Author's Notes: This prologue has extensive quotes from and summaries of most of the episodes of Moonlight (including most of the first scene in this chapter). I do not own any of those words or plotlines. They all belong to whomever owns all things Moonlight, not me.

Chapter 001

The Calm

Josef Kostan's PoV

Wednesday, January 23, 2008; 6:00 p.m. PST

Beth Turner's Apartment, Los Angeles, California

While I flip through a stack of photos showing a car hitting Mick and then Mick getting up like nothing happened, Beth says, "The rest of the paparazzi have moved on. Dean won't. He won't stop stalking Mick."

To think I thought Mick guarding a celebrity and jumping into the 21st century with both feet was a good thing. I forgot that photogs are an issue they didn't use to be.

I sigh and look up from the inconvenient photos before saying, "And eventually he'll get a picture of Mick vamping or drinking blood. This whole digital revolution is bad for vampires. Back in the day, a photo didn't matter."

Her brows knit together before she asks, "Because vampires come out blurry on film?"

I stare back at the top photo of Mick airborne after the car hit him and then nod, "It's the silver in the emulsion."

I look up and meet her eyes, "And all a blurry photo proves is the photographer's incompetence."

She snorts despite the severity of the situation and asks, "Are you speaking from personal experience?"

I grin and shrug, "Let's just say there was a-ah, particularly rowdy night at Garbo's I wouldn't want documented."

Beth quirks an eyebrow and crosses her arms, "Don't tell me, you're the reason she wanted to be alone?"

I chuckle lightly and smirk, "Now Beth, you wouldn't want me to kiss and tell, would you?"

She pouts but shakes her head just a bit, so I stalk towards her and ask, "So, what do you want me to do about this Foster character?"

I lean against her kitchen island with one elbow and face her. She turns and follows suit before shrugging one elegant shoulder and looking down at her carpet, says, "I thought you could handle it, you know, pay him off or something."

I sigh. Greedy humans like this Foster character don't stop asking for money once you give them some. If I pay him off, I'll be doing it for his entire life.

I narrow my eyes and lower my voice before asking, "You think that'll work?"

Beth's eyes studiously stay glued to her floor, and her voice is much smaller than I ever want to hear it when she says, "No."

I look at her then and what I see surprises me. She is still focusing on the ground, but her shoulders are set and her muscles tense like she's ready for battle.

Well, I'll be damned. She knew all along paying Foster off wouldn't work and she still called me instead of Mick to handle the situation.

I want things to be clear between us though, "Well, then you know how I'm gonna handle it."

She looks up then, but her posture remains firm and strong when she meets my eyes and says in a soft voice, "Mick has protected me, saved me more times than I can count."

I nod because it's true. Beth Turner has an incredible knack for getting into tight squeezes. Nothing I'm sure she couldn't have handled on her own, but Mick took it upon himself to be her guardian angel almost precisely 23 years ago when he rescued a then four-year-old Beth from the vampire, Coraline DuVall.

Now, Mick and Coraline have a sorted history. He was 30 years human when she and I first met him in August of 1952. I flew to New York a few days later, and Coraline took it upon herself to seduce Mick.

She has a habit of doing that to any man she can get her claws into.

She and Mick made each other crazy, but by December of 1952, he asked her to marry him. On the evening of December 5th, after getting married by a justice of the peace, Mick and Coraline retired to a hotel room and made love as husband and wife.

Everything would have been fine if Coraline hadn't taken it upon herself to turn him in the middle of their lovemaking, without warning him or asking his permission.

Hell, at that point he didn't even know vampires were real. The next morning, he woke up with a terrible thirst no amount of water could quench and learned that the things that go bump in the night weren't just scary stories told to children.

And thus, began the love-hate on again-off again relationship Mick and Coraline had until one night in January of 1985 when Mick discovered she'd kidnapped a little girl to turn so she could start a family with Mick.

That little girl became the woman standing before me.

Mick rescued her and believed he had set his maker on fire and killed her once and for all.

He returned a shaken but physically unharmed Beth to her teary-eyed mother and then began stalking her.

In my capacity as Sheriff of California's Area Two, otherwise known as Los Angeles County, I instructed Mick, the area investigator, to keep an eye on Beth. While she was far too young to safely glamour, there was a genuine chance she had seen more than she should have.

Despite what the rumor mill might say, I'm not really a monster, so I wouldn't have offered to harm her if she had known of our existence. Instead, I would have encouraged Mick to foster the kind of friendship and trust they currently have back when she was still a child so she would be loyal to us from the start.

Fortunately for all involved, Beth repressed the whole kidnapping. All she remembered was that a scary woman in a white dress took her and an angel in a leather jacket saved her.

Beth resumed her life, and Mick became a certifiable stalker. Honestly, he took it farther than I ever intended. Once he learned she didn't remember anything, he could have just periodically checked in to make sure her memories hadn't resurfaced, but no, my best friend started following her everywhere.

It proved fortuitous, due to Beth's aforementioned knack for getting into jams, but like I said, I'm sure she would have survived on her own. She's resilient and tenacious like that, which brings me back to the matter at hand. She knew I would resort to killing this scumbag and she still chose to ask me to handle it instead of Mick all because she's loyal and wants to pay Mick back for all the times he helped her.

I lower my voice and ask, "And you're returning the favor?"

She jerks her head up and down twice but whispers, "Just don't tell him we're doing this—"

So, she knows Mick won't approve, and she still came to me?

Okay, it's not often I find myself respecting a human, but lately the few times it's happened it's been Beth, so I nod and interrupt her, "I can keep a secret."

She releases a heavy sigh and nods again, so I lay the photos on her island and step around her, heading for the door. About halfway there I stop and turn to face her and tell her a hard truth she has needed to hear, "As long as you're involved with Mick, and you work at Buzzwire, his secret will always be in danger."

Mick should have been the one to tell her that, but he's too soft and too interested in not hurting her feelings to pro-actively protect himself. The result is that I now need to hunt down and kill Dean Foster and remove the threat he presents.

Her eyes widen, but she doesn't object, and I turn and stride out of her apartment to deal with this Foster mess.

I run through my possibilities while I drive and when I pull my cherry red Ferrari into my reserved spot in the parking garage at Josef Kostan Industries, I'm closer to having a solution in mind.

After I get out of my car, I stroll towards the elevators. I could just have someone glamour Foster into forgetting Mick even exists, but it's been my experience that the greedier a person is, the more predisposed they are to eventually breaking a glamour or at least bending it.

That means my best option is doing what I implied I'd do and remove Foster from the equation entirely.

I step into the elevator and scratch my chin. Now, who are my best options for ending Dean Foster and wiping him from the face of the earth?

Mick mentioned running into two teenage vampires posing as paparazzi so they might be able to get to my target more efficiently than anyone else could.

When the elevator reaches my floor, I step out into the lobby for Josef Kostan Industries. Approaching the front desk, I nod toward my second-in-command, Vincent, who poses as my personal assistant most of the time.

He hands me a stack of papers and says, "The top page is a list of messages, and the rest is the paperwork you requested."

I smile and glance at the pile before saying, "Thank you. I'll be in my office, but I'd rather not be disturbed unless absolutely necessary."

He nods, "Yes, Sire."

I turn and walk towards my office. Well, it's not really an office at this point. It's just a shell after a firebomb tore through it. My decorator assures me that the remodel will be complete by this time next week. In the meantime, my desk and chair are the only furniture in the room.

I stride over to my chair and turn it, so the back is facing the desk and sit down staring out at the L.A. Skyline. Taking my phone out of my pocket I scroll through the folder of all my city's vampires until I find Clint Copeland's entry.

I press send and then listen to it ring three times before it picks up, and he says, "'Sup?"

I hold in a chuckle and speaking below humanly audible levels in the ancient vampire language, on the off chance a human is listening, I say, "Mr. Copeland this is Sheriff Kostan."

He also speaks below humanly audible levels and in the same language says, "Shit."

There's rustling and then some murmuring that even my sensitive ears can't make out and then he says, "Sorry, Sheriff, what can I do for you?"

I frown and tell him, "I have a little problem by the name of Dean Foster that I need taken care of—"

He interrupts me and says, "You mean an obsessive, fat fuck of a problem. You want him glamoured or taken care of in a more permanent way?"

I smile then, and there is nothing nice about it, "He seems to have set his sights on Mick St. John and I do not believe glamouring will work, so I wish for you and your friend, Marshall Spanjers to remove him from the equation, permanently."

He pauses, and I hear murmuring once more before he comes over the line again and says, "Do you know where St. John will be tonight, because if Dean is fixated on him now, then that's where he'll be tonight, and we can take care of it for you within a few hours."

With a sigh, I rub the back of my neck and tell him, "Thank you. I believe Mick plans to be at the Arbor Bistro at 8 p.m. with his human. I don't think I need to say this, but it's best that neither of them knows you're there or that Foster has been neutralized."

He chuckles and says, "No problem Sheriff. Marshall and I have been making a habit of blending into the shadows and not being seen for over a century now, so it shouldn't be an issue."

I lean back in my chair and tell him, "Good. When you finish taking care of him, call the cleaners and have them clean it up. Tell them to bill it to me personally and if they question you tell them to call me and verify that I've authorized the bill. I will also compensate you both for your time and effort. You can text me at this number when the job is complete, and I will make sure a suitable compensation is deposited into each of your accounts by the end of business on Friday."

He says, "Will do. And sheriff? Thanks for thinking of us and giving us the excuse we need to remove that fuck-stain from the mortal coil."

I grin and tell him, "You're welcome," and then I hang up.

I turn and place my phone on my desk and then sit back and just stare at the night skyline.

It's been a busy couple of months, and I'm tired of all the drama.

First, Mick and Beth re-met last fall at the Design Center Fountain over a dead body with twin puncture marks in the victim's neck. Beth was on her first assignment for Buzzwire, an internet news site.

They wound up working together to solve the murder, which involved a college professor, Christian Ellis, who fancied himself a vampire. He's not. He's just a human with delusions of grandeur.

The murderer turned out to be the professor's teacher's assistant who felt Ellis was a prophet who was wasting his time and resources on sexing up his female students. So, the T.A. began killing Ellis' worshipers.

He managed to kill two of them and tried to kill Beth, who was posing as a student to get close to Ellis. Mick saved her, though, piquing Beth's interest in him.

I sigh and kick out my feet in front of me because then there was Lee Jay Spalding, whom Mick had helped put in jail some 25 years prior for killing his second wife, who happened to be one of Mick's clients.

What I didn't know when the police arrested Lee Jay was that Mick attacked him and tried to drain him before the cops interrupted him. He went to jail with the knowledge of what Mick was, and he stewed for 25 years. When he got out, he had a well-thought-out plan to settle his score with Mick.

He set it up to look like Mick, whom everyone thought was the son of the man who helped put him away, had attacked him twice and the police issued an arrest warrant for Mick for attempted murder with a firearm enhancement. That's what they called it, an enhancement.

Mick turned to Beth for help, and they proved that Lee Jay was lying and had killed both of his wives. However, when Mick confronted him, he was prepared for battle with a vampire and shot Mick with silver buckshot and then tried to set him on fire with a blow torch. Fortunately for all involved, Beth didn't listen to Mick when he told her to stay in the car, and she shot and killed Lee Jay, saving Mick.

Mick left the scene to go get some blood and heal while also avoiding the police, but Beth came after him and found him drinking blood straight from a bag, thus discovering the existence of vampires.

With a sigh, I sit forward and rest my elbows on my knees and watch a man in a building 800 yards away feed a toddler his dinner. The little boy flings the spoonful of what looks to be mashed peas across the room, ripping a laugh from me.

Then I stop laughing because Beth is not the sort to leave things alone, though, so she showed up on Mick's doorstep a few nights later and asked him if she really saw what she thought she saw. He confirmed that vampires really do exist and turned Beth's world upside down.

On that same night, a car hit one of my vampires, Gerald Stovsky, and he accidentally turned a passerby who tried to help him. That good Samaritan was Dr. Jeffery Pollack, who without any guidance from his sire became feral and started killing people left and right.

Beth and Mick teamed up again and figured out who he was.

After Beth saved Mick for the second time when Stovsky staked him, and she learned that stakes only paralyze us, they ended Pollack and captured Stovsky, but not until after three humans lost their lives, four if you count Pollack.

I lean back again and put my hands behind my head with my elbows sticking out on either side of my head. Next came Mick's sojourn into the desert. Beth's boyfriend, Joshua Lindsey, was the Deputy District Attorney. Two police officers died, and a witness went missing because of a leak in his office.

He asked Mick to track down the witness and make sure she made it to court on time.

Of course, the witness was a 22-year-old young woman who had witnessed an arms dealer, Amir Fayed, kill her boyfriend.

Fayed hired an assassin to kill the girl, and Mick almost got himself blown up protecting her.

Despite avoiding the missile that blew up their vehicle, Mick found himself stranded in the middle of the desert during the day with no shelter in sight.

The excessive exposure to sunlight nearly killed Mick and only Beth's insistence that he feed from her saved him. I owe her a great debt for saving my stubborn best friend despite his staunch protests.

Inhaling deeply, I then release it slowly through my nose because Mick, being Mick, spent a week avoiding her because in his head feeding on her makes him a monster. It's probably why he only feeds on the blood of corpses. Either way, before that night he hadn't live fed since he returned a four-year-old Beth to her mother in 1985.

Beth cornered him, however accidental it might have been, and got him to work with her on a case involving a serial killer who targeted escorts. Luke Mineo was a 197-year-old vampire who turned at 16 and found himself stuck in puberty forever, so he resorted to taking out his anger on the prostitute who turned him by killing working girls.

I grin and massage the back of my neck with one hand. That's the case that allowed me to meet Beth in person. She came to my office and helped us track Mineo to a bar on the boardwalk.

Mick and Beth saved the girl Mineo kidnapped, and my infatuation with Beth began, though, I didn't resort to stalking her like someone else I know.

Now I frown. Part of my not becoming her second stalker might have been because my sometimes lover, the vampire known to her friends simply as Lola, was keeping me preoccupied.

Lola borrowed a million dollars from me and then disappeared, so I asked Mick to look for her. It's a lucky thing I did, too, because it turns out the ancient Lola was hunting her own kind and draining them to create a designer drug that was also killing some of the humans who were taking it.

Lola used the money I lent her to buy a metric ton of silver and used it to incapacitate the vampires, so she could drain them. That way she wouldn't lose any blood like she would if she staked them. Using silver was a problem, though, because that meant the silver saturated their blood and too much silver will kill humans, too.

Mick and Beth once again teamed up and managed to stop Lola before the humans could discover our existence.

Luck was on Mick's side because Lola was so arrogant she never considered him a viable threat and that allowed him to kill her when he wouldn't ordinarily have been able to because she was the oldest vampire I have ever met, and I've met one that is over 10,000 years old. Lola was even older, though how much older will forever remain a mystery.

I release a jarring breath. I thought after Lola died that maybe we'd get a break from all the drama but that's when Coraline returned to our lives posing as the human photojournalist, Morgan Vincent.

Apparently, Coraline's grandsire, a distant relative of Louis XIV of France, helped create a compound from a now extinct cousin of the orchid that would turn a vampire temporarily mortal. The DuVall family created it during France's Reign of Terror, which was a vampire genocide.

I guess Coraline stole some of the compound and turned herself mortal before insinuating herself into Beth's life by utilizing her need for photos for her news stories.

When Mick met Morgan, he was convinced she was Coraline come back to haunt him. Mick and Beth wound up investigating a murder that took place during a fire at the Franklin Hotel that perfectly mimicked how Mick killed Coraline.

What's-more the murderer turned out to be a vampire, which just led Mick to believe Morgan really was Coraline, but when he tried to prove it was her by revealing a brand she had on her shoulder it wasn't there. That caused him to doubt himself and believe that Morgan was just a human who strangely resembled his dead vampire wife.

I sit forward again and rest my elbows on my knees with my hands resting between my spread knees. I thought after Mick attacked Morgan trying to prove who she was that Beth might distance herself from Mick, but she didn't. Instead, when someone began stalking and harassing a young woman who had witnessed her family's murder at the hand of a cult leader, Beth turned to Mick to protect the girl.

I frown again because that wound up being a strange case. One of my vampires was actually stupid enough to turn the cult leader before his execution thus allowing him to go on another killing spree, seeking vengeance on all those he felt had wronged him while the human authorities believed him to be dead already.

Mick managed to kill him, but in the process of tracking him down, Beth discovered that Mick was her guardian angel who had rescued her from her kidnapper, Coraline, when she was little.

I push down the urge to go make sure Beth is alright and remind myself that although Beth's discovery led to her questioning whether Morgan was really Coraline and her stalking Morgan, Beth is safe.

Mick helped Beth's cause by distracting Morgan with a case that he needed a photographer to work with him on.

In the end, Mick and Beth both independently confirmed that Morgan was, in fact, Coraline, but Beth thought she was a vampire, so she tried to stake her and instead almost killed her because Coraline really was human.

I surge to my feet and begin pacing back and forth. That same night was poker night. Mick didn't show up because of his case and Morgan turning out to be Coraline, but Tim, Dan, and I still met at my office for our weekly game.

During the game, a man broke in and shot up the place before tossing grenades into my office and trying to burn us up.

I managed to grab Tim and Dan and use the broken windows caused by the flying bullets to jump out of the window to the ground 77 floors below before the explosion could incinerate us with the rest of my office.

Frowning again, I rub at the back of my neck while I continue to pace. At Grand Central Station, in May of 1954, I met a young woman named Sarah Whitley. In the following year, we fell in love with each other, and I discovered that she knew my secret, but she didn't care. She loved me anyway and wanted to be with me forever.

I didn't feel the mystical pull to make her my childe, but I still reluctantly agreed to turn her. I drained her and fed her my blood, but she never woke up. She got lost somewhere in between.

To her loved ones she just vanished, and when her father found her journals after her mother died, he discovered I was a vampire.

He sent the assassin that burned up my office, and I wound up having to fly to New York and glamour Mr. Whitley into forgetting I ever existed.

I huff out a massive, yet relieved breath. Beth and Mick followed me to New York and discovered Sarah's existence and saved me one final time from the assassin before Mick killed him.

Mick and Beth went home to L.A., and I stayed behind. I glamoured Sarah's 93-year-old father, even though ordinarily I would have killed him because he's stubborn enough to resist a long-term glamour. Mr. Whitley's dying, though, and based on his scent and the rhythm of his heartbeat and sound of his lungs I'd say he won't make it to April first. I'm powerful enough that my glamour should last at least a year despite his stubborn streak, so I glamoured him out of respect for Sarah, who would not appreciate me killing her father, even if he is near death anyway.

After I glamoured Mr. Whitley, I stayed and sat with my beloved for a few days.

I stop behind my desk and then lean against it with my legs stretched out in front of me and my hands clenching the edge of the desk on either side of me.

I, too, came back to L.A. and then began the arduous process of not only explaining how I survived the attempt on my life but also of rebuilding my office.

I shiver despite not being cold because right after the new year, Deputy D.A. Lindsey tried to prosecute a gang leader who responded by trying to kill Beth. Long story short, Beth survived, Mr. Lindsey did not. Unfortunately, Beth witnessed the whole thing, and after unsuccessfully begging Mick to turn her boyfriend, she blamed Mick for his death.

She got over that, and it only took four days, which is remarkably quick all things considered, and in the meantime, Lance DuVall, Coraline's brother, both by human and vampire blood, came looking for Coraline, or more specifically he came looking for the compound she stole.

Eventually, Lance caught up to her but not before she used the compound to turn Mick human. Mick got his human ass kicked by Lance, and Coraline sacrificed her freedom to save him, proving that perhaps she really does love him.

I reach up and rub the back of my neck again trying to loosen the tight muscles. Last week, someone murdered Beth's boss at Buzzwire, and human Mick tried to help Beth solve the mystery. After I spent some time as their primary suspect, which was an exciting experience and a new one at that, the clues eventually led them to a plastic surgeon named Dr. Pierce Anders, who, it turned out, was a vampire who was siphoning off blood from his patients with rare blood types during their procedures.

That habit cost at least two of them their lives when they suffered too much blood loss.

Anders killed Beth's boss because she was investigating the unrelated death of one of his patients and he feared she would discover his secret.

I give up on loosening the muscles in my neck and grip the desk again because Anders wound up kicking Mick's temporarily mortal ass and kidnapping Beth and A.D.A. Benjamin Talbot.

Mick talked me into turning him back into a vampire, which was a dream come true and curse all at once. On the one hand, I initially felt the pull to turn Mick when I first met him in 1952, and I ignored it and by the time I realized what I had done Coraline had already turned him and it was too late. On the other hand, being human again was the one thing Mick consistently wanted for 55 years, and I took it away from him, even if he did beg me and practically force me to do it by baring his throat to me during an emotionally charged conversation while he was in danger. I'm not sure how long this guilt I have plaguing me will last, but I'm guessing it's not going anywhere for a long, long time.

Anyway, after I turned Mick and breathed a sigh of relief that he woke up, unlike Sarah, we went to Anders' lair to confront him.

His henchmen resisted and attacked us, and I killed one in self-defense, which is one of two acceptable reasons to kill another vampire, self-defense or the defense of our secret.

Mick staked the other henchman, and then he staked Anders, and I thought everything was fine until Mick took out his machete and sliced off Anders' head. I actually dropped my phone, which I had in my hand to call Vincent and have him pick up Anders and his goon so they could stand trial for their crimes when Mick shocked the hell out of me and murdered Anders in cold blood.

Now, a week later, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop because killing a vampire for personal reasons is a big no-no.

As if my maker, the Magister of North America, Jorge Alonso de San Diego, heard my thoughts, my phone beeps at me.

I pick it up off the desk beside me and open the message.

Fuck. It's in the same ancient vampire language I used with Mr. Copeland. It's so old it doesn't have a name.

The use of the language, though, means this message is official vampire business. I sigh while I read, "The Honorable Magister of North America, Jorge Alonso de San Diego, commands you, Josef Shamas Talal Konstantin, to appear before a tribunal with your childe, Mick Randall St. John, to answer for the unlawful death of Dr. Pierce Anders. Appear on Wednesday, January 30, 2008, at 8:00 p.m. at the warehouse on Kepler Avenue. Failure to appear will result in further action taken against you and is ill-advised."

Ill-advised indeed. Running is never a good idea. It only serves to further anger my maker. Besides, this is the first time I've participated in a crime so I won't lose my life. I'll just suffer some other form of punishment. Now, whether I'll be wishing for death at some point is another thing entirely, but Mick and I won't lose our lives over this.

Crap, Beth might lose her life as a result, or at least her human life. I'll have to figure out a way to make my sire see that turning her is the best option.

I sigh and rub my neck again. Mick will hate the idea of Beth turning, but that might make it more palatable to Jorge, who despises Mick on principle alone.

Now the question is, how much notice do I give Mick about our needing to appear before my sire?

Less is probably more, so I'll tell him on Monday, which will give him two days to mentally prepare himself without his stupidity and stubbornness tempting him to take Beth and flee.

I put my phone back on my desk and spend an hour staring out at the twinkling lights of the L.A. skyline and praying that Mick will cooperate enough to keep Beth from dying a permanent death.