Nocte Eterna (NC-17) by Michael Aulfrey --------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------ Okay! Welcome aboard my biggest effort yet, folks. This one's got an X-File, subplots, bad language, violence, some relationshipping but no sex. Hope you all like it and forgive my Australian turns of phrase. :) :) :) The Latin is a corruption of something I heard in "Braveheart". Basically, `Nocte Eterna' means `Night Eternal'. Make of that what you will. If you have *any* comments to pass, good or bad, please put them in to mikeaulf@tartarus.uwa.eu.au ... fanfic authors don't live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the reader... :) :) Insert the usual copyright disclaimers here. CC and the 1013 crew own all the rights to the X-Files characters. Whoever else I inadvertantly ripped off, put down or prejudiced myself against in this story is also deeply apologised to. --------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------- PROLOGUE: The dark was his friend as much as theirs. That was a lesson learned after much practice, and never forgotten. Some of them thought they had an advantage in the dark; but the overconfidence such an attitude produced usually negated any perceived upper hand they had. He glanced at the analogue watch on his wrist, the marks lit up with phosphorous. Four o'clock. They would be here soon. He had spent weeks tracking them, monitoring their movements. Creatures of habit, if nothing else. In forty seconds, they would be here. So he settled himself a little further back in the shadows of the fire escape and ran through the weapons check that was second nature by now. First the long recurve bow, painted matt black, and its quiver of simple arrows. He could have used modern fibreglass, but the older ones were far more effective. Next, the dai- katana, the Japanese curved blade, forged three hundred years ago with such arcane precision it was difficult to tell where science ended and the eldritch began. It, too, rested in a matt black sheath, guarded against the telltale glint of bared metal. Lastly, the pistol, though he would resort to it only case of his other weapons failing him. He estimated the time for the check at thirty seconds and though he had to stop to flick an unexpected drop of oil from the gun, got it dead on ... He flipped an arrow from the quiver soundlessly and nocked it to the bowstring. Sighted experimentally along the line of the alley wall. The faint splash of water reached him, and he tensed. They turned the corner into the alley right on schedule, three dark forms walking slowly and assuredly. One of them said something and the others chuckled in appreciation. He checked himself until they were clearly in view. Wait ... wait ... There. The bow bent silently and the release produced no more noise than the drop of a feather. The arrow sped through the air, delivered with almost as much pressure as a gun would put on a bullet. It covered the thirty or so feet in less than a second. It smashed into the chest of the rightmost figure and through, throwing him back against the wall with a wet thud. He was moving even as the other two gave inhuman snarls and ran towards him. The recurve bow was dropped, forgotten; as he jumped off the fire escape, he pulled the metal stud holding the quiver to his back and it, too, clattered to the steel staircase. Then he was on the ground, and the pair were upon him like two immense black birds. Iaijutsu, the art of the fast saber draw, was centred around the dai-katana's unique curved shape. Draw and first strike were one mercurial movement. He had taken the time to become a master at it. One of the figures reeled back with a gurgle, sternum to larynx flopping open from the deep cut that had appeared as though conjured there. The third figure's hands were inches from his throat, and he shifted his weight down and to the right, flowing with the movement of his opponent, shifting and turning. Even as the figure rushed past him, his left leg was up and erupting into a powerful kick with the heel forward. The momentum of his turn added extra poundage, and he was rewarded with the snap of the spine directly between the shoulderblades. The figure screamed even as it rebounded off the wall and fell in a heap in the gutter. He heard it cough as it looked up at him. "Who -- who the fuck are you?" He let his face emerge into the moonlight even as he drew something from a belt sheath. "I am the peacemaker," he said quietly. Recognition flared in the figure's eyes, but it was suddenly wiped by a telltale flicker past him. He spun even as his second opponent, the one he'd cut, leapt at him again. The katana was up, one-handed, in a dizzying series of cuts and parries. He was almost appalled at how easy it was. He ran, almost perfectly, through the first three combinations. Blood flew. Screams shattered the air. Finally the figure fell back. He looked like he'd lost a fight with a blender. The final motion of the third combination ended with the thrust of his other hand and the item in it. It slammed through the chest of the figure and would have pierced the wall behind if it had been made of metal. He turned back to the other, drew another item from his belt. "One of us will finish you one day," snarled the paralysed one as he approached. "This is not that day," he replied simply, and ended it. He stood there for a few moments, listening. Then he quickly retrieved the wooden stakes and the arrow, kissing the crucifixes carved on each of them. Wiped them off, sheathed his blade, gathered up the bow and quiver and was off into the night, his dark coat billowing. * * * NOCTE ETERNA Fox Mulder knew it was over for him. He studied his available resources, then his opponent's. Not good. He had just about run out of tricks, and his opponent knew it. There was -- maybe -- a way out of the situation, but it was as likely to kill him as it was to save him. He grimaced. Nothing else to be done but play it out to its conclusion. He breathed deeply. Closed his eyes for a moment. Then moved. It was the wrong one. The computer figured that out in about three seconds, and then proceeded to dispatch Mulder's Bishop, Castle and newly-regained Queen. The final move of the decimation ended in checkmate, an elegant endgame that would have made Korchnoi, Karpov and Fischer collectively gasp in appreciation of the computer's choices or disbelief of Mulder's. PLAY AGAIN? flashed up helpfully on the screen, an electronic dog wagging its tail for another throw of the stick. Mulder pressed N in disgust and quit out of the program, wondering again why he did this to himself. Dana Scully's knock on the door and entry into his office were one fluid motion after long practice. Likewise the careful steps around the cardboard boxes strewn around the floor of the dim office. A part of his mind that was still sore at losing the chess game viciously wondered what would happen if he bothered to move any of them, but it gave way to curiosity. She was looking at a black file in her hands, turning one page over after another in earnest (if mobile) study. "Hi, Mulder. Sorry I'm late." she said without looking up. "Morning, Scully. What've you got?" he said. She glanced up. "I was in Forensics, and they asked me to take a look at a case they just got in." "Guess I'm not rubbing off on your reputation, then." She smiled, then sobered as she lay the file in front of him. "Chicago Police requested the Bureau's assistance on a multiple homicide there two days ago." "Are they taking it on?" "No ... Chicago said they just needed access to our labs. Agent Pendrell said they're really pressed for time right now, so they asked me to look over the details of the pre- autopsy investigation and check that Chicago didn't miss anything." He nodded absently, scanning over the documents. "Decapitation?" Scully nodded. "Chicago thinks it was post-mortem. Each of the victims died from puncturing of the heart." "Punctured with what?" "That's why Forensics was called in. They recovered wooden splinters of some kind from one of them." "I thought you said they hadn't conducted autopsies yet." "They haven't. The splinters were found under one of the corpses. Forensics still has to identify the species." Mulder closed the file and leaned back in his chair, thinking for a long moment. "Did they find fingerprints matching no known offenders in the National Crimes Database?" She picked the file up and shuffled through the pages, running her finger down one until it stopped at one spot. "Yes. How did you--?" "All over the place, right? Enough impressions for a full set?" "Yeah ... but ..." "Can't be," he said. He knew he was speaking aloud, giving voice to his thoughts. "The chances against it -- " He looked at Scully. "Has anyone looked at the identities of the victims yet?" "No ... they haven't contacted any of the families." "They won't find any, if I'm right," said Mulder, getting out of his seat. He hurried over and around boxes to a forlorn filing cabinet in one corner of the office. Light seldom penetrated this far; in Mulder's domain, illumination seemed to take the weekend off out of sheer exhaustion once it reflected off the thousand small items lying around. He pulled open the top drawer, which gave a screech of protest. A multitude of yellowing manila folders confronted him. He flicked through one after the other, mentally putting tags on some that piqued his interest. Finally, the one he wanted revealed itself and he snatched it out, trying to ignore the thin coat of dust that had descended over it. He carried the file to another table, pushing aside a pile of papers sojourning next to the slide projector. A set of slides obligingly fell out of the folder as he opened it up, encased in a small plastic bag. "I thought you kept videotapes in that cabinet," said Scully from behind him. "If you found any, they aren't mine ..." She walked up next to him, looking at the open file. "So what are we watching now? More slides that aren't yours?" "None of it belongs to me, Scully. It's all the property of the FBI." He flicked the red switch on the side of the projector, and it moaned to life, casting a bright square of light across the wall, banishing the dark in that part of the room. He hadn't bothered to take the screen down from last time, so he peered at the first of the slides and then slotted it into the machine. Colour spat across the room and splattered over the screen, then resolved itself. A picture of a decapitated corpse, its head mercifully absent from the photograph. A red sinkhole in the chest radiated trailed rivers of blood. He loaded more slides into the projector as she stared at it. "Los Angeles, 1976. The FBI opened an investigation into a series of decapitations and stakings in the downtown area. But not only do they have problems finding a killer, but they also can't find out who the victims are. None of the bodies even had a wallet, and not one person came forward to identify any of them." He changed the slide. A similar scene of death flashed onto the screen, the orientation of the body and size and shape insignificant in its differences. "New Orleans, 1965. Same situation. The killer leaves fingerprints all over the place, but no arrests are made, and the victims are never identified. Most of them seemed to be females in the rough quarter, though, so they're passed over and left." His feeling of disgust matched Scully's expression. "I know. Jack the Ripper could go to work in any major city nowadays and never be investigated, let alone caught." He turned his attention back to the screen, and pressed the button again. More scenes, similar in composition and identical in content. "Seattle, 1987 ... Philadelphia, 1952 ... the list goes on, right back to the turn of the century. After that, I had to check the National archives, but it goes on. I stopped looking after 1850." "You've got to be kidding." "I'm afraid not, Scully. I checked with Interpol as well, and they've got a file of similar occurrences, stretching over dozens of countries around the world." "These are multiple murders! The media--" "Not in all cases. Over half were single killings, but in every case, the circumstances were the same. A John Doe as the victim, and prints everywhere but none matching anything in police records." Scully nodded slowly. "So why didn't anybody make the connection after they had police databases installed?" "Most of the cases were dropped, the files erased or destroyed because they couldn't identify the victims. Also, many of them occurred before law enforcement went high-tech. As it was, I had to dig for prints from the most recent case in 1992." He pressed the button one more time. A print of ten murky black ovals appeared on the screen, run through with white lines. Scully fished around in the black folder and came out with the photocopy of the fingerprint data Chicago had collated. She looked from the screen to the paper. Once. And again. She held the paper up so she could look at the two sets of data more clearly. "Well, Scully?" She set the paper down and looked at Mulder with an expression that was this side of disbelief. "There's got to be a mistake," she protested. "There isn't. I remember looking at this file back when I was still on Violent Crimes. I must've checked into this thing about six times by now." "Mulder, I can see that the prints here are the same, but you're suggesting that the killer is over a hundred years old and insists on killing people with no identities." "We've seen it before, Scully. The Gregors." "And the ones that claimed to be your sister. You said they were all killed." "Maybe they were only one attempt at colonisation. These could have been others." He saw that she was about to raise an objection, and held up his hand. "It holds as much water as a sieve, I know. But these killings are all unsolved, mostly because the victims are unidentified. It's the same man. And he's in Chicago right now." She closed her eyes momentarily. "You want to go to Chicago." "There's a U2 concert there this weekend." "I think B.B. King is more my style, Mulder ..." "He's the lead-in act." Silence, thick with the sound of cogs and wheels turning. "I'm not telling Skinner you're taking over an active case." "Well, he's a busy man ..." "Mulder--" "I'll take care of Skinner. Just pull the files down from Forensics, okay?" She bit her lower lip, then nodded. He turned the projector off. "By the way ... what brought you up to Forensics in the first place?" She sighed. "I went to check on a case." He tried to conceal a smile. "And?" "The hairs on the Moretti case matched up." She picked up her handbag, fished around in it for a second and proffered five dollars to him. "And that's the last time we're betting on the outcome of a case." "It beats the track," he said as he took the five and strolled from the room. * * * As usual, the Jack Daniels struck back. The last thing she could remember clearly was puking her guts out on a corner near the nightclub. The three- hundred-dollar dress was probably ruined, but she had other things on her mind at the time. >From there, things got hazy. She thought she remembered a hand reaching for her purse. Then a pause? Then hands starting to drag her towards a car? She seemed to remember trying to stop the movement at that point, but to little avail. And lastly, something like a dark crow flying over her and the sounds of thudding-- Like the thudding in her head. She opened her eyes a crack, was grateful to see the lights were dimmed. Even so, that light jangled her brain, setting off the pain in her head again. She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut again and moved slightly. Smooth. Cotton sheets, she blearily guessed. Other sounds. Clink of crockery. Soft padding of feet. The smell of some sort of bitterness, like herbs. They attacked her head unmercifully, but she had to find out where she was and what she couldn't remember. So she gingerly opened her eyes again. The first impression she got was of a back. A well- muscled back, visible through a loose T-shirt, capped of with a mop of brown hair. Beyond that back was a cupboard door, and her dress, immaculately cleaned and ironed. A strong arm turned at her groan and offered a cup of hot liquid. It was accompanied by a soft whisper. "Here. This should help the headache." She realised she was in a single bed. She blinked, though the movement sent a new wave of pain through her head. The strong arm set the cup down on a bedside table, then folded itself back against the abdomen of the torso it was connected to. She tried to speak, but found her throat was silted with phlegm. She coughed and tried to focus her eyes. "Where am I?" "Safe," said the figure in front of her. A male voice. Not rough, like most of the men she knew. This voice was careful, like icicles hanging a moment away from melting. But still a strong voice. Like the top edge of an iceberg; somewhere deep within was a resounding voice, hidden just below the surface. He'd raised the volume of his voice a little more. "You won't recognise your surroundings, I'm afraid. My apartment was closer than the address on your driver's licence." "Who are--" "Yes, of course. I'm sorry. My name's Kane. Kane Adamson." She finally got enough control of her eyesight to focus on his features. It was a youngish face, about thirty or thirty-five. He looked faintly middle eastern in origin, his eyes dark and smouldering with an inner fire. Stubble shadowed the bottom half of his face. There was a small scar above his eye that had healed a long time ago. He saw her scrutiny of him and smiled faintly. The look seemed to make her anxiety fade, despite the fact she had wound up in a strange place with an even stranger man apparently waiting on her. She managed to get herself up on her elbows, blowing away a strand of black hair that had drifted in front of her face. "How did you know my apartment was--" "Again, I'm sorry. I had to search through your purse to find out who you were. All in all, Miss Chambers, I wish we'd been able to meet under better circumstances." "Madeleine," she said. "My name's Madeleine." He took the cup again and proffered it. "What's that?" she asked, eyeing the steaming liquid suspiciously. "Chinese tea," he replied. "Mostly. There's one or two small additions I've made to the mixture that should help you recover your strength a lot quicker." "I'll pass," she said. The beginnings of fear returned to her eyes. He looked at her quizzically. "How much do you remember about last night?" he asked. "Before or after I threw up?" she countered. He nodded as though in confirmation. "A couple of hoods tried to drag you into a car. You were yelling for help." It came back to her a little less than dimly. "What did you have to do with it?" He smiled thinly as he set the cup back down. "I ... reasoned with them and they let you go. You weren't in any state to go anywhere, so I brought you back here." "What time is it?" "About four o'clock in the afternoon. You slept for a good sixteen hours." He must have seen the tension on her face. "What is it?" "I'd like to call a taxi. Do you have a phone?" He smiled again; she blushed in sudden embarassment. From what she could remember, he'd been more of a protector than a rapist. Why did trust come so slowly these days? For some unaccountable reason, she wanted him to realise that she was only taking the natural precautions. "Certainly. It's over there," he said, gesturing to the far corner of the room. "I'll leave you alone to get dressed. As you can see, your dress is clean. I got you some of my older clothes to sleep in." She was sure her face was flaming red now, but he had already stood and was walking out of the room as she opened her mouth to thank him. Instead, she decided to just watch his motion; he moved with a cat's assurance in his stride, as though some invisible magnet kept him on the ground rather than the crude and primitive force of gravity. She set the thoughts aside and started concentrating on the task of getting her things together. But as she did so, the memories began to return. Visions of him (Kane?) smashing his fists through three or four faces, breaking arms and legs ... she couldn't help a shudder at the memories, but whether it was out of awe, gratitude or fear, she wasn't sure. He'd taken on four men for a total stranger. She wondered where he hung his cape up. She found the address of the apartment from an opened envelope on the bedside table and called for Chicago Taxis. END OF PART 1/14 Nocte Eterna (NC-17) by Michael Aulfrey Part 2/14 He was waiting for her when she came out of the bedroom.She saw his admiring look, quickly suppressed, at the way it fit. At least the three hundred was worth it- - That thought led down a strange path, so she snapped out of it. She fumbled for her purse. "Look, I want to give you something for your--" "That's not necessary." "But--" "No, thank you. If I did anything besides what an ordinary person would do, I'd like to think I didn't do it for money." She hesitated, then closed her purse. "If you're sure." "Very sure." They locked gazes for a second. She broke the contact and walked over to the door. He followed in her wake and opened the door. The sunlight streamed sideways onto her face from the window at the far end of the hall, and the hum of the city drifted up to them. She turned back to him. "Listen, if there's anything I can ever do for you--" "I've got your number," he said with a nod. She fell silent, just looking at him for a while. "Thank you," she said at last. She turned and walked down the corridor, wondering why she felt like something was screwed up tightly inside her. He watched her go, and then closed the door. He headed over to the cupboard her dress had hung on and threw it open, pulling the dai-katana out with the assurance of total familiarity and began running through his daily exercise regimen. * * * It was a 1958 Plymouth Fury, sweet old Detroit rolling iron, black as night's shadows, its heavy engine purring like the cat that got the cream. It cruised at seventy miles per hour along the Interstate towards Chicago, but beyond that its observance of the rules of the road was impeccable. Not that it mattered. No police car pulled it over for its casual disregard of the speed limit. When it stopped at a set of traffic lights in Joliet, Illinois, a Porsche containing a brilliant (if hotrodding) lawyer by the name of Harvey Bernstein pulled up alongside it. He revved his engine once in challenge. The Fury had made no response, merely sat there, the engine throbbing like some mechanical heartbeat at overdrive. Harvey glanced at the machine contemptuously. Why people still drove old heaps of crap like the Fury was totally beyond him. That was when he noticed that the streetlights didn't reflect off the Fury's glass; the windows were black holes that sucked light into them and gave nothing back. It was also when he noticed that the temperature inside the Porsche had dropped about six or seven degrees, despite the cold night outside and the heater blowing at full strength inside his car. And suddenly Harvey was thinking that he would rev his engine harder, but this time not to simply race the old automobile, but get away from it as fast as he possibly could. The light turned green. He put the accelerator through the floorboard and tore off down the road. He only got about two hundred metres or so before the beatuifully-engineered and still-under- warranty Porsche stalled for no apparent reason. Harvey stared at the dashboard blankly for a moment, then madly pushed at the key. The Porsche gave a drunken warble and then cut out completely. He saw headlights in his rearview mirrors. Something in him made him cower down. It was the mouse's response when the dark cross of the hawk passes overhead. The Fury's engine noise was no longer a low throb, but a low, snarling monotone as it cruised up behind, alongside and then past the Porsche. He didn't put his eyes anywhere above the dashboard until the sound of the Fury had faded into the night's silence. The car continued on its way, stopping neither for sunrise or sunset until the lights of the Windy City were gleaming in the distance. Then the Fury slowed back to fifty-five miles an hour and slid its way into the thickening traffic, drawing no more attention now than any other car on the road. The driver clicked a button on the dashboard with a gloved hand, and Chicago radio drifted through the cabin. "In other news, three unidentifed males were found dead on Saturday in an alley in central Chicago. Police are appealing for anyone with any information as to the identities of these men or the killer to contact them." This produced a snort from the driver. "Though Chicago Police are not releasing details of the killings, sources report that the men were decapitated and impaled through their chests." The Fury screeched to the right, horns blaring behind it as it pulled over to a stop at the side of the road. The driver tore the keys from the ignition and snapped the door handle open, pushing his way out of the car and standing to stare at the distant skyline of the city. He towered over the car. His pasty white skin glowed in the light of the traffic and the light burning in his ice- blue eyes. His hair, cut in a short-back-and-sides style that J. Edgar Hoover himself might have admired, gleamed black. Despite the noise of the traffic, he stood stock-still, staring out over the dark terrain, scanning it as though looking for something. He smiled, a death's-head grin that vanished somewhere above his lips. His eyes were as dead as Judas Iscariot. "Dawnbringer," he whispered to the skyline, the words rippling out into the darkness, "This time it will be you who dies." There would have to be retribution, of course. For this incident, if not for many others. An eye for an eye. One of them for each one of his. Satisfied with the course he had decided on, Sai'ten got back into the car, started it up and pulled into the traffic again, disappearing into the rivers of iron and light flowing into the city of Chicago. * * * "I hope she's as good as you say she is," said Detective Marshall. "We've had feds up here before. Not many of them knew one end of a corpse from the other." "Agent Scully is a medical doctor," said Mulder coolly. "She taught Forensics at the FBI Academy for two years before she joined me." "Yeah, yeah, I read her bio. I also got yours. What's this `Irregular Duty' you've been assigned to for the past three years?" "Mop and trash detail. I got bored with all that serial killer stuff in Violent Crimes." Marshall would never know how close he came to getting his head stuffed into the nearest water cooler. Mulder was sick of this case already, and they had only been in Chicago for a couple of hours. Granted, Federal agents were never particularly popular at the front line of law enforcement, but Marshall took the word `annoying' to new levels. Never mind that Mulder had actually only met him fifteen minutes ago, and was becoming painfully aware of the gun resting in his holster, out of sight. Woman's Intuition must have told Scully something. As soon as they'd arrived downtown that morning, she had asked to begin the autopsies on the three corpses found in the alleyway immediately. The Chicago City Coroner was in the theatre with her now, a harried, balding man with bags under his eyes who still managed to have a dancing grin around his mouth. Meanwhile, Mulder was left to meet Detective Marshall, in charge of the case, when he came back from downtown. The detective's first question was expressed with several four letter words, and things had gone downhill from that point. They flashed identification to the cop on the door to the morgue, who stood aside wordlessly. Marshall pushed through the doors into the darkened room. The lingering smell of formaldehyde tickled the nose. Across the room, Scully and the Coroner were huddled over the illuminated body of one of the victims, red stains over their gloved hands and communicating as much through looks over the white surgical masks as muffled conversation. "So? What've you got?" said Marshall, striding across the room. Scully looked up quizzically, and the Coroner turned a tired eye onto the detective. "Agent Scully, meet Detective Lloyd Marshall of the Chicago Police. He's in charge of the case." "Thank you, Frank," said Marshall without waiting for Scully to say anything. "Miss Scully, I trust you'll forgive me if we don't shake hands," he continued with a glance at the gore on her fingers. She glanced past him to Mulder, coming up in Marshall's wake. He replied with only a slight lift of one eyebrow and an odd twist of the mouth that would tell her all she needed to know. " ... Have you got a cause of death?" Marshall was saying. "Well, in case you hadn't noticed, Lloyd, there's a hole in his chest. Call it a shot in the dark, but we think that was what killed him." "Don't screw me around, Frank. Was it the decapitation or the impaling that killed him?" "We're ninety-percent sure that the decapitation was post- mortem," said Scully. "There's a lot less blood loss than would be expected in a decapitation. The crime scene was also clean, from what the Coroner has told me. If this man's head had come off first, his blood would be everywhere. Nerve impulses would have kept the heart pumping for another couple of seconds. His heart was punctured first." Marshall hadn't even looked at her, staring instead at the body and then at the Coroner. "What do you think, Frank?" Frank shrugged. "I concur with agent Scully, Lloyd." Mulder walked up alongside the bed and gazed down at the body. "What else did you find?" "Traces of wood lodged in the heart," said Scully. "I'll send them to Forensics to have them typed, but I think it's safe to assmue they're the same type that was found under one of the other corpses. I also found a small sprig of something in each of their mouths, some kind of plant. I'm sending that to the labs to be analysed as well." "So that's it? You dragged me up here all the way from the precinct just so Miss Scully could tell me what I already knew?" Marshall shook his head. "Okay, but we'll keep investigating our way. I've got the mayor busting my ass to find this guy before he starts finding machine guns more to his taste. C'mon, Frank. I got something else I want you to take a look at." The Coroner gave an apologetic shrug as he pulled his mask down and followed Marshall out of the room. Scully walked over to a washbasin, turning the water on and rinsing the gloves of the bloodstains there. She pulled her mask down as Mulder walked up behind her. He noticed she did all of these actions with a little more force than was necessary under the circumstances. "So who was that?" she said. Her tone confirmed his view that Marshall had made another friend. "That was sensitive new age detective Lloyd Marshall of the Chicago Police. Want a sunflower seed?" He proffered a small plastic bag. She shook her head annoyedly. "His kind really piss me off," she said, pulling the rubber gloves with a snap that made him wince. "How am I supposed to do my job with Stanley Kowalski there breathing down my neck?" "You want me to shoot him?" She looked up at him, her features angry, but at his deadpan expression, she shut her eyes and a weak smile crept out from its hiding place. "The worst part is, you'd probably do it," she said. "Oh, I don't know. You know how mad the Armory gets when I waste bullets." Her smile grew larger, much to his relief. He shoved the sunflower seeds back in his pocket and looked at the body, the silent listener to the conversation. "Not much to tell from the autopsies, huh?" Her smile disappeared. "Actually, there was more. I was going to tell him," she nodded her head in the direction of the door, "But ..." She let her voice trail off. "What did you find?" "The Coroner and I opened the intestinal tracts of all three of these victims. In each case, their bowels had no food in them. None of them had eaten for a while." "Gotta love that waif look." "I didn't say their bowels were empty. They had a lot of blood in them." "The pre-autopsy reports said their bodies had taken severe beatings and trauma before they died--" "No, Mulder ... this blood didn't come from that. We checked all the possible sources for seepage, and there was hardly any. I don't know where it came from." "Ingestion?" She looked at him. "What?" "How much Bram Stoker have you read, Scully?" "He was the author of `Dracula', right?" "That's the most famous of his novels. Some sources say he based it heavily on fact." "I hope you're not suggesting what I think you are." "The vampire. Otherwise known as nosferatu. Equivalent creatures rise in the mythology of many cultures around the world, but the classic example comes from the Christian tradition where a human being turns its back on God and as a result is condemned to eternal physical life, as opposed to the spiritual. They're practically invulnerable, bar some weaknesses to sunlight, crucifixes and wooden stakes. They feed on the blood of the living to survive." "So you're saying I've been autopsying the undead." "Not undead. Plain and simple dead. Wooden stakes, remember?" "Mulder, most vampire myths were the result of hysteria and factual atrocities more horrific than any stories told. Stoker based the character of Count Dracula on Prince Vlad the Impaler, a homicidal maniac that slaughtered hundreds of his own people. And there have been many killers who seem to think that drinking blood gives eternal life because of vampire myths, right up to this century. In all cases, the only benefit was a long stint in jail for those who were caught." "I realise that. But these men were killed with wooden stakes and decapitation, Scully. That's a lot of trouble to go to." "That's only proof that whoever killed them is as crazy as they are." "What about their identities? If they can live on blood, there's no need for them to have any form of identification for work. They could survive invisibly in any large city for literally centuries at a time." "Until I see some identification, though, there's no telling who these men are, or whether they have a job at all. And it still doesn't provide any reason for why the prints from all the different murders are the same." Mulder nodded. "All right. Let's see what this does." He walked over to a window shade where bright light splintered underneath the edge. "Mulder--" He yanked the handle down violently and then released it, letting the shade flap upwards to the top of the window. Sunlight streamed into the room, bathing the beds in light. Including the autopsy table. On the bed, the body ... Stayed exactly as it was. Mulder stared at it for long moments, but nothing happened. "I was going to say ... they found these bodies in full sunlight. And none of them showed any signs of decomposition." He glanced up at her, and knew from her suddenly neutral expression that he had that embarassed look on his face again.. "Look, Mulder ... I'll have the blood in the victims' intestinal tracts analysed. Maybe we'll get a DNA match with someone in the database." He nodded slowly. Scully started taking her surgical gown off, the material rustling quietly. In the near-silence, the sudden trill of Mulder's phone was abnormally loud. He fished it out of his pocket and opened the cover. "Mulder." It was Marshall, and he had news. END OF PART 2/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 3/14 "That, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason Henry the Fifth was perceived as such a great king. Not because he was necessarily a good king, but because he was first and foremost a good general. And because William Shakespeare gave great P.R." That elicited a chuckle from the class. Kane Adamson smiled and flipped over the final page of his lecture, looking up at the filled seats arrayed before him. He picked up a piece of chalk and abesntly flipped it in one hand. "Never fail to understand this: it was not the medieval kings' ability to rule wisely that determined their places in history but rather their ability to fight. We like to think that we've progressed somewhat since that time. But consider this: until very recently, a potential candidate for the Presidency of this nation was a general of the army. And our current President is one of the first not to have served any time in some sort of military role. Have we progressed? Should we progress? These are the things you should be thinking about, above and beyond what I will be asking on your final examination." He was not surprised to see that he had lost the interest of most of the first-year students. A wave of book- closing, pen-clicking and paper-flipping noises washed over him; it was almost time to leave. But he was also pleased to see that there were one or two faces that were still listening intently. He could almost see the words sinking into their minds. It was one of the only things that kept him at this job. The rest of the class was quivering like a horse at the gate, though, so he decided to end it. "That's all for today, ladies and gentlemen. I'll see you here again tomorrow." Before he'd finished speaking, the class was rising, new waves of conversation washing over him. He paid no further attention to it, but gathered his notes and walked from the podium. In moments, he was out into the hallway, mixing with the students as he headed for the outside world and home for the day. His thoughts turned to the woman again. Madeleine Chambers. A warm feeling went through his body, one that he hadn't felt for a long time. Thanks to his other occupations, it wasn't every day that he got the chance to be a vigilante. In spite of himself, he found his mind turning back and remembering that dark corner of the street. He'd been walking along and he'd seen her there, half-falling over into the gutter, from about fifty metres away. Then the four men lounging on a nearby car stop laughing and watch her with some intensity. He was trained to notice the beginnings of violence; their manner as they slid off the car and sauntered across the street towards her. A part of him was still wondering why he had picked up his pace and started trotting towards them instead of simply carrying on his way. He'd stuck to the deep shadows of the nearest tall building, his black coat disguising his movements until he was right on top of them. He'd carried his blade with him that night, but didn't use it; it would have been both inappropriate and undignified for a professional of his caliber to draw it on pond scum like these four. Instead, he'd flown from the shadows like some great dark bird, right foot forward, the toes pulled back and the ball aimed at the base of the skull of one of her assailants. That one had fallen without a fight, and then the other three were on him. They were all quick with the fluidity and speed of youth, but dispatching them to unconsciousness had required no more skill of him than the least of his real enemies ever had. The first had tried a regular punch, but it was telegraphed by movement of the elbow; he locked his hand onto the kid's wrist as the fist swung past and broke his arm with a snap strike to the outside of the straightened elbow. As the thug yelled in pain, he swung the kid into the second hood, buying himself a couple of seconds to deal with the third. He heard the snick of the switchblade unsheathing itself. He had been about to try the long punch, but changed his mind at the sound of the blade, feinting only and then pushing himself into a standing jump with the front ball of his foot uppercutting onto the third's jaw. The knife whistled past beneath him and the assailant collapsed. He landed, turned and delivered one punch to the upper lip of the uninjured one and a midriff kick to the one clutching his broken arm. Both of them fell at the same time. And he'd gathered the woman up and taken her back to his apartment. He got into his car, a conservatively blue Ford sedan and started the engine up, pulling out of the University of Chicago's parking lot. Reminiscing on the technique used to take out four hoods didn't help to explain why he'd done it, though. God knew, he'd seen a lot more death in his time than one single gang rape. There were certain hells he'd been in where that was the least of a woman's concerns ... but those times were past, now. Looking back on it, he remembered seeing the sweep of Madeleine's black hair and suddenly feeling the rage build up. Not that it overwhelmed him; he was too disciplined for that. But the feeling itself was almost novel, the last time he'd felt it was so distant. Rage. Like the proverbial final straw, he decided he didn't want to see another woman violated on a street corner like he had a thousand times before. And so, the violence. Still ... there was something about her more that stirred him more than the outrage of his morals ... He turned a corner in the long, winding road leading away from the university and felt the old, familiar chill. The ruined church was off this road, down that sidestreet on his left rolling closer in his vision. It was part of the reason he'd taken the position at the university. Just so he could keep an eye on the place. His gaze flickered that way. Another reflex he felt the reason for, but couldn't articulate. Some darknesses needed no articulation. He saw the flash of police car lights. Time for another almost-forgotten sensation: the intensifying of the chill. One part of his mind told him to run, run, run, drive the car like Senna screaming out of hell in a flaming version of the machine that had killed him. The other parts either suppressed the feeling or resigned themselves to the inevitable. He slowed the car, checked forwards and back and turned into the sidestreet. At noon, it was a very pleasant drive through leafy, sun- washed trees past olde-worlde style houses that had been built to complement the stodgy academic atmosphere of the university. He didn't want to speculate what the place was like at night. He slowed down to a crawl, watching the old, mossy stone of the place rise up before him, the lights of the police cars flickering below it like sparks from the blows of a blacksmith. He drove past the church about a hundred metres, then pulled over and slowly got out. He paused a moment, taking it in. Though he knew every pebble of the place by now, his eyes scanned it again. On two sides, the church's walls had fallen in, leaving mouldering piles of stone slumped at the base. The front and left walls were still relatively intact. The circular stained-glass window at the front of the church had been shattered a thousand times, leaving a dead hole that the sun peered through. The wooden doors were torn off as though vandals had done their work, but there was not a single graffito's tag to be found anywhere over the walls. He walked up to the yellow police line, mingling with the other passers-by who were looking for some glimpse of what had happened. " ... What happened?" " ... Someone found bodies here ..." " ... Place is getting more dangerous all the time ..." " ... Tell you what, I'm locking my door around here from now on ..." Kane had heard enough. He slipped from the crowd and sauntered away from the line, his mind whirling. He had to get in there. He lost the attention of the police officers after the first house and started to act. A quick leap over the back fence of one house and the gateway of another and he was in a quiet alleyway that fed onto the back of the church. He jogged up the byway, ducking down behind a heavy hedge ten metres from the police line. A police officer was standing another ten metres up, slowly watching the back street but facing away from his point of concealment. Kane waited a good thirty seconds, judging the moments when the police officer was looking away, then moved. The cop never saw a thing. Kane was out from his hiding place, over the police line and into the grounds of the church before the cop even started to turn in his direction. Kane crabbed along the line of one wall of the presbytery of the church, making his way towards the ruined vestry which looked like it had been gutted by fire. Which it had, a long time ago ... he heard voices, and stiffened, going to his personal version of silent running. Made his way to the remains of a window and put one eye around the corner. A man and a woman were standing in the remains of the presbytery, their faces turned away from the window. He considered simply ducking down and listening, but this part of the building was in shadow; even if they looked towards him, there was little chance they would see him. He had always preferred to watch and listen to conversations. The woman was shorter than the man by about a foot. She had coppery hair that burned like fire in the sunlight and blue eyes that caught that same sunlight when she turned obliquely to Kane's position. She was wearing a long tan overcoat. She absently pushed at an old floorboard remnant with her foot, which made the man look up from his inspection of the walls of the place. He had dark hair and a maddeningly neutral expression. "So what do you think, Scully?" he said. She -- Scully -- looked back at him. "What am I supposed to think, Mulder? That this proves your theory?" "Well, those three teenagers weren't decapitated or staked to death. This time I think you'd have to agree it was acute blood loss." "All right. That much I agree with. But the puncture marks on the eldest boy could have been caused by anything ... old nails, loose boards ..." "Yeah, but where did the blood go? Altogether, there's about four litres of blood missing from those bodies out there." "I don't know where the blood went, Mulder. But I don't think some vampire rose up from the grave ... " A sick feeling went through Kane's mind. He closed his eyes momentarily, then opened them and listened again. " ... maybe it is someone who's acting like a vampire for the terror value, but no more than that," the woman was saying. "They could have used syringes to make those marks and draw the blood out." "Look, only one of those kids was actually drained of blood. The other two look like they took on some kind of grizzly bear and lost. They look like wild animals got to them." The woman turned around to stare directly at the one called Mulder, and even Kane could see that her look was one of utter exasperation. "All right. Let's just for a second assume that maybe these kids were killed by an archetypical, right-out-of-the-horror-novel vampire. A creature of the night, nosferatu, whatever you want to call it." "I think you just turned me on, Scully." "And let's assume--purely for the sake of argument--that they were either killed here or dragged here by the vampire. Either way, how do you explain that?" "Explain what?" She pointed at the bas-relief image of a cross on the wall. "This is holy ground, Mulder. Ruined, maybe, but consecrated ground nonetheless. If this vampire of yours is meant to quiver in front of crosses and burn when holy water's tossed on it, how did it set foot over the threshold of the church?" She dropped her hand and stormed out of the vestry, back into the main body of the church. The man was silent for a few seconds, then followed her out of the ruined doorway, absently pulling it closed behind him. Kane saw the mark, etched gold into the dark brown back of the door. The sick feeling erupted into a tidal wave. He had to kneel and grit his teeth against the bile rising in his throat. Dimly, one part of his mind registered that he could have answered the woman's question quite easily. The remainder of his mind burned with that mark. It was a simple figure, really. A circle broken at the bottom with a vertical stroke. Like a letter Q rotated slightly to the left. The Circle of Ten. [Can't be. They're all gone.] Not all. Nine of them. Ten minus nine equals one. [Not ... him?] Got any other suggestions? He very nearly did throw up, then; only the instinct that he couldn't leave any trace of his presence kept him from losing his last meal. Gradually, he fought down the memories of fire in his mind and was able to open his eyes. He breathed in and out heavily, slumping down against the wall of the vestry. Finally, he was able to stand again and begin to plot his way of escape. * * * Mulder stepped over a broken pew as he trailed after Scully. She was walking over to a raised area of ground, where the altar of the church would have been and now was covered in dirt and leaves. It was where the bodies had been deposited. They had received their own coverage; white sheets now. The photographers had finished their work; now the paramedics were moving in with the stretchers and bodybags. The Coroner was looking forlornly down at the white sheets, and he glanced up at Scully as she approached. "Thanks again for coming down here so quickly," said Scully. "That's no problem," said the Coroner, making an effort to recharge his smile. "I figured you might still be having problems with Lloyd." "Where is he?" said Mulder. "Hunting for doughnuts, last I saw," said Frank with a tired smile. "I know he's a problem, agent Mulder, but give him his due. He's one of the finest officers we have on the force at the moment." "Somehow that doesn't give me much cause for celebration. What do you think about this new case?" said Scully. The Coroner exhaled heavily. "Well, I can't say that I've seen much like it. They all died of blood loss. Only question is how it happened. With two of them, it was heavy trauma to the abdomen and neck. The last one ... well, I don't know yet." Mulder was only half-listening to the Coroner; his attention was focused on the moss-covered walls of the ruined church. Something Scully had said ... "I was wondering something, sir. Do you know how long this church has been this way?" The Coroner looked at him with raised eyebrows. "In what way? Ruined, you mean? I'm no historian, agent Mulder. For all I know, this place could have been like this since the city was built." "But City Hall would have records on the ownership and usage of this land, right?" Scully was looking at him with a similarly quizzical expression now, but he kept his eyes on the Coroner, who chewed his lip before answering. "Yes, I think so. You understand I'm not a town planner or anything." Mulder nodded. A police officer called for the Coroner from the breach in the wall and he smiled once more at them before leaving them. "Why do you want to look into the history of the building, Mulder?" "I could understand the state this church is in if we were in England or France somewhere, Scully. But how often do you see ruined churches in modern cities like Chicago, less than two miles from a university? Maybe the building's got some kind of history of this kind of thing. Look, can you finish up here? I'll meet you back at the hotel after I've done some scratching around." She shrugged. "Okay. Oh -- that reminds me. The Chicago field office called this morning. They're sending us the results of our latest physicals from Washington. I'll pick yours up tonight?" He nodded. "Pizza sound good for dinner?" "Great. You know the order." He wrinkled his nose. "I still can't believe you like anchovies on pizza." "It's a habit from college. What I can't understand is how you can stand pineapple toppings." "It's an experiment. I read somewhere they're an aphrodisiac." "They haven't worked so far." He grinned and started for their car. END OF PART 3/14 Nocte Eterna (NC-17) by Michael Aulfrey Part 4/14 Kane left the lights off. He got the 1902 Johnnie Walker bottle out of the wine cabinet and poured himself a large glass, then sat down in the well-beaten chair in the corner of the room, staring into the darkness and occasionally sipping from the glass when he thought he saw something he would rather not. The phone rang, a thin series of trills. Setting both the glass and the dark thoughts aside, he picked it up. "Hello." "Hello, Kane? Kane Adamson?" He recognised the voice, just couldn't believe it was there. " ... Miss Chambers?" "I think I told you to call me Madeleine." "Madeleine, then. Ah ... what can I do for you?" "Actually, I was going to ask you the same question. After last night--" "There's no need--" "I think there is. You saved my life, Mr. Adamson. The least I can do is buy you dinner." "Are you asking me on a date?" There was a pause from that end of the line, and he cursed himself. Blind stupid fool! All she wants is to thank you for being a gentleman and you-- "Yes. Yes, I suppose I am." Well, that put a different light on things. He sat there, stunned into silence. How long had it been since that had happened? Not since ... and the old memories dropped into place again, hardening like old mud on his soul. And with it, the warnings that his training and experience had imposed beat a heavy staccato on his mind. Especially now, with the Circle of Ten ... "Kane? Are you there?" And something in that voice of hers, the soft, musical sound of her question, made the mud fall away, silenced the warnings. "Yes, I'm here. I'd be glad to go to dinner. Where would you like to go, and when?" "How about Edwardson's, tonight? Eight o'clock?" "I'll be there." "And since you knew where my address was from my driver's licence, you can pick me up," she added in a mock- superior tone. He smiled and almost laughed. "Eight o'clock, then," he said, and he knew he was grinning like an idiot. "Goodbye, Madeleine." "Goodbye, Kane." * * * Mulder didn't spend much time at City Hall, as it turned out. The clerk at the front desk was unintimidated by the FBI identification and told him in clipped, bureaucratic terms that information regarding church property was not held in the municipal office, beyond the name of the place he had described: Saint Martin's Catholic Church. For that sort of information, he had to consult their archives, held at the Cardinal's offices across the city. His Eminence's offices were a far cry from the stuffy bureaucracy of Chicago's public service. Plush sofas dotted the hallways. Colourful carpets abounded. There was a heavy chandelier in the lobby, glowing with light. Mulder shook his head slowly to himself. Amongst this luxury, the brown cassock and white, knotted belt of a Franciscan friar was painfully incongruous, but the old man's smile was worth dozens of rooms like these. Mulder presented his FBI identification to the brother, who regarded it through thick glasses before nodding and handing it back to Mulder. "What can we do for you, agent Mulder?" "I need to do some research in your archive concerning a disused church over by Chicago University. Saint Martin's, I think it's called." The old man smiled. "Would you care to have one of the librarians assist you?" "Thank you, no--" "Before you answer, perhaps I should explain. We have records of virtually every marriage, birth and death of our parishoners recorded in this diocese dating back for about a hundred and fifty years. Even the Cardinal has to ask the librarians where some records for some churches in this city are." Mulder chewed his lip and smiled. "I think I'd like one of the librarians to assist me." He sobered. "But I should make clear that I'm looking for this information in connection with a criminal investigation. In that regard--" "I shouldn't worry about the confidentiality of your investigation, agent Mulder. We priests specialise in that sort of thing." Mulder inclined his head in apology. The Franciscan led him down a flight of stairs in one of the back rooms to a large room where dust eddied in the light of overhead lamps. Wooden, old-styled tables propogated as though the basement were a haven from the natural selection of vandalism. From within the stacks, a young man emerged, also wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan friar. The old man explained Mulder's situation and introduced the librarian as Brother Adrian Temple. "It's a pleasure, agent Mulder," said Temple. "Likewise," said Mulder, glancing after the old man as he left. "So what did you do to get sent down here?" he asked, sotto voce. Temple followed his gaze, raising bushy eyebrows. "I don't agree with everything they do up there." "Sounds familiar." Temple smiled. "So what can we do for you?" "There's a ruined church out near Chicago University. City Hall said the land there was owned by the Catholic Church, titled Saint Martin's Church. I was wondering why it's been left derelict." Temple frowned. "Derelict? There are a few churches in the deep south that I've heard of as left in that condition, but I can't remember there being any churches within Chicago in that condition." "Well, it's there, unless City Hall made a mistake on the address." Temple scratched his beginnings of a beard. "I'll check into it. What was that address again?" Mulder told him. The Franciscan moved into the stacks a small way and selected a thick, leather-bound book. "This should have every church in the diocese listed," he explained to Mulder. He opened the book, running his fingers down one of the lists. "No ... it isn't here. There are a few Saint Martin's Churches, but none listed at that address." Mulder began to stand up, feeling the sudden despair of a descent into the quagmire of bureaucracy chill his bones, but Temple held a hand out to him. "Wait -- just a moment. This volume is only current back to 1920 or so. I'll check our older records." He carefully put the book back and walked further into the stacks until he was only a dark silhouette against the light. Stopped. Drew out another book. He came forward, flipping through the pages. "Yes ... this is the one." He ran down the list and came to a stop. "Yes. The reason why we couldn't find it before is because the street had a different name. But this is the address. Saint Martin's Church, Chicago Diocese." "So what can you tell me about it?" said Mulder as Temple laid the book on the table. "Well, it had a patronage of about three thousand at the turn of the century ... four thousand in 1910 ... four again in 1920 ... this is strange." "What's strange?" "After 1920, there's no listing of a number of parishoners. Normally that only happens when one parish is subsumed by another." "Would there be any reason for it happening otherwise?" "No ... that's the strange part. Even where the church is totally destroyed, it doesn't cease to exist. I can't find any reference to any other parish that subsumed Saint Martin's." He left the book for Mulder to stare at and hurried back into the stacks again. He reappeared with an even dustier tome. He wiped the dust from it. "These are the diaries of the Proctor of the parish for that time. If there's an explanation for the closure of Saint Martin's Church, we'll find it here." He flipped through the pages, scanning them at a speed Mulder could never have hoped to achieve through talent or familiarity. "Here. October 28, 1921. `To-day Saint Martin's Church was officially closed on His Eminence's strict orders. Extreme acts of vandalism have caused this act to be carried out.' That's all." "Acts of vandalism?" "I'm as baffled as you are, agent Mulder. I've never seen an entry like this for the closure of a church. More surprising is the fact that the church is still there after all these years." "So you're saying there's no reasonable explanation for why the church was closed?" "I'm saying exactly what's there in the book, agent Mulder. Saint Martin's was closed and effectively left fallow for no greater reason other than some apparent acts of vandalism." Temple closed the book and looked at Mulder. "I'll have to look into this further, agent Mulder, despite your investigation. There must be a reason why that church has been left to rot there." He nodded slowly. "You've been very helpful." Temple nodded and walked with him to the stairs of the archives. "I have one more question, though. If a church is closed, does that mean it loses its status as a church, a house of God?" Temple seemed to consider the question. "If the church declares that it is no longer so, then yes, it's no different to any other building. In England, that happened with some of their current national monuments." "Can you find out whether that happened in this case?" "It'll take a while," said Temple. Mulder haphazardly remembered from somewhere that priests didn't like to say `No.' "All right, if you do find anything, can you call me?" He handed his card to the friar, who looked at it momentarily and nodded. "Thank you," said Mulder, and started climbing the stairs to the outside. * * * The time was coming. Very soon, now. He could feel it happening, as intuitively as the brain knows a fire exists by the chemicals of smoke tickling the cells in the nose. His entire body was feeling it coming closer all the time. Sai'ten stood atop the building, studying the stars. Jupiter, bloated king of the solar system, was a bright point of light here, lumbering across the cosmos like a rhino. Mars, red, warlike, his totem star, strode ahead of his leader, carrying the spear of his astrological sign. The time would soon be here when they stood next to one another. And visible to his eyes alone were the dead stars and the black holes, cold masses of rock that burned with a radiance that threatened to sear his eyes out even from the awesome distances they gave. As Copernicus' heart had been pulled by those points of light in the night sky, so he felt drawn by those holes in the fabric of existence. Sometimes he felt there was one at the core of his heart. It made him feel strong, potent, virile, whatever word others used for it. A sense of ... immersion. He felt one of his new confederates walk up behind him rather than see him and smiled. The pickings were easy in this city. So many souls, pulsing with life, their energy ready to be sucked into the black hole at his core. He had already converted three; and of those he had dispatched last night in retribution for the death of three of his own, one was beginning to twitch; he could feel it happening. "What is it?" "We continue our search, master. We have found another that may be suitable." "Good. Leave me." Again, he felt rather than saw the bow and was alone again, the confederate having departed as silently as he had arrived. Sai'ten was careful. In twenty-four hours or less, there would be a conjunction that had not arisen for nearly three hundred years. The last time, he had squandered the opportunity, and many of his brethren had suffered as a result. This time, there would be no mistake. The blinding aura surrounding his quarry would be dimmed by the power of that conjunction, and he would strike him down in darkness, as he had been promised. But for now, he must be careful. Only the finest recruits would do. Ordinarily, he would have gone on a spree; but that would only attract attention, and he wanted no mistakes this time. As it was, he regretted acting so hastily in leaving a calling card at the scene of retribution. But he consoled himself with the thought that the chances against the Dawnbringer seeing it were miniscule. He studied the sky. In darkness, waiting for darkness. * * * Mulder opened the door to the hotel with a flourish, letting it bang back against the wall. He pirouetted obscenely into the room and deposited the two thin, flat cardboard boxes on the kitchenette's table. Something about pizza always brought out the Nureyev in him. "Honey, I'm home!" he called, kicking the door shut with his foot. There was no response. He pulled his tie off and dumped it on the nearest chair. "Scully?" He walked around the refrigerator and spotted the bedroom door. It was closed. He knocked. "Scully? It's me." Still no response. He gently tried the doorknob. Open. He slowly opened the door. The bedroom light was off, but from the light in the kitchen he could make out her form lying on the bed. She was in the same clothes as he'd seen her last in, facing away from the door toward the thin rectangle of the shade- drawn window. He was about to tiptoe out of the room, wanting not to disturb her, when he heard her take a shuddering breath in and a wet sound not unlike a sob. "Scully?" he asked again, softer this time. She didn't reply; but another sob escaped her, and this time a small moan. Immediately, he was striding around the end of the bed, though he kept his steps light. "Scully? What's wrong?" He could see her eyes were tightly shut, but the glimmer of tears shone brightly from the edges in the dim light. He knelt down beside the bed, tracing aside an errant lock of red hair. "Scully? What is it?" She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. He nearly recoiled at the pain there. She lifted her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up slowly. He got up and sat next to her, reaching for a handkerchief. He waited silently, knowing her better than having to press her any further to get a response. Scully took the proffered handkerchief but didn't dry her eyes. Instead, she stared at the drawn shades. "The physicals came in," she said. "Yours is on the table." "Forget mine. What did they say about you?" She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Cancer," she said. END OF PART 4/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 5/14 It took a couple of seconds to register. When it did, it hit him, a sledgehammer right in the guts. He stopped breathing. His mind screamed at him to begin again, and he did, with a shudder. His heart felt like mercury had just passed through it. "Cancer?" he whispered. "It's not confirmed," she said. "But the doctors found a growth of some kind." "Where?" "On the back of my neck," she said, touching a hand to the place. A sick recognition flooded him. "Right where they found the implant." Cancerman. Krycek. The bastards who'd taken her. His hands balled into fists, both in rage at them and rage at himself. He wanted to scream, smash the windows, and then throw himself out of one. She'd come to him about the implant and the cancer of the MUFON members, and he'd told her not to get too concerned until they found out what the implant was. In the confusion, he'd forgotten about it ... and now, here she was, a potentially malignant child growing within her, because he hadn't done enough. A weight seemed to settle onto his back, and he leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees, staring at the floor. She was still talking. "You get the report thinking it'll be routine and that there'll be nothing wrong. It's just a routine thing, you know, you don't expect to hear that you ... that you might ..." Her lower jaw was trembling, the tears running down her face. Your fault. Your fault, agent Mulder. Another innocent victim of your suicidal quest for the truth. How many more, agent Mulder? How many before you pay for all the blood you've obtained on credit? First your contact, then your father, then your partner's family, and now her as well. His guilt blistered his soul, burning it black. He'd only felt this way once before: when he lost the woman he thought was his sister, and he had to tell his father he had failed again. It came back to him all too vividly: his father, eyes smouldering like broken fire with anger and disappointment. Scully wiped her eyes. A small, simple motion, but it sent lightning through his mind. She needed him now. Samantha was still missing, Deep Throat was gone, Melissa Scully was dead. Many deaths on his conscience. But in his memory, he stood in that room again, and told that dour old man that he couldn't spare any more time for guilt or for the shame the old man personified. Because his partner -- Dana Scully -- needed him now, more than ever. Needed him to be strong. And, he told his father angrily, it's the living who can be saved. Not the dead. "Scully," he choked. A single word. It was all that was needed. She started crying again, great dry heavings of breath that seemed to be tearing at her lungs. Like yin into yang, they fell into each other's embrace, hands trembling, clutching each other like little children in the dark, tears shining. "There was so much I wanted to do ..." she began. "You'll have that chance," he whispered. His hand gently stroked the soft, beautiful hair of her head. Her arid sobs slowed. "I promise. Whichever way it goes. Name some of them." "What?" she managed. "Tell me some of the things you wanted to do." She sniffled. "Love." "That's all?" "That's everything," she said. He nodded silently, feeling his father's legacy loosen a little around his heart. And he thought of all she'd done in her life. Saving lives. Looking for justice. And now, facing death, all she wanted was to know that someone didn't want her to leave. "You'll find love no matter what happens," he said quietly. "Oh, really? And how much do you think I'll have when my hair's falling out from the chemotherapy ... the tests ..." "Believe me, Scully. If any man sees half of what I've seen about you, he'd be stupid to pass you over." She was silent for a long moment. Then gently pulled out of his embrace a little so she could look at him. Her eyes were still red with tears, but he was caught by the intensity of that gaze. He wondered whether death was like this: an eternal staring into the eyes of God, yearning to be part of what was within. He was acutely conscious of the nearness of their bodies, of her heartbeat, her breathing, the smoothness of her skin. Some part of him registered that he had crossed over, that they had both crossed over, pushing something aside. And he could see that she knew it as well. Dana Scully. Partner, best friend, soulmate ... and something more, a bond there was no name for, a link so ancient and fundamental that the Magi might have passed the time puzzling over it on the long road to Bethlehem. He didn't know. He didn't care. Every mote of light in her eyes transfixed him. He just hoped the depth of his belief in her was showing in his eyes as much as the fire of desperate life in hers. "Do you want to make love to me, Fox?" His breath stopped halfway up his throat. How often had he hoped for those words? How often, during those times he was alone in his apartment and the memory of Phoebe Green rested heavy on his mind? He was horrified to discover that he couldn't count them. There was only one answer he could honestly give. And here, now, bared to each other, he could do nothing but be honest. "Yes," he whispered. He felt her grip tighten on him ever so slightly. She leaned upwards, towards his lips. And he did one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. He gently put his index finger on her lips. "But not now. Not ... like this." Her expression changed, but it wasn't the anger, confusion or sadness he'd feared. Instead, he saw the beginnings of understanding. "We don't know whether you've got malignant cancer or not. I think you've got to be sure ... before you decide what you want." He saw she was about to say something, and continued before she could speak. "If you find out we've only got a short time together, I'm yours. If we have longer ... I'm still yours. But I don't want to make that choice for you." She nodded slowly. "Thank you," she said after a long moment, the ghost of a smile returning to her face. "Thank you for thinking of me that way. But ... can I ask you one thing?" "Anything, Dana." "Hold me. Just for a while." He didn't nod or offer any other confirmation, just stood, walked around to her other side and settled himself against the headboard of the bed. She leaned back against his chest. They picked up his arms one by one, wrapping them around herself. He joined his hands around her waist and she closed her eyes, nestling her head against his chest. In the kitchen, the pizza got cold. * * * Kane was amazed at how well dinner went, and how much he was getting to like the woman opposite him at the table. She was three years out of law school and employed as a judge's associate downtown, but her father had left a lot to her in his will. Kane's experience of lawyers hadn't been especially good, but this woman seemed to break every rule in the book about the way a money-grubbing legal eagle should act. She had a spontaneity and yet quiet dignity that most of her fellow sharks didn't possess. When he summoned up the courage to mention this to her, she replied that it was probably because of her background; never wanting for money meant that it had never really been essential to screw every dollar she could out of her clients. She was fascinated by medieval history, considering that much of the law came from it; the fact he lectured in the subject only meant that her appetite for his knowledge was that much more voracious. It was well after closing hour when they finally got up from the table; at the other end of the room, the maitre'd sighed in relief and envy as they walked out of the little back-street place. The woman was beautiful, garbed in a dress that showed off every curve to beautiful effect. It was not lost on Kane, either. He steadfastly tried to stop his gaze dropping anywhere below her neck, for fear of her tagging him as some kind of pervert. "Have you ever been married?" asked Madeleine as they stepped out of the restaurant. The question took him by surprise. He paused, looking at her, trying to judge what her interest was in the matter. Only honesty shone back at him through her eyes. He considered giving her more of the story he'd put together for this place and time, but decided against it. It was too painful. As painful to lie as to remember. "Yes. A long time ago. She died." "I'm sorry." He wondered if she'd heard the catch in his voice. "Like I said, it was a long time ago. But ... the memories are still strong." "What was she?" "A seamstr-- a dressmaker by trade. I met her in Paris in the spring." He smiled in memory. That was one of the few good things he could recall in his past. But he let the memory drift away and he focused back on her. "I trust you've had a good evening," she said with a wry smile. "Wonderful," he said seriously. "You're a very pleasant person to be around." "I'm glad to hear it." The conversation trailed off there, with neither of them able to think of anything to say. So it was of considerable surprise to both of them when they found themselves in a tight embrace, their lips joined together in a long, passionate kiss. The maitre'd in the restaurant behind them shook his head from the vantage point of the window; he was wondering when they'd finally get around to that. He lowered the shades, though, and left them to each other. Kane's mind was alive with fire. The air roared in his ears as though he were flying. His heart drummed within him like the proudest member of a marching band. He tightened his close embrace of her, feeling the raven- black hair cascading down her back, smelling the sweet perfume she'd chosen. He thought he heard her moan very softly, and he loosened his grip; more than likely, he was squeezing the breath from her. They finally let go of each other, but kept their hands locked together. "So, it's to be like that, is it?" he said, softly. "I'd say so," she replied, deadpan, and then smiled, laughter dancing around her eyes. He pecked her lips again. "I have to go," he said after another moment. "I've got classes to teach in the morning." "I should as well. When can we get together again?" "Tomorrow sounds good to me." "And me." "I'll call you." "Yeah." He kissed her once more before she let his hand go and walked to her car. He watched her car start and peel away from the kerb. His heart blazed. He turned away, taking a deep breath. He was giddy as a schoolboy again. How was it she'd been able to walk away with his heart like that? He didn't know. He didn't want to know. All he could wait for now was tomorrow night. He knew it. There was no denying it. He was falling in love with Madeleine Chambers, if he hadn't done so already. "There. I've admitted it. I love her. Are you satisfied now?" His words echoed up the empty street. Why he'd said it he didn't know. All he did know was that it gave the greatest feeling of release he had ever known. Naturally, the guilt ached from somewhere in his gut. Eleanor's shade hovered close by, wherever he went. But the guilt passed in a moment. He had a strange conviction that she wouldn't have minded. [I think because she's much like you, my wife.] But the part of him that was always on guard turned off the feeling when he turned towards his car and saw the two figures standing calmly just outside the edge of the light. They radiated the shadows. No common criminal could have emanated the air of death that clung closely to them. He pretended he hadn't noticed them and continued looking across the street. His better side submerged; the warrior returned to the fore. Kane concluded that he was in trouble. The street was quiet, thanks to the late hour. No cars other than his own stood anywhere nearby. And worst of all, the dai- katana lay safely hidden under the seat of his car, standing in a pool of light from the headlamps below, exactly halfway between himself and the two figures. He berated himself for the lapse in vigilance. Now his only choice was to try and get to the car before they were on him. Not a pleasant thought. He started walking casually towards the car, still pretending he hadn't seen them. With any luck, they would hold off until he got into the car itself, with the restriction of movement that would entail. But he was only halfway to the car when they stepped from the shadows into the sickly light of the overhead lamps. They started running at him a second after he began his sprint to the car. He stretched his legs out, pumping for maximum distance. His mind calmly estimated he had five seconds on them when he skidded to halt outside the car door. No time to fiddle with keys. He whipped his elbow against the car window and it shattered, the glass falling like crystals of snow. The alarm wailed into the silence of the street. His hand was into the car and down, under, slipping under -- there! He felt the handle of the dai-katana, felt the grooves that he'd committed to memory now -- The two figures bowled him over, his arm dragging across the shattered glass of the car, cutting it. He fell to the pavement, instinct alone preventing him from knocking his head on the hard ground. But the long, thin shape was still in his iron grip and he let a long, mocking laugh snap out. One of the figures snarled and raised a hand for a strike that would disembowel him. He flexed the muscles of his abdomen and hips, his legs flipping up, through the jaw of the attacker. He tucked his head under and rolled, agility lending him time as he somersaulted backwards and came to his feet. As the first reeled, the second lunged at him. Kane went into the Earth-Sea change, was under and to the side of the force of the strike as he absorbed the motion of his enemy and used it to lend extra speed to the draw of the dai-katana. It cleared the sheath with a serpentine hiss, and he let the scabbard fall, spinning away in a move calculated to give him distance from them; the sword was too long to be anything but a hindrance at close quarters. He reached the ready stance and they circled, one of them trying to get behind him. They were wary of the silver light flashing from the blade. "Who was the woman?" one of them gurgled. Their smiles were of skulls. Calm, he said to himself. The void. Mind-no mind that is battle readiness. "She's quite the catch," agreed the other. "Will you talk or fight?" snapped Kane. "You're outmatched, Dawnbringer. The master wants you." "I've killed many better than you two," he replied, raising the sword above his head so it pointed at them, parallel to the ground. "And after I've sent you two on your way, I'll kill many more. Including your master. Just like I killed all his brothers." That got their attention. They came at him simultaneously, hands and teeth first. He reached inside himself and found the space of the void, where the strength of the universe was concentrated. Unbidden, the kiai screamed from his throat, the powerful energy of the spirit stabbing out at them with greater efficiency than any weapon the world had ever known. The force of the cry directed to his assailants' eardrums was like a blow. They hesitated, slowing for a second-- And the dai-katana sprang out in one cut, a silver wing taking flight, slicing through flesh, bone, spine, neck. Blood spattered. The bodies collapsed, their heads rolling down into the gutter. The smell of death clouded from them. The dai-katana sang as it completed the cut, then clattered against a metal pole, sparks erupting from its honed edge as it dug into the tin of the pole. Kane wrenched the blade free, breathing slowly. He listened momentarily. No sounds. Good. There was no time or sufficient privacy to deal with the bodies properly. He could only hope that what remained of the Circle would not be able to revive them in their current state. The sudden thought of Madeleine being drawn into his own personal circle of violence and death sent splinters of ice through his blood. He stared at the bodies of the two creatures in sudden sickness. [Please, God. Don't let them find us. Give me time. Just a little season of rest before I have to begin again. Please.] He unlocked his car door hurriedly, got in, started up the engine and screamed off into the night. END OF PART 5/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 6/14 The results arrived the next morning. When one of the agents from the Chicago field office of the FBI called the hotel and told her, she felt a pang of fear until he started talking about Forensics. The results from the wood tests. She was halfway into the call before realising that the phone had been her alarm clock; it was 9:30 a.m. already. Next to her, the bedsheets were rumpled but empty. "Agent Scully?" She shifted her attention back to the phone. "Yes, sorry, I'm still here. What did you say?" "I said they're ready to be picked up whenever you need them." "Okay, thanks. I'll come down a little later on." She put the phone down and got up from the bed, looking around. She walked through the open bedroom door to the kitchen. It adjoined the living room-cum-entertainment area. Mulder was curled up on the sofa, a few blankets and sheets tossed over him. He'd brought his pillow from next door. He was snoring softly. She smiled to herself and tiptoed over to him. Kneeled down and nudged his shoulder. No response. He wasn't a light sleeper, she remembered, and nudged him again. He took a deep breath and frowned with his eyes closed, then exhaled and opened the lids. He focused on her and grinned weakly in response to her smile of greeting. "Hey," she said quietly. "Oh. Hi, Scully." He pushed himself to his shoulders, rubbing his eyes. "What time is it?" "Nine-thirty." That woke him up. "Jesus. How late were we up?" "Too long, I guess. I can't remember what time I got to sleep." She got to her feet, giving him room to throw the blankets off and stand up. "Did the office call?" he asked. She nodded. "The wood fibres came in. They're waiting to be picked up." He looked at her with sudden seriousness. "How do you want to handle ... you know?" She paused, considering. She'd been hurting last night, that much was for certain. And it would have been easy for her to simply sit back and feel sorry for herself. But she was still an FBI agent. And there were still bodies out there demanding justice. "Let's just do our jobs, Mulder. This other thing ... it's for later. We've got a murder investigation to run." He nodded. "Okay." "Mulder -- one other thing. I don't want you to think you have to look out for me any more than you did. I'm not made of glass. Okay?" "Roger that, partner." He winked at her and headed for the door. "Last one dressed's a rotten egg." She dressed in silence, her hand going occasionally to the spot where they said the cancer was-- [You don't know that for sure yet. Not yet.] Finally, there was nothing left but to step into the heeled shoes and walk out into the sunlight again. She took a deep breath, taking a final moment to smooth her clothes down. [Here goes. You can do this. You're no different from when you last looked in the mirror. You're still Dana Scully.] She left her room to find him waiting for her. The look on his face was still uncertain. "Guess I'm the rotten egg," she said. She was pleased to see that brought a smile out of him. "You get to drive, then," he said, and walked around to the other side of the car. They were halfway to the office when his cel phone rang. He answered it and had a truncated conversation with someone on the other end. Finally, he snapped the phone shut with a curse. "What is it?" she asked. "They just found another two bodies outside a restaurant downtown. They're in the same way as the three you autopsied yesterday. Decapitated." "Did he give you the address?" "Yeah, 1121 Valleywood Avenue." "Well, that's not far from here. I'll drop you off and come back when I've picked up the results of the lab test." He nodded. She glanced around, and turned down the first available street. The place was a back-street restaraunt, a little more stylish that one would have expected for its neighbourhood. The circus of police cars had shown up there as well, the light show happening once again. She stopped the car and let him get out, then peeled away from the kerb and continued on to the office. Agent Harry Randquist of the Chicago FBI was a muscular man with a crew cut, his suit barely containing his biceps. He nearly crushed Scully's hand when she met him. She had felt petite next to Mulder. She felt dwarfed by this man. "Good to meet you, agent Scully. Our new recruits still remember you from Quantico. You come very highly recommended." His voice rattled roofbeams. "I'm pleased to hear that, agent Randquist. I believe you have some laboratory results for me?" "Yes. An agent Pendrell sent them down." He handed a copy of the fax transmission across to her and then looked at his own copy. "In summary, the lab referred the research on the species of the plant and the wood you found to the Smithsonian Institute. Which were you more interested in hearing about?" She considered reading the abstract herself, but Randquist had a pleasant enough manner about him. "Well, both, really. What was the wood type?" Randquist shuffled through a couple of papers. "Yeah. Even the Smithsonian had a problem finding a reference to this one. Apparently, the wood comes from a very rare type of deciduous tree that grows in central Europe." "What part of Europe, exactly?" "The Czechoslovakia-Hungary area. In particular, a small province of one of those countries in there called Transylvania." "Transylvania?" "Yup. Transylvania. You know any vampires, agent Scully?" She raised her eyebrows, the coincidence tingling in her mind. "Not personally. Does it grow anywhere else in the world?" "Not according to the Smithsonian. Apparently, it's specific to that area. Very difficult to get." "But it's living matter, isn't it?" "Yeah, but -- ah, I see. I'll start the checks with Customs now, see who the major importers are of plant material into the United States. Maybe we'll nail the guy who brought the stuff in here." Scully nodded in satisfaction, feeling a little better about the investigation than she had since its inception. "What about the plant they found in each body's mouth?" Randquist looked at another sheaf of papers. "Labs checked the type with the Smithsonian again and found that it was a pretty common herb. Wolfsbane." She nodded, making a note on the top sheet. "What about the blood typing on what we found inside one of the corpses?" "Nothing yet. There isn't anything on file, but we're checking." She nodded. "You've been very helpful, agent Randquist. Thanks." "That's our job," he said. She smiled and left the office, carrying the papers of the lab reports. Later, when she had time, she'd go back and look over them again, if only to satisfy herself that she'd got everything right. Still, there was something that sent small chills down her back when she thought about what Randquist had said. Transylvania. And wolfsbane, of all things. Which, as Mulder would undoubtedly remind her, was a common ward against vampires and other evil spirits along with garlic. She was just about to get back into her car when the voice came from behind her. "Agent Scully!" She turned to see a black suit coming towards her. The memory of their experiences with such men instilled in her an instinct to pull her gun, but she spotted the small white square below his throat and calmed the reflex. She looked at his face, then. And almost dropped the papers she was holding. Father Peter Slattery. He was a relatively tall man, a few inches under Mulder's height and about her age. He had yellow straw for hair, and his eyes were a disconcerting grey in this light, but she knew from experience that they could be green or blue at a particular time of day in a particular shadow. The lighter-coloured burn scar stretching down one cheek drew attention away from his eyes, and that was perhaps to his advantage; those eyes seemed to pierce right down to the soul. And perhaps did more than seem to do so, one part of her mind registered. They'd dealt with the Jesuit priest twice before, both times in relation to a series of murders. The FBI had taken little interest in the killings other than to send the cases on to the basement. The Catholic Church had sent Slattery specifically to deal with it. Because he was an exorcist. And because he claimed to by psychic. Both times, his involvement had been justified many times over. The last they had seen of him was boarding an airplane to Rome with two orphaned children that he said were the instruments of destiny. Scully didn't know what to think of him, much like God. She believed God's hand could be witnessed. She wasn't so sure about the theological concept of a Holy human church. "Can we speak a moment?" he was saying. "What are you doing here?" she asked as the young priest walked over to her, putting his hands back in his pockets. "I came here because of some questions that agent Mulder has been making." "What do you mean?" "Yesterday I was told that an FBI agent had been making some inquiries about a certain church over by Chicago University. Specifically, reasons why it had been closed." "And you came all the way from Rome to see why?" Her voice was incredulous in her own ears. Suspicion stirred in its sleep at the back of her mind. "Not exactly. I still lecture in the United States. I was asked to come and look into the investigation. Your partner hit a nerve when he started asking questions in the Cardinal's archives." "What kind of nerve?" Slattery sighed. "Agent Scully, I'm not here to harm you or your partner, or hinder your investigation. I know that's what you're probably thinking of me right now. It's just that the Church has an interest in its parishes. When we heard the FBI were investigating here, I was sent to see why." "No. That's not it. If that church is closed, why are you so concerned with it?" Slattery thinned his lips, looking distinctly uncomfortable. He shifted his feet. "There isn't much I can tell you. As a Catholic, you understand the sanctity of the confessional. I must tell you that there are some matters where confidentiality applies not only upwards but downwards in the church hierarchy." "Who sent you?" "I can't tell you that." "You could before." "I was cleared to do so, if necessary. It became necessary ... last time." "Then at least tell me why you came to see me. Why you aren't just watching from the shadows, like you did the first time round?" She could see that hurt, and she was immediately sorry she'd said it. But he inhaled heavily and looked at her again. "All right. I came to tell you that you and your partner should drop this investigation." "Is that a threat?" she asked quietly. She'd heard threats before. Had some of them carried out, though she had been lucky enough to avoid their impact, if not their fallout. "No. I'm not an animal, agent Scully. Nor is the Church the threatening organisation that people are so quick to remember the Inquisition for. This is honest advice. There are some things that you shouldn't become involved in, that none of us should be onvolved in. This is one of those situations. For your own safety -- from what it is you're hunting, not from us -- you should leave this case alone." His half-pleading tone relaxed her. He wasn't Deep Throat or Krycek. He'd saved their lives at some points. She looked down at the ground, and then back at him. "I'm sorry, father. I can't. There are too many dead men involved. And if agent Mulder's right, there are many more. They need justice." He nodded sagely, though his eyes were tinged with sorrow. "I understand. I can't agree with this course that you take, agent Scully, but at least I know you pursue it for the right reasons." He smiled once more. "Say hello to agent Mulder for me. I'd see him personally, but I have some pressing business." He turned and walked away, leaving her standing there, speculation running wildly through her mind. After he had gotten into his car and driven away, she moved to her own car and turned the key in the ignition, peeling out of the parking lot and back downtown. The picture hadn't changed substantially when she arrived at 1121 Valleywood Avenue, apart from the additional ambulance and the fire-red T-bird that looked like it belonged in an off-Broadway (and low-budget) production of "Grease." She glanced at the green-on-white vanity plate as she got out of her car. MARSHALL. Beautiful. Just beautiful. And there Lloyd was, prancing around like an Arab horse, officiously pointing out which way the police photographers ought to be taking their pictures, loud tie, rumpled overcoat and braying voice giving half the area a headache. The journalists were watching his every move and enjoying the show. She closed her eyes and sighed for a moment, then looked around. Mulder was leaning up against a metal pole about ten metres away from the rest of the circus. His black coat hung limp from his shoulders. He was turning a small plastic bag over in his hands. She walked across the street, and he looked up as she approached. "Hi, Scully. Thanks for ditching me." He smoothed it with a wry smile. "When did he show up?" she asked, putting a heavy emphasis on the third word. "Oh, you mean Sherlock Holmes? He arrived right after I did. He's had a positive effect on me, though." "How?" " I've come to realise Forrest Gump was right all along. Stupid is as stupid does." She weakly smiled at that. "So what did they find down here?" "Much the same as the other murders. Two men, decapitated, no matching prints, both unidentified bodies. But this one was a little different." "How so?" "These ones were just decapitated. No staking through the heart. And from the looks of it, the killer was caught off guard. There's some broken glass on the pavement and some tire marks. Also, we found a heavy cut into a tin pole. Columbo there got most of it," he said, holding up the bag, "But I managed to get my hands on a few small splinters." She took the plastic bag and peered at it. The pieces were small, but there was something wrong with them even from this point of view. "If they look too bright, it's because they are. I don't think it's steel in there. More like silver. And I think they came from the killing weapon." "A silver knife?" "More like a silver sword. Forensics only has the preliminaries, but it looks like these two were killed with one cut of the long blade of a sword. There's a metallurgist they've referred me to, and I'm seeing him right after we finish up here. But I think this is an important step, Scully. Whoever these guys were, they were looking for the killer, and he fought back in self- defence." "So you're saying there's a private war going on here." "Why not? That reminds me, what did you find out from the labs?" She told him. "Slattery warned us off the case?" "He said it would be for our own good. You must've stirred up a hornet's nest when you started asking questions, Mulder." "I've heard of `Thou shalt not', but that takes it a lot further than I would've guessed. Still, that news about the wolfsbane and the Transylvanian wood is useful--" "I hope you're not still thinking that this was the work of vampires." "It's fitting pretty well, Scully. Wooden stakes from Transylvania, wolfsbane in their mouths. What I can't figure out is who their killer was, and where he fits in. But I think this," and he touched the bag she was holding, "Is a start." END OF PART 6/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 7/14 "It's Japanese," said the old man. He took the splinter out from under the microscope and laid the glass frame aside. It glinted in the light of the overhead lamps. Scully was reminded of the description she'd read once of Nostradamus' study: dark, flickering candles, bowl of foretelling before him ... but this was the office of Graham Johnson, metallurgist by trade. He looked at them through a pair of artist's working glasses that made his face look like a pair of television screens. Around his worktable were bookshelves filled with texts. Scully hadn't belived so many books existed on the common properties of metals. "How do you know?" said Mulder. Avoiding Detective Marshall and the media circus trailing in his wake, they had driven halfway across the city to Johnson's office, where FBI identification sufficed to gain his undivided attention. Mulder had handed over the small splinters and watched Johnson go to work, a gnome in some larger machinery he was part of. "Well, there are two reasons," replied Johnson, his voice cracked and squeaky with age. "Firstly, the metal has been folded a certain way. In most antique swords from Western cultures the style is very primitive. A crude beating of the metal until it serves its maker's wishes. But Japanese katana--" "What?" "Katana. Long sword, literally. In the katana the metal is folded exquisitely, every step more intricate than the last, until a blade is produced that will cut iron, such is its strength. The finest blades were made in Japan, that much is for certain." "You said antique. What did you mean by that?" "The techniques used to fold the metal leave certain marks on the blade. We can judge the age of such a sword by the technique used at the time. This metal is at least three hundred years old. I could confirm by running a sample through an analyser." "We'd like that. What was the second reason you know this sword is Japanese?" "Because of the composition of the metal. You were right when you said this doesn't look like steel. It isn't, exactly. It's a silver and steel combination. Very hard to make, even by today's standards. There aren't many of these blades around." "Why should that determine it as Japanese?" asked Scully. "There's an old legend about this type of sword. In Japan, several hundred years ago, historians record a number of unexplained disappearances in the Ega and Koga provinces. Japanese historians attribute the disappearances to the actions of Ninja clans that were resident in that area at the time. The legend, though, is that an Oni demon -- a creature of the night -- was stealing people away to keep as his prisoners. The swordsmiths of the area therefore set about creating a blade that could kill such a spirit. They took the purest of metals known to them -- silver -- and weaved it into the swords of the samurai sent out to kill the thing. It was believed that a silver-steel blade could not only kill the demon but surround its wielder in light so that the demon could not see the samurai's location." "So this metal came from one of those weapons?" Johnson gave a chuckle. "Not likely. The metal wouldn't be in such a beautiful state of repair. No, this metal is only three hundred years ago. If it came from a Silver Rivers blade, it was a ceremonial copy made for some daimyo who fancied himself as a monster-killer." "A Silver Rivers blade," echoed Scully. "That's the term. I don't know what the Japanese word is." "If such a sword existed, what would it look like?" asked Mulder, getting a pencil and paper out. "Well, much like a normal Japanese katana. Like that one on my wall." He gestured at a dark, curved shape hanging on a nearby hook. It was a slim, evil-looking weapon, curved in one direction, the guard a square of iron. "With one exception. Silver Rivers blades were without exception dai-katana." "Which means ... ?" "Big sword. Longer than the average katana. It was believed they had to be made large to hurt the Oni demon." "I see." Mulder scribbled the details down. "Thank you, Mr. Johnson. You've been very helpful." He showed them out of his study, and they walked down the creaky, wooden stairs. "Well, that tells us a lot," she said heavily. "We can now tentatively say that our description of the killer is ten-fingered, kills people without names or relatives, and carries a three-hundred-year-old knife." He didn't respond. She nudged his side. "Hey, you awake?" "Hm? Oh, yeah. Listen, Scully, there's something I want to look into at the University library. Can you check into the blood typing and customs checks that you wanted done? I've got to do some research." "What are you onto, Mulder?" "I don't know, yet. I've just got a feeling about something. Can you do that?" She hesitated, then shrugged. "All right. I've got something else I want to do this afternoon, anyway. I'll drop you off at the University?" He nodded, and they hurried to the car. * * * Kane slowly went through the last of the exercises, bringing his sword back to the ready position in front of his bared chest before relaxing and allowing the point to drop. He breathed slowly despite his fast-beating heart, knowing that to control the heart rate was to control the mind. He'd finished all the regimens, sharpened the blade so the nicks became smooth again, gone through all the directions. None of it helped. The memories gnawed at his mind. The raw ball of rage that had dropped over his vision in those final moments of last night's skirmish kept coming back to him as remembered their words. --Who is the woman?-- --She's quite the catch-- A snarl escaped his throat. He didn't throw the sword down, but the force with which he laid it on the sofa was a little more than what was strictly required. He put his hands behind his head, taking a few steps in a circle, trying to regain his control. It was the threat to Madeleine, of course. And the knowledge that they'd been watching him. What if one of them had got away and told ... him? He shook his head angrily. Might as well admit it to yourself. Sai'ten. The last of the Circle of Ten, and the deadliest. And of all times for him to surface again, it was now, just when he thought his heart wasn't turning to stone in his chest. And despite his best intentions, that set off the chain of memories again. Like fire finding dry tinder, the images raced back through his mind. Eleanor. The apartment became colder, darker. Less light, except from the closed windows, where the light from snow was enough to scorch and blind the eyes at midday. Zurich was in the grip of the heaviest snowstorm in its pentacentarian history. Kane -- or Koenig, as his name had been then -- hadn't cared. It meant he had more time to work on the timepieces. Strange how someone of his nature would be so fascinated by time, considering his movement outside it. Granted, he hadn't been working on his clocks at all today. Instead, he'd gone down to see Olafssen again. The man had been suitably unimpressed with Koenig's newest request for parts; he demanded the highest standards, and the blacksmith was more accustomed to making horseshoes than cogs. Koenig had haggled, though, and eventually the blacksmith had come round to his point of view. But the process had taken a full day, and it was only now, as the sun painted the distant mountains purple with sunset, that he trudged back to the arched alpenhausen. He saw the smoke rising from the chimney, and his heart warmed. It would soon be Yuletide, and the year of the Lord 1560 would be greeting them. He was coming home to his wife Eleanor, and tonight he would give her a son, which she had been pestering him for since July. In concluding their business, Olafssen and Koenig had sampled a bottle of the man's home brew. Koenig normally wouldn't have cleaned a gear with most of the fire-water brewed around the city, but Olafssen was as much a genius with stills as he was with metal. The brew was (my God!) nectar. He took the heavy snowshoes off and pushed in the door. "Eleanor, I'm home!" he called. There was no answer. He smiled to himself. Well, maybe she'd read his mind and was waiting upstairs for him already. He pulled the scarf off, walked through the kitchen and started up the steps to the bedroom. "Eleanor, I have some good news to--" He stopped when he saw the blood. It had been thrown everywhere. The walls dripped. The floor was awash with it. But more than anything, the bed was covered in it. And at the centre of that bed-- He screamed. He ran to the bed. He jumped onto it, ignoring the gore that covered him. Eleanor was pristinely beautiful. They had stopped to arrange her clothes perfectly. The only blemishes on that beautiful, pale body were the two spots on the neck where blood glimmered and trickled. Koenig listened frantically at her chest. Nothing. Her hand. Her throat. Nothing. Only the still, cold silence of the grave. He sat back on his knees, staring at her. Dimly, part of his mind glanced upward above the bed, where more blood had been painted. A symbol. A circle. A circle with a stroke through the bottom. The Circle of Ten. God Almighty, he had been coming back here to--to-- He clamped a hand over his mouth and stumbled off the bed, not getting as far as the stairs before he threw up. Bile and the smell of the alcohol he'd ingested combined into a sickening stench as it came upwards and out of him. He heaved. And heaved. And heaved. Until there was nothing left in his stomach, and his abdomen ached. Then the tears began. Guilt. Rage. Fury. Grief. But more than anything, the tears. He gritted his teeth, felt the racking sobs begin. It was then he noticed a twitch from her foot. He was back at her side in a second, listening at her chest. Still nothing. He snapped his gaze at her face, incomprehension blurring perception. Her teeth clenched, and he saw her eyes flicker under closed lids. The sun's last gleaming vanished over the horizon. He staggered back from the bed. Her heart was not beating, but still she moved. How--? There was only one answer. He felt himself tumbling down, away from his eyes, as though he were descending into the earth. The darkness was cool, inviting. His grief, his rage subsided. He watched himself calmly from twenty metres away as he turned and walked from the room. He descended to the kitchen and picked up the sword, which hung over the fireplace, Damoclean. He watched as he stopped by the railing of the stairwell and swung the sword through one of the palings. It shattered without noise. He saw himself hit by a couple of splinters, but felt nothing of the pain. He picked up the loosed paling and began to sharpen it against one of the sword's double blades as he walked back up the stairs. He walked into the room and sat calmly on her dressing-table, pushing aside the brushes and combs she used to put in her hair ... he sat there and sharpened the paling to a point. He was very careful. Ten years of watchmaking had turned him into a figure of patience. It took him a good fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, her body twitched and clenched on the bed. He stopped occasionally to look at her, and thought he felt something twitch inside himself. But, mistaken, he lowered his head to his work again. Finally, he finished it. He felt himself flying backwards, even further away from the scene unfolding in the bedroom as the man holding the stake and the sword set to work. It took a few seconds. He spent the next two hours methodically packing everything he could find of his. Then he had pulled the snowshoes on again, glanced around a final time and walked into the kitchen. He snatched a burning log from the fireplace and threw it onto the stairs. It was old wood. It caught light very quickly. He watched it for a second, then turned and opened the door. He slammed it behind him, and started out, knowing it would be a long night, heading for the nearest border of Switzerland. Only when he crossed the border would he know he was safe. There was no feeling. Nothing. He walked alongside himself. He wondered at the preponderance of moisture on his cheeks, and the sick feeling in his stomach. The night faded; afternoon returned to his vision. The drifting noise of traffic echoed in his ears. And now the tears were cascading down his cheeks as he stood there, grieving for a past he wished he never had, for a time he wished could have continued forever. But there was no stopping the whirlwind now. It would pick him up and throw him into the malestrom regardless of what he did. The time had come round again. He would find Sai'ten. Madeleine would not suffer her fate. He was tired of running. Whenever they came for him, he would be ready. He calmly picked up the dai-katana and began running through the practice again. He was seeing Madeleine tonight. He had to be ready, if they chose that time to come for him. Sai'ten thought to trap him by his love, perhaps. But this time, he would break the trap and rage free upon his captors. END OF PART 7/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 8/14 Mulder found his way to the Mythology section of the main Chicago University library by way of several jeans- clothed, sneaker-footed students who pointed him in the right direction. He checked in the online catalogue under IMMORTALITY and cross-referenced against TRANSYLVANIA and found the place under the Dewey Decimal System. The way to finding the book led him down into the basement of the library, where the stacks were as shadowy and dusty as those of the Cardinal's archives. Here and there students hid in the blissful silence, either to study or get down to more important business. Mulder tried to steer clear of the necking couples in his search for a seat. He eventually found a place and settled a notebook there, then ventured into the stacks again to find the book he was searching for. He found it settled amongst a dozen dry academic treatises on the nature of mythology. "The Concept of Immortality in Eastern European Cultures", by Victor Gemmell. He skipped the introduction and most of the early chapters, looking instead for the concrete examples that the author had probably gone into. VAMPIRICISM was Chapter 11. He scanned through most of it, but stopped at one passage: `The section of the world described as Transylvania in Stoker's novel "Dracula" is well-chronicled in that work of fiction. The author complements Stoker in that regard. Transylvania, until the twentieth century, remained one of the most remote and superstitious areas of the world, rivalled only by such exotic places as the Mosquito Coast in South America and Outer Mongolia in Asia. Fitting enough, then, that the legend of immortality should be set in such predominantly rural and superstitious surroundings. Add to the remoteness of the region the many feudal princes and principalities that existed at that time, and one has a breeding-ground for some of the eldest traditions in the world.' Mulder considered it and skipped ahead more. Dracula and other supposed vampires were covered in exquisite detail. He was surprised such writers as Stephen King didn't consult it more often. However, it was the fourth section of the chapter that caught his attention. `NEMESES OF IMMORTALITY: Fighting fire with fire. As vampires were seen as the enemies of God and Man, it was only appropriate for converted Christians and semi- pagan storytellers to invent some form of Adversary to provide the balance for good and evil. It was also only logical that such an adversary should be able to combat the vampire as an equal. Thus the legend of the Peacemaker or Dawnbringer arose in this same region. The essential content of this myth appears to have been that while vampires prey on men, there is always the Hand of God ensuring they do not obtain too much power over mortal men. A physical reminder of God's protection, to supplement the spiritual belief in the supernatural. The kernel of the Dawnbringer myth is of an eternal hunter of vampires, his sole charge from God being to slay each and every one in existence. Naturally, he cannot complete this Sisyphean task in one lifetime, and therefore is granted the special dispensation from God that he cannot die. It is said in some villages that vampires fear the Dawnbringer above and beyond the traditional banes of stake, crucifix and sunlight; while these things can be avoided, the Dawnbringer cannot; the vampire must always know that one day, the Dawnbringer will turn his attention the vampire's way, and will conduct a search and hunt as tireless and endless as the vampire's very existence. It must be noted that the precise nature of the Dawnbringer is uncertain; the stories vary from one village to the next. The Dawnbringer may be an army of angels in one village, a single man in another, or anything in between. The central focus in this legend is on the Dawnbringer as eternal champion or knight of God, representing all humanity against the forces of darkness.' The chapter continued on in more detail, but Mulder leaned back in his chair. Could it be true? Was the Dawnbringer in Chicago right now? He dismissed the concept of living immortality; that went against both Scully's and his own beliefs. He could perhaps accept the notion of vampires, though Scully's objections were pointed and well-founded. She would have been surprised how little he actually believed it himself. But if all the killings were was the dramatisation some form of Transylvanian legend, they were taking it very seriously indeed. Something else gnawed at the back of his mind. What Temple had said about the church, and what Slattery had said about stirring up a hornet's nest in looking for reasons for the building's closure. And more than that; the agonising uncertainty that he might have missed something, that he hadn't looked in every corner of the church. He had to look over Saint Martin's Church again. * * * Scully also decided to go to church. There was a small, modern chapel called All Saints' just up from the FBI's main office in Chicago. It nestled in a building's side, set back into the wall so going into the front office seemed to be like going into some concrete tomb. Yet the same aura of peace that she'd known in churches as a child washed over her again. She'd asked her father once why it happened. "Because they're safe, Dana," said her father seriously. "They're the safest places I know." That time was long past, now, and she'd drifted away from the church, but the rudiments of peace remained. And God knew, she needed a little peace. She'd been able to cope with her potential condition while she still had her work to do, but the investigation had ground down to that awful waiting that every cop, from the Commissioner to the lowest flatfoot pounding the beat, knew all too well. Waiting for the labs. Waiting for the usual suspects to be rounded up. Too much time to think. The cargo manifests from a dozen aircraft and ships were being faxed to the Chicago field office, but none of them offered a lot of hope. Whoever had brought bloodbirch into the United States must have been moving it into the country as matches. There had been no importation of wood of that type on the East Coast. They were waiting for confirmation from California that none had come through there. She opened the door and walked in, across soft carpets to the chapel proper. The small font of holy water at the entrance was still, silent. She dipped right hand's index and middle fingers into it and crossed herself. The ceremony came back comfortingly fast to her memory. She started down one of the aisles. There was no Mass on; the church pews were silent, empty. Light glowed from fluorescent lamps in the top of the chapel's ceiling onto the large wooden cross hanging above the altar. The white walls looked down at her quietly. She picked a pew at random, genuflected and sat down. For a few moments she just sat there, unmoving, listening to the silence. Cancer. It was one of the things she'd come to despise most while she was studying medicine. Not simply because it killed people; there were many diseases that did that. It was the mocking nature of the illness. It took people slowly, gently, not humiliating them in the way a broken arm, leg or other body part did, but instead turning them into something awful over a period of years. Taking their hair away. Wasting them, turning their bodies into bundles of sticks that doctors mistakenly called bones. Leaving them strung up to so many machines Giger could draw his best work from a portrait. She hated the illness. Sean Connery, in `Medicine Man', had once described it as the Plague of the Twentieth Century. Naturally, she'd liked that movie more than the reviews had given it, because it was a search for The Cure. But this was not South America, and she was not Lorraine Bracco to Mulder's Sean Connery. She had the illness. Where it had come from was irrelevant. She stared up at the cross. You were more than Man, she thought. I know it. Not because it was taught to me, but because every time I hear your Sermon on the Mount something echoes and resonates inside my heart. Most speeches get boring after the first five minutes. You didn't have the benefit of amplification or nice seating arrangements or even prepared notes. And they listened to you. In their hundreds, in their thousands, down through the centuries. But you'll have to forgive me -- and if you are all you say you are, you will -- if I ask why you did this to me. I can bear this. I'll have to, if the results come out the way I think they will. What I want to know is why you chose me and now. Are you carrying a grudge against Fox Mulder? Is that why you hit him with this? He may not believe in you, but he carries about as many sins on his back as you did under that chunk of tree. First his sister, then his father, then my sister, and now me. He doesn't take it on himself in so many words, but I can see it. I saw it last night. Is that how you want to prove to me that you exist? By grinding him down? I don't believe that any more than you probably do. When I ask, all you say is "Where were you, when I made the world?" but you're a God of love. I have to believe that. And as for Mulder ... I really don't care what you think of him. I only know that he's been there for me when I needed him, and he's given me my space when I wanted it. I don't know what will happen between us. This thing has been eating me up inside so much that I can hardly think straight any more. He'd give his life for me. Would I do the same for him? He trusts me. With everything that's happened in his life, that's a hard-won victory. I know he thinks I've given my life for his quest already. I guess the answer is yes. I'd sacrifice my life for him. If something does happen between Mulder and me because of the cancer, I'll thank you for it. If it turns out I don't have cancer, I'll thank you for it. But please, God, don't let me have this disease. Not for me. For him. He doesn't deserve it. Stop hurting him. For a while. Please. There was silence, both in her mind and in the church. She listened, hoping to hear ... she didn't know what. Her hands absently wandered over to a thick book on the ledge where hymnbooks and flyers lay supine in the light and the silence. The book was a missal, a volume that chronicled the readings and prayers for every church service in the Catholic calendar. She opened it at random. It fell open on a page of the Good Friday mass, where the trial, crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ were chronicled and recounted. A reading from the Book of John caught her eye. `The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching. Jesus answered, "I have spoken openly for all the world to hear; I have always taught in the synagogue and in the Temple where all the Jews meet together; I have said nothing in secret. But why ask me? Ask my hearers what I taught: they know what I said." At these words, one of the guards standing by gave Jesus a slap in the face, saying "Is that the way to answer the high priest?" Jesus replied, "If there is something wrong in what I said, point it out; but if there is no offence in it, why do you strike me?"' She closed the missal and breathed deeply, then stood, genuflected and left the church. * * * By the time he got to Saint Martin's, twilight was stinging the streets a dark blue. Thunderclouds rolled overhead, a storm in progress. Lucky he'd brought his umbrella. He had walked from the university. It was a lot further than he thought. He stood there for a moment, looking at it. The police tape was still up, the yellow tape flapping in the breeze, and small remnants of police presence remained: dead cigarettes, discarded coffee cups. They were inconsequential, though, against the size and shape of the church. It sat there as it had for the past eighty years, unchanged, the moss less than a distraction as it ruminated on some purpose he didn't know the nature of. He walked across the road and up to what remained of the front door of the church. And it was only then that it struck him. There was no graffiti. Within walking distance of a university and a public high school, and not a mark of graffiti had touched the place. Talk about miracles. He pushed in the front door. The leaves stirred at his entry in a breath of wind. The pews still lay broken here. The dirt piled up. He glanced at the remaining parts of the building. The walls had been carved beautifully. Though the stained- glass had been smashed out of the windows, figures and patterns weaved intricately over the walls. He walked on. Above him, the remains of the choir loft jutted out like the bottom jaw of an animal. Further ahead was the vestry. He stopped for a second, trying to get a feel for the atmosphere of this place when it was still functional. He failed. The air seemed to whistle bleakly through very stone in the building. He could not imagine this place ever being a house of worship. The thunder rumbled. He glanced up, then carried on to the remains of the vestry. He walked in, staring around. Here the priest would have dressed for church, saying his prayers. It just felt like an old, battered room now. He turned to leave, suddenly feeling very silly. What was he doing in this old ruin of a place, anyway? It wasn't like he'd find-- He saw the carved mark on the back of the door. Stared a little closer. Some kind of circle with a stroke in it. He fumbled for a sketchpad. Sudden pain smashed through his back. Fire raced up his spine and he tumbled. A feeling like sweat trickled down his back, but he knew it wasn't sweat, had to be blood-- A foot smashed into his ribs. He couldn't breathe. His eyes slammed shut, even as his hands went to clutch that area of his body. Something grabbed him, lifted him. He managed to get his eyes open. He saw teeth. He heard an animal roar, then felt himself flying. His injured back hit the door of the vestry and crashed through it, splinters flying. He screamed. Fresh blasts of pain assaulted his nervous system. He managed to open his eyes. It was the teenager. The one they'd found here. The one with hardly a mark on his body. Except for the two spots of blood on his neck. His skin was slightly grey. The pupils of the eyes were impossibly wide. Two points of whiteness poked out from below his top lip. Teeth. He was naked, and muscles rippled along his arms, legs and torso. Mulder's mind whispered to him. The kid was dead. Dead, gone. Deceased. Or not. Vampire. Nosferatu. It started towards him, grinning, the teeth filed to sharp points, when another dark shape suddenly interposed itself between the naked figure and him. Mulder heard a scream and a strong, powerful voice before he passed out. END OF PART 8/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 9/14 When he came to, hands were on him. He was on his back, his shirt was off, and something was working on his back. He panicked for a second, started to struggle, but a hand gripped his shoulder. "Be still, agent Mulder." Slattery. He'd know that voice anywhere. He felt the priest slap something else on his back, and winced. "What's going on?" he managed. He was horrified to hear his voice sound like a wheeze. "Just a second." He felt Slattery lay another Something across his back. Focusing on the sensation, he thought to himself that it must be fabric or something like fabric. A bandage. "There," said the priest. "That should do for now. Let's see if we can get you on your feet. All right?" He felt hands gripping one of his shoulders, and responded by bunching his muscles together as he tried to get up. An ache from his ribs and back made him wince, but the pain was not bad. Yet. Together, they managed to get him to a sitting position. He glanced around. He was still in the church. The wind was blowing heavily. The dirt had caked itself to his body, and he absently reached up to brush it off. Slattery came around into his field of vision and handed Mulder his coat, which had been casually thrown aside. The priest sat down and looked at Mulder for long moments before speaking. "You certainly manage to get yourself into some situations, agent Mulder. In fact, I would say at the moment you are the sorriest-looking man I've ever seen." "I'm like a bad penny. I always turn up," said Mulder with a weak smile as he pulled the coat a bit closer around his shoulders. "So ... where do we begin?" Slattery sighed deeply. "I thought that might be your first question. I'm afraid I can't tell you any more than I told agent Scully." "If you're telling me that ... thing ... was the reason the church was closed--" "It's a reason. Not the reason." Slattery's eyes involuntarily flickered to the left. Mulder glanced in that direction. A naked body lay splayed out to the four points of the compass. At the centre of its chest, a wooden stake protruded out. Mulder's gaze snapped back to Slattery, suddenly noticing for the first time the cut on his cheek and the blood on one of his hands. "You ... killed ... it?" "Not kill, agent Mulder. After all your interest in the current situation, you should know better than that." "A vampire?" His back ached like fury. "It's not a common occurrence," said Slattery. "But common enough so that we know about it." "But this is a church. Sacred ground. How did it--" "It's not sacred ground, agent Mulder. This church has not been consecrated for many years now." "That's why it was closed, wasn't it? Those acts of vandalism were acts of a vampire, weren't they?" "That's close enough to the real reason." "But that's not all, is it? You know something about the killings. Those three kids we found here -- including that one there -- they were the work of vampires. But the others -- the decapitations, the stakings -- no vampire did those. It's the Dawnbringer, isn't it? And these three killings were retribution for the first three." Slattery looked up at the dark sky, then stared at Mulder again. "I told agent Scully that this was a matter that she should not get involved in. I'll tell you this. The Catholic Church does not want to involve itself in these killings either. This is a matter outside the jurisdiction of both Church and State. I was sent here to ensure that natural events run their course." "Is that why you came here?" "I came here to keep watch for the church." "No. That doesn't fit. You're not here just to keep watch. You finished off that vampire yourself because you were following me. You know something you're not telling me." "Believe it as you wish, agent Mulder. We have no desire to become involved in a war of condemned souls. That is the task of others." Slattery stood. "I've bound up the cuts that creature gave you as best I can, but I think you should call your partner and have her pick you up." He walked over to the body of the creature and pulled a small box of matches from his pocket. Then he lit one against the howling wind and threw it onto the body. It took light instantly, like dry tinder. Mulder faintly smelled gas. Slattery watched it for a moment, then calmly walked out of the remains of the church and into the rising darkness. He left Mulder to stare at the flames consuming the body. * * * Kane met Madeleine after lunch, and they spent a few hours at some movie where the protagonists made mad, animalistic love all over the screen for half the time, and made up with each other for the other half. In the back row, though, they hadn't been keeping score. And he was sure he'd made the right choice several times over by now. He insisted on leaving the long overcoat on, and the sword sometimes felt like it was going to cut a kidney out, but he wouldn't have traded it for all the money in the world. His hand crept into hers as they left, and she squeezed it tightly. He looked at her again, fascinated once more by how easily it had been. But that only brought back more knowledge of what it was he had to tell her. He remembered when he'd told Eleanor. She hadn't reacted much at all, only kissed him and then made love to him several times over. Life to counter the effect of lingering death. He pushed the knowledge down, content for the moment to simply stare into her beautiful eyes and convince himself that he could act as an ordinary man for a while longer. "What is it?" she asked him suddenly. He realised that some of his memories must have come through to his face. "Nothing. I was just thinking how beautiful you are." She cocked an eyebrow at him, mischief dancing around the corners of her mouth. "If that's a come-on line, it's a pretty bad one. But I'll take it up." He rolled his eyes. "Miss Chambers, you are insatiable." "Well, I have to enjoy the time I have before my son arrives." "You have a son?" Other men would have been scared by that; he found it only more attractive about her. "Well, no," she said, spooning up alongside him provocatively and letting her voice drop to a husky whisper, "But maybe you can help me out with that." Her laugh at his amazed and then embarassed expression was like music. "Come on," she said, "let's get home. Before I can't control myself any longer." She pulled him down an alley. "Down here is a short-cut." They stepped down the alley, avoiding the dripping fire escapes and pools of water that were a product of the rainstorm that had come on earlier that evening. He'd never felt better about life. She was beautiful. He wanted to marry her. He stopped her halfway down. "Madeleine--" And then he felt Them coming. He cut short. Hie eyes began tracking over the fire escapes, the windows, the ends of the alley like a robot. He felt the smile drop from his face. A dagger of ice caressed his stomach. "Kane, what's wrong?" His eyes squinted in the darkness, every shadow suddenly that much deeper. "Madeleine, go. Run!" He was turning slowly, looking for the best cover, the widest parts of the alley. Nothing. Yet. The sensation of dread was growing, though, like a black wave rushing a dark beach. More than one of them for certain. Beside him, Madeleine's voice was jumping octaves, demanding to know what was wrong. He threw aside the trenchcoat's length and drew the dai- katana, the metal glinting silver in the light. He heard her sudden cry of fear and snatched a glance to her. "I'll explain later. Go now!" He was about to admonish her a third time when they dropped down from the shadows. Like always. His eyes flicked around even as he stepped between Madeleine and them. His mind counted. Six. Seven. Eight. His concern edged up several notches. "Kane, who are these people?" Madeleine's voice, from behind him. "I'm telling you again -- go! I can defend myself, but I can't protect you as well. Run!" He let the last word snap out with the force of a low kiai, and was gratified to finally hear her footsteps quickly receding from him, back up the alley, up the way they'd come. He backed up a step or two, as if he would go the same way, then held his ground and took the ready stance, sword low. Sai'ten grinned as he took a step forward. Kane's anxiety inched further, but so did his rage. "You told her your real name, Dawnbringer? I'm surprised. You didn't even do that with her predecessor." "I'm only Kane Adamson to her, Sai'ten. Leave her out of this. It doesn't concern her." "True. But I haven't had much fun for a long time. Maybe I'll send the others to pay her a visit." Calm. Be calm. The eye of the void. He told Eleanor's shade to run as well, to a place where they couldn't find her. "I'm surprised you don't have the courage to do so yourself. Getting old, are we? Can't even hunt down a single woman without all your brothers to hold you up?" Sai'ten's eyes glimmered so brightly now one could be mistaken for thinking there were diamonds within. "Very good, Dawnbringer. I'm glad to see I don't have to kill a moping fool. You'll be that much more satisfying." "You'll have to catch me first," said Kane. Time. It was on his side. The longer they stayed out, the closer dawn was. True, sunrise was a good eight to twelve hours away, but the rule still applied. It gave him more time to seek an advantage in the arena of combat. Keep them talking. "Oh, we will," Sai'ten was saying. "I think this time you are outmatched. There are eight of us, after all. You hunt the singular." "I've been getting practice in. Thank you for sending those others out, incidentally. Those last two, in particular, had your smell on them. And you've picked a poor battleground. You can't come at me all at once. Your friends will be positively tripping over each other's feet. On the other hand, this," he hefted the blade slightly, "has no problem dealing with you one at a time. I'm surprised you even managed to find me." This was a more relevant question; he needed to know how the Sai'ten had managed to track him down so quickly. "It took us some time. We've spent the hours since sundown looking for you. But we knew you'd be prowling around somewhere waiting for some of us to feed. And here you are." "Yes, that cloud of obscurity is a problem, isn't it? For all your vaunted powers, you can't even find a single man who's been killing your kind for the past--" "Enough talk!" snarled Sai'ten. "You will die, here, tonight." "I've heard that many times before. It doesn't work on me anymore." "Fine. Shall we be about our business, then?" Kane raised his blade in a mocking half-salute. "Whenever you want, Sai'ten." "Kill him," said the leader, and they came at him like black clouds across an icy sea ... and his blade flashed like lightning in the dark storm. END OF PART 9/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 10/14 Scully sucked in a breath of air through her gritted teeth. The sound echoed through the interrogation chamber that she'd appropriated down at the precinct as the closest stop. How Mulder had managed to even walk after the beating he'd taken was beyond her. His back was a collection of large red circles which would eventually turn angry purples and blues. To say nothing of the four long slash marks that had been pasted over by Slattery. He winced slightly when she asked him to take off the coat and sit on the table where she could get a look at him. "So do you think I should take that offer of a topless spread in Playboy?" he said. She could just about see the smile he'd have on his face. "I think we could get you a guest role on Wild Kingdom," she replied, frowning. He turned slightly, glancing at her quizzically. "As a tropical bird," she said. "You're going to have all the colours of the rainbow on your back in two days' time. How did you get this way, Mulder?" "First the guy mistook my back for a field to be ploughed." He winced as she gingerly peeled the first of the long dressings off his wounds. "Then he showed me the door. Guess the door and I didn't hit it off." Scully nodded, peering at the wound. "It's not bad. I don't think you'll need stitches." "No railway tracks up my back?" "Bandages and rest should take care of it. I don't think it'll even scar. You've been lucky, Mulder. I want you to get your back checked at the hospital, but aside from that I think you'll come through this okay." "How about my ribs?" "Bruised as well, but unbroken. Frankly, I'm amazed you weren't hurt worse." "They called me Timex at school. Take a lickin' and keep on tickin'." She smiled at that. He winced a little as she took the other strips off and replaced them with proper bandages. "Okay, you can put your coat back on." He did so, rolling his shoulders one after the other experimentally. "You'll start it bleeding again," she warned. He stopped. "Feels like you did a good job, though. Thanks." She nodded in acknowledgement. "So what else did Slattery say?" "Nothing else. He left, I called you and here we are." She nodded. She'd heard the whole story on the way in: his research at the library and the attack by the vampire. She had seen the boy's body for herself as she helped Mulder to the car, and called ahead for another police team to get out to Saint Martin's and pick the corpse up. She didn't have much choice but start to come round to his point of view, even if it was a crazy one. "So what do you think, Mulder?" she said, trying to convey as much openness in her voice as possible. "I think this person -- the Dawnbringer -- is here in Chicago right now. It's the same guy who killed all those other unidentifed victims in those other cases I told you about. The Catholic Church doesn't want it investigated into it because they know they should be dealing with it. It's right in their traditional ballcourt." "You said Slattery talked about a war of condemned souls. I don't think it's Church doctrine that any soul is condemned." "If there's any example of a condemned soul, it's probably a vampire. The legends don't ever say how to redeem it, just how to kill it." "But a war of condemned souls ... that doesn't sound like something a Dawnbringer would be." "No, you're right. I can't figure that part out. But if we can just get a description of him, Scully, we'll have him. And then we can decide whether or not we want to charge him." "What?" "One of those things nearly killed me tonight, Scully. Those who die by a vampire's bite become vampires themselves. If this Dawnbringer is God's idea of a pest control operator, I'm just wondering whether we should interfere." "That's completely irrational, Mulder. There have been too many deaths for us to ignore the consequences. When we find this man, we'll have to bring him to justice." Mulder nodded. "Okay. Did you find anything new from customs on the importation of those bloodbirch stakes?" "Actually, yes. Los Angeles Customs took a shipment of bloodbirch that was assigned to a corporation called Treadstone 31. I checked with the Business Registry, and the corporation is a shelf company. It hasn't been accessed for some time. But the last director, someone called Kane Adamson, wound up his interest about three years ago and disappeared. I called Agent Pendrell at the FBI to run rush checks through all the relevant databases." "What did you have to do for him?" asked Mulder, a wry smile creeping onto his features. She shrugged. "He was pretty good about it. I only have to sleep with him for one night when I get back to Washington." His shocked expression only lasted a moment, but she saw it and burst out laughing. He smiled widely. "That's good thinking," he said solemnly, which only sent her into further hysterics. It was that moment that Detective Lloyd Marshall (of the red and white Thunderbird) chose to walk in. "Well, I'm glad to see you two have so much time on your hands that you can amuse yourselves," he said. "Unfortunately, the rest of us have to do real detective work." They composed themselves quickly, though the thought of Marshall playing a role in `Grease' threatened to send Scully over the edge again. "What's the problem, detective?" The detective paused to shift his chewing gum to the other side of his mouth. "We just got a potential witness to the last two decapitations. A maitre'd at a restaurant says he saw two people leaving his place a few minutes before the murders happened. A man and a woman." Mulder's attention was well and truly snared now. "Do we have a description on the man?" "No. But the maitre'd remembers making the reservations in the name of the woman. A Madeleine Chambers. Apparently, they stayed on a long time after closing hour. We got her driver's licence and her address." "Where's he now?" "He's making a statement now." "Good. Get a police artist down, see if he can give us a description of the man. Agent Scully and myself will go stake out her apartment." "Yeah. Sure." Marshall took another bite on his chewing gum and left the room. Scully was looking at Mulder. "Are you sure you're up to this, Mulder? You just took a bad beating--" "I'm okay, Scully. Let's go find this woman." * * * The doorbell drilled in his ears. He ignored it. Unfortunately, in doing so, he forgot to turn off the intercom which was installed in the bottom door. He left it on as a matter of course. He regretted it now. "Damn it, Kane! Let me in! I know you're in there, you left your car outside!" Madeleine. Damn. Something made him stand up. Whatever it was obviously had nothing to do with his wound. He pulled himself, one item at a time, to his feet and then the door. Bookshelf, cabinet, lounge chair, sofa, until he was finally leaning against the doorjamb. "Kane?" her voice demanded, the concern and tiredness gleaming through her voice. He turned the doorknob. In a second, she had pushed the door open and was staring at him. Still dressed in what he'd seen her in a few hours ago. "You'd better ... come in," he whispered, grimacing midway through. He began to slide down the doorjamb. She grabbed his shoulder, sweating as they struggled to get him over to the sofa. Somehow, they made it. "Not ... on my back," he whispered, and she let him stay sitting up. It was then that she noticed the blood on her hand. And the gaping hole in his shirt. And the cut running for a number of inches down his back. She almost lost her dinner then, but forced it down as his voice rasped in the air again. "I'm ... hurt, Madeleine. You have to--" He closed his eyes for a moment, blinking away a drop of sweat -- "Have to help me." "A hospital -- we can get you to --" "No ... no hospitals. Explain later. Can't risk it. Too many innocent lives endangered. You'll have to stitch up the wound yourself." He gestured with his free arm. "Needle ... and thread's on the table." She did feel her stomach turn over then; ran for the bathroom and threw up heavily in the toilet bowl. She took a deep breath, trying to get the awful smell of bile away from her. There was an awful burning in the back of her throat. It was a few long moments before she recovered herself enough to get to her feet and stumble back into the living room. He had managed to turn himself over so he lay on his stomach on the sofa. She glanced around. The needle and thread were there, all right, the needle gleaming like a sliver splinter in the light. "You're serious?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. He seemed to summon strength before he answered. "I've done it ... before." She picked up the needle and thread and walked gingerly over to the sofa. "I think I'm going to be sick again," she said as she sat down behind him. "If you are ... get it over with. Just think of it ... as cordwood. It'll ... help." She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened. "All right, Kane. I'll do it. But on one condition. While I'm doing it, you tell me who those men were and what the hell is going on!" He closed his eyes. She thought he was sleeping. But then he opened them again. "Agreed. Tie a small knot in the end of the thread and thread the needle. Then make the first puncture at the bottom of the cut. Like you're sewing normally." She exposed the wound, wiping a little of the blood away and set to work, trying to block out his flinching and coughing as he spoke to her. It partially succeeded. For his wounded state, his obvious exhaustion and coughing, he still had a resonating voice. She bit her lip to keep from crying. "Those men in the alleyway were not men. They were creatures that have plagued man since the dawn of time. Have you ever heard of vampires? I can't see your face, but I know that you don't believe me. It's true. Straight out of a Dracula story." "Why did they want you?" she asked, hearing her voice heading for the borders of hysteria. She almost dropped the needle at that point. One part of her mind slapped her. Get it together, woman. He needs you. "Because I hunt them." "You hunt them?" He nodded painfully. "Other people have families, children. I have only them. And every time I meet one of them, I kill them." "Why?" " It's my lot in life. Beyond that ... I can't tell you. But they know me from a long time ago. Peacemaker, they call me. Sometimes the Dawnbringer. I'm their fourth bane, along with wooden stakes, crosses and sunlight. Because I bring death to them." And he told her about Eleanor, and what they'd done to her. All up, it took three hours. He told her everything, letting the secret finally come out like pus from a lanced sore. Everything. Including the day it happened. December 25, 1559. She stopped at that, making him flinch, but he compartmentalised the pain and stored it away, cutting it off. "But that means you're ..." "Over three hundred years old. Yes. I cannot die." She stared at his back, unable to believe her eyes. "But the wound ... your blood ..." "They will heal eventually, at a much faster rate than ordinary men. But the wound has to be closed, and I need rest." Her fingers were working separately from her; the amazement in her mind hadn't translated that far down. She pulled the final stitch tightly and sat back. "It's done," she managed to say. He breathed deeply, letting the tension flow from his body. "You've done superb work," he said. "I can feel it." "Do you have any bandages?" "I won't need them. Give it two hours under open air, and there will only be a scar. You can take the stitches out then." She got up from the sofa and walked to the sink, washed her hands blankly. Then she turned back to him. "You fought these men ... this vampire called Sai'ten, didn't you?" He nodded as he pulled himself to a sitting position, grimacing with the pain all the way. "What about Sai'ten?" He breathed deeply, letting the last firings of pain pass away. "No. After the seventh one gave me this, he fled. I finished him off, but I was too weak to pursue Sai'ten." "He'll be back, won't he?" "It's ... possible that he knows where I am now. My sword--" "Your sword?" "My sword ... was able to obscure my presence from his instincts and magic. I don't know if it can still do that." "Then we've got to get moving. If he comes back, you're in no condition to fight him. I'm going to my apartment and getting my things." "Madeleine--" "What are you going to say, Kane? That I shouldn't put myself in danger? Was that what you were going to do when they came back for you? Run out on me and hope they didn't come after me instead? No way. I think I love you. And if you're in this, so am I. And the safest place with that ... that ... thing running around out there is right next to you." He sank back into the sofa, shaking his head slowly. "It'll be too dangerous ..." "Bullshit. I'll see you back here in half an hour." She heard him protest as she slammed the door to his apartment, and kept going. END OF PART 10/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 11/14 Mulder shifted uncomfortably in the seat of the car and stared out at the heavy rain barrelling into the street. They were directly opposite Madeleine Chambers' address, a large apartment building. "Mulder, if you don't stop fidgeting, I'll shoot you." "It's these bandages you gave me, Scully. Somebody must have put itching powder in them at the factory." She shook her head in exasperation. "We only just got here." "We've been here three hours already." "And we could be here a lot longer, so just relax." Silence. Then the crinkling of a small plastic bag, followed by a gunshot-like snap and a sound like a grizzly bear chewing on rocks. Silence. More crinkling. Snap. Chewing. "Do you have to do that?" "Dhoo whatfh, Schully?" "Make it sound like you're executing them." "Sforry." More crinkling, admittedly at a lower volume. "Want one?" She shook her head. Silence. He tapped his fingers on the steering-wheel. The Waltz of the Flowers (percussion allegro). She closed her eyes. "Mulder, just turn on the radio." The rendition ceased. He hurriedly pushed the button. James Brown's "Sex Machine" bellowed through the speakers. He hurriedly twisted the volume knob down so the black guy's raspy yelling became a low buzz. A few seconds at that volume was slightly less annoying than mosquitoes. She looked at him to find he was staring at her. She nodded soundlessly. He changed the station. James Brown's buzz became Kurt Cobain's groaning buzz. He pressed the next button along. The Commitments, singing "Dark End of the Street." She immediately started humming along. He looked at her strangely. "What?" she said. "I thought you were a blues fan." "A blues fan?" "You listen to B.B. King, right?" "So?" "B.B. King is blues. The Commitments are soul." "What's your point?" "You can't listen to both." "Mulder, that's the craziest -- " "They're fundamentally opposed. Anybody who listens to blues can't like soul." "I -- look, I just want to listen to the song, okay?" "It's not right." "Since when did you become the music critic? Next you'll be telling me I can listen to Jimi Hendrix but I can't hear him." "Now we're getting somewhere." "Mulder --" And with that, the song finished and the graveyard-shift DJ started talking about the sponsors of the station. Scully stared at it, then at Mulder, with the deadliest look in her arsenal, the one that made her sister cry once. Apparently, he got the point. He switched the stations. B.B. King and U2 singing "When Love Comes To Town." They both relaxed. A car rolled up to the street and slowed to a halt outside the apartment. They gritted their teeth. Mulder killed the radio as a black-haired woman got out of the car and started for the apartment block. "What do you think?" murmured Scully. "Who else would be out at this time of night?" said Mulder. "Aside from vampires and rejected FBI agents, you mean?" He gave her a hurt expression as they got out of the car and jogged across the road. The woman was at her front doorstep, and she turned as they walked up. Fear awakened in her eyes. Mulder pulled his identification out of his pocket. "Madeleine Chambers?" "Yes?" "I'm special agent Fox Mulder, this is special agent Dana Scully. We're with the FBI. Could we talk for a few minutes?" She stared at the identification for a few seconds, then shook her head. She started to turn back to unlocking the door. Mulder moved around beside her. "Where is he?" he asked. She stared at him with frightened eyes. "Look, we're not going to hurt you. We just need to know where your friend is." "I know you won't hurt me. You do, and I'll sue the Bureau for everything it's worth. And if you need to know where some friend of mine is, look in the phone book. Let your fingers do the walking." "I prefer to let my fingers do the talking." He whipped a set of handcuffs from his pocket and snapped them onto his wrist and hers. "Madeleine Chambers, I'm placing you under arrest, pending charges for the murder of two men at 1121 Valleywood Avenue, last night. You have the right to remain silent--" She was staring at the handcuffs. "You can't do this!" "I just did." "You don't understand. He's hurt. He needs my help." "Then let us help him," said Mulder with sudden intensity. "Look, Miss Chambers, we know he's been killing people. We're getting close to finding him. His only way out now is to come in while he can still give an explanation. If he doesn't, there'll be trouble. Very bad trouble. A lot of innocent people could die. If you help us, we avoid all that. You don't, and you'll go up as an accessory to murder one. That carries--" "I know what it carries. I'm a judge's associate." "Then you should know better than to let yourself go down for this." Madeleine glanced once at Scully. "You won't hurt him?" asked Madeleine. "Not unless he makes the first move," said Scully. She seemed to be thinking hard. Finally, she nodded. "All right." * * * A bad night. The storm blew over Saint Martin's Church and seemed to hold there for some time. Thunder pealed from the rooftops. Lightning raked the sky with electricity, smashing trees near the church with reckless intensity. Sai'ten didn't notice the rain. He had his eyes closed. He saw not the storm or the lightning, but the stars beyond them. And he knew the time was almost here. He had a name, a face, a smell to put to the Dawnbringer, now. With the coming of the conjunction, the last vestiges of the Silver Rivers blade's protection would fade. There would be no place for the Dawnbringer to hide. And better than that, the Dawnbringer was wounded. It would take him time to recover. Time enough for Sai'ten and what remained of his cohorts to tear his heart out. There was anger at the memory. Kane Adamson had been tougher than the lore suggested. None of the Wordsmiths had ever dreamed of the Dawnbringer's fighting skill. He had held the stories in contempt. No longer. He had thought that the decimation of the Circle of Ten had been done by subterfuge, by use of shadows darker than their own. He was wrong. The Dawnbringer was as formidable an opponent as God himself. He checked himself from being overcome by fear. The Dawnbringer had claimed many of his brethren, that much was true, but he was not immortal. And if one attempt failed, the Silver Rivers blade would not hide him any longer. There would be others. They would grind him down eventually. He smiled at that and turned his attention back to the skies. He saw them through the clouds now, pulsing with dark energy, vacuums upon vacuums. All was in readiness. He waited ... and waited ... Hit! The earth opened up. Stinging light enshrouded his body. He screamed aloud, knowledge being simultaneously given to him and taken away from him. A column of power smashed from distant star to aligned planets to earth, to this place, the one spot on earth where the power could be drawn on. Sai'ten was in its path. He roared with the pain and exultation as the power suffused him. Felt himself lifting off the ground, levitating, borne up by the dark crystals of knowledge exploding inside his mind. The pain increased, and increased, until it felt like he was being bathed in full sunlight. Then, abruptly, it stopped. He fell, landing on the ground with a wet thud. But a second later he was on his feet again. He closed his eyes, directing his inner eye to fly out across the city, over the teeming hordes of humanity. A glimmering light in the distance attracted his attention. He sent the eye towards it, the knowledge filling him that this was what he sought. A police station, somewhere downtown. The eye passed women, menstrual cramps exploding into pain. Dogs snarled in its path. Water seemed to turn stale in its wake. It kept moving, until it settled on one cell. The metal door was no bar. It shifted through it. And inside, the Dawnbringer. Alone. Weaponless. Handcuffed. Kane looked up, and though he could not see the eye, knew it was there. Looked up and set his mouth in a grim line. Not fear. Not anger. Resolve. Sai'ten snarled and let the eye dissipate, opening his physical eyes again. He'd found the Dawnbringer. Mortals were guarding him, but they were of no moment. He stared out at the terrain, and sent out the Call, the mightiest one ever known, its power echoing out across Illinois and into neighbouring states. And he heard the surprised voices of recognition and acknowledgment of his Call. And he felt their movement as they started towards Chicago. He sat, and began to wait once more. * * * Mulder looked at him through the cell door. He stopped staring up at the corner of the room at back at the floor in front of him. Mulder distinctly saw him sigh. "He doesn't look like a mass murderer," said Scully. "None of them do, really," said Mulder softly. "They're always ordinary people." He looked at Scully. "Although if what she says about him is true ..." "I'm not buying that, Mulder. I accept that you were attacked by something that might have been a vampire. And I'll admit that his shoulder injury has shown an amazing recovery rate for the time he's been here. But that doesn't make Kane Adamson immortal." "Well, he didn't contest the charges. Marshall threw in the 1992 murders as well, and he hasn't contested them, either. He doesn't want a lawyer. He didn't try to run when we broke his door down." "So?" Mulder shrugged. "We've heard from her what he thinks he is. Maybe we should give him a chance to tell his side of it." Scully raised her eyebrows. "If that's what you want. I'm going to call the Customs Office, see if they want to press charges for importing the bloodbirch." As if in punctuation, her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and turned away from him. Mulder looked back in at Adamson again, watching that calm face, but listening to the call. "Scully. Yes." A pause. "Yes, I have. What did you find?" A longer pause, lasting several seconds. "I see. Yes, thank you. Thank you very much." Then the soft beep as she terminated the call. "What was it?" he asked without looking at her. "It was the field office. The results of the physical came in." He swung away from the window, looking at her. Her eyes were bright. "The cancer?" he asked softly. "Yeah." She took a deep breath. Then a smile burst out from inside her. "The growth is benign. They can remove it at any time." His heart leapt. He grabbed her in a bear hug and lifted her off her feet, swinging her around in the air, laughing his fool head off. He knew what they'd probably be thinking all around him, but he didn't care. They'd given her life back. Somewhere in his mind, his father smiled in that dark room and walked out with a wave of farewell and friendship. He set her down, and they looked at each other. Something passed between them. Something that would have to wait for a more appropriate time. "I'll go and call Customs," she said. She couldn't contain her smile. "I'll see you after," he said. She turned and started up the hall, a spring in her step that made her look ten years younger. He watched her for a few seconds longer, then turned to the cell. He pushed the handle and walked into the small, metal room. Adamson looked up as he entered. "You've been watching me," he said. "I'm curious about some things." "Such as whether I'd be bouncing off the walls by this time?" Mulder pulled up the other chair in the room. "You tell me." "Your demeanour doesn't mark you as regular police," said Adamson. "Not to mention your conservative dress, which an undercover police officer wouldn't wear. And you're not a detective, either, because a detective would be out gathering forensic evidence. No. You are an FBI agent. The detective you sent in before charged me with the deaths in 1992. Therefore your interest lies not only in the most recent spate, but also in a number of others dating back for many years." "You see a lot. Now maybe you want to tell me what you've seen." Adamson leaned back against the wall. Mulder remembered the fast healing rate of the wound. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. And in any case it would not matter." "Mister Adamson, I can't remember whether the death penalty still applies in the state of Illinois for murder- -" "Death! Well, that settles it. I'm definitely not telling you anything." "All right, then. Maybe if I tell you some things. I don't know your real name, but in the mountains of Transylvania you're known as the Dawnbringer. Or Peacemaker. You're as popular as garlic among vampires. You hunt them. And you probably haven't changed your physical appearance for a good three hundred years or more, though your name might well have changed." He paused. "And you've got some involvement in why Saint Martin's Church was closed in 1920. So maybe you want to fill in the gaps." END OF PART 11/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 12/14 Adamson's eyes had slitted. It was the first display of emotion he'd given. He breathed out. "It sounds as though you've done your research." "It's my job, Mr. Adamson." Adamson nodded. "Where's Madeleine?" "She's fine. We're not holding her against her will. She wants to see you." Adamson closed his eyes and it seemed a flicker of relief crossed his face. He opened his eyes again. "You want to hear my full story. Something that I have not told anyone for centuries." "Yes." "Do you believe in God, FBI man?" "My name is Mulder. I want to believe." "You should, agent Mulder. Because God is the reason I am what I am." "How?" Adamson's eyes drifted into memory. "If you read your Bible, agent Mulder, you will find a passage in the New Testament -- the Book of John, I believe -- where Jesus Christ is put on trial before the Jewish official Annas." "What are you saying?" "I remember the smell of incense in that chamber. It was faint myrrh, the smell of repentance, the smell of the tomb. I remember Annas' robes. They were silk, rare as diamonds in those days. He was decked in them. I was proud to serve someone like him. He was -- what's the term -- upwardly mobile. In a few years, he might well have become the high priest, and all his court would have prospered in the wake of that appointment." He was staring off into space. Mulder's spine chilled as he realised Adamson wasn't trying to make it up. He was staring into that time. And all the metal walls could not keep out the vividness of the memory. "It was a hot morning," said Adamson, faintly. "The women were out looking for water early as I went to the palace that day. The gossip was thick in the passageways. Apparently, the Temple guards had gone out last night and arrested a young rabbi who had been causing trouble. There'd been a struggle. One of the servants' ears was cut off. They had been really working this rabbi over during the night. He was due to stand trial before the Governor that day. They brought him in, this rabble-rouser. This revolutionary. I was expecting someone like that bastard Barabbas who was waiting to die. Instead, they brought in a weedy-looking carpenter from Nazareth who couldn't start a cattle stampede, let alone a revolution. Except his eyes." Adamson stopped talking. Mulder waited a moment. "What about his eyes?" Adamson acted as though he hadn't heard. "A carpenter would have soiled his pants the moment Annas glanced at him. But this man didn't. And it was because of those eyes. They weren't the eyes of a carpenter. He looked at me once when they brought him in. For a second, we locked gazes. And it felt like the sky was staring at me from behind those eyes. The stars would have been right at home there. It scared me. And while they were questioning him, I could see it was scaring Annas too. His eyes and the way he talked. Annas asked him something about his teachings, and this carpenter asked Annas why he didn't find out from those the carpenter had taught! Annas, one of the highest officials in Judaea, being told to seek his answers from elsewhere!" Adamson's face pinched up. "I can't describe how he said it. He just said it in a way that for a second there, everyone knew that that little Nazarene was in charge and Annas was the one being called to account for himself. The room went silent. They were scared. All of us were scared. Because we didn't know what to make of this little carpenter. They were saying he'd done miracles, made the dead walk, made the blind see again. A ball of rage dropped over my vision. I stepped forward, yelled something about not talking to the high priest that way, and slapped him as hard as I could." Adamson's face twisted in regret. It was frightening to see. He continued on. "And that Nazarene looked me right in the face and asked me what it was he had said that had given offence. And to this day, I haven't been able to find an answer to that question. They took this little Nazarene carpenter out to Golgotha and crucified him as a common criminal. And when he died, the earth shook and the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. Three days later, they were saying he'd risen from the dead." Mulder stared at him, stunned into silence. Adamson's eyes pierced him, searching. "I have been alive for nearly two thousand years, agent Mulder. I struck Jesus Christ out of rage. For that, my punishment was simple. To live and never die until Christ comes back to release me." Mulder sat back. His mind was whirling. Two thousand years. Not eternity, but close enough to it. For one blow across the cheek. "They drove me out of Israel when my friends were dying of old age and I still looked as you see me now. I wandered. The Nazarene's disciples were growing and spreading. I watched the church grow from one man to a multitude upon a multitude. I watched people grow old and die around me, while I remained young." Finally Mulder summoned up the courage to speak. "When did you ... start hunting?" Adamson's eyes shifted, moving out of the past and into the present. "A hundred years after the incident ... long enough for me to learn to deal with my condition ... I had a dream one night. A dream of dark creatures striding across the ages, stealing one life after another, confounding the little carpenter's work. I was still very much a soldier then. And then I saw the Nazarene in a dream. He told me to defend his work." "Why did you listen?" Adamson's gaze snapped onto Mulder again. "I'd been alive for nearly a hundred years. And the memory of the carpenter's gaze was still very heavy upon my mind. I'd call that a pretty good impetus to do it, wouldn't you? I thought he might give me relief from the constant nightmares. So I set out the next morning. It took me ten years before I finally redeemed the first one. And it got a little better. So I set after another one. And so I have continued." "For two thousand years." "Two thousand years. You said I was the Peacemaker. That I am. And Dawnbringer. Bane, they sometimes call me as well. I've gone by many names, agent Mulder. Van Helsing was another one I took, for a time. It never fails to amuse me when I hear of the fictional version being an old doctor." "Madeleine told us about a woman named Eleanor." This did not draw an immediate response. "My wife. Even immortals become lonely, agent Mulder. It's a terrifyingly solitary experience. For fifteen hundred years, I killed, and killed, and killed. My only constant companion was death. The deaths of those I redeemed, and the deaths of my friends as they died around me of old age. Do you remember the first time you wavered in your ambition to become an FBI agent? Those deaths weigh on you after a while. Especially those ones that went willingly. I believe they were the hardest. And fifteen hundred years ago, I fell in love. I put down my sword and married Eleanor. Then the Circle of Ten murdered her, and I had to begin the killing again." "And you went to Japan and had a Silver Rivers blade made for you," said Mulder. Adamson raised his eyebrows. "You have done your reseach," he said. "Yes. From that time onwards it became much easier to hunt them down. The Silver Rivers blade could kill them, and something about the metal it was made of obscured my exact location from the Circle of Ten." "That's the second time you mentioned them. What's the Circle of Ten?" "Yes. In any group, agent Mulder, you will eventually see organisation. Society. A hierarchy of authority. It holds as much for the undead as it does for the living. The Circle of Ten was such a body. Its rulings and justice were respected among all vampires. I learned that much from those that went willingly to their graves. The Circle had been established around the year five hundred anno domini, and might determined one's place on the Circle. Ten members, ten of the most vile creatures crawling on the earth. As a result of my ... condition ... and their status, I became their archenemy." "And this Sai'ten that Madeleine mentioned?" "The leader of the Circle. He was personally responsible for the death of my wife." These words were spoken with such lack of emotion it made Mulder's spine tingle. Adamson sat forward in his seat. "After Eleanor died, I focused on the Circle of Ten. It took me a long time. Two hundred years, to be precise. But eventually I hunted down nine of them. He thought of them very personally, you understand. They were like his brothers." "So there's only Sai'ten left?" "Yes. And he wants me very badly." Adamson let a grim smile crease his face. "When you've nurse a grudge for a hundred years, it can become an obsession." "Which makes dating Madeleine Chambers dangerous right now, doesn't it?" "Madeleine knows the dangers -- at least, she does now. She's made it very clear she wants to stay with me. I committed a great sin in marrying Eleanor. Or rather, marrying her without letting her know the dangers. I will carry her death on my soul to the end of my life or the end of time, whichever comes first. But I will not stop living because of what I do. The Nazarene owes me that much, for two thousand years' blood on my hands. And if he comes to me now because he thinks I'll be weak in love, so much the better. He's the last of them, agent Mulder. A creature from another age. Without him, the Circle is broken. Strike the shepherd and the sheep scatter. When he comes for me, I will be ready." "I have one other question. Does the church know you exist?" Adamson smiled again. "I'm one of the secrets they pass down from one Pope to the next. I met Peter, once, to explain my situation. He forgave me on behalf on Christ for striking him. But that didn't change my penance, I'm afraid. Most of the Popes since then haven't believed that I even exist. There have been a few notable exceptions. John Paul I, in particular. I met him just after he began his reign. He was curious and contacted me in one of the old ways Peter had set down. We hammered out the deal. The Church protects the details of my existence, and I protect Christians from ... the other side." "You could confirm belief in God for a lot of people around the planet. Why don't you?" "What purpose would that serve?" said Adamson. "I would be a fake or a figure of worship. Either way, I would not be able to do the task I have been charged with." Mulder considered this for a long time. "Anyway," said Kane, leaning back and taking a deep breath, "that is my story. You can do as you will with me. It matters not to me. But do not charge Madeleine with any part of these murders. She is not to blame." Mulder stood. "It's quite a story. I can't promise I believe all of it, or that you'll come out of this unscathed. But that last thing I can do." Adamson nodded. "Thank you for that, at least." Mulder knocked on the door to the cell, and the guard came to unlock it. They had the door halfway open when the lights went out. He was just wondering what had happened when a hard blow across the back of the head sent him reeling into darkness. * * * Scully had permission from Customs to prosecute. Her feet still half on air from the news of benign cancer, she had then gone to look in on Madeleine. The woman had told them all that Kane had said to her. They spent the next hour or so getting a statement from her and then asked whether he was going to be prosecuted. Scully hadn't answered then. Mulder was still in there, interviewing him. So she went to talk to Madeleine. She had been crying. Scully had brought in a cup of coffee; it was nearly four o'clock in the morning. She was amazed she wasn't feeling it herself. And then the lights had blown. There were shouts of confusion outside the interviewing room, and then the sound of breaking glass. "What's going on?" said Madeleine. "Stay here. Don't move one inch," said Scully, pulling her gun. She moved quietly over to the door. "Dear God. It's him." Scully snapped her head around to look at Madeleine. "Who?" "The one Kane was talking about. The hardcase. Sai'ten." Scully snapped her gaze back to the door, feeling a chill inching its way through her stomach. More shouts from outside. She edged out of the door, pistol pointed towards the ceiling. END OF PART 12/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 13/14 A gun went off. Shotgun, a part of her mind said to herself. The roar was unmistakeable. Then another popping noise. Pistols. Shouts. A scream. She started running down the hallway. The noise was coming from the direction of the front office. She slowed her run slightly, lowering the gun to sighting position. A dark silhouette, its hands clasped before it, sprinted across the hall. She saw the grey of prisoner fatigues. Adamson. "Freeze!" she yelled, but he was already through the opposite door as she did it. She sprinted down the hall after him, skidding to a halt in front of the door. She kicked it open and panned her gun from one side to the other, but nothing moved in the room. A shadow flitted away from frosted glass on the other side of the room. She almost tightened her hand on the trigger. But a scream from around the corner of the hallway jogged her aim, and she flicked her attention in that direction. Now there was sustained gunfire erupting, the flashes casting tortured shadows on the walls facing her. Screams. And now roars of fury, things she would expect to come from an animal. She raced down to the end of the corridor and skidded around the corner. She would never forget the utter horror of what she saw. The lobby of the police station had been invaded -- violated -- by animals and humans that looked so alike it could hardly be told where one ended and the next began. A wolf tore out a police officer's throat out in a single, flicking motion. Blood and gobbets of flesh spat across the room and splattered against the far wall. Something like a human-sized bat was crouched over the body of a policewoman, tearing at the intestines that flopped loose from the jagged tear in her abdomen. And then there were the men, locked in hand-to-hand combat with other, straining humanoid figures. A cop screamed in rage and jammed a shotgun in the ear of one of the creatures that was attacking his best friend and pulled the trigger. The flash, smoke and cordite was met with the sound of red rain falling as the head of the humanoid figure disintegrated. The cop with the shotgun was smashed into a wall by a flying body and screamed as it tried to tear his head off. A window smashed. Rats flooded into the room, trampled underfoot and biting at those officers unfortunate enough to be down and unconscious. And at the very back, one dark figure, black jacket and jeans glinting in the overhead light, smiling in tranquility as though he were under a cool fountain. Scully heard a yell building up in her throat at the same time she realised that the pistol was levelling and aiming for the figure. She'd been a good shot at the Academy. Her body unconsciously moved into the textbook shooters' stance; in profile, one hand pointed outward. She fired. Once, twice, six times. She fired. She saw blood fly and explode from the figure as each one of the bullets hit him. He fell backwards, tumbling downward. Around her the slaughter continued. She had eyes only for the figure now lying on the ground. And then it started to stand up. Got to its feet, absently rubbing at the points where the bullets had made holes in the jacket. It peered around as though looking for something. It saw her. It grinned, and started a slow advance through the carnage towards her. She fired again, taking a step back. The shot missed, ricocheting off a wall and whining through the glass of a window. Took another step back. Fired again. The punch of the bullet pushed his shoulder back as though someone had shovedd him, but no more than that. He recovered himself , straightened and started forward again. She fired twice more, the bullets hitting his legs. He crumpled for a second, and then was coming again. She pulled the trigger one more time -- and it hit on empty. She turned and ran, as much from the sphere of cold fear that figure produced as the carnage. Running back, fumbling for the second magazine she kept. Running for Madeleine's space. She didn't glance back to see if the figure was still walking up behind her. She knew that already. She kicked in the door of the room. Madeleine screamed, then stared like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming car at Scully. It was only then she felt the blood which had sprayed from some officer's body in the lobby of the station dripping off her face. "We have to move. Come on, move!" she snapped at Madeleine, who dumbly fumbled her way up to a standing position. Scully grabbed her arm and pushed open the door with her gun arm, snatching a glance out the corridor. It was clear. "All right, come on. I think it's safe." She dragged Madeleine out of the room, letting the door swing closed. Madeleine was screaming in fear. "Where's Kane? Where is he?" "Yes, where is he?" The voice that had spoken was from beyond the grave. Sai'ten was behind the door. It swung shut to reveal his gore-covered form. His eyes were shining with swamp-gas fire now. The light of the dead. Scully swung Madeleine behind her and pointed the gun, her hand tightening-- Only to find that the vampire had grabbed her arm and wrenched it aside. She cried out in pain as the muscles bent back on themselves. Sai'ten snorted in contempt, and then flicked her ever so inconsequentially. Scully found herself flying through the air. Then she crashed against the wall with terrific force. The last thing she heard was Madeleine screaming before she passed out. * * * Kane heard the screams and cursed the police and himself. Once again, he'd allowed innocents to get in the way of the battle. He pushed the emotion down; it was baggage he didn't need in this situation, where he had to think clearly if he was to escape. He heard running footsteps outside the darkened room and crouched down a little lower before resuming his efforts. He'd gotten a set of keys from the guard outside his cell, knocking him unconscious before he'd had a chance to pull his gun. The woman -- agent Scully -- had almost caught him, but he'd kept moving. Now came the difficult part; of all the experiences he'd had, unlocking handcuffs that were actually on him was a novel one. He'd already dropped the keys twice. Third time was the charm. They fell from his wrists like shed skin. He rubbed his hands together, clapping his palms together and bending them to get the circulation going again. Another gunshot roared from outside. He had submerged the fear again; the warrior was back in control. Now all he had to do was find where they'd hidden his-- He spotted the long plastic bag and couldn't believe his luck. Of all the rooms he'd picked to hide in, he'd gotten the evidence collection room. He crabbed over to the table, keeping below the level of the frosted glass windows where his silhouette might give him away. The dai-katana they'd confiscated from his apartment slid into his hand like the old friend it was. He hefted it in both hands, concentrating on the feel of his slashed shoulder. It was healing well; not optimum, but he could still deliver killing force with it. Another crash of furniture being broken outside, in the lobby. He briefly considered going after the ones out there at the moment, but decided against it. They were only the cover for the real target: him. And there was a good chance the police might see him with the sword in his hands and panic. No. He suppressed the pang of guilt that rose up and slipped out of a doorway. He found an open window easily and jumped out of it. Being on the ground floor had some advantages. He gripped the sill and pulled himself upwards, flipping onto the roof. Sai'ten was here. The vampire's sensation in the universe was unique. Better to have the high ground and wait until he made his appearance. He hurried across the roof, avoiding air conditioning ducts where the sounds of battle still echoed from the lobby, to the front of the building, still shrouded in darkness. He waited. Occasionally a body rolled from the front doors or windows. He was unimpressed by the animals; this was a low form of attack, designed to scare an enemy into surrendering against apparently insurmountable odds. There were probably only four or five of the vampires actually present, and the men, with their firepower and their adrenalin-aided strength, would probably take them easily. The real target -- and the real battle -- was Sai'ten. He didn't have to wait long before the crawling sensation he had intensified. Sai'ten's form was hurrying from the building. He readied himself to jump at the black- cloaked figure. But Sai'ten suddenly turned around. All Kane's battle-readiness and meditation vanished. Madeleine. She was in a headlock, held fiercely by the vampire. Sai'ten looked up straight at the Dawnbringer, crouched on the roof, white T-shirt and silvery blade glowing in the near-darkness. "Let her go, Sai'ten." He had to fight to keep his voice under control. The blade wanted to reach out, to slash, to kill; but Madeleine held his hand back in an agony of indecision. "I don't think so, Dawnbringer." "It's me you want, you bastard! Why don't you let her go and we'll see if you can really fight!" "No. You made me come here, forced me to fight on your terms. Now you will come to my ground. You know the place. Or else she will become mine, like your Eleanor did." Sai'ten turned and calmly pulled Madeleine away, towards the black Plymouth Fury that stood like a faithful pet at the kerb. Kane jumped off the roof, hitting the ground and rolling to absorb the impact so he came up without injury. He had only just got there when the car peeled away from the kerb, its engine howling like a hell hound. His heart beat fast. It was happening all over again. Eleanor's shade hovered by him, accusing him with every step he took. He had left her to die, and now Madeleine was going to die. The pain washed over him. Sai'ten had been right all along; love was his weakness, the thing that had made him falter. He was as helpless as ever he had been. His immortality meant nothing to him. The pain vanished. Only the rage and revenge were left. The fire of rage merged with the skill of the warrior and left hot, blazing metal in its wake. Kane Adamson no longer existed. The man who struck Christ was gone. Only The Eternal Knight remained. The instrument of humanity's vengeance on the darkness. He knew the place. Oh, my, yes. He started to run. Found a police car, jumped into it and hotwired the engine, screaming off into the night towards his destiny. * * * Mulder awoke to the final gunshot and Scully shaking his elbow. "Mulder? Come on, wake up!" He dimly remembered something about sleeping. Then it came back to him. He groaned. "Adamson ... where's Kane?" "Gone," said Scully. She glanced around at the makeshift stretchers and bandages. "He hit me from behind ... when the lights went out." "So did Sai'ten," she said. He stared up at her in sudden concern. "Sai'ten?" "And a whole host of other horrors. You were right, Mulder ... there are such things as vampires. A lot of good police officers died because of the attack they made here, tonight." "How long ago?" "Marshall thinks they just got the last one. They're still in shock." "What about Madeleine? Is she all right?" Scully looked down at the floor. "I tried to keep hold of her, Mulder. I pumped six rounds into Sai'ten, and he still kept coming. They said they saw him taking her outside to a car." "Jesus. Has anyone seen Kane at all?" "No. But ... his sword's gone, Mulder. They found open handcuffs on the floor of the evidence room." "We've got to find him. He's going to fight Sai'ten, and I don't think he can win on his own." "That's a great idea, but we don't even know where to start looking for him." "I do. Kane said about a hundred years ago, he killed the last of Sai'ten's brothers ... something called the Circle of Ten. Saint Martin's Church was closed in 1920. I'm willing to bet that's where they're heading. Sai'ten will want to finish Kane off on desecrated ground." Scully nodded. "I'll get us a car. Mulder ... you talked to Kane. Who is he, really?" Mulder thought about all that Kane had said. Christ. Murders. Hundreds of years of hunting vampires. "I don't know," he replied. "Come on, let's move." END OF PART 13/14 Nocte Eterna by Michael Aulfrey Part 14/14 Not quite dawn. He slowed the police car as he reached Saint Martin's Church. Stopped it about twenty metres out from the front of the place, and got out. He drew the dai-katana and walked, each pace more careful than the rest, to the front door of the church. The memories cascaded over him again. Here he had finished the last of Sai'ten's family, in revenge for his own family, slain so long ago. It had been a hard fight, consuming most of the church in fire and destruction. He'd finally won, driving a stake through the heart of the vampire right on the altar itself. Now the last of the Circle of Ten had come back here. To kill or be killed. Either way, part of him found it fitting. He stood there before the church, reminiscing. Behind this door was his destiny. He pushed it open and walked, unhesitating, inside. No sound. Only the whistling of the wind. The smells were of peat and moss. Then a woman's scream, and the smell of blood. He spun in the direction of the sound. Immediately, something crashed across the back of his head, felling him to the ground. The dai-katana skittered from his hand. He snapped his hand back onto it and sprang to his feet, listening again. Nothing. Nothing at-- Another blow, this time a sharp, quick slap across the side of his face, bloodying his nose. He reeled, but rolled with the force of the punch, lashing out with a quick swipe of the sword in retaliation, but his blade caught empty air. He turned slowly in a circle, reaching out with all his senses. "Are you afraid to face me, Sai'ten?" he said, the words rolling across the ground. There was a short silence. Then, from the shadows, as though he'd never been there, Sai'ten stepped out, a long rapier in his hand. "No. I've never been afraid to face you, Dawnbringer." "Is that why you hid from me for the past hundred years?" snapped Kane. "Where's Madeleine?" "You will have to come through me first." "I'll do more than that." "You have been the bane at the heels of every one of my kind since I can remember. But tonight you will die." Kane let a sharp guffaw rise. "Don't you listen to your own legends, Sai'ten? Don't you know that I can't die? You have chosen your death in coming here." Sai'ten's eyes glittered. "I've been waiting a long time for this. There will be no new day for you, Dawnbringer." They advanced on each other. Sai'ten tried a quick blow to the head. Kane contemptuously flipped the point aside and thrusted quickly. Sai'ten danced aside. The first blows, traded without injury. Kane began with a two-blow combination that Sai'ten managed to block and riposte to, and they were deep into battle. Steel rang. Sparks flew. They danced backward and forward. If Michelangelo had been present, he would have begged for a canvas to try and record them as a moving tableau. Their artistry was impeccable. But the fight wore into the fifth, sixth minutes without any change in them. Now the blows were less perfectly timed than they should have been. Rage came into its own. They had been mortal enemies since the days of steam and earlier, and now it came down to this final fight to settle all scores. They smashed at each other, their muscles corded and snapping out like pistons of some great machine. No artistry now. But Kane suddenly felt himself getting tired. He blocked a thrust, countered with a riposte, and barely blocked another. The sword became heavy in his hand. And Sai'ten was smiling. He blocked another blow as the vampire forced him onto the defensive. Now he was retreating across the church, moving back towards the altar. He caught Sai'ten's blade and for a moment they stood locked together, straining against each other. "Feeling a little weak, are we? Not quite our usual self?" They broke the lock and backed off from each other, Kane sweating heavily. "It's the place, you see. It's why I was able to find you in the police station. It's a focus for most of the darkest energies in the universe. And you, my friend, are right on it. Your sword could protect you for a few minutes, but now ... you will die. You're no stronger than any other man." "You're wrong," snarled Kane and slashed at Sai'ten. The vampire nimbly dodged aside. "Am I? Then why can't you even lift your blade?" Sai'ten walked within sword-reach. Kane tried to smash his sword into Sai'ten's side, but found he couldn't even shift it a few small inches. Sai'ten lifted his blade and crashed it down on the guard of the Dawnbringer's sword. A bright arc of light, it skittered away to lie in the darkness. Kane found himself hardly caring. The darkness was suddenly pressing down on him like a weight of iron. Sai'ten ran him through with his blade. Fire exploded in his stomach, the blood welling around the blade. He screamed in pain. Sai'ten twisted it, making a hole the size of a coin in his gut. But the nerves shut down after a little more. He started to go black. Madeleine. Where was she, now? If he knew she was alive-- Sai'ten had pulled the blade out now, the blood running in a river to the ground as he staggered back against the altar. He was aiming the point somewhere between Kane's legs. He didn't care. Madeleine-- "Federal agents! Drop your weapon and put your hands up!" The hollering of a male voice. Agent Mulder. Kane smiled dimly in appreciation of the joke. Sai'ten was turning away and looking in that direction, the blood running down his blade. Out of faint interest, Kane looked in that direction as well. Madeleine. His damaged nerves took a second for that to register. But there she was. Her hands still tied, but leaning heavily on the shoulder of the woman, the FBI agent, who also had her gun pointed at Sai'ten. The vampire roared in anger. Mulder yanked the trigger. Scully was a couple of seconds behind him. Both their shots hit, staggering the creature. It roared in pain and anger. Kane watched Sai'ten with considerable, pondering thought. Neurons fired in his mind. Madeleine was alive. And safe. Streength surged through him, the light of a reborn heart shining through him. He lurched forward, every movement a blaze of new pain and pulled the small wooden stake he'd hidden in the rear of his belt. And with a last bolt of strength, he collapsed on top on the staggering Sai'ten and slammed the wood through the creature's heart. Blood sprayed. Sai'ten screamed, and then stared directly at Kane, lying on top of him, locking gazes with the Dawnbringer as the light in the last of the Circle of Ten faded for the last time. Then the eyes closed. The body began to crystallise as the sheer will holding it together crumbled, and then turned to dust. Kane let himself meld with the pile of dust , his blood spilling out onto the ground. This was how it ended, then. No carpenter with the Nazarene's eyes to greet him and tell him he could die. But then he looked up and saw a strange light in the sky. A welcoming light. Curious, he moved toward it. One part of his mind was physically conscious of leaving his body behind, but chose to ignore it. And there was the carpenter again. --What have I said that was given offence?-- And this time, he was surprised to find he had the answer to that question. * * * They had found Madeleine behind the church, bound and gagged. Scully had gotten her on her feet while he had run around to the side of the church and pointed his weapon at Sai'ten. Now they stumbled forward into the church towards Kane's slumped form. Mulder turned him over, then took Madeleine from Scully as she lookd him over. She tried his pulse, then his throat. She looked up at Mulder and slowly shook her head. Madeleine Chambers turned her head into his shoulder and sobbed, her tears racking her battered body. They lay there silently, the wind caressing them gently, as the dawn rose. EPILOGUE: EXTRACT: PERSONAL NOTES, FOX MULDER. Kane Adamson was proved to be linked to most of the other mass murders I told agent Scully about. The difficulty, of course, was that since none of the bodies were identified, there could hardly be any charges. Scully and myself? We're back to our old relationship ... I think. She hasn't said anything else about what happened in Chicago those two days. And maybe, in some way, I'm glad it hasn't happened either. We are closer; but in one of those ways I can't explain, we're further apart. What will history say of Kane Adamson? That he was immortal? That he was a murderer? That he might have been doing the will of God? I don't know. It was never conclusively proven that he was immortal. Or that he was not. What scares me more is the prophecy that he could die only when Christ returns. Not that I believe it. I only know this much. His sword is safely locked away in one corner of Scully's and my own office. Just in case. In case of what? Just ... in case somebody needs it again. Such as who? I wish I knew. EXTRACT ENDS. END OF PART 14/14 -------------------------------------------------- Phew! Over at last. This one was a piledriver, folks ... but I enjoyed every minute of it. If you have *any* comments at all, good or bad, I'd appreciate them being mailed to me at mikeaulf@tartarus.uwa.edu.au ... --------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael J. Aulfrey Anti-Gump, X-Phile University of Western Australia X-Fanfictioneer Address: mikeaulf@tartarus.uwa.edu.au ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "High tech tech technology." -- Fox Mulder on Pentium ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Unarmed...and extremely attractive." -- Dana Scully on Windows 95