Mab's Fanfic Site

A Day Must Come

by Mab

Remembering is supposedly an old man's prerogative and pleasure, and I'm willing to bet that there aren't very many men older than I am. There's plenty of time to think and remember on the trips to the mill. Sam Olsewski is a good-natured guy, but he's no more one of the chattering classes than I am. Besides, there's still a half hour walk to get back home anyway, once he drops me off. Fuel, even the wood ethanol that powers most of the tin pot vehicles around here, is too expensive for me to let him go anywhere out of his way.

So I remember. I remember the first time Blair suggested San Francisco. I teased him, of course.

"You don't think that's a little stereotyped, Chief?"

"So, sue me if I enjoy the idea of being out in at least one aspect of my life. Besides, it would be a logical place to go - good size, marginally better climate than Cascade, and I just like old San Fran. Naomi and I lived there for three years."

I thought about it. The idea seemed reasonable. For starters, Carolyn was in Denver now, married to a lawyer. "So long as you don't expect me to hold your hand in the gay pride march."

"S'okay, Jim, I know that'll probably contravene the ex hard-ass code or something. So, you'll think about it as an option? That's all we're doing right now, thinking about options, after all."

"Well, first I have to decide whether I should be weirded out by 'ex hard-ass code' or insulted by the idea that I'm an ex hard-ass."

"You're a complete candy ass Jim." There was this unsubtle waggle of Blair's eyebrows. "I should know."

"Bite me, Sandburg." And that was unwise of me.

So we ended up going to San Francisco and into private security and investigation work, in the grand tradition of former cops the world over. But we kept the business from expanding as far as it could. That was a way station before Jim Ellison and Blair Sandburg had a very sad accident, and gave up a whole heap of things, including our old names and family and old friends. But we'd been pushing it for a while. Blair was running out of Rogaine jokes when Simon came to see us. Sandburg has a very annoying sense of humour.

As it happened, holding his hand during the Pride celebrations was easy, as was planting one hell of a lip lock on him. It takes very small things to make him happy sometimes.

I remember when Blair turned forty. It wasn't a big party because we always try to keep a low social profile, but there were about twenty people there, including Naomi, who was very complimentary about how well we were both wearing. She was wearing well herself, but I think she was checking my hairline for scars. I slow-danced with Blair half the night, and when all the guests went home he showed me that maybe he wasn't that old yet.

I remember a lot of things. So why couldn't I keep in mind that normal never did apply to us, any more than safe? Why be so surprised when, yet again, the shit descended big time?

The phone rang.

"Ellison."

"Jim, it's Simon. How are you?"

"Pretty good. And you?"

He chuckled, although it struck me there was a slight edge to his voice.

"About to be a grandfather."

"Simon, that's great news."

"Well, I'm old-fashioned enough to wish that he'd married Elise first, or was planning on marrying her at all. But they seem happy enough, even if it's not my idea of family life. Whatever works for them, I guess."

"So when's the happy event?"

"Another six months, so some time around Christmas. At least that means the middle name is settled. Noel or Noelle, but the battle is still raging about the first name. "

"So long as you stay out of the fray, Grandpa."

"It won't be a problem, although I'm not sure that Joan is following that advice. How's Sandburg?"

"He's great. We're both busy of course."

"I don't doubt it. Look, Jim, it's great to catch up, but I had another piece of news to pass on to you. We had a man at the station, a writer, checking up on a whole heap of old cases. He was particularly interested in the Bloodsucker case - you remember that one? One of your rare failures."

I wasn't likely to forget. There was a woman buried as Julia Gregory, but I remember her by her real name - Elizabeth Drewson. I felt uncomfortable, the version of nervous tension that you get when your heartbeat doesn't speed up to fill your chest.
"Yeah, I remember. What about him?"

"He was real interested in that case, and I have a feeling that he's going to try and get in contact with you. Name of Peter Landis. So, fair warning, in case he's pushy, or brings up that business around Zeller. I don't know how far back he was planning to do his research."

"Yeah, thanks, Simon."

We chatted a little longer, filling each other in, but I was unsettled. I hated the thought of anybody poking about in that case, but if they were, I wanted to know what they might find. I warned Blair, and we agreed on our stories, but the weeks went by, and nobody approached us, and I forgot about it in the course of normal business.

Curiosity always has been one of Blair's overriding characteristics, and I've indulged his about me with varying degrees of graciousness. After Drewson transferred her tenant to me, even in the first shocks, he wanted to know stuff. Later on he'd either grin or produce the serious look when I complained, and give whatever variation on the 'knowledge is power' speech that he thought would take the occasion. If he thought I was in the mood, he'd just sit on the couch and ramble through ideas and questions.

I remember the only time I purposely let him see the teeth, ready for action as it were. God, he nagged - it's the only word for it. He had a flashlight and one of those damn dentist mirrors, and he really wanted a look. He had a theory (and when does he ever not have a theory) that they were like snake fangs, that when the teeth went in that various chemicals were injected.

"If some sort of happy juice is going in there, it'd explain a lot. I mean, if I thought you were hoodooing me into coming my brains out, then I'd have to say that I like the way your mind works, but it makes sense that it would be a chemical thing. And it would make sense about why the neck, because from a concealment point of view you'd think that there would be more effective places to take it - brachial or femoral blood supply - but with the neck you're that much closer to the brain I guess..." All this was muttered as he pushed his glasses up his nose and checked me out, and I found out that I could still feel nauseated as hell even when my digestive system was only getting a monthly workout. I hated those fucking teeth then and I hate them now.

But I let Dr Frankenstein have his look. I can do one of Blair's memory exercises and notice now that his heartbeat was a little elevated, his breathing a little fast, that his guts were maybe a little twisty too. Maybe, if I wasn't a self-conscious asshole, it would have been better to have flashed the fangs at him once a day and twice on Sundays. But hindsight is always twenty/twenty.

My habit of licking the wounds after got analysed as well. He once wished that Santa Claus could deliver a tame and discreet bio-chemist to check out my saliva, but somehow neither of us thought that one of those was going to fit into a Christmas stocking, assuming that St Nick delivered to Jewish geeks. I was just relieved that the bites healed fast.

And there was the time that he presented me with some syringes, the bigger ones that you use to take blood samples. It was coming up to the department physical, and I assumed that they were for his bright idea for that. It was also coming up to the monthly visit (don't ask - Sandburg's idea of gallows humour. Greater love hath no man than to listen to a comparative discussion of menarche rituals). He had yet another bright idea.

"I didn't want to do this straight away because it was all pretty weird, but I've been wondering if you can do the old vampire novel stand-by and use blood that's already been - removed. And this is a little bit easier than going to the local blood bank and buying a pint, although I guess we can check out that option if this looks like it might work."

He looked hopeful and scientifically interested at the same time. So I carefully extracted a few spoonfuls from him (one hundred and one uses for that extra sensitive touchy-feely thing) and decanted it into a small medicine glass. Then I sat and looked at it. My feelings toward that little glass were vaguely neutral. On the other hand, the extra physical awareness of Blair that I got around feeding time was shining bright and clear. Fully resigned to puking the stuff back up again, I took a cautious sip. It went down and stayed down, which was more than had happened with most things I'd tried to swallow in the last six months. I gulped the rest of it down. It stayed put, but there was no peace, no satisfaction in it.

"Sorry, Chief, but your neck is still looking good."

He was disappointed, but he rallied. "So I should think." Then the researcher took over. "This is actually really interesting, that there's more to it than just the blood ingestion. Maybe the hoodoo thing..." And he shut up, but I could damn near see the wheels turning, and then he planted a quick kiss on me and headed for his computer. There was still a day or two before I really needed it, and I let him go, while he web surfed on neurology and brain pleasure centres, the physiology of addiction, and hypnotism. Not to mention one heap of 'new age' and parapsychology sites. He had folders inside folders inside folders in his favourites section.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the fact that the whole thing was more complicated than just needing a really specialised diet. I know I wasn't surprised. Undoubtedly, it would have been easier if I could have just bowled up somewhere and ordered the ultimate in Bloody Marys. But right from the beginning, I'd sensed complicated things about the compulsion I felt. I sometimes wished, hell, still wish, that Elizabeth Drewson hadn't been in such a hurry, but I understand where she was coming from. As for Landis...him, I try not to think about, but the memories sneak under the wire.

"Hey, Jim, am I going to find out what's wrong any time in the near future?"

"What?"

"Now that's exactly what I mean. Either it's serious meditation or you're starting to zone again, and you're not supposed to do that."

I would have liked to tell him, but I couldn't because I didn't know. There was this vague sense of unease, discomfort, whatever - had been for a couple of days. Mental, emotional, not physical. I stood up from the table, where I was keeping Blair company, and looked out the window. The last time I'd felt this level of confused emotion was Alex Barnes, but this wasn't as visceral as that. Small mercies.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Sorry, Chief, I'd tell you if I could. Just some free-floating anxiety and distraction."

Blair frowned. "Existential angst isn't usually your thing. So what are your instincts reacting to?"

"I don't know. Should I climb into the lotus position and wait for enlightenment? Cause there's a shitload of work waiting for us."

I started clearing his breakfast debris before Blair could suggest that some meditation might be a good idea. Leaving dirty plates sitting on the table all day wasn't going to improve my mood.

I managed to push the feelings aside to put in a normal working day of dealing with clients, and continuing efforts to track down a child kidnapped in a custody dispute. Blair headed home a little before me, with the threat that some relaxation exercises were in my future. Despite some complaining for the sake of appearances, I hoped that it might help. I was sick of waiting for the shoe to drop and not even knowing what shoe it was.

I headed home, about an hour and a half after Blair and the whatever it was that was bothering me got worse. Just a sense of something not right, but what was really taking my mind off the tail end of drive time was that the closer I got to home, the worse it got. The anxiety got so bad that I called Blair.

"Hello." He sounded all right, but I didn't feel any better.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Jim. Why, what's wrong?"

"I don't know. Just assume that you need to take care. Lock everything up if you haven't already."

"No problem. Where are you?"

"Not far away. Get that gun out of the drawer."

"So what am I defending my virtue against, man?"

"Just do it." I finished the call, the better to concentrate on my driving. I kept it to just the wrong side of legal, with no intention of pulling over, not even if half a dozen cops had ended up following me home.

I never gave up the habit of carrying a weapon, even if I didn't always wear a holster. Blair, of course, had abandoned the daily necessity of carrying a gun with relief, even though I made him keep up practice. I went into our building with the gun hidden under a newspaper, like I was some cheap hit man.

Our apartment was on the fourth floor. I had the elevator to myself, and on an instinct I dialled up smell. There were familiar smells of other residents, and a few scents of strangers, but nothing overtly unusual until I stepped out into the hallway leading to home. And there I stopped short for a moment.

It was a smell that I'd almost learned to ignore because it was a part of me now, only this time it was overlaid with the smell of a stranger. Nearly ten years ago I'd told Blair that it was a dry, non-smell. Somebody else, like me, and the fucker had been in my building. He'd stood at my door, the bastard, and I yelled out to Blair, while holding my gun at the ready, hearing and sight alert to register any threat.
Blair called back to me through the door.

"Jim, you okay?"

He was looking through the spy hole, I could track him with my hearing, and he sounded okay, heartbeat and breathing elevated, but no more than you'd expect when he could see me ready for a fight out in the hallway.

"I'm fine."

There was the sound of bolts and locks being undone, then the door opened. Blair was blessedly fine, and I stepped inside. He was resecuring the door when I turned, back to the wall, gun aimed.

"Where is he?" I snarled. "Why the fuck didn't you say something?" Blair just looked at me in shock, but it wasn't any more extreme than mine. Our apartment, our home stank of strangers. I focused a little more on scent, while also reaching out with hearing. Two people, my fellow monster, and a woman whose smell I didn't know. No heartbeat, but then, there wouldn't have been one from one of them anyway. I started working my way through the rooms, yanking or kicking open doors, while Blair stood by the entrance in apparent complete confusion. There was nobody else there, but every room stank of the intruders - every room.

Furious, I turned back to Blair. He'd changed into jeans and a long-sleeve tee and his feet were bare. He looked at me as if I was crazy, but I could smell recent fear on him and - shit - the smell of the strangers was all over him. The woman was stronger on him, the man stronger in the apartment. Both smells made me want to vomit. I shook Blair by the shoulders.

"What – is – going - on?" Dear god, something like me had been touching him, and panicked, I sought out the smell of blood, of sex. There was nothing, just Blair getting increasingly scared and angry. He pulled himself away.

"How about you seriously chill. Nothing is going on. I came home, had a shower and organised some food, until you started with the paranoid nutso stuff. What the hell is the matter with you?"

"Somebody was here." I couldn't tell him more than that, especially since he didn't seem to know what the hell I was talking about. "Somebody was here."

Blair took a deep breath. "Jim, nobody is here, nobody has been here. What's going on?"

"I can smell them! They've been through the whole place. You stink of them. You stink like you've had a good scare too. So how about you tell me what's going on?"

"How about you put down the gun and sit down. And I'll go and see if my dinner is still edible." And the incomprehensible little bastard just turned and walked away from me. I followed him. There was some meat/vegetable thing sitting on the table, nearly untouched. I put my hand above it. Practically cold.

"When did you sit down to this? I talked to you about twenty minutes before I got here. Were you eating then? You just had to nuke this didn't you? It was in the freezer." I wondered if he'd been drugged, but surely there would have been more obvious side effects. A blow to the head? The same argument applied.

"Will you sit down? And let's see if we can figure this out." He'd gone to full Guide mode, voice commanding and soothing at the same time. I desperately wanted to haul him into the bathroom and scrub him down, burn those clothes. Instead, I dialled scent down to practically nothing. It had told me everything it was going to. Hearing was completely up, listening to every sound in the building, filtering Blair's voice to normal. We sat down together at the table.

"Okay. You think someone was here, and I sort of disagree with you about that."

"I don't think it," I growled.

"Now is not the time to go primal, Jim. One of us is in serious trouble here. How do we figure out which one it is?"

It was a little easier to be calm without the stink of the violation of Blair and our home sitting in my nose, but I was still so damn angry, even with him. I knew it was stupid, but watching him sitting there so unaware drove me nuts. And then I realised what must have happened.

"Blair, there were two people here, a woman, and somebody, somebody like me." That got his attention. "And you don't remember because the bastard must have been playing with your head."

His eyes widened at that.

"Okay, interesting theory. How do we prove it?" His voice was shaky, despite the scientific detachment of his words.

"I think that you get to do the mental exercises, Chief."

So he dragged out all the paraphernalia that he liked, the mat, the candles. I doubt he really needed them; it was just another ritual to get him in the groove. Gradually he directed himself into a relaxed, meditative state, and I started asking questions - what time did he get home, what time did he start his meal, any odd sounds, why would his meal have been untouched and so cold when I got home if he hadn't been interrupted by something. Nothing. He had a clear memory of normal evening activity, up until my call, even if intellectually he accepted my claim that something completely abnormal had been going on.

I was frustrated as hell. And even though I was choosing not to smell it, knowing that there was scent trace of people who had no right to be there marking our home was seriously messing with my temper.

I sat on the floor in front of him, and took his hands in mine. Square, strong hands. I looked at them for a moment, gripping hard. He just gripped mine back, and looked at me with a wry, apologetic smile. I wasn't the only person frustrated by lack of progress.

"Blair, I think I should try the push on you."

He surveyed me quietly, his eyes big in the evening light.

"Might as well. Life is full of new experiences, huh?"

I call it 'the push' most of the time. When Blair was jokey, he'd call it 'that hoodoo that you do'. He'd seen it in action, but I'd never used it on him. What reason would I have? Although I couldn't deny that once or twice, when faced with a stubborn Sandburg, I'd been tempted.

He started his breathing thing again, and I started talking, pushing him. I didn't like it.

"Blair, it's important that you remember this, okay. What happened when you got home this evening?"

His breathing hitched a little.

"Told you, Jim, nothing important. Just the normal stuff, until you called me, and then came through the door like Rambo."

"You know that's not so, Chief. There were two people here. What did they want? Who were they? I need you to remember."

Suddenly he took a deep, harsh breath, and shoved himself upright. Agitatedly, he took a few steps. I might not have liked what I was doing, but it was getting results. He turned to me, with an expression I hadn't seen on his face since he was spaced out on that Golden crap.

"Jim, this is a bad idea, man, there's nothing to remember."

I stood up myself, took a step towards him. "Blair, you have to remember."

He put his head in his hands. His voice was weak, surprisingly young sounding. "Bad idea, Jim. I'm really not supposed to remember." And then he dropped, just folded up and hit the floor.

I leaped forward, too late to catch him. Crouching down, I turned him over. He wasn't breathing, and his face was grey-pale, his lips bluing. Fuck, no way was I going through that again.

Something - instinct, pure terror, told me that CPR wasn't going to cut it, but I started it anyway, working on him for what felt like a sick eternity. It wasn't working, and in despair I leaned my head against his silent chest.

"Come on, Blair, damn it, breathe, live. Come on. I'm not doing this again, Sandburg, I'm not, come on." And then it finally clicked for me, and I said it all again, but this time I pushed for all I was worth. Suggestion, command, whatever it was, had started this, and I waited to see how it finished it. And he choked and coughed, and breathed, thank god, he breathed. I pushed and pulled him into the recovery position and debated the wisdom of calling 911.

His eyes fluttered open after a couple of minutes, and he reached up a hand, spoke my name.

"You with me, Blair?"

"Yeah, where else, man? Shit, that was weird."

"You okay to sit up? Or you want to lie down a while longer?"

"Up. Oww. Shit. Why does my chest hurt, Jim?"

I lifted him to his feet long enough to put him on the couch.

"I'll get you an icepack, Chief. You've got a good bruise coming up where your face hit the floor."

"My face gets pretty aggressive, huh." It wasn't wit, just confusion turned to literal mindedness. He looked at me uncertainly, and leaned his head back on the edge of the couch. I stayed in the kitchen longer than it took to get an icepack, but my hands wouldn't stop shaking, so in the end I had to go back and hope that he wouldn't notice. Some hope.

I put my suit jacket over him and applied the pack and just looked at him. Shock was quietly taking us both over, although it didn't stop Blair deducing a few things. He said, "That CPR thing gets old fast, doesn't it? Thanks, Jim."

"You're an idiot, Sandburg. The last time you needed CPR was my fault too." And I leaned my head on his shoulder and sobbed like a small child, while he patted and stroked me and told me it was all right and it was okay. I didn't lose it for long. I was all too aware that somebody was playing games with us, and eventually I stood up.

"Time to advance to the rear, Chief."

"What? Otherwise known as let's spend the night somewhere else?"

He was still too pale, except for the shiner coming up on the right side of his face, and his breathing was shallow - hardly a surprise given the workout I'd just given his ribcage, although I thought I'd know if I'd actually cracked anything.

"You've got it." I headed for the bedroom to pack a couple of bags. When I got back, he was still sitting on the couch, looking troubled.

"It worked, Jim. I remember what happened." I didn't like the defeated look on his face. "It's, uh, it's not good."

"Never expected it would be. You get to tell me everything once we're out of here."

He was walking pretty carefully, but I got him into the jeep with a minimum of pain. I headed for a motel I knew, keeping watch for any tails. Only when I was sure that no one was following did I pull into the motel parking lot, after we'd bought some food from a service station.

I organised check-in leaving Blair sitting in the car. I could see that the road and lot were quiet, and I could see him, but I was antsy as hell. The memory of Blair, not breathing, had that effect on me.

Finally, we were sufficiently in hiding for me to listen to him. He was right; it wasn't good. I propped him on the bed with every cushion the room had, and he started talking.

The upshot was that Simon's 'Peter Landis' had called shortly after Blair got out of the shower, and essentially invited himself over. Blair had agreed, as much out of curiosity as courtesy, and the doorbell rang some five minutes later.

Landis was a man somewhere in his early thirties, wavy sandy-coloured hair, medium height and a stocky build. There was an older woman with him, whom Landis introduced as his mother and secretary, Leona. Blair offered coffee, they both declined. So far, so normal.

"We were just talking about the case, or rather he was talking and I was playing helpful but nonplussed cop, and I was getting some fairly weird vibes. I knew he knew stuff that he wasn't talking about - he had that I'm gonna getcha look about him. And the woman..."

Blair trailed off. I was in the only chair, mainly focused on him, but still monitoring our surroundings. Paranoid? Hell, yeah. And he was getting more and more disturbed as he worked up to the serious news.

"Y'know, Jim, I don't think that I'm particularly ageist about people exercising their sexuality, but Leona, she was giving me the creeps. The way she looked at me, and he, he was amused by it. Definitely creepy. I was getting ready to tell them to leave. And then he just came out and asked how I liked life with a vampire. Shit, I thought I was going to have a stroke. And then he grinned, with, um, with teeth, you know? And said it was okay, I didn't have to say anything, just stay put, and that was it, I couldn't move and I couldn't talk. And he got up, and took a good look around the apartment, went through our stuff..."

His voice vibrated with anger.

"And she, she um, just sort of draped herself around me, stroked me," and he must have seen the murder in my face then, "nothing overt, Jim, she didn't go for the crotch, man, just rubbed my shoulders, my face, that's all."

Yeah, that was all.

"He gave all the computer files a once-over. I - told him the passwords, which discs were the important ones. My journals. They both asked a pile of fucking prurient questions about our personal life."

There was a painful flush on his face and he sounded more upset about that than the hag molesting him. Of course, that stuff involved me as well as him. Sandburg always did have more instinct to protect me than himself.

I spoke for the first time since he'd started.

"They were still there when I called you, weren't they?"

"Yeah. He's excellent at that pushing thing."

"Fuck."

"Oh yeah. So. They left and as a parting remark he told me that there was nothing to remember, that it was just a normal evening. And that was when you came in and the fun and games really started."

It was a cute remark, a little undercut by the fact he was lying exhausted and miserable on a too firm mattress in a cheap motel.

"I'm sorry, Jim. We've gone to so much trouble to keep secrets and I opened the door to them like some idiot."

I climbed on the bed with him then, eased an arm under him. "It's not your fault."

He stirred restlessly. "What the hell do they want? Looking back, it seems so pointless. Just games."

Lash and Brackett both liked games. Chapel liked them as well. It hadn't meant that they didn't have a plan. We just had to figure out what plan Peter and Leona Landis had. But first I wanted Blair clean and, hopefully, resting.

It's always interesting - the games that people play. The press conference and the publicity about the Sentinel business were replaced as the main grist of the rumour mill soon enough, but some people always did wonder. I don't know that because of my skills in perceptive detection, either.

There's always spite in the world, and the PD was no different. I stood on my share of toes, and people resented Blair's fast track to Major Crime. About four months after Drewson - more than a year after the press conference, we were heading down to the garage, when something teased at the edge of my hearing. Blair was talking away, and I held up my hand.

"What is it?"

I gestured irritably at him for silence, and then it came through loud and clear. Somebody in one of the stairwells behind us was saying, "Can you hear this Ellison? Hey, Ellison, listen up. I have something real important to tell you..." I turned, and as I did so an appallingly loud shriek of feedback ripped out of the speakers of the PA system. Everybody in the garage clapped hands over their ears, exclaiming in shock and downright pain. Wide open as I was, I should have been pole-axed by it, but there was an awareness, maybe like the rush of air that comes ahead of and alongside a fast-moving object. I shut down fast, and didn't 'hear' it as such, although the physicality of the noise sure made itself known to my eardrums, along with everybody else's.

As soon as he collected himself, Blair turned to me in quiet panic.

"Jim, are you okay? Are you okay?"

He was stunned when he saw I was in working order. I shook him off and headed for the stairwell that I had picked as the most likely source of that voice, but there was nothing, of course. With a growl of frustration I turned back towards the garage.

"Come on, Sandburg. Time to blow this joint."

We spent the drive home trying to work out how worried we ought to be about the fact that the incident was obviously aimed at trying to expose me. As it turned out, it was hatched by some dork in Property Crime and his little girl friend in Despatch and Supervision. He felt passed over when some fraud got all the breaks, and she thought she was Lois Lane trying to out Clark Kent. I doubt it would have stuck in my mind if it weren't for what came out of it.

Blair entered into the speculation about motives but he was unnervingly quiet about what actually happened, except to say once, "Man, my ears are going to ring all night." Mine were little better, and I was pissed off, partly because of the implications of what that little prank might mean at the PD, and partly because I recognised the signs of Blair in 'I'm thinking and then you're talking' mode.

We got home, got organised, and Blair said, oh so nonchalantly, "When was the last time you zoned?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. A while."

"You have a tendency to minor zones and spikes once or twice a month. At least that's what you used to report to me. Shit, I can't believe that I didn't notice this." Strain was sneaking into his voice, despite his best efforts at control. "When was the last time you zoned, Jim, or had a spike, or operated at anything less than top Sentinel form?"
I could see where this was leading. Once I'd had time to think about it, I was as surprised as he was that I hadn't been a whimpering mess on the garage's concrete floor. There was one obvious thing that had changed in the last few months.
"I said that I don't know!"
"Well, I don't know either, but I have this little gut feeling that the last time you zoned was that scene investigation a few days before you met her. Should I check back?"

I shook my head. I hadn't consciously thought about it, but it was suddenly blindingly clear that whatever worries I'd had the last few months, my senses hadn't been among them. I'd seen, heard, smelled, touched, tasted - or not - whatever I'd needed, to whatever intensity I'd needed.

He was smiling, but it was off, somehow.

"Who'd have thought that I'd be grateful to a bunch of nosy, malicious bastards? It's controlling all those other bodily functions for you, why not the senses. It's obvious, when you think about it. And useful. It's a surprise, but a good one, huh, Jim?" And he kept smiling that off sort of smile.

I ached for him. The thing is, Blair was the one who put Sentinel and Guide into capital letters for us. I was happy to know that what was happening to me had a name, that there was a reason for it all, but now and again I'd surprise Blair in this look of holy awe those first few months after we met. He'd wipe it off when he knew he was caught, but I was relieved when he started to see me rather than 'The Sentinel'. I was the Sentinel, and Blair was the Guide, and if he'd ever tried to tell me that he didn't get off on that, on the role, on that link to Burton and the history of the study of man, I'd have called him a liar.

Me, at first I put up with him because I needed his help, and then I realised I needed his friendship and then I realised that I just needed him. I'm not saying that he didn't love me for me, Jim Ellison, but I knew that the Guide thing was tied up in his mind with - I don't know - his right to be with me. It had kept him by my side through crap when other men would have cut their losses, and I was grateful. And along with all the other things that my passenger had changed, he'd just figured out that this was one of them.

"Well, it's a surprise, Chief, for sure." I pulled him up against me. He was tense, and I tilted his face up. "Hey. You okay?"

He sighed. "I'm fine. I just have to think it through. Kind of a bummer though." He shrugged weakly. "I was hoping for a long-term study, and this is really going to skew the data."

"It doesn't matter," I told him, and I didn't mean that mythical long-term study. "You belong with me, you hear? And I belong with you, and nothing changes that. Right?"

He sighed. "You're developing this unnerving ability to read my mind."

"Right?"

He nodded, still unhappy. "Right."

Definitely win some, lose some. Not having to worry about zoning at an inconvenient moment was great. But it bothered him. It bothered him for a long time.

Blair slept, finally. I sat propped up against the headboard, and tried to figure out the exact nature of that warning I'd had, for all the good it did. Blair and I had both tried to work though the interactions of the Sentinel things and the other things but this was a new one. Was it a warning, or was my invisible friend just recognising the presence of a compatriot, and it was my human instincts that were distressed by the information? The feeling was still there, although only to the effect that I was sure that Landis was in the same city as me.

Could I use it to track him? The idea of knocking down Landis's door and showing him how it felt to have his loved ones frightened and abused had a certain vicious appeal, but in the end I dismissed it as a fantasy. A rogue thought flitted through my head, 'You know Blair would kill you.' I grinned and turned to look at him. He was looking right back at me.

"You're supposed to be sleeping."

"I'm sore," he said, "and too strung out. And horny."

"Right," I drawled. "Horny." A little hard to believe when the lines of his face were tight with fatigue.

He turned over cautiously, but determinedly, and slowly stroked his knuckles down the buttons of my shirtfront.

"Near death experience equals need to reaffirm the life force. It's a well-known phenomenon. So how about you kiss me."

I turned towards him, but that was all the action that was happening on my part. He put a heavy hand on my hip.

"I'm sore, not broken. Come on, get with the programme here." He was smiling, maybe a little too eager. But perhaps I wanted to do a little reaffirming of my own.
"Your wish is my command, Chief."

"Of course it is," he muttered into my mouth just before I kissed him, the first time I'd tasted him since the mouth to mouth earlier that evening. I remembered to keep the pressure off his body as I pushed that mouth as wide open as I could, but after a moment he made a tiny noise, and I realised just how hard my hand was gripping his jaw. I pulled back.

"I'm not going anywhere," he whispered and started undoing my shirt buttons, and running a hand over my chest and stomach. He was just in his shorts and I had no trouble finding plenty of skin, both smooth and hairy, to play with, although I was careful how I held him.

He whispered again. "Suck me?"

So I hauled his shorts off his hips, leaned over him. His voice rose a little, trying for sultry, but mainly achieving tired.

"There's something weirdly debauched about watching you go down on me in a shirt and dress trousers. Have I ever told you that?"

I stopped working him long enough to say, "That's great, babe. Put another one in the kink file."

Only problem was that it looked like it wasn't kinky enough. Blair was usually pretty enthusiastic about head, whether giving or receiving, but not much was happening that night. He wanted to be horny, but in the end he was forty, and too sore and strung out and tired. I rested my head on his hip after a while, knowing that it was useless but not wanting to point out the completely obvious. Between the previous tension and the disappointment in him now, it was as if one touch was all that was needed to break through, but neither of us seemed to know the right touch.

His hand stroked over my neck and back, his voice strained.

"Shit. I want to fuck you."

I moved up to kiss him on his mouth.

"The spirit is willing, Chief, but..."

He shut his eyes in desperation. He needed the release.

"Bite me."

"What?"

"Just do it, will you. I want to come, Jim, please. Just bite me, do it that way."

He asked me once, why I wasn't interested in using the teeth in bed, and I gave him a part truth - that feeding wasn't a sexual pleasure for me, and that if I was going to be putting sharp objects in his throat, then I preferred to have everybody concentrating on the business. The next part of the truth was that I wasn't into three in a bed; I never felt as if it was me that he came against, it was the invisible friend instead.

The last part of the truth was that deep down, where he barely admitted it to himself, he was afraid of what I was. No problem. Scared the shit out of me as well, and I didn't want to bring something into our bed that scared him. But he needed this, needed control and pleasure where Landis and his friend had given him fear and humiliation.

So, I gave him what he needed, felt him arch against me, hands gripped hard on my shoulders, heard the little gasps and cries, watched him sink back onto his pillows, lax and already half asleep again. The taste of him, barely more than a taste, was in my mouth, different somehow to when I wasn't taking it in my own sort of need. Mixed with the heavy smell of his come it was still addictive in its own way. And unlike the times I took it because I had to, I was turned on by it, by his response. I lay there, restless and horny, watching him sleep, before going to the bathroom and jerking off. Then I went back to bed and dozed for a while myself, waking about six o'clock.

Morning meant me calling Simon early at his home, and requesting any information about Landis that Cascade PD had. I asked for it to be transferred to our office, told him that we'd be there by about ten if he had anything he wanted to pass on in person. Blair slept through that, but when I got out of the shower, he was awake and crouched down to check out what there was in a bag in the way of clean clothes.

He looked a lot better for the sleep, barring the bruise and slightly puffy nose. He smiled at me, a little tentative.

"Hey, Jim."

"You okay?"

"Kind of stiff, but basically okay."

I reached down to tap the side of his head. "How about in there?"

He shrugged. "I guess I'll do some meditating at some point. For now, I'd just like to know what's going on." He stood up and stroked his hand over my jaw. "Last night, I shouldn't have asked you to do that for me. I'm sorry."

"No problem," I told him, and I meant it. "I love you." I didn't tell him that often enough, I knew that. He didn't answer, just stood up and hid his head in my shoulder. The silence wasn't like him. I listened to what there was to be heard, his heart beating, the soft hiss of breath. His body was sturdy in my arms, but too damn fragile as well. There were small glints of silver shining all through the curly hair these days.

So we had our Hallmark moment. The mood was a little broken when Blair asked, "Did you pack my gun when you got our stuff last night?"

"Yeah."

"Fine. Think you might like me to wear it? 'Cause I suspect I might feel better for it."
I was in two minds. Landis wouldn't be easy to stop physically, but a weapon might be useful leverage if his 'mother' was on the spot. I shrugged. "Finally think I might be corrupting you, Chief. When do I send the application to join the NRA?"

"I'd eat the damn gun first," he scoffed.

And then it was on with business, which added up to using our resources, both personal and professional to find out about Landis. As it happened, we didn't have to work that hard. We went in to our office, where Jinny was waiting for us with her efficient secretary's smile, which flicked off like a light when she saw Blair's face.

"My god," she cried, "what the hell have you done to yourself? At least I know why you're in late."

Blair put on some embarrassed humour. "Jim, you employed this woman. Why is she assuming that this is self-inflicted?"

"That'll teach you to tie your shoelaces properly, Chief."

"I took a fall, Jinny, that's all. Anything for us?"

There was a fax from Cascade, and a phone message, from one Peter Landis.

I swallowed my fury and we reviewed the stuff from Simon first. Nothing special - the permissions that Landis had filled out to access the files, a couple of security camera screen shots that Blair confirmed as the man that had come to the apartment. There was a note from Rafe to say that some of the case files might be missing. Blair and I had no questions about how they left the building.

I wondered whether pushing would work between Landis and me. The fact that he'd chosen a time when I wasn't in the apartment for his intel gathering suggested not, but there was only one way to find out. There was a cell phone number on Landis's message, and I rang it from my office phone. Blair was sitting, leaning forward with his elbows on the desk. The speaker was on.

"Hello?"

Ordinary, ordinary voice, to go with his appearance.

"It's Jim Ellison, Mr Landis. You left a message for me."

"Yes, how good of you to return my call so promptly, Mr Ellison. I hope you have some time up your sleeve for an explanation."

He was all polite supplication and old-fashioned diction. Lying bastard.

"Simon Banks told me that you were writing a book about some of the unsolved cases in Cascade, the Bloodsucker case in particular."

He was amused.

"The police have their grapevine just like we ordinary mortals, I see. Would it be convenient to meet with you at some point?"

"I have this morning free."

"Excellent. I'm at the Excelsior. Perhaps you'd like to meet me in the bar?"

Blair gave me a look at this point. Landis liked his games for sure.

"Okay. About 11.30?"

"Excellent. I'll see you then."

Call finished, I stood up and paced about my office to try and work off some anger. It wasn't successful. I needed a five-mile run or a punching bag with Landis's face on it, and the small space we were in provided neither.

Blair spoke. "Well, at least he hasn't tried luring you to some out of the way location. Maybe he doesn't want you for his white slavery ring after all."

"Cute, Sandburg. They'll be making plushies of you soon."

"Maybe, maybe he doesn't want anything in particular. Maybe he's just curious about finding somebody like him."

I thought of the strangers' smell through our apartment, and Blair's hints about the interaction between Landis and Leona.

"Then he's picked a strange way to start a support group."

"Who knows how old he is? Maybe he's had the odd nasty experience. I'd have thought that you'd understand caution about revealing secrets."

I shook my head. Time with me as an observer and a cop contributed to knocking the bloom off Blair's trust in human nature, but he was still too prone to at least try to put the best face on people's motivations. Too much empathy and too much pysch.

"Going through our stuff and humiliating you, and nearly killing you, is not some equivalent of dunking pig tails in the inkwell, Sandburg. Look, will you go out and talk to Jinny about rejigging clients and work for the next couple of days until we can sort this out. We still need to make a living."

He opened his mouth, and I put my hand over it.

"No, you're not coming. Power to cloud men's minds, remember? I'll fill you in."

He wasn't too thrilled, but he was still freaked out enough by the previous day's happenings to accept it, if with bad grace. He indicated his state of mind by licking my palm. I shifted it pretty quickly and hauled him closer with the licked hand against the small of his back.

"This is a clean shirt, Jim." His expression was mock longsuffering.

"You've got a clean mouth, Chief. Most of the time, anyway."

I showed him how much I appreciated that clean mouth by checking it out with my own, and I tried to ignore the tang of anxiety that covered him.

"Watch yourself," he said.

"Same applies to you."

The Excelsior was a mid-range sort of hotel, catering to conventions and business travellers. The bar was pleasant, with big booths rather than tables, and I appreciated the real greenery rather than fake. I was there by 11.20 but he was waiting for me. He saw me coming across the room, and stood up to greet me with a contained smile and knowing eyes.

"Mr Ellison. I feel as if I know you a little from reading your reports. It's nice to meet you in person."

I had no patience for niceties or subtleties.

"Going through my apartment must have filled in a few gaps, I'd have thought."

He grinned, only a little disconcerted. "Well, it was a calculated risk. I did wonder about that press conference. It seemed a little strange in view of your current relationship with Mr Sandburg, although love is forgiving, of course. I hope he wasn't too upset to discover that his memory has gaps. So did you smell me? Or did you leave little booby traps visible only to those keen eyes of yours?"

"Perhaps I should let you guess. But you can tell your friend she should keep her hands to herself."

"You're a positive bloodhound. I should apologise, but Leona has always been partial to pretty men. One of the few pleasures I can't provide for her directly."

He waved his hands at what was a fit and tidy, but homely, appearance. His voice sounded like mine when I complained about Blair's habits; affection hiding behind exasperation. But Blair's habits never included mauling unwilling strangers.

"Where is she?"

"Out looking for that special something. Would you like me to get you a drink, Mr Ellison?"

"It would be a waste of money, the way this looks like it's going to be a waste of time."

"I don't buy them, and I don't waste anything. Please, sit down. I got a Bloody Mary for myself. I've always wondered if tomato juice tastes as interesting as it smells. I've never tasted a tomato, not fully. They were thought to be poisonous when I was young, when people grew them at all."

So, in about a minute I'd confirmed the impression I got from Blair, that he was intelligent, amoral and liked the sound of his own voice. Despite what should have been a bad first impression, I almost wanted to like him. This man understood things about me that nobody else would understand - which didn't excuse how he chose to investigate me.

"What do you want?"

"Perhaps I just wanted to make the pleasure of your acquaintance."

I didn't answer.

"As it happens, I have a proposal for you. There's a rather pleasant park a few minutes walk from here. How about we go there?"

"Why can't we discuss it here?"

"I don't think you want other people overhearing our discussions. Not really. My control over people is limited to one on one contact, and this bar is going to fill up with lunch time traffic shortly."

So, we walked through warm summer sunshine to the park. Along the way I grew uncomfortably aware of pleasure in this man's company, a sort of buzz that I associated with the day or so after feeding, or the first weeks after Blair and I finally worked out exactly what we wanted to be to each other. I realised that I wasn't feeling my own reaction, which only slightly reduced the freak out factor. My passenger was really happy. I wasn't so happy, not least because I had no idea what my little friend might have in mind. From a purely human viewpoint, I didn't trust Landis as far as I could throw him. I did not need to be distracted by vampire virus in love.

I looked at him. It was hard to say if I was projecting my own mix of feeling on him, but it seemed that he wasn't quite so smug as he was before. He must have sensed the glance. He looked up at me briefly, troubled, and then discreetly but definitely increased the space between us. I nearly laughed. If it was that easy to turn someone gay then the human race would have died out generations ago. But it set me thinking to how much he knew or understood about what he was.

I tried the senses, but hearing and smell weren't much use to me. His body was as unnaturally quiet as my own, and just as bland-smelling compared to the riot of scent that made up a normal human being. Perhaps with more time I might develop a baseline, but I had a gut instinct that Landis and I wouldn't be spending that much time in each other's company.

There was a small stream, tamed into an ornamental watercourse, with a fancy bridge arching over it. Landis stood in the middle, leaning on the railing, and looked over the water.

"How long have you and Mr Sandburg been together?" I was tempted to say that surely he'd already asked Blair that question, but I didn't want to even hint that we'd broken the block he'd put on Blair's memory.

"I don't see that that's any of your business."

"I met Leona in an Alabama dance hall in 1954. She was seventeen and very pretty. And a wild little hellion." He grinned at me. "Not so very much has changed. I just meant to use her for a night, but - well." He made a gesture that seemed to suggest that nobody ever figured out love.

It was surprisingly easy to stand there and listen to him. Even without the hum of contentment from my passenger, it was interesting in its own right. I wondered just exactly how old he was.

"It's a long time," he said, "and I'm not resigned to the idea of losing her."

"It's not something that either of us has much choice about."

Landis chuckled. "Fatalistic, or just depressingly noble? Of course I have a choice. You're going to give it to me. You're going to turn Leona."

Which last time I was paying attention, involved the death of one party.

"Let me get this straight," I said quietly. "I'm supposed to commit suicide so that you and your girlfriend can toddle off to be happy vampire lovers together?"

"Absolutely. It's a hard choice I know. You can die, or Blair Sandburg can die. If I can't have my lover, Mr Ellison, I see no reason why you should have yours."

Threats to Blair have always been a good way to get my full attention. Angry, I snarled, "You're pretty sure of yourself. I could just walk away, or kill you myself."

He had the look of a man about to put four aces on the table. "But then you won't know where Mr Sandburg is. Leona should have collected him by now. And I think you'd find it difficult to kill me, even for a man of your skills."

Fuck. The temptation to find out just how difficult it might be was rising strong.

"She's over seventy."

Again, there was that flash of prideful affection.

"She does have to wear contacts, but she's very fit for her age. And very confident with a gun. I think that she could take your friend unawares. And of course, he'll want to ensure your safety as well. He's quite fond of you."

Any flicker of fellow feeling I might have felt for him was gone. He was a danger, plain and simple. He stood in front of me, smug, and I prayed, over-confident.

"I want to try calling my office."

"Take your phone out slowly. And after you've made your call you can step discreetly into the bushes and I'll make sure that a phone is all that you're carrying."

I got a ring tone for far too long, before the work phone was picked up to Jinny's breathy "Hello?"

"Jinny, it's Jim. I need to talk to Blair."

Her voice was a little annoyed.

"Well you'll have to try his cell then. He said it was fine if I went to lunch early, he'd watch things, and then I get back and poor old Paul is locked out, and everyone is lucky that I never take my swipe card off, or we'd still be waiting in the hallway."

"Check if he left a message for me."

There was a brief silence, and then, "Nothing to be found. Is everything all right?"

"It's fine. Tell Paul we'll brief him about the job later. Tell him I'm sorry for wasting his time."

"Believe me now?" Landis asked.

I didn't have much choice. Landis frisked me, and there was a brief rise of that inappropriate pleasure. God, I'd had enough of being led like a bull by the hormonal nose with my own Sentinel reactions, without my invisible friend getting into the act. No way. Landis took possession of my gun; perhaps he interpreted his own spike of enjoyment as triumphant pleasure, or maybe he just got off on this sort of thing normally. He waved his hand towards the park exit. "I have a car parked nearby. Shall we have a little more exercise?"

We set off, just two men walking towards a mutual destination. I had nothing to say, but once in the car, Landis couldn't help himself. As far as I was concerned, it was self-aggrandising bullshit. He and Leona had this great love affair, and that justified abduction, extortion and murder. I didn't think so. I didn't like much of what I was thinking, and I was thinking hard.

"I suppose," I said, as I manoeuvred off the streets and onto the freeway, "that you didn't pay for this car either?"

"If I tell somebody that the bill is in order, for some strange reason they believe me. I suspect that it's chaos at the end of the day's tallying up, but if that's likely to be a problem then I can be discreet and actually pay for things. It's a matter of judgement. I've learned. But in the circumstances, Leona and I plan to leave the area fairly quickly, once we have what we want."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"At least Mr Sandburg won't need to worry about all those tortuous arrangements you've made for ID and money transfer. My way is simpler. We don't leave a lot of trace behind us, and people don't like to admit that they've been gypped."

"I bet."

I brought up a harsh fact.

"You know that it won't take properly for her. Leona's too old. You're only going to have about another forty years tops."

"And what makes you say that?"

"Because that's what happened to the woman who did this to me. Come on, you read the files. You know that my - forebear - was killing at the end. She didn't do it for kicks. She couldn't help herself. It's not going to help your discreet lifestyle if Leona needs to rip out a throat once a week, is it?"

He was still, maybe too still, and if so that was the only clue that what I'd said disturbed him.

"Sufficient to the day, Mr Ellison. Leona and I will work something out."

He ran out of conversation before we reached our destination, which was fine by me. We went a fair way out of the city, into an area that was mainly vineyards, interspersed with a few houses set off the road. We turned into the drive of one of those, an older house, well maintained but modest-looking.

I threw the senses wide open as soon as we were out of the car, and went a little weak as I heard Blair's voice, faint but definite. "Fine," he was muttering, "I won't underestimate delicate old ladies," there was a hitch in his voice as if he was making some physical effort, "and you won't underestimate pretty faggots." Then a woman's voice, Leona's, spewing filth and venom at him. Landis gestured at me - with my gun - but he wasn't concentrating on me. Presumably he expected to see her.

"Do you have a cellar?" I asked. “Try there." I tapped at an ear.

He indicated that I should go first, which was fine by me. I was pretty sure that Blair had his end under control and I preferred to be between Landis and him. We headed down stairs. Part way I turned and went for Landis. He knew enough to be some distance behind me and I expected that he'd have time to get off a shot. It didn't matter. Like him, I'm difficult to kill. He looked startled, almost in pain, and then his hand jerked, even as he pulled the trigger. The bullet winged my arm, but I grabbed the gun from his hands. I didn't bother to cover him with it, just bolted down the stairs ahead of him

In middle of a large basement there was my partner, holding a gun on a woman. She had her hands tied behind her back with a scarf, no doubt formerly part of her tasteful outfit. She looked ready to kill, the disarrangement of her careful elderly chic notwithstanding. Hearing the shot must have been a bad moment for Blair and he looked relieved as hell to see me, although he dimmed a little at the sight of Landis following behind. He was sensible enough to keep his weapon trained on Leona, but he was more than a little surprised when I moved forward as smoothly as I could and whipped the gun out of his hands. But the last thing I wanted was Landis coming out of shock and telling Blair to point the gun at his own head.

I also chose to cover Leona, rather than Landis, who moved across the room to join her. "He knew who I was," she hissed at him, jerking her head at Blair. Landis's look turned speculative, but he didn't say anything, just put an arm around her. I emptied the clip from Blair's gun, somewhat awkwardly, and handed him back the weapon.

Blair was eyeing the blood on my shirt. He'd learned not to freak at minor injuries. "You okay?"

"I'm great."

He relaxed a little, and looked at the door to the stairs.

"How are we going to do this, Jim?"

I didn't say anything. Landis laughed.

"How are you going to do this, indeed, Mr Sandburg? Are you going to report this to the police? It would be an interesting story."

"Leona told me what you want him for," Blair spat out. "It's not going to happen."

"Maybe another option? Do you think that you can run away? Going underground only works if your opponent doesn't know what you're doing."

Arrogant, stupid shit. He'd spent too many years getting what he wanted with a little dig in someone's head.

"Mr Ellison doesn't have a choice."

Blair looked from him to me, and absolute horror crossed his face.

"Jim. Fuck, no."

He knew. I pulled him up against me, and muttered, "Everything's fine. I'm fine. I want you to get out of here, go somewhere safe, not home, and when you're safe you can remember all this then. You just do whatever has be done but don't come back here." I just had to hope that those ambiguous instructions were enough. For all I knew, I was completely messing him up in more than the obvious way.

He fought me hard, anger and betrayal and fear all over him, and I resigned myself to the possibility that he might never forgive me for this. That was too bad - I wanted him out of there. Then his face cleared. He smiled at me, and snugged his arm around my waist and squeezed gently, and then he was gone.

Landis spoke again. "Not tempted to turn the tables on me? I half expected you to try to convince him what a lovely vampire he'd make." I pushed down the leap in me of mingled revulsion and yearning at the idea. Then he said, "Put the gun down." I felt pressure against my mind, but only that, no compulsion, and I knew that he was getting scared. He was wising up at last. He must have realised my intent, because even as my hands came up, he moved in front of Leona, shouting, "No!"

And as the gun went off, my hands jerked off target. I stood there like a fool, and finally realised that there was still more than one hostage here. I'd been right not to trust my little friend. Landis shoved Leona towards the door, and that was a mistake because he wasn't covering her any more, and the friend didn't give a damn about her. One shot was enough - clean and quick.

Landis froze, and made this animal, choking noise. Then he came at me, hands outstretched, teeth bared. The struggle to aim meant I only got one shot off, and it hurt like I'd put my hand on an electric wire. I tried for a headshot, between the eyes, but I only got him in his left cheek. He jerked but kept coming.

We grappled together, both of us moving as if we were in quicksand, surreally silent - no panting, no grunts of effort. He bit the wrist that gripped the gun, and when that didn't work pulled in a breath to say, "No bullet for him. Nothing that clean." His speech was distorted by the damage to his face, and he had to spit a wad of mess in my face to get out the threat. Finally, I had the gun jammed under his jaw, and I pulled the trigger until the clip was empty, while my own body jerked and my sight greyed out.

I stood up like an old man. I was spattered with blood and I ached all over, and that was a shock in itself after ten years of unnaturally good health and stamina. Landis was still, but his eyes opened, and he moaned. I untied the scarf around Leona's hands and tied his, not quite able to avoid seeing the mess I'd made of his head. I could guess about what to expect, but I wasn't going to assume anything. My belt went around his feet.

I stumbled up the stairs, and stood at the door. I let my hearing range out. I couldn't hear any concerned voices wondering if that noise really had been shots. What I could hear was the growl of a tractor engine and the hiss of spray. There was a chemical smell on the air, sharp and overwhelming. Startled, I jerked myself back from the edge of a zone.

So, maybe, nobody had heard shots, and please god, nobody had connected any noise to Blair driving the jeep away. Maybe the start-up of the engine provided a little aural camouflage. Still, it wasn't wise to count on that.

An awkward but very fast recon through the house revealed that it was probably someone's home, not a rented property. More hoodoo by Landis presumably - hopefully. I found his bags, Leona's - not much there.

There was a stack of newspaper in that cellar. There was a fireplace in the living room, and when I went out the back there was an outhouse, empty of wood, but it did have a log splitter propped up against the wall, and I took it with me. I went down to the cellar again - those stairs featured in nightmares for a long time. My head was pounding, my legs could barely move. The friend really was pissed, but it was my body, mine. Landis was moaning still, twitching. I leaned on the axe like an old man with his walking stick, and without any warning I was immersed in a dark fantasy of leaving Landis alive, and finding Blair, presenting Landis to him like some mangled creature proudly brought home by a cat. We could be together, maybe not forever, but a lot longer than we'd have otherwise. The friend liked that idea; the headache and pain receded a little.

Except that Landis didn't want to die, unlike Elizabeth Drewson. Maybe, by the time I found Blair, Landis would be healed enough to spit curses at us, or beg for his life. To finish it, Blair would have to murder, not simply kill. And if Landis hadn't healed - I looked, really looked, at the little gift I was planning to offer to Blair. So, in pity, and revulsion, and determination that this had to be fucking finished, I swung the log splitter and took his head off. It took two or three blows to do it properly, and I felt as if I was dying too.

I wrapped the bodies in blankets. There was a bowling bag behind the bedroom door and I used that for the head. It was convenient, and ensured that I didn't know if there were any more tics or twitches. I carried everything outside to the car. Luckily, the entrance area was reasonably secluded with vegetation. Landis went into the trunk, Leona went on the floor of the back seat. There were garden tools in the cellar, and a shovel went in the trunk as well.

I went upstairs - I must have moved as if I had Parkinson's disease - and washed the worst of the blood off, put a rough patch on the graze across my arm. I put on a navy blue shirt of Landis's, a little tight, but manageable. I was wearing dark trousers - they'd just have to do. I screwed up paper and spread it over the cellar and the house. I siphoned off some gas from the car and poured it over the paper in the cellar. I found matches by the fireplace, and I lit one and dropped it on the mess of paper, with a silent apology to the real owners.

Then I went outside, shut the door behind me, and got into Landis's car and drove away. It all took maybe twenty minutes tops from when I made Blair leave.

The Bay area isn't renowned for its fishing, but there are plenty of outdoor recreation areas. In four years, Blair and I had checked out plenty of camping sites and hiking trails. There's one, a fair way out, never mind where, that Blair and I had visited once or twice. He'd looked at it once with cop eyes, and joked that it was a good place to hide bodies. Plenty of vegetation, miles from anywhere, lots of topography, as Blair put it. Well, we never went back there.

Driving wasn't easy. I felt as sick as I ever have while still keeping function, and that scared the hell out of me. I did not need to crash with two corpses in the car, or draw any other attention to myself, but damned if I wasn't going to make every effort to keep Landis away from a forensics lab. By the time I'd driven there, and buried the two of them, it was early evening, still plenty of light. I was wiping down the shovel handle when I heard the sound of an engine. I couldn't believe it, and then something about the particular noise the engine made registered with me, and I still couldn't believe it, but for different reasons.

I was about ten minutes walk off the track, but I could hear him calling me, not loudly, just talking quietly. I was going to kill him. Eventually I stumbled out of the woods, into the rough clearing that served as a car park.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing here?" Not much of a greeting, I know, but I was exhausted and sick and pissed off as hell.

He looked totally unrepentant. "I tried to figure out where you might go. This seemed like a good bet, assuming that you were alive. Given that the house is ashes and all."

That put a cold spike through me. "I told you not to go back there. I told you..." I had to stop. I must have looked bad because he tried to put his hands on me, but I stepped back. I stank.

"I didn't go there. I couldn't have, thanks to your little exercise in withdrawing my free will." His voice was flat. "I told myself I wasn't going back, I was just driving past." That wasn't making me feel any better. Just twenty-four hours after I'd been pumping his blood for him, listening to his body creaking and thudding while I did it, and he was playing games with the games that laid him on the floor in the first place. I couldn't say anything. What if he'd had some sort of reaction, crashed?

"I have to get rid of the car," I declared. There was still about a quarter of a tank of gas in it. Enough to drive it far enough that it wouldn't necessarily be connected to this spot, and then fire it.

"Then it's a good thing I'm here, isn't it. You'll need a lift." He headed back to the jeep, muttering, "Nice to know I'm good for something." I followed him, listening, hearing the quiet current of his blood. It was only a couple of weeks since I'd fed, but I knew then that I needed it. The friend needed it, maybe it wasn't pissed at all, but somehow hurt, ill. I thought of the hum of contentment that I'd felt in Landis's presence, and then I didn't think at all. I just grabbed Blair's arm and spun him against the hood of the jeep.

"Jim? What...oh shit." He didn't have time for any more before I had my mouth against his throat, and let the peace and strength flow in, while he shuddered underneath me.

After a while, noises made sense again. "Jim, my back is killing me. Off, man, come on." I pulled back from him, and he put one hand to his throat and the other hand against his crotch with a dazed expression. "Oh, great. Just what I needed." Then he jumped, because both my hands were in fists and I was thumping the jeep's hood as hard as I could. Then again. I even made a dent.

"Jim, stop it. Come on, just stop it."

I twisted away from him and headed for Landis's rental. "I have to get rid of the car," I told him. "You follow behind." I got in the car and leaned back against the headrest. Congratulations, Ellison, I thought. For an encore, why don't you just bend him the other way and fuck him raw and walk away from that too? But I had to get going. If I sat there any longer, he would have come over, and I wasn't ready to face him with the marks on his throat yet. Nice to know he was good for something.

We headed back to the city. I had plenty of time to contemplate my scorched earth policy and wonder if I shouldn't just dump the car instead of burning it. It's not often that I regret advances in forensic science, but there had been substantial ones over the last eight or nine years since Drewson found me. Burning a car was the fattest of fat hints that there was stuff that a perp didn't want to be found. I didn't know what sort of trails Landis had left, and for all I knew he might have just disappeared into a black hole of uncompleted paper work and confused, embarrassed people. But I wasn't prepared to take the chance that anybody would find anything that could have a DNA analysis done on it.

Well before the turnoff to the busier routes I parked the car off road, and set it on fire, while Blair watched. He looked terrible, in contrast to my sense of energy. The bruises down his face merged into his usual evening whiskers, and he was propped against the jeep looking as if he was going to sleep standing up. I bundled him into the passenger seat, and took off, heading for home with the stink of burning plastics and rubber in my nostrils.

Blair was looking out the window when he finally spoke. "They're both dead, then?"

"Yeah."

"Well, you like keeping things tidy."

He could get irritable and exasperated in argument, but he very seldom aimed to hurt. He was good at it for something he had so little practice at.

"You'd have had a better idea, no doubt."

He squirmed in the seat, still looking out the window.

"You didn't need my input earlier. It's a little late to be offering any ideas now, isn't it? Jim Ellison was in command." He took a deep, ragged breath. "I heard shots, Jim, and they didn't bother me, because you told me that everything was fine. You were just - fine. So I found a nice safe motel unit and I had the panic attack to end all panic attacks and threw up a couple of times and then I tried to figure out where you might be."

There was another uneven breath.

"It's really disturbing when I don't know if I'm more upset with you for killing two people, or for taking it all on yourself like that, or for messing with my mind. I mean, what the hell were you thinking?"

I was thinking that the man and woman who could so calmly accept the idea that I should die on their behalf weren't going to accept a quiet, 'we all keep our mouths shut and nobody ends up on a slab in a lab anywhere' sort of deal. And I knew that he was remembering that they were both helpless and held at gunpoint when he left.

"Blair, I can't talk about this in the car, unless you want to top off a really shitty day with an accident. Let's just leave it."

If silence gives consent then he agreed. It was twilight by the time we got home and we headed inside. It's a habit that I run through my senses to check that everything's okay whenever I head home, and I did it then without thinking. The stale scent trace of Leona and Peter Landis's home invasion struck me. God, was that only twenty-four hours ago? It wasn't a physical spike, just emotion and memory, and bad enough on that basis. Without thinking I charged though the apartment, throwing open windows and doors. Then I went and stood on the little balcony, consciously sucking air in and out through my nose and mouth to try to clear the tiny traces.

I heard movement behind me and then Blair was there. He put his arms around me, head against the back of my neck. He hadn't needed to say it in years, but he muttered reflexively, "Dial it down, Jim, it's okay," and I let it anchor me. Finally I had something like control of myself, a defence against the scent ghosts that haunted our home. I made to turn around and he stepped back. Immediate crisis over, he didn't know what to say. I reached out, touched the faint marks on his neck.

"I'm sorry about that."

"Like this is top of the list of things that I'm bothered about, man."

"I know. But it's the only one that I'm likely to apologise for. Go have a shower, you'll need one. And keep the fan going."

His skin flushed, and he turned and headed for the bathroom.

I stripped off the clothes I was wearing, threw them into the trash and shrugged into my robe. Leona's human scent was the stronger of the foreign scents in the bedroom, although already diffusing in the draft coming from the open window. Quickly, I stripped all the bedding, and wiped a damp cloth over anywhere that seemed to need it. It wasn't enough, and I grabbed some cleaner and wiped it over every surface that could take it, and probably a few that couldn't.

Blair came and grabbed some clothes. "You want me to light one of those beeswax candles in here?"

"Maybe later. The windows should be enough for now."

"Fine. I left the bathroom fan going."

He didn't comment further on the obsessive purification rituals, just headed to the kitchen and checked out the freezer and the cupboards. "I'd better have a shower," I said, and didn't wait for his opinion about that or anything else. I kept remembering his words in the car. I told myself it would be okay, it was just knee-jerk reaction. He didn't have to like it, fuck knew that I didn't, but he would understand, once he'd had a little time.

I couldn't relax under the water, and decided not to even try, just scrubbed myself as clean as I could and got out, pulled on some clothes. I heard the microwave humming. The kitchen was full of the scents of defrosting food and the sharp ammonia-citrus smell of the cleaner that we used. Blair was wiping down the floor and counters, his movements slow and awkward.

"You don't have to do that. You're dead on your feet."

He shrugged. "The smell's bothering you, and it has to be done eventually."

"Sit down before you fall down."

He pulled a chair back from the dining table and sagged into it. The microwave beeped but he didn't get up.

"Short shower. I thought I left you plenty of water."

"Bloody hands wash off easier than you might think." Not my most diplomatic line, and I regretted it as soon as it was out of my mouth. He went even paler in shock, and then there was another faint flush of colour in his face, embarrassment or anger, I didn't want to know anymore.

"Shit, Jim, I'm sorry. I'm just not so - pragmatic- about this stuff as you. I didn't mean to imply that I thought you'd done it lightly or anything, it's just," and rarely for him, he fumbled for words, "it's a big deal, man."

"It's a done deal, is what it is."

"Yeah," he sighed. He still didn't move. I got up and organised the food and did everything except play 'here comes the airplane' to make sure that he actually ate some of it. I chivvied him into bed, and then quietly kept on with the exorcism of our uninvited guests, knowing to about five minutes how long it took him to sleep. A while.

It was around midnight when I turned on the pc and checked out the history of the tomato. It wasn't illuminating unless you were a serious horticulturalist. Depending on Landis's place of origin, he could have been born anytime from 1900 back. Something about the precision of his diction made me suspect non-English speaking beginnings. And then I turned the damned thing off, because in the end, what the hell did it matter?

I wasn't tired, but took a book and a mini-light and lay on the bed next to Blair and tried to read. About 4 am maybe, I slept, and wished I hadn't. I was walking down those steps to the cellar, but instead of some unknown person's storage space, I walked into David Lash's lair. Right before I'd stepped on his booby trap step, I'd seen the way he leaned over Blair and thought that he looked like - guess - yeah, some vampire, sucking the life out of the man in the chair. Lash turned his head to me and it was my face under the cheap wig. Then Lash/I was gone, and Blair was saying hopelessly, "I couldn't figure anything else out, Jim, that was just all there was." Twenty-six year old Blair's face, thirty-four year old Blair's words, after he shot Leroy Groves. And then I started awake, and wished my sub-conscious would go to hell.

That was just all there was. They were dead, and I regretted it, sure, but leaving them alive involved just way too much trust, and I'd given up whatever I had of that to Blair a long time ago. As for the other thing - I tried measuring the merits of murder for self-defence, against murder for advantages such as not having to watch your lover grow and old and die when you didn't have the same opportunity.

Blair stirred. I lay back down again, and put my arm across him over the blankets. He sighed, and I knew he was awake. We just lay there, until he said, "I am a complete fucked up mess."

"Yeah?"

He laughed, one of his nervous 'heh-heh-hehs'.

"Absolutely. So, how are you?"

"The blood buzz is dying down."

"Not what I meant, Jim."

"I'm not wallowing in guilt, Sandburg. Do you want me to?"

"Nooo." And forgive me if I found that unconvincing.

"So, just how pissed off are you?"

"Still pretty damn pissed off. What, did you think I couldn't handle it or something?"

He'd picked up the pieces after Groves. He always has been resilient, but he'd needed a little help.

"Chief, the stuff you can handle scares the shit out of me sometimes. But that doesn't mean that you have to."

"Doesn't mean that I want to be sent on my merry way like some zombie, either."

"I didn't want you there, and there wasn't time to play debating club."

"How much difference would another five or ten minutes have made? I don't have the right to help decide that two people should die to keep us safe, to at least satisfy myself that it's the only option? And what the hell is this not wanting me there shit?"

His voice was loud; not a shout, but he was combat ready all right.

"We could have debated as long as you like. In the end the only thing they wanted was me dead, and there's nothing that's going to change that. We could have handed them over to the cops. And how long do you think Mr Good at Pushing would have stayed in custody? How much worth would you put on their word to leave us alone? Maybe we should have chained them in a cabin somewhere?"

He was out of bed by now, pacing the floor. I sat against the headboard, arms crossed hard across my chest, hoping it looked like a hard-ass pose rather than me trying to hug myself.

"I was right before, Jim, I'm completely fucked up. Because I'm really upset about what you did to me. Never mind that you - executed - two people.

I took the fight to the flank I knew I could defeat. "How upset were you over Lash, or those drug-runners in Peru?"

"They were fighting back, Jim, they weren't helpless."

"Lash just had a piece of wood when I shot him. He might have chosen to run."

Blair was looking at me like I was crazy. "If he'd got away, who knows what he'd have done to somebody else."

"Yeah, that's right. Do you want to be looking over your shoulder all your life?"

He raised his hands in sarcastic defeat. "I bow to your superior logic." Then he headed out. No sound from the living area, no noises that might suggest coffee making or showering - just silence, except for a too rapid heartbeat.

I followed him. He was slumped on one of the upright chairs at the big table, arms bent and resting on it.

I didn't want to be angry with him, but I was. I'd made the best choice that I felt that I could in the circumstances, and knowing that he wouldn't be happy about it was one thing, but seeing and feeling it was another. And it wasn't just moral outrage for him either. So he wasn't happy that I'd made choices that affected him without his input. We'd already been there, done that. Let him be on the receiving end for a change. Yes, I hold on to things, loyalties and grudges, and I couldn't keep my next words back.

"Face it, Sandburg, sometimes you're not the one making the big life-altering decisions."

"Fuck you!" he shouted. Then only a little more quietly, "Fuck you, Jim, this isn't about some shit ten years old, this is about now." He got up from the chair and tried stalking back to the bedroom, except that I intercepted him.

"So what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm going to get dressed and get some air and try and cool down. Some decisions I can make for myself, okay. Now out of the way, man."

He was just in boxers and a tank top, his usual warm weather sleep gear. He was angry and stressed out and he was beautiful to me. He was beautiful, and I decided that my passenger had had more than its fair share of him the last couple of days. I wanted just him and me, and I grabbed his shoulders and kissed him. He - endured - it, I guess. When I pulled back, he laughed bitterly.

"Let me guess. Yesterday you bit me, and today you're horny. Usual pattern, huh?" I've never been sure if he ever figured out all that post-feeding sex, if he assumed that it was just another way of working off the energy high, or if he realised the territoriality behind it. I let one hand slide down and stroke his arm and kissed the ball of the shoulder, then worked my way up his neck. He was still, unnaturally still for him, but I could smell the start of desire on him, and I breathed it in and let it feed mine.

"Like this is so fucking subtle, Jim." I showed what I thought of subtlety by working my hands under the hem of his shirt and stroking his back. He sighed then, and let his head lean back so I could better kiss his neck, and I let out a low, satisfied noise. Maybe that finished the decision-making for him - the next thing I knew there was nothing passive in the hands clenched across my back, or the way he put his mouth to my neck, my chest. He pulled back from me, but only to haul my tee shirt up, over my head and off. Then he shoved me, not hard, towards the bedroom door.

"Go on. You're the one who's so fired up by the idea of sex." His voice was hoarse, and he stroked an obvious hard-on under his shorts. I wasn't the only one fired up. I dragged him along and we fell gracelessly onto the bed, humping against each other as soon as we had the leverage, and I half thought this would be one of those times where we came without even getting our clothes off properly. Instead, he slowed the pace a little, just a little, and lifted his head from the nipple that he'd been sucking.

"Do you want me to fuck you?"

And there was the pleasurable little twist in my gut at the question, which went with my answer.

"Yes."

"Thought you might," he said, and reached to kiss my mouth. "You'd better take these off," and he tugged at the sweat pants I was still wearing, "and turn that pretty ass over, hadn't you."

His boxers were halfway down his thighs and he kicked them off awkwardly, before grabbing some lube, while I pulled off the rest of my clothes. It wasn't as if either of us needed a lot of preliminaries by then, which was good. He was never rough with me, but the intensity of him...it was one finger, two fingers, and then his cock in a damn speedy progression, and one hand slippery with gel milking my cock.

I slumped onto the bed once he was in me, bracing myself to one side just enough that he could keep handling me without too much trouble, rolling my hips to meet him as he pushed rhythmically in and out of me. For a long time it was just his heat and weight on me, no talking, not even many sounds from either of us, until finally I came. He slowed his movement briefly, his hand still on my softening cock but not letting go of me. As often as not, that was the point when he would tell me he loved me. Not this time.

"Do you want this to be absolution, Jim?" He was trembling a little. I knew that he was about to start the slow, intense thrusts that he needed to finish. "How long can you hold your breath, man?" And then he moved again, while I lay beneath him as if paralysed. He came with a sobbing hitch of breath, and collapsed on top of me. I took a moment to realise that the continuing movement of his body had nothing to do with sex. He was crying. I shifted underneath him, trying to encourage him to move off me so that I could hold him, but he just clamped his arms and legs around me. I could have bucked him off, but I didn't, I had to lie there while he worked it out of himself.

"Ah, shit." Finally, he got off me, and blundered across the bed to find tissues. I made to get up, but he stilled me with a hand in the small of my back. "Just let me wipe you down. I've snotted all over your back, never mind anything else." He swabbed me down, blew his nose, wiped his face, and then finally faced me.

"I'm a prick. Sorry."

"It's okay, Chief."

"No, it's not."

He let me pull him into my arms. "It will be," I told him.

"Later, maybe," he sighed, hiding his face against me. He was still tense, which didn't make sense to me; after the sex and the crying he should have been wrung out like a rag, from exhaustion if nothing else.

"He asked me whether you liked being what you were." Blair stopped. There was a silence as we both waited. "I told him you hated it. And he made some smart-ass remark about how important it was to be happy with what you are." And that answered a few questions.

"Look at me," I said, and then, more sternly, "look at me." He obeyed eventually, clearly ashamed.

"You could have told him I was dead and loving it," Blair snorted at that, a little messily, "and it wouldn't have made any damn difference. You know that, Blair, you know it."

He shrugged.

I continued. "I don't like it. That doesn't mean that I haven't learned to live with it. And I appreciate all the ways you've tried to help me to stay myself with this."

He laughed, another unpleasant laugh.

"Such big sacrifices that I've made. Sometimes I think that I should have taken your hand, that first time, and led you to some nightclub or bar. That's what they did sometimes. They'd pick somebody out and she'd watch them."

I remembered the ingrained horror I'd felt at the idea of using another human that way. Sometimes I think that maybe it was a Sentinel thing. Other times, I think it was just me, Jim Ellison, kicking against a fate that wanted me to be something that I didn't want or know how to be. Accepting something as a gift from Blair wasn't easier but it felt more right. He liked giving me things. I'd learned to accept.

"It's better the way it is."

"Yeah, sure it is. It was just selfishness, that's all." He pushed himself into me, trying to get even closer. "It wasn't even a whole year, not a whole year." Not even a whole year between Drewson, and the first time we tumbled into bed together. "I thought it - you - was my reward, my just deserts for all the crappy stuff that went before. I didn't want to share you, that's all that it was."

I didn't say anything - just hugged him tighter. I never did say sorry. I was sorry I hurt him, but not sorry about protecting us, or for keeping him out of that cellar filled with the smell of blood and shit. I wasn't sorry that I dug graves by myself and had to manhandle two stiffening corpses into them on my own. I wasn't sorry that he didn't have to make any choices about what happened to Peter Landis.

The next few days we waited to see if anyone actually missed Peter and Leona Landis. Nothing. The arson of the house was a small item in the regional section of the Examiner. Nothing else. No knock on the door. No enquiries. It stayed quiet. I don't know if anyone ever knew or cared that they were gone.

The next week or so was notable for Blair catching up with old friends and new ones. He messengered Megan, who was back in Australia. He called Naomi. He e-mailed Joel, and Molly, who was one of the few people he knew at Rainier who had stood by him without questions. I'd sent her some anonymous flowers for that. He went out drinking with Ethan and Tom, friends that we'd made in San Francisco, and came home just a little drunk.

I envied him the chance to get drunk, and the way he turned to old friends burned. Not that I was angry that he did it - it was healing for him, and I was all for that. We'd been planning that maybe we should 'drop out' in about another year or eighteen months, and his frenzy of catch-up reminded me of what he was going to lose, what we would both lose. The thought of him losing contact with Naomi especially upset me. Dad had died eighteen months earlier and I had some sort of closure - something that Blair wouldn't have. I toyed sometimes with the idea of just leaving him behind, but I never admitted the fantasy out loud. He would have been hugely offended and hurt.

Despite all those things, I was increasingly thinking about bringing our disappearance forward, to within six months or so. San Francisco, and our life there, was spoiled. Eventually, I discussed it with him, and he agreed, which surprised me. So we went on a little trip to a surfing town down the coast, and we were seen the worse for wear at a beach front bar, and left a few small clues to point to a drowning accident.

I feel guilty when I remember a long way back, as if I'm being disloyal to the man who's with me now. But it's - dislocating - sometimes. When I look in a mirror I haven't changed. I'm still the same, and surely that means that somewhere nearby there ought to be this exuberant, sometimes irritating young guy, with wild hair and even wilder ideas. What about the quieter guy in his thirties? He had some pretty wild ideas too, and the same habit of not being able to talk without waving his hands around. All the different faces that Blair's worn, and I still look the same.

I haven't thought about Landis in years. James Ellison avoids an unpleasant memory. Now there's a news flash. But I don't have to be a hotshot detective to know why he's in my mind. It was easier to think that I was making the right decision then. What might I do if somebody offered me the chance of longer with Blair, now? I hear Landis when I dream, sometimes - "I'm not resigned to losing her." It's improbable for him to say anything because he's sprawled against a wall with his throat ripped out. Blair, the Blair I know now, is standing over him, and another Blair, young and glowing with health, tenderly has his arms around his counterpart. The young Blair looks at me, the fangs prominent, and he pronounces, "You could have done better for him." And then I wake up, and try not to think about it.

The early 2020's was the decade when all the dystopians' dreams came true. The oil thing got serious - Blair and I joke that, one day, gold will be worth its weight in plastic again; the flu pandemic that the doomsayers always warned about finally arrived; and those were just the highlights. Social and economic breakdown accelerated, along with associated government crackdowns, and the rise of a rigidly neo-conservative viewpoint that meant that there was nowhere left that Blair and I could live openly as a couple.

We'd gone to Massachusetts originally - about as far from California or Washington State as you could get, and we hung around the east for a while. But the west coast drew us both back eventually. The travelling was hard, but not so hard as it could have been. For a long time Blair was spry, feisty, a tough old coot - pick the half admiring, half condescending term of your choice for the old who've lasted longer and better than we think they have a right to.

We're living, in tidy piece of irony, in Clayton Falls, and in a sort of commemoration we reverted to our real names. The town is bigger than it was, and doing okay out of all the timber around it. We're avoiding cities after what happened in Chicago. I don't regret it - somebody had to deal with Tor Delaney and better us than some, but we were given away. He had a lot of people scared, and a lot of contacts in the crime families.

Blair misses some of those city amenities, but I'm happy to be where a vidcell is like hen's teeth. If you have no money, the standard of living is pretty much the same wherever you go. Once the local sheriff was satisfied that we were genuinely looking for work, he directed us to Catherine for a bed. She does tailoring, and rents rooms out of the rambling house her husband left her. She lost most of that custom when he hanged himself over the banister about a year ago. She wasn't sure about us, more probably me, but we got in on a trial basis when Blair beamed that, 'yes, I am the cutest old guy you ever did see' twinkle at her. Eighty-five and he was still working it.

She and Blair hit it off. He gets angry for her sometimes, trapped by circumstances in a backwoods town, when she has a good brain. These days, old, half-empty buildings have no great value, and even if she could sell it and head out somewhere, lone women have to be even more careful in city areas. Blair would hang around the ground floor where she does her sewing. It was lonely for him, but it's harder for him to get a job. It's a younger world again, and as his adopted son, our current story, people expect that I'll look after him. He helped Catherine out, and discovered just how hungry her mind was. I'd come home and he'd be hoarse from talking all day, answering questions for her, the two of them debating away.

We've spent four years here, and they've been good years, and we've spent most of that time ignoring the fact that if the town sees anybody as an oddity around here, it's Blair. Life expectancy is way down these days.

I'm climbing the stairs to the dingy little room we're living in when I catch my name - I listen harder. It's Catherine. "Damn right I'll be talking to Jim about this. You may not be senile, but I swear to god that you're crazy."

Shit. He said he would, but I've been sort of hoping that he wouldn't. Some things don't change. It's been a recurring argument between us, his transformation into Dracula's fucking yenta. Every community, for about the last thirty years, he's been assessing his potential replacements, and we've had some knock-down, drag-it-out fights about it. Not this time. Not when he can get breathless just walking round the room, and when I can hear his heart stutter when he sleeps. The last of our money stash is paying for medicine, but the pills only help a little.

I'm outside the door, and I'm listening. Blair's talking again.

"Well, it's a folie a deux, and I'm hoping that it's going to be a folie a trois."

"Blair, just leave it until Jim gets here."

I gather my courage and walk in.

There's Catherine, her usual competent self, but a little flushed, and clearly concerned. There's Blair, in the chair by the fire, eyes snapping, white hair all over the place where he must have pushed his hands through it, his own face flushed. The room is the same as it's always been, except for a photograph sitting on the dresser. It was taken over fifty years ago, Blair and me standing together at a lookout, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. We're leaning into each other, and he looks boyish, and younger than thirty-six.

Catherine doesn't waste time.

"He's trying to tell me that that's you and him. And a whole heap of other nonsense to boot."

She's looking at me, expecting that I'm going to bring some sanity to proceedings. I'm sorry to disappoint her, in more ways than one. There's a hot, angry place in my chest that I could soothe by saying, 'yes, you're right, he's crazy, why don't you head home and we'll just try to ignore him'.

I rub a hand over my face. "You'd better sit down," I tell her. She does, and I join her. I pick up the picture. I didn't know he'd kept this. I look at him, and he looks right back at me, his face unreadable.

"So, what did he tell you?"

She blushes. "He wrapped it up in scientific language, but I know a fairy story when I hear it."

"What did he tell you, Catherine? So that I know what I'm dealing with here." I shoot him another look.

She takes a deep breath. "What it all amounts to is that you're a vampire. I mean, really." She giggles nervously.

Blair speaks for the first time since I came in. "Maybe you should give her that special smile, Jim."

"Shut up, Chief." I address myself to Catherine. "What would you say if I said it was all true?"

"Oh, come on. This is a very bad-taste joke, and I think that you both ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

"What if I showed you proof?"

She crosses her arms. "That would be nice," she declares sarcastically. I lean forward, and I have this vision in my head of her running screaming down the street, to return with a lynch mob armed with stakes and flaming torches - not that she won't be pushed into forgetting it all if it looks like she can't cope. Then I shut my eyes, open my mouth and let the teeth drop down. I hear her gasp.

"My god, my god," she whispers. I draw back.

"Are you okay?" I ask. She's just sitting there, stunned. Then she pulls herself together.

"That could just be a deformity. It doesn't mean the rest of it's true."

Blair has hauled himself up. He comes over and leans one hand on the back of her chair, puts the other on her shoulder.

"Of course it's true," he says grumpily, an old man whose very best true-life story is disbelieved. Catherine's looking at him sceptically. There are several reasons I like this woman, and the fact that she likes Blair without falling for all the blarney he spouts is one of them.

"And why are you sharing this information with me?"

"Because Jim and I," he catches my eye, "have a favour to ask of you."

I have to stand up then. "It's your favour, Sandburg. Not mine."

Catherine puts up her hands. "Whoa, stop right there. You don't think that I've got quite enough to think about right now?"

Blair leans down, persuasive and apologetic together. "Okay," he admits, "I'm trying to get you at a weak point."

"Why am I not surprised?" she mutters. Then she looks at me. "This favour involves Jim? Then perhaps I should talk to him."

I shrug. "Sit down, Chief. We'll just be on the stairs." And that's what we do, Catherine and I, sit on the stairs just outside the door. I don't really know what to say, and I most sincerely wish that Blair had left well enough alone. We're silent for a little while, my attention divided between her and monitoring Blair behind the door.

"So," she says, "it really is true. The teeth and - everything."

"Yeah."

"I thought that maybe it was your father in the photo."

"No, it's me. And him."

Her hands can't keep still. "Jim, I don't know what to say."

I have every sympathy with her, because I don't know what to say, either.

She sighs. "That mattress that you supposedly sleep on, I suppose it doesn't get made up from one end of the year to the other?"

"That's right."

She snorts. "These days, that would probably get you in more trouble than the other thing."

I find a laugh in me somewhere.

"Surely not. Reverend Hill told me that he'd seen too many blood relatives with far less filial respect between them than Blair and me." We share a look as we both contemplate the Reverend Hill, but she won't be diverted.

"And you need blood. Shit, I can't believe that I just said that." She laughs a little shakily. "I'm as crazy as you are."

But she can say it, which is why Blair so very kindly chose to dump this on her.

"Not a lot of blood," I say. "I've been taking it from Blair for years, but with his heart the way it is...I went to a bar last time." Even in this time of 'values' you can still find sleazy drinking places, regardless of the size of the town or city. I'd felt weirdly as if I was stepping out on Blair. However bad that felt, it wasn't as bad as seeing him sweaty and pale, and gasping for breath in the aftermath of the feeding before that.

Catherine's curiosity is taking over. "So the contact doesn't have to be exclusive? And how did you stop the other person from blabbing all about it?"

"I can tell someone to forget that they ever saw me, and they will; but this is a small town, and I get pretty caught up in the moment. Blair's worried something will happen."

She shakes her head. "He really is hell on wheels. He wants me to do that for you, doesn't he?" Her face is pale, and scared, but also lit with amazement and a need to know. No wonder she and Blair get along so well.

"Why can't you still take it from him, if it's only a little blood?"

And so I have to explain it all, the physical reaction for whomever I take it from, the physical payoffs of long life plus strength and stamina at the top end of the human bell-curve, all the hassles associated with it. I manage to be pretty damn clinical about it all, but maybe I'm not as clinical as I think.

"Why didn't you want him to talk to me?"

I stare at her. "Jesus, this is hardly something you drop into casual conversation. He just thinks he's so fucking clever..." I stop. "Next thing he'll be wringing death bed promises out of me. He's a ruthless little shit." I stop again, and swallow hard. She doesn't understand, but my distress is pretty obvious. "Why don't you just go back to your rooms, huh? You don't have to decide anything, or have anything to do with this at all. I'll straighten him out."

She puts her hand on my shoulder. "I'm really going to think about this. You two are good friends, and friends help each other." She shrugs. "It's just so strange." And she leaves, heads back down to her rooms.

I go back to our own rooms, and I walk over to him and, without any shame, I loom. It's petty revenge. I've already told Catherine everything, after all. "You're a manipulative bastard."

"Both of those points are old news." His mouth quirks, but he's nervous underneath. I leave him and go and stare out the window at nothing.

"So, you like to talk the talk about the right to choice but when it comes to me, you're not planning on walking the walk, are you? You really want to rub my nose in it."

'It' doesn't need defining. 'It' is the last nightmare, barrelling towards us both, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

"Jim, I can't make you do anything, I know that, but you need options and I'm not one of them anymore. It's far too easy to get caught out in a little podunk place like this. We have to trust somebody, and if you can think of anybody better than Catherine then you'd better speak up." Compared to so many of the things that have changed with time, his voice is still nearly the same, although his delivery is a little slower these days.

He's pretending that he's looking at the short-term fix, but I know that he's trying to, as he sees it, save me from myself. All those brains and he still doesn't get it. Death is never going to catch me by surprise - whether it's now, or a hundred or two hundred years down the track when the symbiosis or whatever it is between me and the friend starts to fail, I still have to make the conscious choice to pass it on. Since I have to make the choice of how and who, I have every intention of choosing when as well. I'm nearly one hundred years old. It's a good lifetime by human standards.

I keep looking out the window. I don't see the street, the shabby buildings in the gathering dusk, I just see life with a Blair shaped hole in it, and me going on and on, and it's completely unacceptable.

"Come on, Jim, listen to me."

I shake my head.

"I should be used to talking to the back of your head by now, but for some strange reason it still pisses me off. Come on, man."

I can't say anything - there's nothing I can say that won't break the doctor's strict orders to keep him calm and not upset him. Those orders have been ignored enough for one day. With the pills he might last a year, even two. God knows he's stubborn. I turn back to him but I don't speak, I kneel by his chair and hide my face in his lap. He snorts in exasperation.

"Still talking to the back of your head. We've been looking after each other a long time," and his gnarled fingers stroke my hair as he speaks, "you didn't expect me to give it up now, did you? I had to talk to her, Jim, I had to."

I don't want to think about Catherine. What I want is him young again, not because I can't love or even want him, with his white hair and scrawny old man's body, because I do. But I want to be back at the beginning, listening to a beautiful young man telling me things that I don't want to know about, and god, the things that I'd like to change. But I can't tell him that. There are some fear-based responses that he doesn't have to know about.

He curls himself to lean down and whisper, "Just you remember that I love you."

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