Casting the First Stone  Section 4 of 4
Copyright 1998 W. R. DeAngelo 
Rights to post granted to FTP site and FK fanfic site only.
Names of persons associated with Fk fandon purposely used with their permission 
and are meant in fun / tribute.  Everyone else, it's just a coincidence, folks.
     This story is based on characters and situations created by James Parriott
     and Barney Cohen and owned by Sony/TriStar.  No infringement is intended.




22. Chapter
     
     That evening, Nick rose early and settled in to work on the three Runes 
from the Limon homicide.  For breakfast, he tried to choke down Nat's latest 
concoction.  It was summer, a time when the sun threatened him late into the 
day, which compelled him to try and get extra work done at home.  His loft in 
the warehouse near the Docklands was isolated, but he could hear the sounds 
carry clearly from the lake, the birds and the water and the boats.  Trapped 
behind his steel shuttered windows, he closed his eyes, listening carefully, and 
imagined he was outside in the sun.  The view wasn't much from the warehouse, 
but for one voyeuristically focusing on the smells and sounds and rhythms of a 
city with vampiric senses, it was perfection.
     Writhing above his mantle was mounted a bizarre, convoluted dragon, a 
souvenir from one of his most lamentable dalliances.  He felt the eyes gaze down 
on him in judgement.  Nick kept so much magic in this room; the dragon, the 
gnomes, his sun paintings, the antique sculptures, St Joan's cross, his ancient 
sword, all of them cherished, arcane tokens from his long and surprising life.
     Nick believed his attachment to these objects a promising sign, even a 
human failing.  Somehow their close association would encourage his 
metamorphosis.  They surrounded him with enchantment, and his superstitious 
nature believed they could restore his humanity, if only he could divine their 
secrets.  Science claimed supremacy over the alchemist, but he still held on to 
his antiquated faith, just in case.  It seemed to Nick that everything of his 
old world was gone except these few select artifacts, his free-floating 
memories, and his persistent regrets.
     The twentieth century had nearly run him down in a fast car carrying a hand 
held video camera.  For uncounted years, he and other vampires had operated in 
veritable obscurity.  Nick had been able to move from country to country, 
anonymously, recreating his life and identity at will.  For mortals, distance 
and communication had been virtually insurmountable impediments only overcome at 
the cost of weeks, months, and years.
     His inconvenience, however, was usually temporary, for he always had 
sufficient gold to buy or bribe his way abroad.  Now he had to change currency 
for credit too easily tracked his movements.  His anonymity had disappeared in 
the glare of cameras, the speed of satellite communication, and the computer 
driven efficiency of bureaucracy.  Everything had become so complicated.  
Mortals could follow him anywhere.  Mortals could fly.
     Before, his failures, the bodies, the aliases, were left behind easily.  
Ignorance and inobservance protected him.  All the changes of the modern age 
made it difficult for him to change identity or to pretend to be mortal among 
mortals.  In the artificial daylight, people noticed things, and he wondered how 
long it would be before modern science caught up with his kind.  Nick took 
comfort in supposing they were looking harder for Bigfoot. 
     Brooding was a poor way to begin his evening.  There was work to do.  He 
flipped absently through the pages of the small gray book of Runes.  Dory had 
advised him to stick to the obvious interpretations and to remember that the 
perp might use plenty of poetic license.  Assume he is talking directly to the 
police and his victims.  Also, she said, bear in mind the killer's motivations 
while reading, and pay attention to words that seemed to pop out.  Nick wrote 
the symbols down the side of the notebook in order: the letter P, an F with its 
flags pointing down, and a lightening bolt.
     The overview Rune was for joy and light; the same one Nick had drawn, only 
his had been reversed.  Soured, Nick tapped his pencil.  The killer seemed to 
have better prospects than he did.  He noticed references to a heightened sense 
of well being and to restoration.
     The Challenge Rune indicated signals, messages, and the trickster god Loki.  
Dory had penned in, "Divine Utterances".  It was a signal to be alert for chance 
encounters and visits that may impart important knowledge.  In particular, one 
should remember the trickster god might deliver the message in a contrary or 
mischievous manner.
     Finally, the Action Rune indicated wholeness, the path that must be 
followed because of strong interior dictates, and abundant energy available to 
achieve the goal.  Noting the time, Nick picked up and activated his remote.  
The steel shutters blocking his windows slid up their tracks in response.  It 
was twilight.
     Interpretation came easily to Nick, but he was no closer to the killer's 
name, just certain the murders would continue until all the perpetrators of the 
real estate con were dead.  Obviously the killer believed these murders restored 
to him what he'd lost.  Nick thought that reimbursement was sufficient repayment 
for property loss and wondered why the killer thought murder was more 
appropriate.
     The Challenge Rune probably meant that the murderer had to be clever and 
trick his way in to see his victims in order to get them to consume the poison.  
This was especially true of the last victim, Sarah Limon, who had already been 
alerted to watch out for her former marks.  There had been no sign of forced 
entry or struggle at any of the crime scenes.
     The Action Rune must mean exactly what it said, that the murderer felt 
compelled to finish what he had started, and had the wherewithal to do it.
     Closing the small gray book, Nick considered the implications.  This was 
not about money.  There had to be something else.  The murderer had been driven 
to his crimes for a larger reason.  It might be someone indirectly affected by 
the real estate con.  That could explain why the perp's appearance didn't ring 
any alarm bells for Sarah when she answered her door.  She didn't recognize him 
as being connected to any of their scams.  Surely a group trying to push a sale 
for a club called The Grotto would have heard about an interest in Runes from 
their mark.
     Had someone hired an assassin?  No.  A hired killer would not hang around 
setting out Runes.  This was personal.  This amount of care and planning was not 
the sign of an impromptu murder nor did the case have the hallmarks of the 
compulsive serial killer.  This was someone who took this all very personally, 
and said so over and over with the Runes.  He wanted much more than his money 
refunded; he wanted a pound of flesh.
     Vengeance.  That is what this perp wanted, vengeance for a wrong that no 
amount of money could make right.  Whatever had been lost, whatever Don, Sarah 
and Pauly had stolen from this man or woman, could not be restored.  No apology 
was sufficient.  Time would never heal the hurt.  Nick clenched the gray book in 
his hands.  The Runes had suggested a betrayal between friends.  Was there 
anything that raked the soul as raw?  An unforgiven lie was an open wound 
between friends, a broad breach within the relationship.  It must divide them 
regardless of loyalties tallied before or after.
     Then, as though he knew Nick was thinking of him, he came, filling the loft 
surely and silently as a shadow.  Nick felt his darkness penetrate his heart as 
deftly as light cuts through crystal and splits into a thousand opposing shades.  
He hated to give him the satisfaction, but, reflexively, Nick looked up, then 
checked his response.  Without turning, he said to his master, "What do you 
want?"
     "I trust I'm not disturbing you."
     "Of course you are.  I'm busy.  Make it quick.  I'm on duty soon."
     "Hard at work, the wolf defending the sheep?"  LaCroix, carrying a goblet 
and bottle, walked around the leather couch, blocking Nick's view of the 
fireplace.  His master poured himself a glass.
     "You were a trifle peaked the other night."  The tall vampire's hair was 
cropped close to his head as it had been since 2000 years ago when he was a 
general in Pompeii.  His eyes were cold, pale, and hard as blue zircon.  He 
smiled around them and Nick felt the sting of their malevolent charm.
     "I appreciate your concern," said Nick evenly.  What did LaCroix want from 
him now?
     "I brought another case to refresh your Spartan supplies.  If you have 
guests, you should have one palatable vintage to serve."
     "Greeks bearing gifts."
     "Roman."  LaCroix smiled in his practiced way.  "I did not come to be 
insulted, Nicholas."
     "Then why do you come?" said Nick sarcastically.
     "We have been over this before.  I am merely, and understandably, concerned 
for your well-being."
     Nick said nothing.  They had tried to kill each other on more than one 
occasion.  Yet, as is always true of old friends, and they were very old 
friends, their shared history bound them together as tightly as their 
relationship as vampire sire and son, master and slave.  They did not agree.  
For the past one hundred years they were hardly civil, but they understood and 
excused each other at a deep, unspoken level.
     LaCroix's voice, emanating as it did almost nightly from CERK in his guise 
as the Night Crawler, did connect him to his past.  LaCroix was the vampire that 
had brought him across and introduced him to hell, had escorted him throughout 
and shown him every hot corner's secrets.
     His master's voice had been nearly a constant in Nick's experience, 
taunting him, teaching him, persuading him, misguiding him, tormenting him, 
lying to him.  LaCroix was his hobgoblin of constancy and the easy answer to all 
of Nick's misery.  If only Nick could stop fighting the vampire within himself.  
If he would just let the vampire win, LaCroix would forgive every betrayal, 
receive him back and keep faith with him eternally.
     "We will always be connected," reminded his master.  LaCroix lifted his 
glass in salute and as an offering, a symbol evoking in Nick the memory of his 
master's first lie.
     This manufactured sentimentality put Nick's teeth on edge, and he said, 
"Brother, father, sister, uncle, son, daughter, blood brothers, yes.  
Interminably yours.  I am not of a mind to celebrate our connection at this 
moment."
     "Still out of sorts, are we?  Having difficulty with the Good Doctor?"
     "I don't have a problem with the Good Doctor.  I don't have anything with 
her at all."
     "Pity.  She's lovely."
     "Can we be civilized?"
     "Aren't I always?"  LaCroix took a sip from the goblet, allowing the blood 
to linger a moment in his mouth before he swallowed.
     Nick watched his master's demonstration with a mixture of horror and 
jealousy.  How despicably free LaCroix remained of liability or conscience.  
Rising from his couch he said, "You are the poster child for the arrogant and 
dysfunctional."
     "No," said LaCroix, his face twisting, "you are the dysfunctional child.  
You frustrate yourself with fairy tales and fantasies, wishing upon stars and 
stethoscopes that someday you might become a real live boy.  It will never 
happen.  You have made your choice and you cannot unmake it.  You are wasting 
all the years we spent perfecting your craft."
     "Craft?  You call our contemptible addiction a craft?"
     "You are now, Saint Nick?"  LaCroix circled behind Nicholas, pressed close 
and urged, "Do you not miss the hunt?  Do you not miss the taste of living blood 
piquant with fear?  Nicholas, you must remember.  You must dream as vividly and 
pruriently as a celibate."
     
     <<< ----------
     
     23. Chapter
     
     Saffron Walden August 1572
     Jeffrey made his unhurried way home from his late night rendezvous with his 
Margery.  Some nights it was difficult going through the deep woods which 
separated their properties, but tonight each leaf was crisp-edged by bright 
moonlight.
     Along the path, weeds and grasses quickly reclaimed the trail during the 
summer, as it was primarily used during harvest season to transport the crocus 
flowers to the roasting houses near town.  Jeffrey's beast was sure-footed and 
the bone white moonlight cast clean barrels of light through the trees.
     He proceeded at leisure along the course, familiar with every stone and 
furrow.  Jeffrey let the traces rest lightly in his hand, allowing the animal 
his head to pick out its own way home.  The night breeze was cool and welcome 
after the hot day.  Jeffrey mused, listening to the quiet noise of the 
surrounding woods and muffled cadence of his horse's hooves in the dirt as it 
sorted a trail along the rough road back to the stable. 
     Tomorrow morning Jeffrey would tell his parents.  The latest legal 
contracts were satisfactory to Margery's parents.  Soon all would gather 
together for the signatures and Jeffery and his fiancée could be married.  After 
ten months of dickering and rewriting contracts, the lawyers had finally reached 
an agreement.  The only impediments remaining were time and the payment of fees.
     Common wisdom eschewed love such as his.  No good could come of marrying a 
woman for love.  But love had not done his parents harm.  Respect, yes, honor, 
and particularly obedience from a woman were crucial.  Love, however, romantic 
love, made people foolish reprimanded his lawyers.  Foolish people sow the seeds 
to their own destruction.  Jeffrey had chosen to ignore their fearmongering.
     Margery, fortunately, was not only his choice, but the perfect match 
according to common wisdom.  Her family lived on the farm adjacent and the 
arrangement between them would bring security to both of their families for 
years.
     He kissed her tonight, protected beneath the muscular arms of her beloved 
oak.  Clothed by the shadows of the quaking leaves, she had never been more 
beautiful, more precious, or more yielding beneath his hands.  His home lay 
within the billows of her skirts and his heart beat for her soft breast.  There 
has never been and, until death, there shall be no other, he told her.
     No sooner did he leave her company than he ached to see her again.  Long 
ago, as children, they had laughed and chased each other through these woods.  
Tonight, in silence, they caressed each other in these same woods as lovers.  
This infernal waiting would soon be at an end, but Jeffrey was no less 
impatient.
     A few blasphemous thoughts crossed his mind in protest to the proscriptions 
of his minister, which prevented him from enjoying the favors of his fiancée 
until after they were married.  No matter, he was in high spirits.  His lover 
waited as anxiously for him as he did for her.  They had time.
     A dark blanket spread across the sky, suddenly blotting out the moon and 
stars.  He held his forearm up to guard his face as the wind whipped around him.  
Then it seemed as though a giant bird dropped from the moon, its great wings and 
claws beating and slashing the air all around him.  His horse reared up, bucking 
and frantic to toss his burden and bolt.  Jeffrey struggled, trying to catch a 
glimpse of his furious attacker.  He heard his mount shriek as the foam spilled 
from its mouth and its coat sweated out in a slick sheen.
     Pulling and fighting with the reins, Jeffrey fought for control, but the 
descending blackness was fluid and alive and roaring.  Was it the crown of a 
tall timber falling on him, its breaking branches scratching him and its crowd 
of leaves blinding him?  He heard it roar as it fell upon him.  He feared a 
wolf.  His boots lost the stirrups and he was flung from his seat, hitting the 
ground with a sickening thud.  The crack he heard was his leg bone snapping.  
The sour taste in his mouth signaled the presence of displaced bile and blood.
     He moaned and rolled, thinking he must avoid being trampled by his horse.  
He must somehow defend himself against the great wolf.  Or was it a bird; was it 
a bird?  In waves, he was lucid and disoriented.  His horse must have gone, no, 
she was still with him.  He could smell the heat from her flanks nearby.  She 
was calm.  What was it?  Whatever had attacked them must have gone.  Hearing a 
low murmur, he opened his eyes and saw his animal being soothed by a slender 
figure holding his bridle.  Who?  What?  How long had he been unconscious that 
this stranger was already here to help him?
     The enigmatic man threw the reins over a low branch along the side of the 
path, deluding the horse into thinking it was restrained, then walked around to 
regard Jeffrey.  His cloak swept along the ground, floating and lifting in the 
breeze as he walked, reminding Jeffrey again of the bird, a monstrous crow come 
to peck out his dying eyes.
     "Nicholas!"  Jeffrey gasped in grateful recognition.  Ah God, he was saved 
after all.  He could not see clearly, his eyes were swimming with tears and 
pain, but he knew the clothes and the soft, curling blonde hair.
     "Nicholas," he cried.  Salvation so near, he let his tension fade.  Jeffrey 
lay back in the dirt and gave over to grief and exhaustion.
     Nicholas knelt down next to him and placed his cool hand on Jeffrey's 
forehead as he lay in the dirt, caressing back the dark hair away from his eyes.  
Jeffrey could no longer rely on his sentience, felt himself passing back and 
forth between dreams and reality.  He felt Nicholas's hand search for the rapid 
throb of his pulse.  It beat hard and hot in his head as shock and pain ravaged 
his body.  Jeffrey looked into Nicholas' face and read with certainty that he 
would die within a few hours from his fall.  He felt his blood pool in his body 
in places it didn't belong.  His limbs were already stiffened and cold as his 
vitality escaped him.  Nicholas' hand, soothing back Jeffrey's hair, was sticky 
with blood.  Jeffrey began to cry and shake.
     "Jeffrey," Nicholas said quietly, touching Jeffrey's tears as they slid 
down his face, "Be content."
     "Nicholas," Jeffrey swallowed, his mouth dry, "Monsier, my leg.  It flew.  
A blasted creature...my horse..."
     "Yes, I know, Jeffrey."  Nicholas unfastened Jeffrey's cloak and collar.  
In response, Jeffrey tried to take a deep breath, as if his clothes had been 
straps binding his chest, but the effort induced a sharp pain near his heart 
that made him tremble.
     The feverish heat from his body contrasted with the penetrating coolness of 
Nicholas' hand on his breast.  Cool fingers, welcome as fresh water, lingered 
along Jeffrey's throat as they pulled away the fabric of his collar.
     Jeffrey shook his head heavily for it felt as weighty as a bag of sack 
meal.  Panic gripped him.  His brain burned hot as firebrands.  He feared he was 
hallucinating, or worse, he was not.  He imagined the frosty breath of a wolf 
against his cheek, its teeth snagging his clothes.  Jeffrey could see its 
ferocious teeth bared to tear out his throat and he grasped and pulled his 
companion's sleeves and shoulders.
     "Nicholas!" he cried weakly, "Help me, I am mad.  I am lost, I am done."  
Margary!  He had lost her!
     Two pale yellow moons glittered before Jeffrey's eyes.  He felt himself 
lifted and weightless as he floated away in a whirlpool of pain and blood and 
delirium.
     
     24. Chapter
     
     Nicholas held the young man in an embrace, closer than a lover.  Suddenly, 
he dropped the leaden body, throwing his hands away from it as if he could not 
bear to touch it a moment longer.  Discarded, Jeffrey lay limp, limbs twisted at 
sharp angles, his eyes staring burnished and sightless toward the stars above.
     "Life is good," said Nicholas bitterly to the corpse.
     He backed away, wiping his mouth with his hand and stood unsteadily as the 
wash of emotions and blood from his kill buffeted him.  The blood temporarily 
slaked the horrific, nameless thirst within Nicholas, but it was never enough.  
The more he drank, the more he wanted, and the less rein he had over his desire.  
The corpse oppressed him already and he hated it for what it represented.  It 
was testimony to his weakness.  His disease lay manifest and rotting before his 
eyes.
     He surveyed the grass and his recent kill, reliving a familiar nightmare.  
His sight became crowded with tangled images of armaments and bodies.  The 
ground transformed into a hot battlefield in the Holy Lands.  Past and present 
merged, confused and distorted before him.  He saw himself hacking flesh with 
his sword, beating down his foe with the primitivism of an animal.  Excitement, 
terror and desperation pumped violence through his mind and body.  It had been 
so raw and compelling, the intermittent warring hell that relieved the searing 
boredom and uncertainty.
     The Crusades were a wretched horror where he wondered if they made war for 
lack of other diversion.  The roaring emotions and physical exhaustion that 
ensued drained all the soldiers of rational thought, bringing its own kind of 
destitute peace.  Only afterwards, there was the distressing hash of death, 
pain, and bloody waste.  Birds would come and the poor would scavenge the dead.  
Flies, maggots, and vermin repopulated the field of honor.  Once he had 
contemplated such a scene and swore he would never kill again.
     But here he stood, three hundred and fifty years later.  He had not kept 
faith with himself.
     He cursed himself, his fate, and his weakness.  If he must bring the temple 
down on his own head, he would bring it down on them all.  He freed up the 
horse's reins and slapped it toward home.  Then he fell to his knees next to 
Jeffrey's lifeless form and expertly broke the boy's neck.
     Days later, Waltham Hall was black with crepe.  Nicholas observed the 
drama, without comment, from the fringes of the activity.
     It was hardly a week since the plain funeral of the serving wench Jenny, 
who had been buried in her new frock by the grieving Waltham family.  Having 
lain to rest their surrogate daughter, they prepared to bury their natural son.  
The previous day arrived accompanied by the portentous discovery of Jeffrey's 
favorite horse, riderless, and grazing outside the main stable.  Fearing the 
worst, John and Edmund immediately set out to examine the roads.  Shortly before 
nightfall, they found the young man dead on the little used path between his 
home and that of his fiancée.
     Nicholas watched from the door as John brought the body home, bedded in the 
hay cart, Edmund weeping alongside.  He helped carry the body to Jeffrey's 
chamber and waited courteously without as several local citizens examined the 
battered remains.  Through tears and past halting breathes, Edmund explained the 
particulars of Jeffrey's accident to his wife.  Apparently, being thrown 
violently from his mount, the boy had broken his neck, along with diverse other 
injuries which were of no consequence now.
     For the second time within a fortnight, the Waltham household requested a 
coffin, but this one was finer and better built the plain, white draped box that 
had accommodated poor Jenny.  Stones were commissioned and clergy were 
congregated and paid.  Mourners, friends and family were plentiful about the 
yard and Hall, demonstrating love and shared sorrow for the Walthams.  Margery 
made a brief appearance, but soon took to her bed.
     Edmund and Agnes kept silent company, vacantly responding to their well 
wishers.  The mistress never recovered from the loss of her Little Wren and had 
often told Nicholas so.  Her little Wren.  Her little Wren.  This fresh 
heartbreak left her wordless.  In the evening, she was often abed long before 
Nicholas rose.
     Eventually the hearse, relieved of its burden, rolled back from the burial 
yard.  The crush of black velvet and crepe visitors abated.  Jeffrey's horse was 
summarily put down.  The stone would be set soon and many families would leave 
token cairns.
     Edmund moved through the Hall at all hours of the day and night, restless 
as a ghost.  At meat, he stared stupidly at his son's empty chair.  Nicholas 
excused himself early from table and excused them from their duties as host and 
hostess, saying he already had plans each night.  He swore that the stars turned 
and the planets rolled in important arcs across the dimmed heavens.
     Late into the sleepless nights, John sat idly in the stable as Nicholas 
brushed Arthur and berated himself for not seeing the danger sooner.  Had the 
beast gone mad while he overlooked the signs, or had some creature molested the 
boy as he rode home that night?  He blamed himself.  Nicholas assured the old 
man that even the gentlest palfrey is prone to throw its rider under the right 
circumstances.  Edmund refused to dismiss him from his duties, although John 
requested more than once
     An attempt to return to routine was made, but morose and without the aid of 
Jenny, Agnes moved listlessly as the hot summer air.  Dinner was served as 
usual, but the absence of Jeffrey's voice strained the thin nerves of his 
parents.  Agnes and Edmund had to consider finding another wench.  Agnes could 
not keep up with her responsibilities alone.  Edmund also had to secure someone 
to help John, for with Jeffrey gone, they could no longer wait for Skipwith to 
return.  Further, he needed to make new arrangements for their old age.  Edmund 
considered leasing or selling the Hall to Margery's family.  Had Nicholas any 
experience dispersing large properties?
     Nicholas withheld his counsel, interrupting little, as Edmund laid out for 
him the Hall's concerns.  Edmund pressed for his guest's opinion on the matters 
that plagued his household.  Nicholas was unable to offer any advice saying that 
it had been a very long time since he had been master of a household.  And that 
had been a long time ago and for a short span of time.  Neither had he been a 
good householder.
     Meals were plain affairs supplemented by the sympathetic aid of neighbors 
who understood Agnes' hardship.  Nicholas sat at table in silence and observed 
his hosts with his quiet eye.  Their misery was not yet enough to assuage his 
own, and he found this at once interesting and abhorrent.
     "It is our blessing that you have been with us, Nicholas," said Edmund 
dispiritedly one night at table.  He reached out and took his wife's hand in his 
and squeezed it gently as he spoke.  "You fill a seat at our table.  Of late, 
our bounty is such that I am more that a little grateful for your presence.  
Only an empty table will remain between my wife and I after you go.  The 
prospect gladdens me not."
     Nicholas nodded.  "I remain for as long as I am wanted."
     Edmund appeared comforted.  "Your visit has not borne fruit.  We have 
hardly spoken since your first night.  Instead, you witness our grief.  For you 
sake, I am sorry you came.  I am sorry for this entire wretched season."
     Agnes nodded.  "It has been a wretched season."
     Nicholas accommodated her by pouring her out more wine and did the same for 
Edmund, as had become his custom.  "Do not imagine I have suffered 
disappointment.  This is life, is it not?"
     Edmund sighed.  "Are you in any mood for conversation tonight, my friend?  
I am in the mood for tobacco.  After I carry out for Agnes, will you keep me 
company?"
     Nicholas put his hand over the old man's.  "I will be the one to help your 
wife, tonight."
     A weak smile pressed Edmund's lips as he rose from the table, leaving 
Nicholas to care for his wife.  She took the cups and jug while Nicholas carried 
the knives, platter and scraps.  He quickly put right the kitchen, but Agnes 
looked away, paying little attention to his rapid movements.  Once the 
superficial chores had been accomplishes, she picked up the bucket and set it 
outside the door for John to collect.
     "That is sufficient till morning," Agnes said, making a small tug on Nick's 
sleeve.  "Tomorrow we will find someone suitable.  I will find two good 
wenches."
     Agnes leaned back against the heavy worktable, the dark smudges below her 
eyes painted there by so many sleepless nights.  She told Nicholas how she and 
her Little Wren had made bread together.  Jeffrey loved the dark rye and she 
made it for him every week.  Nicholas listened to her patiently.  Her fragile 
reserves seemed nearly spent.  She buried her face in her apron, telling him how 
she missed her Little Wren and how she longed to hold her precious son once 
more.  Her dear, sweet, dead son.
     She said, "I do not know how I still have tears left to weep."
     Nicholas shifted uneasily and folded his arms.  This would be difficult.  
Had he made a mistake?
     "Where is my faith?" she said.  "I know this is the way of all mortal 
creatures.  Always, someone must die."  Her shoulders sagged, her hands fell 
limply to her waist.
     Nicholas breathed deeply, inhaling the remaining scents of kitchen hearth 
and the salty fragrance of Agnes' teary grief.  He closed his eyes, and for a 
brief moment, knew kinship in the common doom of all living creatures.  All 
mortal life comes to an end and he embodied that truth with the unbiased mercy 
of plague, accident, and old age.  "Yes, it has always been so," he conceded to 
her, and to himself.  "Someone must die.  Always, someone must die."
     She said, "I do not know how I shall bear it all."
     Nicholas put one hand behind her shoulders and gently pulled the apron away 
from her face with the other.  "Mistress, it shan't discomfort you a moment 
longer."
     
     ------  >>>>>
     
     25. Chapter
     
     Tracy and Nick stood in Reese's office waiting for their Captain to speak, 
but he just sat with his hands resting on his desktop, silent as a black onyx 
Buddha.  He shook his head slowly as a heavy pendulum swinging back and forth.
     "I want this case solved."
     "Yes, Captain," said Nick.
     "I am sincere about this."
     "I know you are, Captain."
     "No more murders.  Thank goodness, we have uniforms sitting on the last 
two."
     "Sir," said Nick carefully, "they refused security."
     "I am not hearing this," said Reese.
     "I'm afraid you are," said Nick, still peeved at Westlake and James 
himself.  He quickly added, "Sir."
     Rising thick and dense as smoke from a volcano, Reese said, "They have a 
certified nut case after them and they refused?  Convince them.  Tell them 
politely that it is up to them, but they have no choice."
     "We tried, Captain," Tracy said.  "We really did.  We sent two officers to 
their homes last night, but no go.  We think that they are going to skip town 
rather than let us or the murderer catch up with them."
     Nick said, "We do have some uniforms sitting a polite distance from their 
residences.  James has two offices parked on her street; Westlake has two down 
the hall watching his door.  Anyone goes in or out, they will be right on the 
scene."
     "And?" said Reese.
     "And nothing," said Nick, "so far."
     Reese smiled.  "With this strategy, we'll have officers breaking in just in 
time to save the foundation.  What were their names?"
     "Pauly James and Don Westlake," said Tracy.
     "Pauly and Don."  Reese rolled the names over his tongue,  making a face as 
if it made a bad taste in his mouth.  "They must be out to lunch without a 
subway token.  Which reminds me, I haven't had any."
     Reese opened his side drawer and pulled out a small bag of candy.  He 
opened it and popped several of the multicolored peanut butter and chocolate 
flavored pieces into his mouth.  He waved the bag at the detectives as he sat 
down, but both declined.
     "I know this has been tough," he said around the chocolate, "You've three 
unsolved from the same killer, and one victim dead on our watch.  But don't 
blame yourselves.  Don't take it personally that I had days work on the suspect 
list."
     Nick said.  "Our only failure is that we have three dead people."
     "Knight," Reese said as he pushed back his chair and stood back up, "stop 
being a martyr."
     "Sir," said Nick.
     Reese crinkled up his empty candy wrapper and threw it at his wastepaper 
basket.  Typical night.  He missed.  "I'm saying I don't need any OT on this.  
Days can clear alibis and run down bios faster than nights.  Take a close look 
at the incoming data and find pattern."
     "Yes, sir," said Tracy, "We're on it."
     Reese lifted a thick folder and handed it to Nick.  Nick felt its heft and 
was discouraged just thinking about looking through it.  "Here's another batch.  
Keep your phones handy.  I noticed your killer likes to strike after dark."
     "Like labor and vampires," chimed Tracy suddenly.  Just as suddenly her 
cheeks pinked up and she added, "Sorry."
     Reese rolled a heavy head and two tired eyes her direction.  "Vetter, work 
on your material."
     "Yes, sir."
     "Dismissed," directed Reese.  As Nick put his hand on the doorknob he 
added, "Don't forget.  Run by Don and Pauly's.  You're in a position to coerce, 
I mean, convince them to accept on-site security.  I don't want them flushing a 
toilet without a witness and a bodyguard.  Do it before it gets late."
     "Again, Captain?" said Nick.  "Wouldn't it be better for us to comb through 
the files?"
     Reese did not reply.  He simply leaned over his desk and pointed 
significantly at the credentials on his nameplate.  Captain Joseph Reese.
     Leaving the Captain's office in wordless communion, Tracy and Nick 
proceeded to their desks.  Nick felt both underenthusiastic and 
underappreciated.  Laying the folder on his desk, he noted three similar folders 
awaiting them already.  Turning open the one near his hand, he saw it was also 
full of backgrounds and interviews accumulated by day personnel.  "I'm having a 
bout of déjà vu.  Didn't we play this same scene last night?"
     "No," corrected Tracy.  "The Cap didn't call us into his office then.  He 
came out to our desks.  And we are wearing different clothes.  I am, anyway."
     "Right.  It's all coming back to me now.  So, we can lose or at least put 
aside the 500 name list and go straight to the folders."
     Tracy picked up a folder.  "It's all labeled and in alphabetical order.  
Looks as if they simply started at the beginning of the list."
     "This is why I became a detective, Trace," said Nick with a grand gesture, 
"the excitement, the drama, the paperwork."
     Tracy said,  "It's just like TV except we're in Toronto instead of New York 
or L.A."  Tracy peered at the labels and sorted through her set.  "I suspect 
this is why my father wanted me to make detective, so I'd be off the streets and 
safely behind a desk."
     Despite his griping, Nick really did love being a cop.  This was his second 
incarnation in law enforcement and it suited him.  When he became mortal, he 
supposed he should give it up.  His reflexes weren't geared up for dodging 
bullets as though his life depended upon it.  Nat had warned him such lapses 
could prove fatal once he was cured.  Nick recalled his closet full of bullet-
ridden haberdashery and grinned to himself.
     Tracy said, "what has four legs but never walks?"
     "Our desks."
     An hour later, Nick and Tracy had gave up on the incomprehensible morass of 
interviews and files and were tooling up Eastern Avenue to Pauly's cottage in 
the Beach.  An hour of unspectacular reading and dead-end brainstorming had 
inspired them both to confront Don and Pauly again.  This decision was made 
immediately after Reese popped his head out of his office door and told them to 
get going.
     Nick was in a mood.  He switched on his ancient AM radio.
     "This is Nightwatch with you friend, The Night Crawler, waiting for your 
call.
     "Waiting is tedious, so why wait in expectation of that which will never 
come?  Waiting for your dreams to come true or your nightmares to end, are we?  
Do we dream when we are awake or are we awake when we dream?  Are we the dream 
or the dreamer?
     "Your hallucination is that you are something other than what you wish.  
That cannot be so.  You are exactly what you are because it is your fate, your 
destiny, your script.  If you are the dreamer, then you are exactly as you 
desired.  If you are not the dreamer, then there is no possibility that you can 
recast yourself into a different role.
     "One plays the hero and one plays the villain, one plays the fool and 
another the wit.  One is fodder and another feeds.  If you think yourself badly 
cast, let me just say, there are no small parts; only small actors.
     "You have been designed and costumed and rehearsed for the part you were 
born to play, and still, you stand in the wings, waiting, waiting for a cue to 
play a different role.  But that is a role for which you are vitally ill-suited.  
You are not right for that part.  Be honest.  What is your strength?  What gifts 
can you bring to the part that others lack?  Tonight children, shouldn't you 
simply act naturally?"
     Eastern merged into Queen Street East.  Nick's Caddy hummed leisurely 
along, except for a pesky leaky vacuum problem with its brakes.  He really 
needed to get his vehicle in for some long overdue service.
     They still had nothing to lead them to the source of the strychnine.  The 
possibilities were endless.  An ingenious person should be able to put their 
hands on it.  For the disingenuous, Toronto was only a few hours drive from 
Detroit or New York.  Days was busy tracking possible sources, but nothing yet.  
The database information was unwieldy, as Nick and Trace discovered.
     "Why do you listen to that Night Crawler?  It annoys you and then you turn 
it off anyway," said Tracy"
     "He is sort of, well, related to me, but no, he's not.  He's like an uncle.  
It is as if he was a friend of the family or not."  Nick switched off the radio, 
hoping to switch off her line of inquiry.
     "I thought," said Tracy, "you didn't have any family."
     "Yes," said Nick, wrapping his hands tighter around the steering wheel.  
"That's it exactly."  Why did he let himself get sucked into these 
conversations?  "It's a connection to the past.  Someone's."
     "What?  Do you mean he is like a weird friend of the family that everyone 
calls uncle, but he isn't really your uncle?"
     "Exactly," said Nick.  He smiled reassuringly at Tracy as if his reply was 
perfectly reasonable.  He had not explained anything.  He had been as clear as 
mud.  He heard a foreign noise coming from the engine.
     "I know of him," said Tracy.  "He owns The Raven over on Richmond.  Uncle.  
Uncle Pervie is more like it."
     Nick shrugged to hide his shaking shoulders.  He tried not to burst out 
laughing.  Then he thought the heck with it and did.
     "81 Kilo.  Please respond."
     Tracy picked up the call.  "81 Kilo, go ahead."
     The dispatcher gave them Pauly James' address, requesting their immediate 
appearance.  Pauly had called the police and uniforms were already on the scene.  
Reese had routed the call back to the Caddy.
     "81 Kilo, we're on the way."
     Tracy pulled out the red flasher and stuck it on the front dashboard.  "It 
is a good thing we were already in the car.  The Captain never would have 
forgiven us if we had still been at the precinct."
     "Seems our perp may have been caught in the act.  Cross your fingers."
     "And hope to die."
     The front entry of the cottage style home was crammed with people, 
including the uniforms who had responded to the initial call and the stakeout 
team.  Tracy and Nick joined the throng in Pauly's living room.  Of all of them, 
Nick had expected Pauly James to tread most heavily upon the tenets of good 
taste.  Instead it was so tastefully decorated it was uncomfortable, as though 
she had purchased the trappings from a designer showcase home lock, stock, and 
ottoman.  Noting the lack of personal photographs, Nick realized, that was 
exactly what she had done.
     "This isn't quite as fancy as the others, is it?" said Tracy.
     "Aren't your walls painted pumpkin?"
     "What are you saying?"
     Pauly sat primly on her gray and yellow jacquard upholstered De Boers couch 
wearing a gaudy gold lame gown.  In her right hand she clutched an irregularly 
shaped puce ceramic ashtray.  It filled rapidly with her stubs as he watched. 
     She sucked deeply on her fag when Nick and Tracy stopped in front of her.  
Smoke leaked from her mouth, nose, and ears as she spoke.
     "About time you got here."
     "What happened?" asked Nick.
     He was answered by a tall, thin man in a cheap suit, which was incurably 
rumpled from sitting in his car for hours.  "Knight?  Vetter?  Name's Bick.  
Been awhile.  Saw a man.  Looked like pizza."
     Nick and Tracy shook hands with the officer.  She said, "Pizza?"
     "Yes."  Bick snapped open his notepad with the alacrity of Captain Kirk 
whipping out his communicator.
     Pauly yelled, "Poisoned pizza!"  She pointed rapidly at each of the 
detectives, drilling in her point with the glowing end of her cigarette. "He was 
at my door with poisoned pizza!"
     "Pizza guy, you mean," said Tracy.
     "Yes, pizza,' confirmed Bick.  "At appoximately Twenty Three Oh Two, one 
Caucasian, slender male, approximately 25 and one half years old, russet hair, 
French Canadian accent, wearing blue jeans and T-shirt,..."
     "The t-shirt said Bare Naked Ladies," interjected Pauly.  "He was some kind 
of pervert!"
     "...carrying large flat cardboard box.  Opened door.  Offered pizza.  Woman 
screamed.  Smashed suspect with box.  Slammed door.  Police.  Utter," a man, 
obviously Utter, a short squat man with a stringy beige comb-over sidled up next 
to Bick and nodded devotedly, "and I gave chase.  Left vehicle.  Lost suspect at 
approximately Twenty Three Thirty Five PM.  Returned.  Thirsty.  Water.  Running 
plates."
     "I didn't order any pizza!" yelled Pauly, as if this was not abundantly 
clear.  Nick held his tongue but cupped a palm over his ear closest to Pauly.  
"It was him, it was him!"  She sucked deeply on one cigarette while lighting its 
successor with the glowing end.  Ash snowed delicately into her gilded lame lap. 
     "That was only ten minutes ago," said Nick.  "He still must be somewhere in 
the neighborhood.  Trace, stay here and try to get a line on his identity."  
Nick waded through the assembly back out the front door.
     Jumping down the front entry steps three at a time, Nick could hardly 
contain his speed.  He reached the street, then ran up the hill until he was two 
houses away.  He scanned the windows of the homes around him to make sure he was 
unobserved, then lifted into the air with a thought.  Nick listened carefully, 
sorting the sounds and emotions that filled the air around him.  He searched for 
fear, someone running and panicked.  The vampire within him was drawn to it, 
linking him to escaping prey.
     First it came to him as a subtle warp in the fabric of the darkness, then 
as a low base tone carried within the wind.  He followed the increasing urgency 
and volume to a shadow panting and peeking about the side of a detached garden 
shed.
     Immediately, he dropped from the sky, silent as a leaf, behind the suspect 
and secured him by the elbows.
     "Metro Police!"
     The suspect fainted.
     Nick sighed, lifted the man into the sky, and carried him to a position 
closer to the James residence.  He decided it would look better to find the 
suspect closer to James' house than a mile away.  Touching down in her backyard, 
Nick shook the young man, reviving him enough to walk under his own volition.
     "Is that him?" said Tracy as Nick guided the panting and compliant suspect 
into the front door.  Nick said, "He wasn't' very far from here, after all."
     Tracy said matter-of-factly, "Let him go, Nick. He is the pizza guy."
     "But I didn't order any pizza!" came the familiar voice from the couch.
     Tracy rolled her eyes and gave Pauly a dirty look accompanied by a 
cautionary finger indicating for her to shush.  "He's from a Mom and Pop type 
Pizza place called D'Angelo's.  I had a talk with his parents, as you can 
imagine."
     "I can," said Nick, as he lifted his sagging escort.
     "His name is Henri Chevalier.  He had the wrong house.  He was supposed to 
deliver the pizza next door."
     Nick released Chevalier and asked gently, "Sorry.  We thought you might be 
a murder suspect.  You'll be fine.  Why did you run?"
     "Run?"  Chevalier waved his arms about in a disjointed arc and gasped, "You 
hear her, don't you?  She's hysterical!"
     "Poisoned Pizza!"
     Nick turned to shush her but couldn't say anything after he saw her.  While 
he had been gone, she had transformed into Bette Davis in Whatever Happed to 
Sweet Baby Jane?  Her mascara pooled in a crayon thick black line beneath her 
eyes.
     Chevalier extracted himself from Nick's arms.  "She screamed just like 
that.  She beat me with the box!"  He backed up farther from his accuser and hid 
behind Nick.
     Nick wrestled Chevalier into the kitchen and over to the front door.  He 
continued to lament his situation, his lack of tip, his lost of his pizza, the 
rudeness of customers, and the national disgrace of issuing phone service to mad 
citizens with which they could order pizzas, all the way back to his delivery 
van.  Nick and Tracy's efforts to explain and apologize on behalf of the entire 
department did little to dam the torrent of nervous outrage pouring from 
Chevalier's mouth.  He rolled up his window in furious haste as soon as he got 
in his vehicle.  A tortuous sound of metal twisting metal accompanied 
Chevalier's departure as he abused his clutch in his hurry to vacate the curb 
and Beach.
     "Are you ready to give us some names?" said Tracy shortly, when they 
returned to the living room.  "How many more of your friends must die from rat 
poisoning before you help us."
     Nick shot Tracy a look.  Too much information.  Suspects shouldn't know too 
many particulars.
     "Rat poison?" said Pauley, with a voice strangled by escaping cataracts of 
smoke.
     Tracy shook her head.  "Yes, rat poison.  And he did it without raising 
their suspicions.  It could be anyone, anytime, anywhere.  If you know 
something, you'd better give it to us."
     Nick stepped back slightly, hiding his smile behind his hand.  Tracy was 
really turning the screws on Pauly.
     Pauly nodded dumbly, but made no move.  Tracy pressed on.  "Limon knew she 
was vulnerable, but he still got her."
     The cigarette in Pauly's hand trembled.  It was a five on the Richter 
Scale.  "I should call Don."
     "Stychnine is a very unpleasant way to die," said Tracy.  Nick heard the 
sharp edge in her voice cut deep as she closed in for the kill.  "It makes for a 
very disturbing, unphotogenic corpse."
     The cigarette in Pauly's hand burned itself down to the filter and 
extinguished itself.  She stood up and went over to her desk.  She pulled open 
her laptop and shoved a floppy into the drive.  A moment later she turned and 
handed it to Tracy.
     "Here," she said.  "A list of everyone we've screwed royally in the last 15 
years.  Also, there is a separate list of forty names of people we think are the 
most likely to be gunning for us based upon dollar amounts and temperament.  We 
left the chum out.  Chum pay the rent, but we didn't consider them a risk."
     Tracy held the small square diskette in her hand.  It was red.  "Are you 
sure this is everything we need?"
     Pauly said, "God, I hope so."  Her hand spasmed across the low coffee table 
until she located her pack of ultra light 120's.  Her lighter flared as she lit 
the end with a flourish.  "We all worked on it the afternoon Sarah died."
     Nick took the floppy from Tracy.  "Thorough," he said.
     "We try to avoid repeat business."
     He knew she had just incriminated herself in the real estate scam.  This 
was a long list of witnesses ready to testify against her.  "You do understand 
what we will do with this.  I will eventually turn this over to Fraud."
     Pauly motioned at the diskette with her cigarette.  "The list includes 
dates, numbers, names, addresses and dollar amounts."
     Tracy said, "Will you accept security?"
     Pauly nodded as she inhaled, her body relaxing with the influx of nicotine.
     Nick said, "Now you can call Don and tell him to accept protection as 
well."
     Pauly picked up her puce, princess style phone.  "Don? Don?  Don.  No.  I 
did.  I can't take it anymore.  I gave them the list."  Pauly put her hand over 
the receiver and shook her head at the detectives as Don responded to her 
declaration.  When the small, squeaky onslaught of invectives subsided, Pauly 
put the receiver back to her ear.  "Don't give me that.  Too late; I did it."
     She discarded her half-spent cigarette into the overflowing ashtray and 
shoved a fresh one in her mouth, using a disposable to light it from the same 
hand.  "I'm not about to let someone feed me rat poison because you're stupid.  
Yes.  Yes.  Rat poison.  Yes, I'm sure.  You're on your own then, pal."
     Tracy said to Nick, "I guess we can skip Don's."
     Reese was elated when Nick and Tracy arrived with Pauly's short list of 
suspects.  He dispatched them to their desks to go through the profiles.  Nick 
and Tracy had a list of qualified suspects and dayshifts interviews from several 
dozen profiles.  Matching the two piles could save them time.
     Tracy deep-sixed files that weren't on their short list while Nick 
hurriedly alphabetized the rest.  Day shift had also matched the folders to many 
of the faces in the photo album.
     "Ready?" said Nick.
     "We don't have too many from the short list, do we?" said Tracy, pulling 
folders from her stack.
     Nick checked his copy of the list.  "Just those at the beginning of the 
alphabet."
     Tracy to opened a folder.  "It's nice to have a name to match with a face.  
It is sad," she said.  "These poor people didn't know what was happening.  Not a 
clue.  Except this guy."
     "Him?" said Nick.  "Maybe he doesn't photograph well.  He looks 
intoxicated.  Too much champagne."
     "And here he is," said Tracy, opening a folder, "top of the alphabet.  Leo.  
Leo what?  Is it my lousy French or the lousy handwriting?"
     "Brulé," said Nick, consulting Pauly's notes.
     "Brulé, as in Crème Brulé?"
     "He's at the bottom of the list," Nick said.  "Their notes say they took 
him for five hundred and fifty grand, but he wasn't aggressive."
     Tracy said, "He is wearing the weirdest cufflinks."
     "Wait a minute, this is interesting.  Look at the business he's in."
     "Great big ones.  They look like big cockroaches."  She squinted her eyes 
closer to the picture.  "I think they are cockroaches."
     Nick walked around and read over her shoulder.  "It says Univeral Pest is 
an extermination business."
     "Wait, they're not cockroaches!  They're little fat guys.  Why would he 
have little fat guys as cufflinks?"
     "Trace," Nick said firmly.  "Might an exterminator know where to find 
strychnine?"
     "They're weird little fat guys, like Hobbits.  He must be a Tolkien 
groupie."
     "Trace."
     "Nick, this is it!  Lord of the Rings, Middle Earth, the Rings,..."
     "Stychnine, Trace."
     "...the Runes.  Runes!  It's got to be him!"
     Nick pointed at the folder in urgency.  "He kills rats for a living.  He 
has the stychnine connection.  Pauly and Don.  Call them.  This has got to be 
it."  Nick called for the warrant for Brule's arrest.  They would sort out the 
details later.
     "Pauly's team's been alerted, but no one is at Don's condo," said Tracy.
     "What happened to the officers watching his door?" asked Nick.
     "They lost him.  When he didn't answer my call, I had them bang on his 
door.  They broke in, but he's skipped."
     "Absolutely fabulous."
     
     26. Chapter
     
     Don put his cordless phone back on the coffee table.  A cold wet feeling 
comprised of irrational certainty and unwanted onus slid down his back and 
seeped into the waistband of his khakis, making a sad, embarrassing watermark 
around the back and down the sides of his pants.  He walked over and flipped up 
his screen, and activated his touchpad.
     His fingers, shaking and awkward, manipulated the cursor until he found the 
files he wanted.  He tapped page down, page down, page down.  The screen 
flickered, his face reflected in the computer's blue desktop.  There it was.  He 
scribbled the address onto a piece of notepaper.  He pulled open his desk drawer 
and gingerly lifted up its contents.
     It was his Kahr K9 compact 9 mm double action only 8 shot with a 7 round 
single stack magazine, 100% steel pistol.  Made in the good old accommodating 
U.S.A.  He put the ammunition in his left pants pocket and the gun in his right.  
Don was conscious of safety, but not licensed to own a weapon.  He decided he 
had better wear a jacket to cover the bulges in his pants.
     Reprising Sutherland's brooding, swashbuckling turn in The Three 
Musketeers, Don crawled courageously over his glass terrace railing and shimmied 
down the tree growing stalwartly next to his building.  He spoke encouragingly 
to himself in a voice he hoped was as richly textured as that of his unaware 
twin.  But he failed.  His vocal coach claimed that it was Don's tragedy was 
that he had never learned to project from his diaphragm.
     Don covered the ground across the lakefront and around up to the sidewalk 
along Queen's Quay.  It was past midnight, but there was still traffic downtown 
in Harbourfront.  He didn't see any cabs so he decided to put some distance 
between himself and his condo next to the Terminal.  The two fools watching his 
door might discover he was gone if he didn't make tracks.  Next thing he knew, 
those annoying detectives would pull up in that big geezer Caddy and cut him off 
crossways on the sidewalk.
     He made a dash up Bay  heading for Front Street, alert for the approach of 
a orange and yellow until he was sucking in air as hard and fast as a chest 
wound.  As he leaned over the ground looking for oxygen, he felt an 
uncomfortable bulge pressing into his right buttock.  Reaching back, he 
extracted the offending growth.  It was his wallet.
     Panic pearled in small sweaty wet beads across his forehead.  Opening his 
wallet, he discovered he was right.  He had no cash for a cab.  Where the hell 
was the bank machine?  Damn, it was hot outside.  He dashed again, but with less 
swash, until he was just south of the railroad tracks, and ducked down into the 
PATH.  He jogged past the stores of the underground mall and up the escalator 
into the lobby of the Royal Bank.  There was the automatic teller.  He punched 
out two hundred dollars.
     He had to take a cab.  His own car wore conspicuous plates. He darted 
across the street and around the west side of the Royal York.  Two Halloween-
colored hacks waited for fares outside at the cabstand.  He hopped into one, 
grateful for the air conditioning.
     Leaning toward the front seat, he blurted, "the Burbs."
     "You have to be more specific."
     Don reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of notepaper, 
reading the address to the driver in the subdued cab light.  "But if you see a 
Tim Hortons(tm), drive through, eh?" he said.  "I need a cup of caffeine."
     Pauly had been hysterical when she called. She had butchered her part.  She 
had completely cracked from stage fright.  Couldn't handle the bright lights.
     Don had been packed and ready to steal out of town and out of the country.  
Once Sarah had been murdered, the likelihood of finding the killer before he 
found them seemed remote.  Pauly was to follow separately on a separate flight 
as soon as she could duck the police.  Now she had forgotten her lines.  Don 
hoped she would enjoy herself in prison.  He didn't feel sorry for her.  In the 
Big House, cigarettes were the only form of currency.
     It broke his heart to leave Toronto now.  The George Bernard Shaw Festival 
was in production in Niagara.  This would be the first year in many that he 
would not enjoy the entire season.  Things could not be worse.
     It was well past two when the cab pulled up near the address.  He had the 
driver pull over early, before they reached the house.  He tumbled out, 
retrieved the slip of paper, and tipped the driver modestly so that the man 
would not remember him even though he looked like a big name movie star.
     He waived good-bye in a nonchalant and extraordinarily casual way to imply 
the actions of a common suburbanite.  The cab pulled away leaving behind only 
the small stench of burnt rubber.  Don frowned, internally critiquing his 
performance.  Perhaps he had overacted a touch.
     Don stayed in the street awhile, hopping nervously from one foot to the 
other.  Once the cab had pulled completely from his sight, he consulted his 
notepaper, squinting at the numbers.  Damn contacts.  He sighted and entered the 
side yard of a white colonial.  The gun burned a hole in his pocket.
     He took it out, remembering its kick when he tested it at the firing range 
in Detroit, but the metal now felt cold in his hand.  He inserted the magazine 
with a flourish and pulled back the slide, prompting the cartridge into place 
for firing.
     Circling the yard to a side window, Don discovered the home's occupant 
seated in the living room watching television.  Who watches television this late 
at night?  He didn't want to get too close, so he stuck to the shadows.  He 
could see the reflection of his own eyes glittering in the window glass.  For a 
moment, he thought he could taste Sarah's pink lipstick in his mouth and feel 
her abundant white skin in his hands.  His eyes pricked and itched.  He would 
kill that son of a bitch.
     He checked his weapon again, the clicking and snapping the only sounds in 
the darkness.
     What would it be like to shoot a man, to sense the slug entering the body 
and stopping midways in a moist thud?  Would he see the man's fear and surprise, 
see the sweat as pain and understanding crossed his face.  Would Don smell the 
blood as it exited the wound and seeped into the man's clothes?  How would the 
man fall?  Would the impact of the bullet throw him backwards, or would he stick 
to the spot, slump to his knees, look up at his assassin with Bambi eyes and 
ask, "Why?"  Would Don have to shoot him again to sure he was dead?
     Slipping behind the house, Don found the back entrance.  Carefully he 
pressed the latch of the screen door, moving slowly to muffle the sounds of the 
spring and screens.  The door itself opened with a gentle push and he was in.  
His heart pounded.  He felt his way through the kitchen, along the smooth molded 
counter, then followed his hands as they slid along the wallpaper into the 
dining room.
     He stood at the foot of the staircase by the front door.  The living room 
flickered before him as the television illuminated its interior.  Don edged 
around the stairway landing to peer into the room.  There a fat man snored 
loudly in a green fabric easy chair.  A newspaper lay over his ample midsection 
and three beer cans sat on the table.  The newspaper moved up and down with each 
rattling breath.
     Don washed the sweat from his face with his palm.  A body, dead bodies 
turning gray and swelling in living rooms.  He imagined the aftermath in grisly 
detail.  Ima, Two Bears, Sarah.  His friends; all dead.  The thought of killing 
Leo did not interest Don.  The thought of seeing Leo dead, however, continued to 
sparkle with golden appeal in his mind.
     The ponderous form in the living room snorted and woke up.  Don watched in 
fascination.  The man he was about to kill was drinking a beer.  Don clenched 
his fists, quivering, grieving.  That pathetic waste.  He could see Sarah and 
the others, tippling, unaware, the fiend's vile concoctions.  His brain raced 
through the plots of every play and movie he had ever seen involving poisoning: 
Arsenic and Old Lace, The Poisoner's Handbook, and Notorious.  How innocuous and 
curiously amusing they had seemed.
     Don certainly would bring a new dimension to the part of a killer after 
this night.  He felt the remaining shred of his humanity leave him, replaced by 
a fictional construct capable of impulsive vengeance.  Vengeance.  Morally 
justified, socially acceptable, heartless, callous, calculated, best served cold 
vengeance.  This was the black terror that filled him.  It could not be that he 
was scared that Leo would kill him first.
     Don heard his victim heave himself out of his chair.  The ungainly 
movements made Don twitch.  He turned and skittered to the top of the staircase 
where he hid around the corner and waited.  For what?  He heard heavy footsteps 
on the stairs.  Leo was coming after him!
     Was he more afraid of Leo, a man who had cold-bloodedly murdered his 
friends, or was he more afraid of committing murder himself?  Or was he afraid 
of meeting a man who had proven himself capable of murder?  The questions ran in 
his mind untethered as he braced himself against the wall.
     But here was the perfect opportunity.  Here the fiend was, full of beer, 
drunk, tired, heavy, awkward, coming up these treacherous stairs to a dark 
hallway, leaning not on the banister but on the wall, sliding upward.  How easy 
it would be and how reasonable.  The man was close enough now.  Don could smell 
the alcohol on his breath, hear the ill-fitting clothes squeak as he struggled 
up the stairs.  Don crouched, trying to decide whether he really wanted to be 
the hero of this story or not.
     
     27. Chapter
     
     Nick rang the bell, but it didn't produce a sound.  Tracy poised her hand 
over the door to knock.  She brought it down, but the percussion that resounded 
caused her to bounce back and turn to Nick with a helpless look of shock and 
astonishment.  Next followed a piercing scream and a second loud crash.
     "What was that?"  Tracy spun toward the source of the commotion.
     "Sounded as if it came from next door."
     The detectives darted across the green suburban lawn and scrambled up the 
concrete steps to the porch entry of the adjoining white colonial.  The front 
door opened easily and they entered to find an obese middle-aged white man 
crumpled on the floor of his downstairs landing.  It appeared he had plummeted 
through the railing of his staircase to the dining table below, trashing it, and 
rolling into the front entry.
     "Are you okay?"  Nick gently, but firmly, tried to confirm the man's state 
of consciousness.  "Are you all right?"
     "How is he, Nick?"
     Nick felt the injured man's arm, appraising the strength of his heartbeat.  
"He's breathing.  I think he'll be okay."
     "I'll call the paramedics," said Tracy as she punched numbers into her 
cellular.  She moved into the living room.  "Let me see if I can get an ID."
     "I think he was just overtired.  And I smell beer," called Nick.  "Sir, 
stay with me.  What is your name?  Find anything, Trace?"
     The unidentified man on the floor struggled, whispering, "Pushed."
     Nick hesitated, checking the room for shadows and stray heartbeats.  
Finding none he said, "What?  Pushed?  You were pushed.  Who pushed you?"
     "Man.  Man with hair pushed me."
     "His name is Syd," Tracy said, returning from the living room and kneeling 
next to Nick and Syd.  "Syd Marting.  You say a man with hair pushed you?"
     "You'll have to call for someone else to arrest Brulé."  Nick sighed 
deeply.  "I'll check for our assailant."  He glanced upstairs without much 
conviction, then followed the worn orange carpeting until he reached the upper 
landing.  He did not see or sense anyone else in the house.
     He made a quick circuit of each room to orient himself, snapping back 
shower curtains and probing closets for a tell-tale sign that an intruder had 
been there.  In the back bedroom, he found the window open.  Outside, the 
branches of a large maple tree wedged up against the siding beneath the window.  
Nick noticed the scrapped bark on its near branches.  Looking down and out 
farther, he spotted a figure off between the houses in the back.
     His first thought was to crawl out the window, but he thought better of it 
and turned to go back down the stairs.  Then he changed his mind and went back 
to the window, squelching the urge to rip part of the window frame from the 
wall.  "Whoever it was went out the back window," he called downstairs to Tracy.  
"I'm going after him."
     Nick scrambled over the marble sill and snagged a rip into his jacket on 
the branches.  He felt the pull of time wasted as he yanked it free.  Already he 
had lost sight of the fleeing suspect.  Nick checked around.  The heck with the 
EMTs, it was getting late.  He had people to arrest.  He took to the air.
     Nick sighted the suspect traveling on foot, literally, because one of the 
man's feet appeared to be sprained as he limped his erratic way down the street.  
Nick closed in.  The man probably fell out of the tree.  Served him right for 
pushing a guy over his staircase.  Nick floated overhead, choosing his moment.
     When the man paused to check back over his shoulder, Nick dropped down 
directly in his path.  The suspect turned and slammed right into Nick's chest.  
He staggered, fell straight back, and landed on his rear.
     "Don?  Don Westlake?  What are you doing here?"  Nick yanked Westlake off 
the pavement with one hand, forcing him to his feet.  He left him to stand 
without support.
     "Ow, Ow, Ow.  That hurts."  Westlake struggled to maintain his balance.  
Nick did not offer him an arm.
     "You bet it hurts, Don,"  Nick tapped him on the left shoulder, throwing 
Don off balance again and forcing him to put all his weight on the weak right 
foot.  "You're under arrest for attempted murder."
     "Attempted?"
     Unbelievable.  Nick waited until understanding possessed Don's face.  
"Attempted.  He survived, lucky for you."
     "Leo's still alive?"
     Nick was more disgusted than he thought possible.  "I don't know anything 
about Leo.  The man you pushed over the stairs, Syd, is alive, but hardly well."  
Nick tapped Don's shoulder, throwing him off balance again.
     "Ow."
     "What did you think you were doing?"  Tap.  Tap.
     "Ow.  Ow."
     "Were you trying to kill Leo, and you walked into the wrong house?"
     "If I had a horse to jump on I could have gotten away and you'd never have 
known,' said Don, scowling, hunching over and limping in a semi-circle.  "My 
kingdom for a horse, eh?"
     Nick observed Don's sorry interpretation of Richard III.  He considered 
shoving the man against one of the nearby garage walls for wasting his time, for 
being a general menace, and for bad acting.
     "Follow me.  We're going back to the house."
     Nick started walking.  Don called piteously after him.  "A little help, 
Detective?"
     Nick did not turn.  "No."
     The hike back to the house took a full fifteen minutes.  Don hopped and 
bellyached the entire way.  They reentered through the back door.  Inside, 
paramedics were carting the misfortunate Mr. Marting to hospital.  Tracy was 
waiting for Nick in the living room.  Next to her on the sofa sat a round, thick 
man with large feet.  His head was bowed down and his hands were cuffed.
     Tracy rose as Nick entered the living room.  "Guess who stopped by to check 
on his neighbor?"
     The handcuffed man lifted his head and gazed at Nick through watery eyes.  
"I'm Leo.  I live next door."
     "He heard the crash," said Tracy.
     "Crassshhh," said Leo.
     Don tiptoed up behind Nick, as if he needed a shield, and whistled softly.  
"Leo?  I didn't recognize you.  You lost a lot of weight."
     Don's words had the effect of causing Leo's iris's to bob like ping-pong 
balls on water.  They floated aimlessly a minute, then drifted and settled in 
the direction of Don's voice.  Tilting sideways on the sofa cushions, his head 
darted right and left, trying to see around Nick.  Leo's body followed the 
motion of his own head with the helplessness of the ragged tail waving behind a 
kite.
     "Westlake?"  Wessstlake?  "You reeking jackel!"  Leo jerked up, raising his 
encumbered handcuffed hands.  His ears turned bright red.  Tracy blocked his 
progress, placing her body between him and Nick, pushing against Leo's bulk 
until he fell back into the cushions.
     Nick herded Don away towards the front door.
     Leo shook himself and regained his feet.  He began lunging, abdomen first, 
in Don's direction.  His words were projected at Don in oleaginous chunks.  
"There you are, damn you!  The police have me now, but I'll tell them 
everything."  Policccce.
     Nick called to Tracy, "I'll get Don out.  Calm him down."  Nick turned to 
find that Don had wedged himself between a wall and a desk in the corner.  He 
was trying to hunker down behind the furniture.
     "And don't think you'll be safe when I'm in jail," raged Leo.
     Don ducked his head under his neck, webbing the fingers together as if he 
were participating in an air raid drill.
     "There are ways!  Prisons,"  Prishions!  "are full of criminals and I still 
have some money left, you hyena.  I'll use it.  I won't need it.  I'll see you 
in hell!"
     "Calm down," said Tracy, dodging the waving pyramid of arms and pushing Leo 
with the determination of a Sumo wrestler.  Leo's body was rigid; no longer limp 
noodle drunk.  She was unable to topple him back into the couch.
     "He can't do that, can he?"  Don's voice had risen half an octave.  Nick 
reached in to extract Don from his burrow.
     "Nick," said Tracy, "Forget him.  I need help."
     Nick ordered Don, "Stay put."
     Don pointed past Nick's shoulder at Leo.  "Is he going to hire someone to 
kill us from jail?"
     "Do I look psychic?"
     Don pointed more and his mouth moved soundlessly in the round motions of a 
fish blowing bubbles.
     Nick abandoned Don.  Leo's handcuffed arms flew randomly in three 
directions at once.  Grabbing hold as the hands drove past his face, Nick said, 
"We're going to need another car."
     "I'll see you dead!"   Sssseee.
     Tracy attached herself to Leo's shoulders, steadying him into a 
perpendicular stance.  "I'll hold him up until....  Nick!"
     Nick twisted around and saw, in perfect clarity, what he least wanted to 
see.  Don had emerged from his hole.  He stood trembling, hands stretched 
forward, clutching a 9mm between his two shaky fists.
     "Gun!"  Nick lunged at Don, throwing himself between the gun and two 
mortals in the line of fire.  The blast, so near, split the air in his eardrum 
and shocked his senses.  Fleeting, but unmistakable pain delineated the path of 
the bullet as drilled into the flesh of his left shoulder, shattered the 
shoulder blade and continued in an undeflected quest to its target.
     The rage and power of the vampire responded.  He hurled Don against the 
wall, slamming him nearly into unconsciousness.  He ripped the gun from Don's 
limp hand and tossed it aside.  Nick sensed the wet scent of blood spreading in 
the space where Don's head had connected with the wall.  The pricking sensation 
in his mouth warned Nick to step away, but he did not.  His vision swirled with 
sweet amber and red auroras.
     "What is wrong with you?" Nick said, the golden-eyed demon within him 
poised inches from Don's face.  "Answer me!  What did you think you were doing?"
     Nick pulled tighter and tighter on the throat of Don's collar, his warring 
desires holding him at a precipice between the easy descent to hell and the 
excruciating climb toward redemption.  Part of him willed himself to take the 
man in his hands and kill him.  The other part, resisted, reminded him of where 
he was, of his responsibilities and everything he had to lose and of every 
untouched joy toward which he groped.  He pulled tighter.  He remembered 
himself.  His partner.  Tracy.
     "Trace?"  Nick's voice cracked.  He let Don go.  Don, glassy-eyed, choking, 
slid to floor, leaving a thin red streak on the wall.  Tracy was in trouble.  
"Trace?"
     "Okay, okay, okay."  Tracy's voice was a breathy rush.  She was on her 
knees, Brulé's head cradled in her lap.  Her hands moved furtively over Brulé's 
chest, lightly touching the fabric.  Her eyes, when they met Nick's, were 
dilated deep and black.  "He hit Brulé."
     Nick stood silently, ashamed, watching blood seep into Brulé's shirtfront, 
creating a large wet, red stain.  The man's eyes were open and still, 
unmistakably and forever fixed upon the next world.
     Nick turned away.  This was his fault.  He had been so flippant and 
impatient when he had discovered Don that he had failed to pat down his suspect.  
Don moaned on the floor.  Nick pulled him up to eye level and said with a 
clenched throat, "You irresponsible fool.  You could have killed my partner."
     "Nick, it's okay," said Tracy.  "Cuff him."
     Nick disregarded her.  He felt his monster surging, the pricking at his 
lip.  "You deserved payback from your victims."
     Tracy pulled herself up from the floor, carefully laying Brulé's head down. 
"Nick, what are you doing?"
     Nick could feel Don's body trembling beneath his hands.  Don did not 
realize with whom he was dealing.  Maybe he did.  His face splotched white and 
yellow as he looked into Nick's face.  Don's eyes wavered in their sockets.  He 
whispered, "Don't kill me."
     "I should."
     Nick felt Tracy's hand on his shoulder, her touch and voice gentle.  "We 
just arrest people; we don't cast stones.  Let the courts handle him."
     Nick released his hold on Don and let him slide back to the floor.  "You're 
under arrest.  Again."
     The emergency vehicles parked outside cast a garish sheen of alternating 
red and blue lights through the parted curtains into the living room and over 
Brulé's body.  The EMTs hoisted it into the gurney, secured the straps and 
locked the struts into place.  Nick looked down as they rolled past him and out 
the front door to the ambulance.
     Nat came up to him, hugging her clipboard.  She smiled slightly and said, 
"I'm calling it a GSW."
     Nick said nothing.
     "Bullet wound right to the heart.  He probably didn't suffer."
     Nick rubbed his shoulder.  Nat inspected his blasted shoulder covertly.  
"You'd better keep your jacket on until shift ends.  There's a big hole and some 
blood."
     Nick stuck his hands into his pockets.  He could hear Tracy outside, 
speaking to Reese.  "My shift is over.  I'm on suspension."
     "It'll be all right, Nick."
     "I'm going to go next door and see what turned up at the deceased's house."
     Nat let him go with a nod and a sober smile through pressed lips.
     Leo Brulé's home was similar to the Marting residence.  As Nick walked in 
the front door, a uniform was calling Animal Control.  A large cat cowered 
beneath a china chest in the dining room.  A rat, an iguana, and several birds 
occupied an assortment of cages in the living room.  He wondered how many other 
animals lived in the house.  Nick stepped into the living room and took a closer 
look at the rat.
     It was a modest home, nothing fancy.  Solid and livable.  Nick liked it 
better than any of the other homes or condo's he had visited during the 
investigation.  It had a nice lived in look.  Two shelves stood along the back, 
full of books and fanciful paraphernalia.  Small figures of dragons, gnomes and 
wizards made of ceramic, pewter and plastic collected dust along the shelf 
edges.
     But it smelled of whiskey.  Specifically Wild Turkey.  A bottle, freshly 
opened, sat on the coffee table.  Next to the bottle, Nick recognized a small 
gray bag and a similarly colored booklet.  Three flat, paste colored Rune stones 
were laid out in a horizontal line across the table.  These weren't hematite 
like the one's Brulé had left at the murder scenes.  These had come with the 
original kit.
     Nick pulled out his notebook and pen.
     
     <<<   --------------
     28. Chapter
     
     Saffron Waldon August 1572
     Edmund waited in his bookroom for more than half an hour.  Agnes must be 
taking advantage of their guest's charity, perhaps finding extra chores for him 
in the scullery.  Presently, Nicholas entered, carrying two small jugs and two 
wine cups.  He passed one of each to Edmund.
     "Two?  Are we to drink as if there is no tomorrow?  My head will ache.  I 
am not as young as I used to be."
     "Nor am I."  Nicholas joined Edmund before the fire.  He lifted his jug and 
poured bright red liquid into his glass.  "I will drink mine.  Do as you like 
with yours."
     "A contest then," encouraged Edmund, "between soldiers."
     "Honorable soldiers?"
     Edmund chose not to reply.  Instead he poured himself a cup.   On this hot 
summer night, a fire seemed redundant to all but a cold-boned old man like 
himself.  His guest had made no complaint.  Nor did he attempt to begin a 
conversation.
     Edmund leaned back against the hard back of his chair, basking in the peace 
he had not felt in weeks.  His odd guest, Nicholas de Brabant, had become fixed 
in his home, a restrained though good-humored presence haunting their nights.  
His impending absence would be felt keenly by him and his wife.  There were but 
a few days left of his visit.  Edmund felt an urgency to speak to the man and 
discover his secrets. He still didn't understand this pilgrim to his doorstep, 
and now the man might leave without explaining himself.
     A strange Frenchman he was, but then Edmund had been warned that all 
Frenchmen were strange.  Edmund looked forward to renewing their correspondence, 
especially since Nicholas' tongue was looser in his letters than in person.  It 
would help him suffer through his remaining years without his son.  Their Little 
Wren was flown ,too.  He blinked away a tear.  Grief stooped the shoulders of 
him and his good wife as low as a heavy black cloak.
     "You promised tobacco," said Nicholas.
     "That I did."  Edmund rooted out a small wooden casket, which contained his 
hoard.  He fumbled with the contents until he had extracted one of the two pipes 
and had it properly loaded.  He explained the process to his guest.
     "It requires practice.  If you do not do it properly, it will not burn or 
draw."  He handed the pipe to his guest, then ceremoniously lit it for him with 
a splinter from the hearth.  "You have done this before?  I am told they favor 
snuff in France."
     "Yes.  Her Majesty is fond of snuff."
     Edmund watched his guest draw on his pipe, then hold it out, allowing the 
tobacco to extinguish itself.  Swallowing self-consciously at his own 
foolishness, Edmund realized that a well-traveled gentleman would not consider 
tobacco a novelty and needed no guidance from him.  Nicholas certainly appeared 
to have the money to indulge in any fancy past the point of saturation.  He and 
his wife had always been satisfied with their books and life outside of the 
towns.  Their naturally conservative tastes had enabled them to prosper despite 
the regular failures of the crocus harvest.
     Edmund relit Nicholas' pipe, leaving the splinter on the candle stand 
between them.  They would both need to utilize it frequently.
     Settling back into his chair, Edmund a second pipe for himself and filled 
the bowl as his guest smoked in silence.  The whole process constituted twenty 
minutes.
     Indicating the candle and splinter, he said, "You will have to keep 
lighting the infernal thing, if you are not clever.  It is a wonderful way to 
waste time on a long summer night."
     Nicholas made no comment.
     "You seem to have had a reversal of attitude.  Are you still intent upon 
perdition?"
     "I will let you decide."
     "I like not the responsibility."
     The smoke from the fire and from the pipes comingled, smelling of sparks 
and ash, burning wood and leaves.  It evoked in Edmund a curious, primitive 
comradery with his guest, as if they had sat in silence in just this way 
millennia before.
     "It was your experience as a soldier that has caused you to lose faith.  
That is a common reaction."
     "My faith was taken from me," said Nicholas.  "Since my arrival, you have 
lost your son and a beloved servant.  Do you still have your faith?"
     "I do."
     "Do you?"
     "I am tired, desperately aggrieved, but I still have my faith."
     "In what?"
     "What do you think life is about, Sir?  Do you see anyone who does not 
suffer heartache, loss, diseases of mind, body and spirit?"
     Nicholas drew deeply on his pipe, then exhaled.  He answered, "Until 
recently, you."
     "You are cruel, Sir."
     "Observant."
     "For two weeks merely, hardly long enough for you to pass judgement."
     "I have observed the harvest of your life.  You reap what you sow.  Is that 
not the way of it?"
     "Reading the last page is not the same as reading the story entire.  I told 
you, I was not born to perfection any more than the next man.  My ideals come to 
me after long years of ignorance and blindness," said Edmund, rapping the fading 
flame of his pipe into life.  "Even so, no one is perfectly protected.  Life is 
what it is.  So is death."
     Edmund poured himself a bit more wine, let it prick his throat.  "Of late, 
except for my wife, my good fortune has been dissipated.  Yet life is not about 
rewards.  It is about living rightly regardless of your burden.  One must 
appreciate the opportunity in every experience."
     "I see naught to appreciate."
     "I admit," said Edmund, "I suffer, but had my son and I not loved one 
another, I would suffer more.  I am wretched in measure equal to the love I held 
for him.  Our love was well done and I refuse to regret it.  I am entitled to 
mourn, but I am determined not to despair."
     "If I were you," said Nicholas, his breath blue with smoke, "I would not be 
so complacent."
     "You are not me.  You cannot know what you would do in my position.  You 
cannot speculate nor can you know the depth of my affections."  Edmund felt 
exhausted.  He leaned his head back and closed his tired eyes.
     Nicholas did not let him rest long.  "Are you not angry?"
     "I am very angry," Edmund admitted.
     "Angry at your God?"
     "In turns."
     "How are you angry?"
     "You are relentless," said Edmund, opening his eyes and seeing the wooden 
crossbeams above his head.  "I am angry with myself, and with God.  I am the one 
who chose life and life is a battle of faith against despair.  When I accept my 
responsibility, I berate myself.  When I deny my responsibility, I blame God.  I 
regret that I am brought to the test, but it is I who chose to improve myself by 
living.  I should not complain when my life is exactly as I would have it."
     "You think you chose to lose your son?  That defies reason."
     "I must have done it."
     "You believe you murdered your son."
     Edmund shifted.  His cold bones ached.  He rubbed his eyes.  "No, I chose 
to live a life in which my son would die young."
     "Pray tell me," said Nicholas, "what does your son gain by his sacrifice?  
Did you consult him or his Margery before you made the decision to waste his 
life."
     "Each one lives his own life and makes his own choice.  I did not own him.  
Regardless, he is not dead."
     "He is dead, Sir," said Nicholas.  "Must you insist this is an ennobling 
experience?"
     "He is dead to us, only.  It is but a separation."  Edmund felt anxious.  
He did not know why.  He believed.  Heartstricken as he was, he harbored no 
doubt.  "If the creature in us were not designed to cling to life, then our 
expectations would cause us all to follow shortly upon his heels."
     "Follow him where, I ask?  To meet a god that allowed your son to be 
murdered?"
     "God did not allow Jeffrey to be murdered, nor did He kill him."
     "No.  God did not murder your son," said Nicholas.  "I did."
     The earth, its grounds and oceans, seemed to crack open at Edmund's feet, 
revealing a wasteland of silence and blood before him.  The despicable 
confession rose between them as a thick, burgeoning scourge of smoke and ash 
that churned and twisted the night into monstrous shapes.  Edmund choked, the 
pipe in his hand belching bitter fumes into his lungs and throat.  It was a 
jest, was it not?  A foul, cruel bitter jest from an angry, lost man?  Edmund's 
eyes teared as he stared at the man, this stranger, seated next to him.  It was 
not true.  He had welcomed this man into his home, introduced him to his 
household.  What depravity had possessed Nicholas to say such a thing?
     In a thin voice Edmund said, "You bait me, Sir."
     Nicholas gently set his pipe aside.  There was not a note of impatience or 
insincerity in his voice.  "I do not."
     Realization hit Edmund in sickening waves.  He forced his voice up to an 
audible whisper, "How?"
     "I frightened his horse.  I drank his blood.  Then I broke his neck so it 
would look like an accident."
     "You drank?"  Edmund could barely speak.
     "I am a creature of myth, Edmund.  I am a vampire, one of your god's 
creations."
     Edmund found the spirit to twist and confront Nicholas' face.  He was met 
by gold-flecked eyes and a smile ornamented by ghastly canines.  Appalled beyond 
fear, Edmund's mind snatched for coherent thought.
     "Bluatsauger," he said stupidly.
     "Yes, but not as dreadful."  Nicholas tilted his head.  The horrific 
features of his face receded as Edmund watched.  "You surprise me.  You know the 
word.  But you wrote that you traveled northeast when you were a soldier."
     Edmund's limbs felt numb.  He fought off the swoon.  He must think.  "You 
murdered my son.  Why?"
     "I have done it because I am not like you.  I never will be and I resent 
it.  I do what your god compels me to do.  I do what my nature dictates."
     "You must kill?"
     "I must drink blood to live."
     "It must be human blood?"
     Nicholas seemed shaken.  A sudden violence animated his movements.  
Nicholas picked up his cup then set it down just as quickly.  Was this progress?  
Edmund knew he had to come to some sort of compromise with this demon before he 
hurt anyone else at Waltham Hall.
     "I do as I must," Nicholas said finally, his words lurching like wheels 
over a treacherous road, "as does any animal.  I hoped you could save me from 
this torment, but you have denied me.  You say I must change into something else 
to be saved and I can not.  I have tried.  I am unchanged in three hundred 
years."
     "You have always been a demon?"
     "Once I was a man, as you are."
     "You have the sense of a man," said Edmund, probing for the demon's weak 
spots, "yet you came to kill my son, to give my wife and I the cruelest blow."
     "No."  Nicholas paced.  He seemed to vacillate between despair and fury.  
"On my word, that was not my intention when I came.  I wanted to save my 
wretched soul.  You said I had to change the matter that has caused my grief.  
It cannot be done.  I see that I must be what I am.  I am one who feeds on the 
misery of the human race and your misery is to be my only solace.  I stay to 
observe how a godly man suffers the plagues of Job."
     Edmund received Nicholas' last statement unprepared.  He bit down the 
savage panic that threatened to make him mad.  He stood quickly and removed 
himself as far from Nicholas as he could.  How many plagues of Job?  From the 
bottle next to him, Nicholas poured himself another cup.
     Edmund studied its thickness and clarity.  It was not wine.  It was 
familiar to him as it was to every farmer, butcher, and soldier.  Where had he 
gotten it?  When?
     Edmund said, "Jenny?"
     Nicholas nodded.
     Edmund swayed, the firelight red and yellow and everything blurring into 
black, then red and yellow light again.  ""Skipwith?"
     Again, he received Nicholas' a silent acknowledgement.
     "John?"
     "Someone must tend my horse, Edmund.  John is well."
     Edmund licked his dry mouth.  "You were correct, Nicholas, you do great 
evil.  You choose to cause suffering."
     "I do not choose.  It is what I am."
     Edmund felt a strange delirious relief.  The fear within him subsided.  He 
knew with whom he was dealing, as sincerely as he knew himself.  "You did 
choose.  You chose to come here.  You chose to befriend me and my family.  You 
chose to confront me with this horror.  What you are may not be your choice.  
What you do, is your choice."
     "You cannot know.  You cannot judge."
     "You came here for my opinion.  I do not judge.  It is you who must judge 
what you have done.  You alone know where the fault lies and what is beyond your 
control.  I do not think you fail because of what you are, you fail because you 
do not choose differently.  That is no one's fault but your own.  You excuse 
yourself, saying you are an animal but an unthinking beast is not capable of 
cruelty."
     Nicholas rose before him in a movement so rapid, that Edmund first mistook 
him for a vapor from the fire.  The demon accosted him with a voice thick with 
threat and bitterness.  "I have failed.  This is the error beyond forgiveness 
committed a thousand times over.  I am apart.  I am separate.  I am not human.  
I have tallied fifteen lifetimes of murder weekly and daily.  There is no 
adequate recompense for a single murder.  You tell me what will wash away the 
stain of blood from my record.  What hope is there for me?  Give me a reason to 
deny myself what I desire most!"
     "Is it what you desire most?"
     "Yes," said Nicholas, the violence in the demon's voice so palpable that 
Edmund pressed into the wall in fear.
     "I think not, or you would not have come to me," said Edmund.  "You were a 
man once.  You have misplaced yourself."
     "This is your answer to me after I commit the blackest deeds of my life?"  
Edmund watched as beads of blood sweat appeared upon the stranger's brow.  His 
knees buckled beneath the weight of this fresh evidence of Nicholas's abnormal 
condition.  He determined he would do everything in his power to preserve his 
wife and John from harm.
     Nicholas paced before the fire.  "It is too late.  If I walk into the sun 
now, I go to damnation."
     "Nicholas, there is no torment."
     "There must be."
     Edmund smiled at his own situation.  "No, Nicholas, only here."
     "The rest of the world is wrong?"
     "I was like you, Nicholas.  I died alone on a foreign road where mercy 
found me, taking me through a great tunnel of light to force me to judge my 
life.  And my heart broke, appalled by all I had done.  I had gone to God with 
naught in my hands to show Him.  I had created nothing but misery and 
destruction.  Even for such a debauched soul as mine, it is God's country there, 
not the squalor we make of creation here."
     Edmund risked coming close to Nicholas.  He knew not at what peril or 
whether he had already lost the battle.  "We are here, under trial, to create 
goodness in the face of evil.  By expressing out virtue we learn our greatness 
as His children.  It is not easy for anyone."
     Edmund searched Nicholas's face.  The demon eyes and hideous canines had 
passed away from view.  "You were once a man, Nicholas, you can create good, 
too.  It is difficult for you because you walk where it is darkest."
     Nicholas bowed his head.  He moved from Edmund, as silently as fog above 
cold stone, blocking his view of the fireplace.  The demon held his hand before 
the flames until the flesh smoldered and bred thin wisps of black smoke.  "As I 
suspected, this is hell."
     Edmund watched the macabre demonstration before the fire in anguish.  The 
decision belonged to Nicholas.  His family's fate was in the hands of this 
fantastic half-man, half-demon.  Edmund had done all he could to influence him.
     "Please," he begged softly, "leave us to our grief.  Have mercy."
     "What, Edmund," said Nicholas, "is the merciful thing for me to do?"
     Perplexed, Edmund said, "Why, you may leave now, and bring no more death to 
my house."
     "I think not, my friend."  Nicholas lowered his head, reflected firelight 
licked his pale face with flames.  "Would you still dare to call me friend?"
     "Spare Agnes, and John, and go."
     As if exhausted from a long journey, the demon leaned heavily against the 
hearth.  "She is gone, Edmund."
     Edmund staggered.  No, he told himself.  Everyone?  His children, his wife, 
his life all ground down in this heartless machine?  It was more than he could 
bear.  His chest heaved in grief.  How could anyone bear this injustice?  Then 
Edmund remembered himself, and he felt ashamed.  He did not know how he would do 
it, but he knew others had not let themselves be destroyed by perverse 
intruders.  He would persevere too, or die trying.
     He had dealt worse than this to others.  He had robbed families of their 
winter food.  He had burned them in their homes as they held their children in 
their arms, as if that hopeless gesture would protect them.  He had once been a 
beast.  And he determined to bear this report as courageously.  Other men and 
woman had borne greater horrors than this, and he had witnessed their 
unflinching devotion to decency and righteousness.
     Nicholas had taken everyone from him, but Nicholas was no more worse a 
creature than Edmund had been.  He straightened his old bones and presented 
himself to his tormentor with dignity.  "What will you do?"
     "What is the merciful thing, Edmund?  Shall I suffer you to live?  Would 
you love me well and hunt me down?  Would you put an end to my misery?"
     Edmund's mind turned in circles.  This man, this creature, had been his 
friend, his correspondent.  Could he hunt the monster and at the same moment 
destroy his friend?  Did he not yet believe that this nightmare was real?  How 
could he not take action, knowing these bloodthirsty creatures existed?  This 
silent, sad man before him, this beautiful lost young man of education and 
breeding, who had come to his doorstep, this could not be the murderer of his 
wife and child.
     Edmund said, "If you spare John, he will hunt you down.  I am certain of 
it."
     "That can be remedied.  He has not seen anything.  I can make him forget."
     Edmund trembled.  "Make me forget."
     ""The choice is yours, Edmund, for you will not forget.  You have suffered 
too much.  What would you have me do?"
     Nicholas returned to his study of the twisting hearth flames.  Edmund's 
chest was too tight for breath.  He wanted to die, but could not bring himself 
to relinquish his life by his own consent.  He saw his future clearly, the 
endless nights searching for the creature that had killed his family, and would 
continue killing unless he stopped him.  The terrible vocation beckoned him and 
he welcomed the challenge. He would become an honorable soldier at last.
     "Tell me, Nicholas.  Are there many others of your kind?"
     Nicholas turned and faced the last living member of the Waltham family.  
Edmund was relieved to see the sad determination in the creature's eyes.
     
     -----  >>>
     
     29. Chapter
     Toronto
     The chaos of The Raven was a welcome change from the silent isolation of 
his loft.  He worked his way through the thick crowd of mortals and immortals 
until he reached the bar.  Nick opened his notebook and set it in front of him.
     The bartender, an immortal Nick had not seen in the club before, placed a 
glass in front of him.  "The usual?"
     Surprised, Nick nodded.
     The bartender flicked his towel across the glossy counter surface and said, 
"Compliments of the management."
     Picking up the glass, Nick took a tentative sip of its vermilion contents.  
Not bad.  Not good.  Better than Nat's protein shakes.  A bar patron jostled his 
arm, nearly causing him to spill his drink over his notebook.  He edged around 
to warn her to watch it, but she had already disappeared in a blur of orange 
hair, black lace and silver stud piercings.
     It was always a mistake coming here, and a symptom of his desire to 
backslide.  Nick turned back to his notebook.  The symbols from the Runes he'd 
found in Brule's home were already familiar to him, and he didn't need the small 
gray book to look them up.
     The first Overview Rune was the double x symbol for fertility and new 
beginnings.  The text had referred to a time to clear away old impediments and 
experience a sense of release.
     The second symbol, for Challenge, was for strength and represented by the 
Wild Ox.  It also had a connotation of new beginnings and of terminations.  The 
old life must die in order for the new life to supercede.  Interior fortitude, 
represented by the Ox, was available for this to occur.
     The third Rune symbol for Action was the letter P for joy and light and the 
illumination of the soul.  The text elaborated on this idea to say that a period 
of work had ended and a mental shift had occurred.
     He turned the notebook over in his hands.  This was the fourth time he had 
looked over the symbols.  What did they mean?  The implications nagged him.  The 
instructions mentioned Rune override; that the Runes might choose to address a 
more urgent question than the one presented.  Why had Brulé chosen these Runes 
for his next victim?  Or did he draw them for himself regarding a personal 
question.  Who had these stones been cast for?
     Vachon sat down next to him on a barstool and smiled a greeting toward the 
strange half-naked mermaid like creature painted on the wall behind the 
bartenders.  He said, "Thanks, I will have a seat."
     "You don't deserve it, but thank-you for your help with the case.  I might 
owe you a drink."
     "You know what I like."
     "I'm afraid I do."
     The bartender returned and said to Nick, "Another?  Compliments of the 
management."
     "Excuse me," said Vachon raising a hand, but the bartender still ignored 
him.
     "Ah, no," Nick said to the bartender as he stood up to leave.  He gestured 
toward Vachon's head with his full glass.  "Give him one on me."
     "You're a prince," said Vachon.
     Nick ducked and grinned into Vachon's ear, "No, knight."
     "That's right.  I'm the prince."
     "I'm counting on it."  Nick patted Vachon on the shoulder a bit harder than 
necessary.  "Do all your drinking here, that's all the thanks I need."
     The crowd was thick in The Raven.  LaCroix had certainly made a success of 
it, even though Nick had not appreciated most of the changes.  He also missed 
Janette, and considered LaCroix a poor substitute for her challenging company.  
He stood outside the sound booth and looked inside, where LaCroix, as The Night 
Crawler broadcast his evening program.  He could pick up the words through the 
glass partition with his sensitive ears.
     "Why do we yearn so for progress?  What is this yearning for change except 
that we are dissatisfied with what we are.  We laud progress, and yet it is the 
eternal we prize.  We celebrate the novel, but it is the timeless we value.  We 
admire the wisdom of age while we scurry after youth.
     What is change?  It is a fallen petal, the rose gone past its glory.  Where 
in this sad scene of decay do you perceive happiness, my friends?  
     The root of mortality is mort.  To die.  Je suis mort.  Tues mort.  Vous 
êtres mort."  LaCroix pulled a white rose from the vase on his console and 
rolled the stem between his fingers.
     "Immortal, unchanging, eternal; these words are anathema to natural order.  
To be natural is to age, sicken, and fall as surely as the leaves from this 
stem.  Is this the fate we choose, children?  Is this the fate we deserve?  
Could I offer you a different fate, tell me, would you hesitate to take it at 
any cost?"
     LaCroix turned off his mike.  He smiled at his son through the window of 
the booth and signaled his technician he was through for the evening.  Motioning 
Nick to come in, he leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers.
     "So good of you to come."
     "Thanks for the drink," said Nick, raising his glass slightly, "the drinks, 
actually."
     "I take care of my own."
     "You spared me from embarrassment the other night.  I appreciate it."
     LaCroix smiled and dismissed Nick's words with a magnanimous yet imperious 
wave of his hand.  "I was concerned for your welfare.  Anytime."
     "Not anytime.  You must stop dropping in on me at work."
     "Your dull co-workers are never aware of my presence."
     "You tempt fate."
     "I do."
     Pulling up a rolling office chair, Nick deposited himself in front of 
LaCroix's console.  LaCroix uncorked a bottle and set it on close to his son.
     "How did you like my show tonight?"
     "You are morbid."
     "You would still rather die than live?"
     "That is not the point," said Nick.
     "If one is not alive, there is no point, is there?  There is nothing else."
     "We both know there is more.  When I was brought across, I saw something 
past the threshold of death.  We have both seen it."
     "We have seen something," said his master.  "I doubt it was heaven and I 
doubt there are cerebum waiting to fit us with wings.  We were invited into hell 
or annihilation.  It was an illusion."
     "It was not," said Nicholas.
     ""Why would the god's condescend to share their gifts with you?  Would this 
be a proper reward for a banal life?  Show me one man deserving of this prize, 
who has so curried favor with perfection that he ensures himself eternal 
relief."
     "There are many," insisted Nicholas.  "There are many, many good people."
     "Compared to you, you mean."
     "I cannot imagine one being turned away."
     "Give me five minutes and I will reveal their weakness to you.  We are 
eternal, not they.  We triumph now.  We are absolute because we do not change.  
We do not deteriorate and we are not sorry."
     "But I am sorry."
     "Leave the dead to die.  Mortals breed like locusts."
     "Why did you choose me, LaCroix?"
     "Questions.  You never come just to spend time with me anymore."
     "Why?"
     "Janette chose you.  She took a fancy to you."
     "That is not the whole truth."
     LaCroix took a sip from his glass.
     "She didn't bring me across," persisted Nick.
     "She did not trust herself.  She never acquired the knack.  She is overcome 
by her enthusiasm.  She asked for my help."
     "You have never be so beneficent."
     LaCroix pushed himself away from his console and walked over to the sound 
booth window.  His steel gray eyes were directed at the swaying bar patrons on 
the other side of the glass.
     He said, "You were fair, intelligent, unlike the common medieval bore.  
Yes, and disillusioned.  You questioned.  We knew you would not accept death 
easily.  You were sure to stand at the portal of life and death and refuse to 
accept obliteration."
     LaCroix turned and clasped one hand behind his back.  "Mortals follow their 
straw gods because they believe they have no choice.  They accept their 
ridiculous existence, counting the days until death expecting then to collect 
their paltry delayed benefit.  You could not accept that.
     "Some drink to get drunk.  They are crude in their thinking and appetites.  
Some drink, but appreciate the vintage.  You are the later, a connoisseur, an 
exception."
     The implications of LaCroix's appraisal tried Nick's soul, but he was 
determined to hear it all.  He had to know.  "You saw in me a proclivity for 
elegant dissolution?"
     "You have, when not so concerned with your tiresome morality, raised the 
simple fact of being a vampire to an art form.  That potential is what I saw in 
you."
     "Janette said there was darkness in me."
     Nick's memories of his first night, the night Janette had lured him to 
LaCroix, were vivid.  He remembered every word, every sensation.  In his dreams 
he relived the ecstasy, power, and freedom as immortality entered his veins.  
But soon after he entered an absorbing nightmare of searching to sate his 
unnatural hunger.  It was an endless search.  He could neither satisfy his need 
nor shrug off his guilt.
     "That could be said of anyone," said his master.  "Particularly, it is true 
of the betrayed and disappointed.  You did not go to the Crusades willingly, but 
were sent to pay for another's crimes.  You lost your faith in humanity."
     "I had not."
     "Have you learned nothing about human nature in 800 years?  Mortality is 
not equivalent to humanity."
     Nick's eyes fled from his master's crushing gaze.  His eyes fell upon the 
dying rose blossom LaCroix had left naked and dry upon his console.  "Then I 
wasn't evil."
     "You were not a vampire then."
     "So you corrupted me entirely."
     "I cannot take all the credit."
     "You did corrupt me."
     "It is a natural consequence."
     Frustrated, Nick turned to LaCroix and said, "Evil is not natural."
     "That is debatable."
     "There was not something vicious or deserving in me already."
     "On the contrary, Nicholas, it was your character that condemned you.  All 
thinking persons must eventually become heretics and outsiders.  You were 
unusually considerate, loyal to your friends, tolerant of your ignoble 
compatriots.  Your were respectful to women instead of treating them as chattel 
or as a subspecies of the human race.  It was an uncommon virtue in 1228.  That 
is what drew Janette to you, that and your pretty face."
     Nick was puzzled.  "Character and nobility, these are the qualities you 
seek in a vampire?"
     "No, those are the qualities Janette sought in a man and I sought in a 
friend."
     "I gather she did not find those qualities in you."
     La Croix's lip curled down perceptively at the corners.  The clear blue 
eyes hardened into pale ice.  Nick sensed he had touched a nerve.  Neither 
Janette nor LaCroix had ever explained their relationship to him.  Nor had 
LaCroix ever sufficiently explained why he had chosen Janette.  The two had 
traveled together for hundreds of years before they decided to add Nick to their 
family.  But he could see that LaCroix was not going to reveal the reasons for 
their strange threesome tonight.
     "If a mortal has wit, " said LaCroix crisply, "and eyes, and ears, he 
cannot fail to appreciate the travesty of this world and cannot fail to see the 
folly of worshiping any god responsible for creating it.  He must become bitter, 
angry, and hateful as a result.  You had wit and eyes and ears."
     "She favored my character and you volunteered to destroy it for her," said 
Nicholas but again, his master dodged the issue.
     "Your curse is that you have never killed thoughtlessly.  Your immersed 
yourself in the hunt, in the games, the deceptions.  First, it was an endless 
Passion Play of blood and death.  Later, you decided to make every kill a 
morality play in which you dispensed justice to the deserving.  Each and every 
kill was fraught with intent, romance, and meaning and you experienced each 
vividly.  I miss that.  I miss your energy and your heart and your 
heartlessness."
     "You have been heartless enough for both of us."
     "Heartlessness is insufficient.  If you were heartless, you would be like 
them."
     Nick followed suit as LaCroix returned his gaze to the crowd of customers 
beyond the sound booth vibrating in time with the music in The Raven.  It was 
only because his own hearing was unnaturally acute that he could hear the music 
at all through the barrier of glass.  The mob appeared unconscious of everything 
except their own sensuality, lost in the sweet annihilation of sights, sounds 
and movement.
     They seemed blind, deaf and dumb to Nick at this moment, repeating the 
behavior of countless numbers of people at parties, bars, festivals, and 
baccanals he had observed century after century.  This song was the same as the 
first, one liquor as intoxicating as another, that partner interchangeable with 
the next.  Each experience served to blot out reality and replace it with 
mindless, temporary, successive diversions.  And still it drew him, as 
dependable and decadent as his bloodlust.  Did they lead sequential foolish 
lives while he suffered the same except in one unbroken thread?
     "Why do you still follow me?" said Nick.  "I no longer provide such 
entertainment."
     "Because I know you."  LaCroix circled Nick steadily.  He felt his master's 
scrutiny search his mind like a panther's soft cheek whiskering the foliage.  He 
bent down closely, one hand on Nick's shoulder and whispered into his ear.  "I 
know you.  I have known you since the night I brought you across, that first 
night when I drank your blood."
     Nicholas shot up from his seat, casting off LaCroix's hand.  "Correction.  
You knew me.  I have changed."
     "Have you?"
     "I am not the same man you brought across."
     "Time will tell."
     "I made my decision."
     "Come back to us, Nicholas."
     "I can not.  Never."  Nick strode behind the console, to place an 
additional barrier between himself and his master, and found himself staring at 
the bottle of red liquid LaCroix had left there.  Embarrassed, Nick glanced up 
quickly, hoping that LaCroix had not noticed his sudden preoccupation.  But of 
course, his master missed nothing.
     Nick said, "It means nothiing."
     LaCroix snatched the bottle away and shook it at Nick, swearing, "Read the 
label, it says, 'Drink me."
     "No."
     "You are a killer!"
     "I was."
     "You will be again.  You have merely forgotten.  You think the grass grows 
greener in the sun.  It does not.  Murder is the common fact of human existence.  
The vampire in you distills the natural impulse, sharpens your sword, and keeps 
it in constant readiness.  Your unnatural strength makes you the consummate 
hunter."
     "I have put away my sword.  You wear yours on your collar like a badge of 
honor," said Nick, coming around to confront his master.  "There is no honor in 
what we do.  Dressing it up in pretty clothes does not change it or make it 
admirable.  Have you not once considered the consequences of your bloody 
lechery?"
     "They are cattle to us.  Virtue does not interest me."
     "Why were you so enamored that you had to recruit me from the stockyards?"
     "That is different.  You have been elevated."
     "You create such convenient distinctions for one life versus another.  You 
must have some comprehension.  You seem to value mine, why not another?  You 
have been my unwanted guardian.  If someone were to slaughter me, tell me you 
would not feel something."
     LaCroix was silenced a moment, as the case was put to him.  "You 
overestimate your importance.  I have lived a very long time."
     "You would avenge my death."
     His master shrugged.  "That goes without saying."
     "Not for my benefit."
     "Mine then."
     "To what purpose?"
     "Justice would demand it."
     Nick was astounded.  LaCroix perverted the world to suit his own ends.  His 
master would demand retribution for one paltry death, even after though 
thousands had a better claim to his soul for the murders he had committed.  
"Whose justice?  It solves nothing."
     "Mine, of course!"  LaCroix swept closer to his son, and Nick saw the gold 
flash in his eyes.  "What other justice is there?  If someone takes away from me 
what is mine, they must pay, affections aside."
     "You have no right.  I do not belong to you."
     "You would not be available for comment."  With this last refutation, his 
master seemed to have regained his aplomb, coolly taking the bottle and 
refilling his glass.  As his master took his time sipping, Nick felt the thirst 
coming upon him.  LaCroix smiled.  "Come to your point.  We talk in circles."
     "Just do me this respect.  Do not shed blood in my name.  I have had enough 
of killing." 
     "I'll consider it.  Shall I kill you now and put an end to this confounded 
conversation?"
     "I just want some peace," said Nick.
     "You and your irrepressible joi de vie.  You'll continue forever your 
useless struggle if only in the dim hope of proving me wrong."
     "You are the devil."
     "Merely his advocate."
     "It is late."
     "I remain bemused.  What has been decided?  Did I win this argument?" said 
his master.  "You were not swayed to my course.  Nor have I changed my mind."
     "That is your tragedy."  Nick picked up his glass and drained it.  "Fare 
well."
     LaCroix smirked.  "Fare well?  You use such antiquated language and you say 
you have changed."
     Nick put his hand on the doorknob, but felt LaCroix reach out to him 
through the blood connection.  So he turned back again.
     His master raised his glass and said, "To my son, you do still entertain 
me."
     
     
     End