying to persuade. "I need this," he growled, "you can give me this, you can show me some of what I need to know."

LaCroix was still for a moment, battling with his own voices. But finally he lowered his head and in movement he'd slit his son's left nipple with the sharp point of one fang. Nick yelled, arching his back as his father's lips suckled on the blood that flowed from the tear. When the flesh healed itself, LaCroix shifted to the right nipple. Instead of slashing it too, he tongued it until it became hard, teasing the bud to an almost painful arousal until without warning he slipped one fang into the ridged flesh.

Nick bit back his cry, clawing his nails up LaCroix's back as his sire worried the wound open further, sucking at the blood that was released into his mouth. The continuing working of the incision stopped the natural healing process, keeping the blood flowing. The small explosions of pain across Nick's chest mingled uneasily with the pleasure innate in the feeding, in feeling himself being drawn into another. Natural survival instincts meant that the vampire was close, watching, ready to fight if it needed to.

But LaCroix wasn't draining him. The blood being taken was a small amount. And after a few seconds LaCroix extracted his fang, licking the nipple until it healed, sensitive now to any touch.

Nick writhed beneath him, cock stroking LaCroix's thigh as he thrust up, desperate for contact. "More." He rasped the word out between extended teeth, eyes glowing their red gold arousal. "I need more."

Nipping his way over his son's sweat-sheened body LaCroix formed an idea in his mind. He remained reluctant to push Nicholas. His child was still on a fine balance after his experiences with Linque and at the hands of Edwarldo. But there was something he could do, something that might satisfy this lust he could feel emanating from his favourite.

Kneeling over to one side, LaCroix turned Nick on to his front. He covered his son's body with his own then, lying with his chest flush to Nick's back, his engorged cock nudging its way between the firm cheeks of his son's ass. Licking, nipping, biting, the ancient worked his way along the fine pale sculpture his child was. His hands found Nicholas' lying either side of them and he pushed his fingers between those of his son, linking their hands tightly. He accompanied the gesture with a series of kisses along each shoulder blade.

Releasing those hands again, he turned his head to slash into the skin over the spine, about half way down Nick's back. Sharp points touched nerves and Nick screamed, feeling only pain for a half second before the flash of pleasure melted the two sensations in to one. But LaCroix was already continuing his journey. He kissed the small of Nick's back, licking at the sparse, tiny golden hairs there.

When powerful hands gripped his buttocks, Nick tensed. But the grip slowly became a massage, deliberately deep. The vampire groaned low in his throat, feeling the excitement building with agonising laziness as the massage parted his buttocks now and again, exposing him to the master now straddling his legs, attention captured by the tight pink hole that awaited his ministrations.

Just as slowly, LaCroix turned the movement of his hands into movement of his fingers. He shifted himself to kneel between Nick's legs, parting his thighs, pushing one knee up to give him better access to the opening of his son's body.

A strangled moan escaped Nick's throat as he felt something hot and wet begin to caress his anus, begin to worm its way passed the resisting ring of muscle and demand entry to his body. LaCroix's tongue snaked into him, moving constantly, in and out, around inside. And then strong hands parted his buttocks and held him open as LaCroix's mouth sealed itself over his hole.

There was nothing he could do. Thrusting against a tongue was impossible and all he could do was squirm under his sire's hands, rub his massive erection into the silk sheets and hope that LaCroix would do more, much more before this day was out. He felt teeth nip at the skin along the crack of his ass and became aware of blood dribbling down, lapped at by the tongue taken from within him. In the past, LaCroix's fingers would follow but instead his master was suddenly lying beside him, turning him again onto his back.

LaCroix kissed him, letting him taste himself on his master's lips and in his mouth. Then he was gone, leaving the bed for a short moment before returning with something in his hand, held behind his back so that Nick could not see. "Close your eyes."

For the first time since they'd started this, Nick hesitated. He needed LaCroix now, needed him to be rough as well as loving. He wanted to feel the pain as badly as he wanted to heal. And yet something in this new twist made him nervous. "LaCroix...."

"Close your eyes." Nick did as he was told. "Good." A cool hand brushed over his nipples, teasing one then the other, both healed from LaCroix's earlier antics. "Now, bend one knee up." He was assisted, LaCroix pushing his far leg up until his foot was flat on the bed. That same hand pulled the other thigh up, exposing Nick's anus once more. "Good. That's good...." Now Nick felt his sire's fingers working him.

LaCroix slashed open the tips before pushing one, two, three, four fingers into his son's ass in quick succession. He worked the muscle open, spreading those fingers wider and wider, making the opening painful for his child.

Nick's cry became a steady stream of pleas. The pain wasn't acute, wasn't even close to unbearable. It was uncomfortable, tearing him slightly, but he wanted it. He could feel the blood running from him, smell the coppery, heady aroma of his own essence mixing with LaCroix's.

LaCroix alternated between watching his son's expression and regarding his own handiwork at his son's ass. Only when he was sure did he withdraw his fingers quickly, drawing another, more intense yell from Nick. He picked up the thick, solid link chain he'd dropped to the bed between Nicholas' legs. The links were slickly coated, smooth, a little over an inch across, the metal almost a half-inch thick. It was sturdy, yet would bend with the contours of the passage into which it was about to be inserted. It would go deep, deeper than he could go. It had been a present from Linque.

He didn't allow Nick to see the implement. He had no intention of scaring his son. He just wanted to give Nicholas something of what he believed he wanted.

He held the uneven, blunt head of the chain to Nick's anus and without warning he pushed it passed the stretched ring of muscle. Nick gasped as the cold thickness slipped inside him. He tried to move, to see what LaCroix was using on him but he was stopped by his father's hand on his chest. "Close your eyes, keep them closed. You wanted to feel, to know."

Sitting up then, LaCroix grasped Nick's wilted cock with his free hand, and as he pushed the chain further, watching as Nick's rectum swallowed the metal, he started to massage his son's erection to its full thickness.

The blunt metal head of the first chain link hit up against Nick's prostate and he yelled hard, arching his back, clenching the muscles within him. The strange cold shape was merciless inside him. He dropped his head back, his mind clouding. LaCroix was pulling the impaler out of him slightly, only to thrust it back hard, assaulting his prostate with some force. Nick screamed, the ecstacy soaring up his spine, spreading through his bowels, throughout his body.

With a practised flick of the wrist, LaCroix turned the heavy chain passed Nick's prostate, pushing it further inside, entranced as his son's ass was forced to accept another then another long link of thick metal. Nick howled. Each push stroked a length of unending heat over his prostate, driving him toward an oblivion where pleasure was pain and pain was pleasure, toward an ecstasy the likes of which he'd never experienced in all his long history. The rest of his body became irrelevant as his whole being centred on the harsh sensations spiralling from his ass.

The chain went further, deeper into Nick's bowels until it could go nowhere else. LaCroix ducked his head, engulfing his son's stiffened cock in the heat of his mouth for just a moment before working back to lap up the blood leaking from his torn insides. Nicholas was oblivious to those internal wounds. Or more to the point, they were not a source of pain, more of pleasure which spiked each time the thing within him was moved.

LaCroix shifted once again, seating himself between his son's legs, opening his own and roughly finding his anus with his fingers. Taking the end of the chain in his hand he thrust it up inside himself, unable to bite back his own cry as his unprepared entrance tore in the penetration. Nick opened his eyes, gold fire blazing as he watched his master. He still didn't know what was within him but he understood that LaCroix had just taken the other end within himself with his hand wrapped around that mid section between them he started to pump it in and out of them both.

Nick's yells became uninterrupted. The chain tore him open at the same time as it stroked over the gland that was causing his orgasm to close in on him. He felt he would explode. LaCroix's hand was still on his cock, working him up to the same frantic pace he was using on whatever was fucking them.

Face twisting, LaCroix clamped his hand down on his son's cock. At the same time he leaned down and bit into Nick's stomach. Nicholas came painfully hard, sitting up, screaming his father's name into the bedroom, clenching his ass down on the unforgiving thing within him. And then whatever it was was being viciously pulled from him. He cried out, tears rolling unheeded over his cheeks as he heard something metallic thrown to the floor to be immediately replaced by LaCroix's heavy cock.

After the harsh, solid cold of what had been before, the smooth erection was welcomed. And after three long, smooth thrusts LaCroix was climaxing, bathing his abused insides with cold semen. It was more than Nick could withstand. A second fierce orgasm crashed over him just as LaCroix fell on top of him and attacked, fangs piercing his throat even as he was grabbing for Nicholas' head and turning it into his own neck, urging his son to return the bite.

The world evaporated, swept away by the red tide. After drowning in an overload of sensation, Nick found himself with something to cling to, something so real he knew instinctively that it wouldn't be taken from under him. He rested on it, drinking heavily from its source. And as he took that wash of peace into himself he gave back what was within himself; his grateful thanks, his soul-deep love for the one who'd given him this.

LaCroix deftly turned them, bringing Nicholas to lie over him while keeping their fangs lodged within one another, letting the cycle of blood remain between them. His own blood acted as a balm on the chaos of his son's mind, and the love infusing him had the same effect.

As he drank deeper, Nick found the answers he was searching for. He found Linque, found the memories of the cenobite and what he and LaCroix had shared. Finally he thought he might understand what LaCroix had been so reserved about, what he held so close, unwilling even to allow his favourite creation to know. For now, it was a cascade of thoughts, memories and emotions, twisted and linked. But Nick took it all within himself and later, much later, he would translate it.

When Nicholas finally extracted his fangs, LaCroix followed suit, holding his son in a careful embrace, knowing he would be sore for a time. He himself was feeling the after effects of the chain inside him. Nick rested his chin on his father's chest, looking up into the soft human blue of his eyes.

"That really hurt." LaCroix looked stunned at his son's expression for a moment, and then he actually laughed. Nick quieted him with a kiss that started light and deepened in a second. When they parted, Nicholas settled back. "Thank you."

"My pleasure, Nicholas. Did you feel... anything but pain?"

"You know I did." LaCroix acknowledged that, his son's orgasm had been bright in his blood. "I hesitate to ask...."

"A present, from Linque. A chain made of him and extracted from him. You wanted to know."

"I did." Nick closed his eyes feeling completely at peace, a sensation he hadn't known for some time.

Soon enough the young vampire's breathing became practically non-existent. LaCroix gracefully pulled a sheet up over them. His eyes unfocused for a moment while he tracked the position of the sun outside the black steel shutters hidden from view by the thick black drapes. There were several hours before the sun would set. His own instincts would wake him, so in tune was he to the natural rhythms of the moon. Sometimes he wondered if vampires were more aware of nature than the mortals who purported to be a part of it, to be children of it. He believed they were all children of nature, for nature herself had many sides.

With these philosophical musings being pondered vaguely by his mind, he drifted to sleep with the welcome weight of his beloved child settled upon him.

*

Nick opened his eyes and blinked back the red gold haze. There was rarely warmth in the blue that beheld him as he woke, but this evening his father was watching him with a delicate intensity he wasn't sure he could face up to quite yet. He was relieved when LaCroix's smile took that particular expression from his eyes and replaced it with something gentler but no less rare.

"Good evening, Nicholas. You slept well?"

"Umm..." Nick stretched, rolling off LaCroix's chest to lie on his back.

The ancient turned and lifted himself onto one elbow. "You would make the proudest feline jealous," he commented, admiring the innate grace in his son's movements.

Nick accepted the compliment, pointing his toes, stretching his feet and legs. Finally he looked up at his master's face. "I have to thank you again for what you did this morning. I needed... to know."

"Indeed. But now you know, what are you to do with it?" Nick hesitated. His thoughts had not progressed so far. But as open as they were to one another, LaCroix read easily his reasons for silence. "It is not a decision that needs to be taken soon. Nor is it one that should be taken lightly. And whatever you decide, I will be here for you."

Touched, Nick pushed himself up and took his sire's hand into his own, locking his eyes with LaCroix's as he kissed the palm slowly. "Thank you, mon pere."

LaCroix watched Nicholas, speechless perhaps for the first time in centuries. For a long moment they stared at each other. But the moment was broken by the loud banging of the club's main doors as they opened and closed, admitting Vachon, they guessed.

Nick started, releasing LaCroix's hand. Neither spoke, yet there was so much else to be said.

Or maybe there wasn't. Maybe it really could be that easy. After so long, perhaps everything they'd had to say to one another had already been told.

"I have a club to open," LaCroix murmured with regret.

Nick sighed. "These mortal restraints we do live by." And he winked at his master.

* * *
epilogue

"What is it that turns us in matters of crisis? What properties of pain allow it to move even the furthest apart to places so close they can almost touch? We all seek different goals. Some search for new horizons while others are content with what they already see. Change is inevitable, even the most adamant among us cannot hold it back. To fly on the winds of change is the most difficult yet the most rewarding journey. And if we make it together, gentle listeners, it need not be feared."

Vachon glanced over to his companion as he pulled the heavily Cadillac up to on the sidewalk just outside the Raven. Nick was still officially on leave from his job but he'd dropped in to reassure Schanke that he would be back eventually, when he was ready. Schanke, for once, was more on the ball than Nick gave him credit for.
'Fix things with your family first, Nick,' he'd told him in no uncertain terms. 'You've too much to lose if you lose them."

Vachon indicated the club. "You still living here?"

Nick shook his head. "Just spending the majority of my nights here. And the odd day."

"Ironic, when you think about it." The Spaniard chuckled to himself. "The only time we can venture out is during the night hours and we spend them cooped up inside a nightclub."

Nick smiled across. "But we live forever, Javi. That's a lot of night."

They got out of the car, walked passed the queues of mortals waiting for a glimpse of darkness and were admitted by Deinde, LaCroix's new bouncer.

"Who the hell bought him across?" Vachon whispered to his companion as they stepped passed the large, bull-dog of a man and inside the raging club. Despite the volume of the music, Nick heard him perfectly.

"LaCroix," Nick answered smoothly. "Although he said it was an accident."

Vachon stared. "So you two are... brothers?"

Nick laughed. "I guess. I'm not sure how LaCroix makes the distinction between vampires he brings across and those he regards as his children."

"He regards you as his only son." Vachon stopped on the steps down, staring at the blond just in front of him, so close he could reach out the short distance and touch....

Nick turned, capturing the Spaniard's hand for a moment. He didn't have to say yes, didn't have to point out how precious he was to the ancient.

Vachon knew what Nicholas meant to the frightening visage, the Roman General. Some kind of honour grabbed at his heart for a fleeting second and he felt again the love he'd cultivated for this intoxicating vampire.

"Don't think about it," Nick told him quietly. "Life's too short."

Javier pursed his lips and nodded, shrugging. "Several thousand years. Barely time to breathe."

*

A long time ago I gave a speech. Of the words, the phrases, sentences and paragraphs I remember just one. And only now does that one sentence make any sense to me.