This story is a crossover between X-Files and the Canadian series Forever Knight. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Forever Knight is about the life of Toronto homocide detective Nick Knight, an 800 year old vampire (and which the author of this story asked me to describe as "the best doggone vampire cop show ever made.") The Forever Knight characters in this story are: Nick Knight: 800 year old vampire homocide detective Janette: even older vampire & Nick's on-again/off-again lover Natalie Lambert: Toronto coroner trying to help Nick in his quest to become mortal again Don Schanke: Nick's partner, who is just a little too dense to figure out what Nick is. This story is being posted here by permission of its author. All comments about the story should be posted to alt.tv.x-files.creative or mailed to the author at lmpayne@aol.com >Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 08:14:40 EST >Reply-To: lmpayne@aol.com >Sender: Forever Knight TV show stories >From: Lisa Payne >Subject: FK/X-Files crossover story This is part one of two. Like a Shepherd "Nicolah! You look terrible!" Janette cried as she opened the door. Nick Knight walked into her elegant apartment and sank into a darkly tasteful armchair. His normally immaculate hair and clothes were spotted with dirt, leaves, and some foul-smelling gore. Although the sun would not rise for almost an hour, his hair and skin seemed singed. Janette handed him the glass she had been drinking, and he tossed the contents back in one swallow. "What happened to you?" Janette demanded. "It's a long story," the detective replied. ************************* "C'mon, Nat, UFO's?" Knight's tone was highly skeptical. "C'mon, Nick, vampires?" she mocked him. "There are more things in heaven and earth, and all that. Besides, there's been a lot of reputable witnesses, and no one has any other explanation for all these disappearances." The two were in Nat's office, which she was usually too busy to use. The clutter testified that she was always too busy to tidy it. "Business" was slow, and they were at liberty to chat about mysteries outside the responsibility of the Toronto Police Department. There had been a rash of unexplained disappearances up around Lake Simcoe in the past week. A few of the missing persons had known each other, but most had nothing in common. "Lights in the sky" had been seen, and rumors were flying that government radar had noticed something odd. Nick decided to keep the ludicrous argument going, just to prevent the doctor noticing that he hadn't touched his tea. "I know all about things undreamt-of in your philosophy, Nat. I've been around a long time. But I've never, in all my years, run across any little green men!" Don Schanke walked in without knocking, as usual. His face and hands were heavily stained with green. Natalie took one look and burst out laughing, causing Nick to look around and grin. "Don't even ask, okay? Myra was dying a dress, and -- I don't even want to go into it. Just don't ask." Schanke flopped down into Nat's remaining chair. "Can we laugh?" Nick asked drily. Schanke tried to change the subject. "Don't you guys have any work to do?" Natalie started busily searching through a precarious pile of dusty papers from the corner of her desk. "I'm cleaning my office," she volunteered. Schanke turned to Knight and tried to glare at him. "What about you, hotshot? Shouldn't you be out investigating a murder or something?" Nick gave him an innocent look. "Sorry, Schank. There's just nobody dead." ********************* Fox Mulder sat quietly in his cramped basement office. He had a fresh newspaper clipping on the desk in front of him, but he wasn't seeing the print. He was remembering a young man, a misfit, an epileptic -- and a promise that Mulder had failed to keep. He whipped around at a sudden voice in the doorway. "Quitting time, partner. Aren't you going home?" Dana Sculley's calm gray eyes took in Mulder's jumpiness and the pain in his face. Although his leg had healed, he still seemed hurt, somehow, by the recent escapade that had almost ended his career. She was glad the Bureau had decided to keep him on -- he was the most skillful detective she had ever worked with. But when she saw him looking like this, she couldn't help but wonder whether it might not be better, for Mulder's own sake, to try to get him reassigned away from the X-files. Mulder tossed her the newspaper. "Take a look at that," he suggested. Sculley read the story. "Lake Simcoe. Ontario, Canada? Mulder," she warned, "that is out of our jurisdiction." Mulder wheeled his chair around and got a folder out of his desk drawer. He handed it to Sculley as she sat down in his spare chair, and pointed at the newsprint as she began to read. "Look at this. Three of these missing persons are members of NICAP." "Mulder," Sculley began, "don't get into that again. You know Max was a delusional...." "And look here." Mulder turned over the papers in the folder until he found the one he wanted. "This small article here. They're treating this as unrelated -- a camping accident, or an arson." "Body of a man...charred beyond recognition...authorities seeking any identification...Lake Simcoe," Sculley read. She looked up at her partner. "It's still not in our jurisdiction, Mulder. And it could all be a coincidence." "I've got two weeks' vacation coming." He looked at her. "So do you." ********************* Somewhat to Sculley's surprise, she found herself and Mulder on their way to Canada only two days later. There had been no trouble about getting time off -- her supervisor seemed to think it would be a good idea for "Spooky" Mulder to take a vacation, and for Sculley to keep an eye on him. She was fleetingly a little angry at the nursemaid reputation she seemed to be developing, but shrugged it off before the supervisor had finished signing the vacation requests. "Mulder's car looks awfully normal," she thought as she tossed her luggage into the back and walked around to the passenger door. "What did you expect," she chided herself. "A hearse? The Batmobile?" She got into the car. Mulder handed her the map as she strapped herself in. "You all set?" he asked. "Just fine," she replied. They got underway. A few miles later, Sculley found herself wondering about the electronic device secured just below Mulder's glove compartment. It had two rows of LED's across the front, a couple of big clunky knobs, and a speaker grille. It looked obsolete. "What is this?" she asked the driver. "That's my old police scanner," Mulder told her. "I've never gotten around to taking it out of the car. It's way behind the state of the art, but it still works. Pretty much." "I'll take your word for it," she said, but he reached over to turn the device on anyway. It made a terrible noise, and he automatically adjusted the Squelch until the static was barely audible. "My uncle always used one just like this," Mulder volunteered. "He was a reporter." "You had an uncle who was a reporter?" "Yeah. He worked all over. Las Vegas, Seattle, Chicago. All over." "Your uncle ever work in Ontario, Canada?" "No." There was silence for a while. Then suddenly Mulder said, "I wonder about the human race, Sculley." Dana looked at him, but he looked all right. "What do you mean, Mulder?" "Well," he began, but then he had to avoid a truck. When the car was going steadily again he started over. "We've encountered some very strange people -- you could call them human mutations -- that pyrokinetic Cecil Lively, and the liver-eating Eugene Tooms. Even the Jersey Devil." Sculley wondered where he was going with this. "What about them?" "Are you familiar with the Gaia theory of the earth?" "Isn't that the idea that the earth is all one organism?" Sculley asked. "And that it compensates for change, trying to keep itself in balance somehow. I've been an FBI agent for years, Sculley. And I've been paying attention to UFO's and paranormal activity all my life. Almost." His voice sank to a whisper on the last word, and she knew he was remembering his sister. Mulder coughed once and went on. "I've never before run into these human -- monsters. It's like the human race is trying to evolve something more -- dangerous. Maybe to compete? To hold our own against the aliens in our midst?" "You think creatures like Tooms and Lively are coming about so as to protect the human race from alien invaders?" The disbelief in Sculley's voice was palpable. "I don't know, Sculley. It's just a thought." "To protect us," Sculley repeated flatly. "Too bad they're all psychopaths." ******************* "Well, somebody's dead now," Schanke told Nick as he slapped the dispatch slip down on the vampire's desk. "Charred beyond recognition," he went on, "and it's all ours. God, I love this job." Nick winced at his partner's choice of words, and read the location off the slip. "That's the north edge of town," he mused. He tried, but couldn't remember why the words "charred beyond recognition" rang a little bell in his mind. "Let's roll, partner." Natalie was already at the site when they arrived. An early-evening jogger had discovered the body and called it in. The uniformed cops who had been the first police on the scene had cordoned off the area, but a man and a woman in a dark car with Washington, D.C. plates had apparently gotten there even before the police, and were poking around in a way that irritated Nick. "Who the hell are these people?" he demanded. "What are they doing here?" Dr. Lambert was right next to him, leaning over the body. "They're FBI agents. On vacation, if you can believe that. I think they're slumming." She looked at the body again, and said, "That's funny." Nick looked where she was looking, and saw what she saw. "The body is badly burned, but the vegetation near it isn't scorched at all." He scouted around the body with his practiced hunter's eyes, and added, "the victim came here under his own power. The tracks are those of a single man, and not someone carrying a heavy burden -- an already charred body, for instance. He came along here, and then stopped here for a little while -- confused? -- and then fell over dead. Charred beyond recognition." The smell of the burnt human flesh was making him sick, and the words "charred beyond recognition" kept nagging at him. There was some other smell, too, that he just couldn't place. He tried to sample the air without sniffing too obviously, but before he could identify the weird aroma, Don Schanke came back from interviewing the jogger and introduced the FBI agents to him. "Nick!" Schanke began. "Hey, Nick, this is Fox Mulder and Dana Sculley from the FBI...." "Aren't you a little out of your jurisdiction?" Nick snarled. "This isn't an FBI matter." "We're on vacation," Dana replied smoothly. "We happened to hear the call...." "Have you connected this with the similar incident at Lake Simcoe last week?" Mulder interrupted. "That was it!" Knight thought. "That was what I kept trying to remember!" He told the FBI man, "Lake Simcoe isn't in FBI jurisdiction either." But Mulder wasn't listening to him. His attention had been caught by a call coming in over the police radio in the uniformed officer's squad car. "Sculley," he said, and he had gone a little paler even than usual. "Did you hear that call?" "It was just a report of illegal fireworks, Mulder," she tried to calm him down. "Lights in the sky, Sculley, lights in the sky." He was already turning back to his car. "I bet there's another corpse just like this one in King's College Circle, wherever that is. A nice fresh corpse." Nick Knight grabbed the FBI man's shoulder and spun him back around. "Are you withholding evidence in an arson, 'Agent' Mulder?" He turned his head towards Schanke and the patrolmen and snapped, "Did any one actually check an ID on these two?" Dana Sculley wordlessly produced hers as Don placated his partner, "Yeah, Nick, I saw their ID's -- both of them. Looked all right to me. But I would like to know what's going on here," this last addressed to Fox Mulder, who had gotten his shoulder back, slightly dented, from Knight's grip, and was displaying his ID card to the vampire. "If I told you all that I think is going on here, Detective Schanke," Mulder said, "you wouldn't believe me." Dana knew that that had never stopped him before, and so she hastened to put an end to the discussion before Mulder told the Toronto detectives all about his theories of alien invasion. "Look," she said reasonably, "We know we're way out of our jurisdiction here, and we're on vacation anyway. But Mulder and I did run across some similar deaths, and injuries, in Wisconsin a while ago, and while it wasn't a case we solved...." It hadn't even been a case they should have been allowed to know anything about, but the chances of Canadian police being able to hold that against them were, she hoped, small. Natalie Lambert was suddenly in the midst of the conversation. "Did you say injuries?" she demanded. "You mean there were people who were burned like this -- and survived?" Sculley forced down the more graphic memories of that night in the Townsend Hospital ER and nodded. "And the weapon that did it looked like a flash of bright light, according to people who saw the attacks from a great enough distance," Mulder put in. "I'd say the killer is, or was, in King's College Circle, and that the 'fireworks' that were reported are the flash effect associated with another killing. If you want to catch up with this killer you should probably go there now. And you should take us with you." ************************************ end of part one Don't blame me; by Lisa Payne I just lurk here. LMPayne@aol.com >Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 04:43:23 EST >Reply-To: lmpayne@aol.com >Sender: Forever Knight TV show stories >From: Lisa Payne >Subject: FK/X-files crossover conclusion Like a Shepherd, conclusion Lisa Payne In the enormous back seat of the Toronto detective's classic Cadillac, Fox Mulder checked his gun. Sculley looked at him curiously. "Do you really think that will do any good?" she asked him in a whisper. "The military in Townsend were armed to the teeth, but it didn't help them." "The things are invisible, or nearly so," Mulder murmured. "Why would they need to be invisible if they were also immune to bullets?" Sculley couldn't answer that, so she got out her own gun and checked it over. Nick Knight, driving the car, heard the quiet conversation and the smooth metallic clicking in the back seat, but he was fairly sure that his mortal companions had missed it. Nat Lambert had insisted that she come along on the grounds that a doctor might be needed, and she was riding between Nick and Don in the front seat of the Caddy. Her warmth and soft human fragrance were distracting, but not distracting enough to keep Nick from worrying what sort of invisible killer they might be going up against. He wondered whether his passengers might be merely insane, but realized that would be the "sensible" reaction if they had come up with a story about vampires, and withheld his judgment. "Check your gun, would ya Schank?" he said, and Nat stared at him in surprise. ******************************* The University of Toronto looked deserted at this late hour of a summer's night. Nick checked his pistol as he got out of the car, then curled his lip in disgust. There was that unidentifiable smell again, stronger and more disturbing than it had been when overlaid with the stench of crisped human flesh. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck. The mortals didn't seem to notice anything. Suddenly a scream rang out from past the oak trees that surrounded the King's College Circle common. Mulder, who had been heading that direction already, broke into a run, staggering a little on his recently healed leg. The others followed. "No!" the unseen voice cried out, "Don't take me!" Mulder broke through the trees and saw just what he was afraid he'd see. A skinny, uncoordinated-looking young man was suspended in mid-air, in the midst of what looked like a wide beam of blue light. The man was obviously shaking in terror, but no sound could be heard from him anymore. His grubby sweatshirt had the letters NICAP stencilled across the chest. "Not this time!" Mulder shouted, and sprang for the young man's feet. Knight and Schanke came thundering into view just in time to see the resulting explosion. Schanke was blown off his feet, hit his head on a tree root, and lost consciousness. Nick narrowed his eyes and flew at the blue column of light, suddenly much expanded in size, which held its two victims suspended above the turf. The light, when he reached it, burned like morning, but he was strong enough to throw both Mulder and the young stranger to the ground outside its influence. Teeth bared and eyes blazing, he wrenched himself free from the beam's stinging grip, and it disappeared. The doctors were already bent over the fallen when he had cooled down enough to land. "This man's dead," Nat announced. "Looks like maybe a brain embollism." Despite her professional tones, Nick knew her heartbeat sounded afraid. "What about Schanke?" he asked her. "He hit his head, might have a concussion," she answered. "Agent Mulder isn't breathing." She gestured to where Sculley was giving him mouth-to-mouth. Nick noticed that, oddly enough, Sculley's heartbeat was quite normal. He allowed himself to hope that she hadn't noticed him flying. Without warning, Nick's eyes went yellow and his teeth extended. Nat looked at him in alarm. "Did you hear that?" he breathed. Even as she shook her head, he realized the vibration he had heard, and which spoke to him so much of danger, was well outside the range of human hearing. Suddenly, with his vampiric eyesight, he saw two shapes moving where there had been nothing before. He drew his gun and told Nat to get down. She obeyed, and he was able to concentrate on seeing the shapes. He was dimly aware of Nat spelling Sculley's resuscitation attempts some distance behind him, but ahead of him the mysterious shapes were moving in an erratic pattern that made them hard to aim at. First one would make a quick dash in some direction, then the other. They seemed to stop only long enough to change directions, and he could not tell from observation which direction they would choose next. They were incredibly fast over short distances, faster than any living thing he had ever seen, and the trick would be to shoot at one while it was stopped, and before the two could attack the party in some sort of a pincer movement. He fired, twice in quick succession, and was rewarded with an unearthly wail. The surviving creature sped at him, and he sprang straight up into the air, barely in time to avoid its rush. The place where he had been standing was flooded with an incredibly bright light. Nick jammed his eyes shut, and gasped in pain and sudden fear. If the creature got a square shot at him with that flash of light, it could well kill him. When Nick got his eyes open again, it took him a second to locate the alien. Even as he got his eyes focused again, the thing sped towards Natalie and the other two humans. Without thinking, the vampire dived at the creature, matching unhuman speed against unhuman speed. He knocked it to the ground, and found himself contending with a strength that matched, or maybe even overmatched, his own. "Shoot!" he growled at Sculley, who was on her feet with her weapon out. Sculley hesitated. She still could not actually see the alien. It looked to her as if the glowing-eyed detective were rolling around on the ground by himself in a heat haze. "Shoot!" the vampire howled again. The thing was definitely stronger than him, and it might be able to bring its weapon to bear at any time. "Go ahead! Shoot!" called Nat, who had finally gotten Mulder breathing on his own again. "Oh, well," thought Sculley. She emptied her gun into the detective and the shifty-looking ground which surrounded him. Everything went still. "Good going, Dana," she told herself, "you've killed a Toronto cop." Fox Mulder opened his eyes just in time to see Nick Knight -- fanged, yellow-eyed, and covered with ichor -- struggle out from under the dead alien (which bore a perfect image of the vampire from neck to knees upon its back, as well as the image of the ground on which it had died.) The carcass began to dissolve into a foul corrosive smoke, and the vampire heaved it away from him with his superhuman strength. Nick calmed his eyes, pulled his teeth in, and turned to Dana Sculley. She squarely met his gaze. "You don't believe I'm a vampire," he said persuasively. "Of course I don't believe you're a vampire," Sculley replied. She holstered her gun and knelt down beside her partner. "Are you okay, Mulder?" she asked. ************************** Nat had gone to the car to call for an ambulance, and Nick had suggested she take Sculley with her. The three wounded men were alone for a moment. Nick had already satisfied himself that Don Schanke would be all right, and now he was carefully probing the blisters forming on his face and wondering how badly burned he was under his clothes. "You're a vampire?" Mulder asked hoarsely. Nick doubted human ears could have heard the voice. He looked Mulder straight in the eye and said sincerely, "You don't believe I'm a vampire." Mulder half-smiled. "I do now." He closed his eyes and went on. "Don't worry; nobody ever believes anything I tell them." "That must be disappointing," Nick deadpanned. "How long have you been a vampire?" "About eight hundred years now," Nick admitted. "You ever meet anything like these before?" Mulder asked. Nick shuddered slightly. "Never in all my life. Never anything like them." Mulder opened his eyes and spoke earnestly to the vampire. "I have. And I think their activities are increasing. What I've never seen before is a human able to beat them." "I'm not human. Not anymore." "But your self-interest runs with ours, doesn't it?" Mulder's voice grew even fainter, as he seemed to be drifting off again. "Like a shepherd." **************************** "What could he mean, Nicky, like a shepherd?" Janette had found some salve somewhere, and was rubbing it onto Nick's burned skin. It felt delicious. "I'm not sure." Nick opened his eyes and sat up. "A shepherd may eat mutton, but he also drives away the wolves. But it doesn't really matter what the man meant. Those things I met last night are definitely dangerous to us. You can see the burns I've got, and they missed me! You should talk to the other vampires you know, and warn them about these creatures." "Aliens from another world? No one will believe me. I'm not sure I believe you, cherie." But Nick could hear the little current of fear under Janette's silky skeptical tone. "I don't pretend to know where they're from. All I can say is I had never seen or smelled anything like them before, not in eight hundred years. But it would be mortally foolish to ignore a threat like this. Even if nothing ever comes of it." Nick sounded serious. Janette did not. "But I thought you wanted to be mortal, Nicolah." She laughed. "Lie down again and let me dress your wounds, as fair lady's duty to bold knight." "You're no lady," Nick growled at her, but he was laughing too. *************************** "So you didn't see any of it. Not the glowing yellow eyes or the half-inch fangs -- none of it, huh Sculley?" Mulder asked. "I already told you, no. And neither did you." Sculley was driving this time, since Mulder's hands were burned and still bandaged, and he had been found to have a mild concussion at the hospital. "How come he was able to see those things well enough to shoot them, and to survive wrestling with one, and survive you shooting that one while he was all tangled up with it? The military in the Wisconsin case sure weren't able to do any of that," Mulder persisted. "I admit he has phenomenal night-vision," Dana said calmly. "Dr. Lambert told me he suffers from extreme photosensitivity, to the extent that he can only work night shift." "See?" "Mulder, the world is full of people who work nights and have good vision. That doesn't mean they're vampires." Mulder fell silent for a few minutes. Then he laughed. Sculley sent him a quick smile, then turned her attention back to the road. "Share the joke?" she asked. "Oh, nothing," Mulder replied. "I just suddenly feel a little bit better about the fate of the human race." Lisa Payne LMPayne@aol.com