The dark side of forever

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of any part of Moonlight- this is purely a not-for-profit fanfiction to pay respect to a great show I am gutted was cancelled.

Chapter 1

A/n: This first chapter is just getting the story started. There is an OC but he is only a plot-device, so please do not be put off by that- there will be lots of recognisable faces as it unfolds.

Beth Turner was being followed.

Glancing behind over her shoulder, the pavement was empty and no ominous shapes loomed out of the night time shadows. The harsh orange glow of streetlamps brightly dispelled the darkness that otherwise blanketed downtown L.A., with any moonlight hidden above the cloudy sky. It was nearly four in the morning and the street appeared completely deserted.

Still, Beth could tell someone was there. Having worked with and dated a vampire for almost two years, not to mention being an investigative reporter with a nose for trouble, Beth could tell when danger was lurking nearby, and her spider-senses were tingling.

'Please let it be a mugger,' Beth muttered aloud to herself, digging in her oversize shoulder bag for her pepper spray and reaching her other hand down to locate the comforting press of cold metal, where a newly purchased taser gun was tucked into her waistband. 'A nice, normal, run-of-the-mill-responds-to-electric-shocks-and-stinging-eyes mugger.' Unfortunately, Beth was all too aware of the far greater dangers out there in the night.

Picking up speed and cursing the lack of parking outside the paper factory where she had been covertly chasing a lead tonight, Beth made it to the multi-storey parking garage where she had left the Mercedes and practically ran into the elevator. When the metal doors closed behind her, she breathed a sigh of relief and slumped against the side wall. Her reflection stared back at her from the mirrors covering three walls of the elevator cage. Blonde hair scraped back into ponytail secured unglamorously at the nape of her neck; dark circles under her eyes that the expensive liquid concealer did not quite hide; blue eyes that betrayed constant tiredness and the dull pain that greeted her every single morning when she woke up. The clothes and the make-up could not hide the fact that, even after nearly eight months, Beth was barely holding it together.

Working harder and longer hours than ever before was the only way she could get through each day and, if she was being more reckless than advisable, then maybe she needed that too. Beth grasped at anything to occupy her mind, to make her heart beat loudly enough to avoid the awful moments when she was left with her own melancholy thoughts. Bedtime was the worst and she had to be tired enough to fall immediately into unconsciousness.

The elevator ping alerted Beth to its arrival at the top floor and she stepped out onto the tarmac roof. The Mercedes was parked on the far edge of the roof, just two spaces away from the only other remaining vehicle on this level, a black Jeep truck with tinted windows. From up here, she could see the city lights across a few miles, and it made her think of all the nasty, scary things crawling around down there.

A soft swish of air on her cheek, suddenly alerted Beth to the fact that there were some nasty, scary things on this roof too.

Whirling as she reached the side of her car, pepper spray already drawn, she came face to face with her assailant. Just in time to see the surprise in his eyes as the man let out a strangled 'ohhh' of pain and crumpled to the floor. The squirt of pepper spray she was already in the process of triggering went directly into the eyes of the vampire who was standing behind him. The vampire, who she could identify as such by the extended fangs and pale, filmy eyes, hissed briefly in pain and took a few steps back to wipe his eyes with the sleeve of his overcoat.

'Oh no! I'm sorry,' Beth apologised, immediately. Pepper spray would not have caused the vampire to hesitate, if he had intended to attack her. The bad side of knowing what creatures were out there, was that Beth knew there was nothing she could do to protect herself from them. Well, not walking alone at night in empty parking lots was probably a good start, but if she came face to face with a vampire, she knew her pepper spray and taser gun would be about as useful as a feather duster in a lion's den.

'Quite alright, Miss,' the vampire offered, in a deep, almost melodic, British accent that might befit Queen Elizabeth of England's butler. 'It's my fault really, I startled you.'

'Not as much as being smacked on the head with that would have started me,' Beth admitted, nodding towards the thin but substantially heavy Maglite torch that had rolled a few feet away from the now-unconscious human next to her car door.

'Let me move that for you,' the vampire offered quickly, and unceremoniously lifted the man from floor, depositing him with a thud in the open trailer of the man's own Jeep. Beth caught a brief glimpse of the human man's bearded face as he was whisked past her, and shuddered. God knew what he had intended to do to her after hitting her with the torch. The path to her driver's door now unobstructed, she unlocked and opened the door, throwing her bag onto the passenger seat.

'That guy couldn't have taken the stairs up here so quickly,' Beth commented to the vampire, who had now retracted his fangs and had a polite smile fixed to his face. He looked like a banker, in his dark, thinly pin-striped suit and black overcoat. He was fresh-faced and dark-lashed, handsome but understated, and appeared to have been made a vampire some time in his late-twenties. Although who knew how long ago that had been.

'I'd have heard if the elevator doors opened after me, so he must have been waiting by his car here, when came up,' Beth continued. 'It wasn't him following me on the street tonight. Was it you?'

The vampire raised an eyebrow.

'You knew I was there? I do apologise, Miss, I was intending to be unobtrusive. It was not my intention to frighten you.'

'What's your name?' Beth asked.

'Harry, Miss. Harry Pendleton.'

'Well, Harry Pendleton, do you make it your business to run around the city saving damsels in distress?'

Harry looked amused, in a very polite way.

'I regret to say, Miss, that my presence here cannot be attributed to such noble aspirations.'

Beth sighed.

'Harry, is it possible that a bossy and exceptionally wealthy vampire called Josef Kostan asked you to follow me around?'

'Very possible, Miss,' Harry confirmed, eyes twinkling. 'Mr Kostan is very concerned with your safety. He told me you have a quite a talent for running into dangerous situations, and has tasked me with your protection.' He gave a half bow, which would have looked ridiculous from most other people, vampires or not. Harry looked like the sort of vampire that Josef surrounded himself with, Beth thought. He had his use for thugs, but often it was the clever, respectable, apparently house-broken vampires who could be the most dangerous and therefore the most valuable to him.

'Well that's very kind of you Harry,' Beth said, 'but you can tell Josef from me that he should butt out of my life. We have nothing more to say to each other and I neither want nor need his protection.' Her displeasure was clear from her stroppy tone, but Harry only smiled gently.

'With respect, Miss-'

'Oh, stop calling me 'Miss',' Beth interrupted him. 'My name is Beth.'

'As you like, Miss Beth', Harry continued unperturbed, 'but you did seem you were a little in need of some assistance tonight.'

'I could have taken him,' Beth argued. 'I have a taser.' She pulled it out of her waist band and pressed the button a couple of times, making short crackles of electricity flicker along the surface. Harry nodded and suppressed what Beth was horribly sure was a grin.

'Indeed,' the vampire said.

'That's not even the point,' Beth snapped at him. 'I don't want anything to do with Josef. If I get hurt or killed it's none of his business.' She reholstered the taser and sighed again, hands on hips. 'Look,' she said, more calmly, 'I'm grateful for your help tonight, and I know you're only doing your job, but please tell Josef to leave me alone. He's not even in L.A. anymore is he? And now, what, he's trying to control me from halfway around the world?'

'Trying to protect you,' Harry distinguished. 'Anyway, Mr Kostan has been back in L.A. for some weeks now.'

That was interesting. Josef had been out of the country for more or less the past six months. Even though Beth was not talking to him, every time he had left, a note of emergency contact numbers for his household and business staff had appeared at under her apartment door. The last she heard, Josef had been headed to Russia on business. Beth had never called a single one of those numbers.

'How long have you been watching me?' Beth asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Harry shifted, considering the blonde human woman.

'I'm not sure Mr Kostan-'

'How long?'

'Someone has been making sure you are safe every day and night since… well, for the past eight months.'

Beth's voice rose furiously.

'He's been having someone stalk me for eight months?' She made a strangled scream of pure frustration. 'And in the daytime too?'

'Mr Kostan does, of course, retain humans on his staff.'

Beth studied Harry while she gritted her teeth. The vampire did not seem remotely fazed by her displeasure and waited patiently.

'Did you kill that man?'

'Did I-?'

'The man you just put in his truck over there. He was unconscious when you picked him up. Is he dead now?'

Harry hesitated, before answering 'Yes. Does that bother you?'

'Did you really need to kill him?'

'You know what he wanted to do to you. He's probably done it to lots of women. Probably would have done it to more women if he had survived. Why would it bother you that he is dead?'

'You could have just handed him over to the Police,' Beth pointed out.

'With what evidence?' Harry rationalised. 'Besides, my orders are to kill anyone who is a threat to you.'

Beth closed her eyes and leaned against the side of her car.

'I'm tired, Harry,' she said. 'I'm tired of stupid vampire crap and dead bodies and secret underground rules. It's ruined everything. I'm sick of it all and I just want Josef to understand that and let me go. I'm just… tired.' The vampire nodded and reached slowly to take the keys from her hand.

'Allow me to drive you home, Miss Beth.'

'No-'

'Allow me to drive you home and I will pass on your concerns to Mr Kostan, I promise.'

Beth eyed Harry wearily. She was probably naïve beyond all belief to put any trust in another vampire, and she knew for a fact that Josef would not be deterred by any of her protests, but it was so tempting to let someone take care of her, just for a little while. Nodding, she let Harry see her into the passenger seat and then slide into the driver's seat next to her.

'Nice car,' he complimented, as he negotiated the convertible down the spiral ramp to the ground floor and onto the street.

'It's not mine.'

Harry did not respond to the sadness in Beth's voice, but soon started a soft melodic hum that sounded suspiciously like a lullaby.

'Harry?' Beth murmured sleepily, through a yawn. 'Did you have something to do with the Farrell brothers disappearing last month after sending me that death threat at the ADA's office?'

Harry chuckling was the last thing she remembered before she slipped into a sound, exhausted sleep.

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