The Cure - Act 1

Pearce dropped his hands to his sides in annoyance. "Not a frickin' clue what you're talking about."

Logan reached out to the arrangement of fresh fruit and selected the freshest looking apples. "Yesterday," the man in the blazer said with equal annoyance, "we were sitting at your place —your palace— watching Magnum and you said—"

"I don't think so," the vampire raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you sure you weren't just watching it by yourself...? At your place?"

Logan made an expression of confused contempt. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" He bagged the apples and twisted the bag tight. "I think I'd remember going over to your place and watching TV. It's kinda hard to confuse a gothic condominium with my suburban dream home."

"Whatever," Pearce dismissed, internal alarms going off. Something was terribly wrong. "Aren't you getting bananas?"

Logan shrugged. "And why should I get bananas?"

There was a pause as Pearce waited for Logan's question to answer itself. "...Uh, because you always get bananas when you go shopping. Niki loves them."

Logan turned away and pushed the cart to the bakery section. "I'm not shopping for Niki."

The realization dawned on the vampire and he nodded. "Ah, I see. This is part of 'Logan's Apology.' How's that going by the way?"

"I don't know what the hell I was thinking ever hooking up with Niki in the first pl..." he stopped and seemed to see something flash before his mind. "Oh, yes I do — but that doesn't make it right. She's right. I have a family and a responsibility to them. Even scum bags have responsibilities." Pearce eyed the human who was examining the loaves of bread on the shelf. "White or whole wheat?"

The vampire shrugged. "What would a scum bag choose?"

Logan thought for less than a second. "White," and he tossed the loaf into the cart. "And if anyone asks, you're my brother."

The vampire in the black KISS shirt and faded blue jeans shrugged his shoulders as if he were Logan's apathetic teenage son rather than his brother. "Whatever."

--

"A couple of weeks ago, he forgot this car accident we saw on the news together. And before that, he kept forgetting when he was supposed to pick me up..." Niki up ended the amber liquid. The Stuff in it kept her as much a Slayer as she could be without feeling the sudden and unexpected emptiness Logan's absence had introduced. "And that's not to mention all the erratic and aggressive behavior of late." She blinked away the after image of the lights behind her eyes. "I mean... seriously. He totally just up and left me. How's that rational?"

"Hobbs," Pearce frowned, carefully nursing a beer, "what were the symptoms again?"

The barkeep sighed as he refilled Niki's glass. "Plague sufferers get irritable, aggressive and irrational from the lack of sleep caused by frequent blackouts and lapses in memory. Eventually hallucinations set in and total cognitive function breaks down. Then it's all over."

"Hallucinations," Pearce snapped his fingers. "Just last night, he was convinced he'd come over to my place to watch TV. If that's not delusional, I don't know what is."

"How do you know you didn't have a memory lapse?" the Slayer asked with a frown.

The vampire scoffed. "I didn't, alright?"

The Slayer shrugged. "I believe you. I'm just worried about the amount of information we're going on."

"If he is infected," Pearce cautioned, "then his family is at the mercy of the Nosphorus he serves. And if he's told to infect other vampires —allow them to feed on him— then we'll have a whole new outbreak on your hands." Niki was nodding. Everything Pearce was saying made perfect sense – then again, with all the Stuff in her, just about anything made sense. "Can we afford not to take him... under quarantine?"

Niki swallowed. "Hell of a price to pay for being an ass."

--

Logan carried the bag of video cassettes towards his car. On an impulse he had decided to rent some movies. Popcorn... cuddling... The possibilities were endless. They were even chick flicks. A sappy romance for Hanna – then it was off to bed with her and the slightly more adult romance for Mr. And Mrs. Kilpatrick.

"What've we g-got here?" the skinny crack-vampire stepped out of the shadows cast by the narrow alley. "A p-poor defenseless man on his w-way home."

Logan, still not recognizing the nature of his enemy nonetheless prepared himself for an attack. In an instant he could call up a protection spell that would prevent any kind of contact. This relatively newly perfected power gave him such a confidence that he didn't even set down his movies. His car was in sight. He would be out of this situation in seconds. It was almost amusing.

"Can I help you with something?" the man asked, courteously.

The vampire played along. "Yeah, you c-could. I'm a l-little hungry. You mind t-terribly if I suck you dry?"

Logan finally laughed. Had vampires declined so much these last few weeks? He set down his bag and raised his arms helplessly. The barrier between himself and the vampire before him was firmly and invisibly in place. This was going to be funny. "By all means," the man smiled, "suck me dry."

With a dull thunk, the board came down on the back of Logan's head. The vampire ran off into the darkness. He had played his part.

Niki and Pearce looked down at the unconscious body at their feet. "You were right," Niki said regretfully, holding the board guiltily. "He was going to offer himself to spread the plague."

Pearce sighed. "Only one thing to do now."

The Cure - Act 2

"This is it," Hobbs said with some hesitancy. "I had to specially manufacture the parts and assemble it from millennia old drawings... but this is it."

It was hideous. Even Pearce, who generally took a liking to things that reminded him of his days of sadism, had to admit that this was a cruel looking creature.

As far as torture tables went, this one was fairly straightforward: A wooden table incised with several channels which funneled blood to a drain in the center. There were leather bindings for the hands and feet and head and a wooden block upon which to rest the back of the skull.

One of the two oddities about this table was the brace which was hinged at one side and could be brought down across the mid section. The brace was wrought iron, giving it some weight and slightly off center of it was a ten inch long silver spike, whose tip, when brought down, fit into the end of one of the incised channels.

The other oddity was the headrest. With a forehead strap and block upon which to rest the head, it was unclear at first where the other two silver spikes were designed to go. It took some imagination, but Hobbs showed them with vague gestures and delicate language that they stuck in through the back of the neck, crossed behind the throat, missing the major veins and arteries, and protruded under the chin.

Niki swallowed. Hell of a price to pay for being an ass. Her words came back to haunt her. "Three days on this thing?" she croaked, trying to ignore Pearce's morbid interest as he ran his hand over the surface, gently stroking the silver stomach-spike.

"At least three days," Hobbs confirmed. "It really depends on how virulent the infection is."

"How exactly does torture cure a viral infection?" Niki said with the grimace still plain on her face. She did not look forward to introducing this ancient machine to the man tied up in the other room.

Hobbs looked almost hurt. "It's not like I want to hurt him. I didn't design this thing, I only built it."

"I understand that," Niki said sympathetically. "I'm just a little curious why torture was decided to be the best method of curing a viral infection."

The barkeep sighed. He'd already gone above and beyond his duty as host in getting involved in this whole thing... But Diego wouldn't appreciate it if one of his employees let a plague loose on the city and ruined business.

"It's fairly simple," Hobbs sighed. "The only thing keeping the immune system from fighting this disease as it would normally is the magic of the Macedonian holy men. The virus, protected by the magic can infiltrate the blood and brain as far as it likes without resistance. The Greeks discovered that the particular magic was similar to the demonic invulnerability whose only weakness was silver. This was the method they devised for filtering the blood at critical points past raw silver, cleansing it of the virus."

Niki frowned as Pearce listened intently, his hand resting appreciatively on the headrest. "Couldn't we just inject —someone— with a liquid silver solution?" the Slayer asked. "Forego the bleeding to death in agony?"

Hobbs shrugged. "Except the silver doesn't kill the virus. And the virus in its non-magical form happens to be fairly lethal. With no immunity to it, considering few people have ever been infected and survived, without bleeding the virus out, there's no chance of survival."

"But," Niki gestured to the table helplessly. "It's so... crude!"

"It's nearly two and a half thousand years old," Pearce argued with something closer to awe in his voice. "Give it the respect it deserves."

Niki sighed resentfully. "Fine."

"Is this it?" Pearce was holding open the ancient-looking volume which had been resting on the table's surface. The vampire gazed at the hand sketches and words scrawled in the margins. Flipping forward he was amazed to find details about the Nosphorus itself, with illustrations of the different stages of ugliness.

"Yeah, that's it," Hobbs nodded. "You wouldn't believe the trouble I went to to get that."

--

Logan continued to twist his wrists in the cord that held them behind his back. Whoever had kidnapped him had left him in some dark room with almost no room to breathe. He'd woken up on his side with his skull throbbing. He'd given up shouting but continued to wrench his hands back and forth in the hopes of either loosening the cord or severing his troublesome hands.

With a click, the door in the utter darkness unlocked and a crack of blinding light tore across the floor. Logan grimaced and squinted into the light at the silhouette that had come for him.

"Wakey, wakey," the almost taunting voice said. "Do you know where you are?"

Logan blinked for a moment in total confusion. "Pearce?" he demanded. "Get me the hell out of here!"

The silhouette sighed. "Can't do that, chum, you'd go off infecting every Tom, Dick and Toothy from here to... somewhere else."

"Infecting?" Logan's panic was rising. What the fuck was going on? To slow his rapidly beating heart, he took a breath and assumed a calm, rational tone. "What are you talking about?" he asked politely.

"The Plague," Pearce said coolly. "We know you're infected. Your behavior fits perfectly. We're here to cure you."

"My behavior..." the man frowned. "This is ridiculous!" He struggled against his bonds some more. "I'm not infected with anything – Pearce, untie me."

"Nope," the vampire shook his head. "Three days and you'll be as good as new."

"You're shitting me," Logan spat, his anger on par with his panic. "Let me talk to Niki!" Pearce didn't seem to move. "Let me talk to her now, you son of a bitch!"

The silhouette stepped back and another form entered the room. By her walk and outline, it was clearly Niki Valtaine. "It's true Logan," she said quietly. "You're infected. It must have happened sometime during the last battle." Logan was shaking his head vigorously. "You wouldn't remember it," Niki said soothingly. "And you don't remember anything you do when you're not yourself."

"I'm not infected," Logan argued reasonably. "I haven't had any blackouts. I think I'm being very rational right now. I think you should recheck your sources, because I'm telling you right now that I'm not infected and..." he thought quickly, anything but rational, "and... I refuse treatment of any kind."

"Don't listen to him," Pearce said calmly. "He has a right to be terrified. But we can't afford to think he's not infected."

Niki only nodded.

Logan's heart began to pound as the crack of light began to shrink. "I'm not sick," he said rationally, his breathing quickening. "I'm not sick," he repeated louder as the two stepped out and the door began to close. "Pearce you piece of shit—I'm not sick!" He struggled desperately at his bonds. "I'm not sick! Let me out!" With a click the door locked again.

Locked again in total darkness, Logan was on the verge of hyperventilating. This was some kind of nightmare. Not only was his former girlfriend going to subject him to some kind of twisted 'cure,' they had kept him from his family for God knows how long... How long would it take to reverse all his hard work these last weeks? How long before Rachel gave up on him?

As the hot, pent up fury built in him, Logan ground his teeth together, feeling suddenly less helpless than he ever had. "You're fucking dead," he swore, summoning the dark magic from deep inside him.

The Cure - Act 3

Logan raced down the morning lit street. Yellow taxis and two tone brown cars colored the canyon between high-rises a dismal brown. Pedestrians with umbrellas and long coats scowled at him as he dashed between them away from the bar from which he had just escaped. It wouldn't take more than a minute for anyone to realize he was gone. Then a vampire and a vampire Slayer would be after him.

His breath panted, fogging in the chilled air. His ears and nose were red and his finger tips were numb. Without a look back he pounded down the sidewalk, between the scowling foot traffic and occasionally across the cursing street traffic.

After rounding a corner he shoved a ratty looking street urchin aside and landed himself inside the phone booth. With a hand on the glass and his breath taking too long to calm, Logan picked up the receiver and began searching his pockets for change.

As the numbers came out of his memory and the ringing on the other end started, a calm relief began to settle in. "Hello?" He suddenly felt all the confidence in the world. "Get me Richard Addison, it's an emergency."

--

Pearce unlocked and threw the door to the back room open faster than any human could have. Immediately he fell back inside the bar proper and wrung his seared hand. Bright morning sunlight was streaming in past the rubble, in through the hole in the wall near the ceiling at street level.

Niki slowly moved into the room, her guard up completely. If ever there was need of proof that Logan was possessed by some preternatural viral-imbued strength, the charred and smoking hole through the cinder block wall was it. Expletives and various colorful expressions suggested themselves to the Slayer as she stood in the angular column of light entering the otherwise dark and vacant room, but none seemed completely appropriate.

This, of course, did not stop Pearce from spewing an almost non-stop stream of curses and pseudo-adjectives about the nature of the situation in which they had landed themselves.

The Slayer turned and moved past the vampire, calmly addressing the barkeep who was assessing the damage. "Can I use your phone?"

--

"Listen, Addison, I'm telling you, there's something wrong with your Slayer. She's gone all 'Dr. Death,' making wild accusations and threatening this barbaric torture to anyone who doesn't act within her twisted realm of right and wrong..." There was a pause as Logan listened to the reply. His red face contorted in anger as he heard the response. "What do you mean by that? Pearce is on her side! They must be working with Hobbs, that's the only way they'd get to use his bar... unless they've already killed him..."

Logan sighed and rested his forearm against the glass of the phone booth. "I don't know what to do. I can't let them get to my family. Then again, I don't know who I can trust around here—" he rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know we don't exactly see eye to eye... Look, Niki and I called it off. I've been back with my family for a couple of weeks now – until your little psychopath and her pet bludgeoned me and hauled me off, convinced I was infected with the stupid plague..."

The man's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, that plague. I don't know why the fuck they think I'm infected. They claim I'm acting irrationally — well you should talk to hormone girl," he hissed, "maybe she can tell you why she has it in for me!"

"Good," he sighed. Addison was returning from England, admittedly more to ensure Niki was alright than for Logan's sake, but either way, the problem would soon be solved. "I can't go home— they might look for me there and I can't let my family know what's been going on. I'll be staying at a motel. Here's the address—"

Logan looked up as he recited it and waved his hand in annoyance at the street urchin who was gawking through the glass. There was a thin trail of mucus running down the street man's chin and his eyes wouldn't stay still. They seemed to quiver in their sockets.

Logan frowned. "Yeah, okay, I'll be waiting there." And he hung up the receiver, quickly stepping out of the booth, annoyed.

The ratty looking man suddenly snapped out of his world of slavering hunger and two small horns poked out of his toque.

"Not now," Logan sighed in exhaustion, pushing at the invisible force he wielded to throw the demon across the street and onto the hood of a stopped taxi.

--

The next morning, looking weary and unrested, Addison arrived in New York City and deposited his bags on the curb outside his old apartment. Niki Valtaine's apartment. She was waiting and lifted his heavy suitcases with ease.

"It's good to see you," she said sincerely. There wasn't the usual cynicism and amusement in her eyes, nor the hidden resentment she had once felt for this legal guardian. She had the slightly repulsive thought that perhaps she had matured in the last few months. She realized without any kind of juvenile arrogance that she had wanted him out of her life and had got it – and now he was just a person... who might as well be useful.

"What's this I hear of you finally bludgeoning that ponce of a boyfriend?" There was no greeting, none of the expected British politeness, Addison acted as if he had never left.

Niki sighed. "I finally bludgeoned that ponce of a boyfriend of mine. But not before we broke it off and not before I came to realize that Logan Kilpatrick was infected with the Nosphoric plague."

"Hm," Addison nodded thoughtfully. "What makes you think he is one of the infected?" They boarded the elevator, the Slayer setting down the admittedly heavy suitcases.

"He's acting really weird," she said ignoring the raised eyebrows of her former Watcher. "What?"

"Let's see... The adulterous small claims lawyer who fights vampires is acting 'really weird' of late." The doors opened again and they stepped out. "Anything about that seem a little ridiculous to you?"

"As a matter of fact, no," Niki answered resentfully as they approached her door. "I've known him for a long time and I think I know what's normal behavior for Logan Kilpatrick."

"And dumping you is not normal behavior," Addison nodded sympathetically.

Niki scowled. "No, as a matter of fact, it's not—" she caught herself. "And just for your information, I dumped him. So don't go thinking this is all about retribution. Though I must admit," she let the little smirk free, "I can't say some part of me isn't relieved that he isn't actually himself."

"So your diagnosis is based on assumption and conjecture?" the Watcher stopped, just inside the door. "Did you ever think to check for bite marks?"

Niki stopped dead. Bite marks. As in – Logan was bitten by the Nosphorus during that last battle – the only place he could have been infected... "Uh... no."

--

Logan's eyes flashed as Addison's taxi pulled away from Niki's apartment. He'd been betrayed. Addison was in on it. He pulled his collar higher around his face to obscure him from unwelcome eyes and moved back into the crowd.

If he was right —and they were all in on it— then they would come for him, to the address Logan had given the Watcher. Then he would know. Then he would have a real problem. As he made his way back to the motel, he thought about everything Niki and he had been through, and even more– what they had been through together. A normal relationship, he understood, was made stronger by adversity... by vampire attacks and demon plagues. Now she was using her world against him and his world. There was something just a little unhealthy about that, the man mused.

He strolled past his room number and headed for the front office, slapping more cash on the counter. "Room 107 smell like a rat died in it. I want room 108." Without more than a scowl, the clerk gave him the desired key and took the extra cash.

And so Logan was waiting in room 108 with the blinds drawn and the door open a crack when Niki and Addison approached room 107. He didn't hear their conversation until they were near, but it was clear Addison was ratting him out.

"Here it is," Addison indicated the room he'd been told contained the possibly infected Logan Kilpatrick. He knocked only twice before opening the door to find it empty. The old man frowned. "Where has he got to?"

Niki, however, was not so naive. One glance at the drawn blinds and she was creeping up to the door of room 108. With a tremendous kick which nearly sent the door off its hinges, she burst into Logan's hiding place.

All that greeted her were shadows.

The Cure - Act 4

"Where the hell is he?" The Slayer strode back out onto the street, shrugging her shoulders in annoyance. "I thought you said he'd be here."

"He obviously came to feel he couldn't trust me," Addison said regretfully. "Coming to you was a mistake."

"If you found him, what would you have done?" Niki demanded. "Lecture at him while he handed you over to the Nosphorus?" Her former Watcher ground his teeth but was silent. "I need a drink," and she was off down the street. "Maybe Pearce has had more luck tracking him down."

Pearce was waiting at the Nail Biter, his mouth still agape. He had returned after a fruitless search of the darkening streets of New York to find the bar empty and the barkeep in his current condition.

As Niki opened the door from the bottom of the steps her face assumed an expression similar to the vampire's. With eyes wide and mouth hanging open she was silent for a long moment. The Watcher, however, felt no such shock. "What the bloody hell is that?"

'That' was a broad dark pool of blood extending across the floor to their feet, directly beneath the upside down body of Hobbs, suspended by his ankles from a flickering light fixture, swinging gently back and forth.

It was clear that the corpse was fresh as the blood stain was still expanding over Hobbs' pale face from his thoroughly lethal neck laceration and dripping in a constant rhythm into the center of the still expanding pool of dark blood.

The flickering of the light bulb near his feet cast intermittent shadows down over his body and alternated the color of the pool between dark red and gloss black.

Niki gulped. Surely Logan hadn't... Had he...? Niki slowly stepped through the growing pool and made her way to one of the back storage rooms. The door to the left was still empty and dominated by the rubble from the hole near the ceiling. The door on the right was now dominated by the rubble of what had been the table Hobbs had set up to cure Logan of the Nosphoric Plague. Among the rubble, the Slayer could find no sign of what she was looking for.

"The book's gone."

--

"Okay," the three walked down the lamp lit sidewalk, the vampire in the lead, "where would a psychotic plague-sufferer go?" The vampire waited for either of the other two to answer and decided to answer his own question. "Where did they go last time?"

"That... warehouse," Niki suggested, her voice still a little subdued. There was really no part of her mind that wanted to believe Logan was acting under his own volition. Then again, without the table or book to reconstruct it, she was confronted with the possibility of having to kill her ex-boyfriend. Neither possibility appealed to her.

"We might as well start there," Pearce shrugged. "But we shouldn't go unarmed."

Thirty minutes later the three were walking very gloomily towards the broad front of the warehouse in which, only a few weeks ago, they had slaughtered the original Nosphorus and his plague-suffering minions.

Out of the several heavy suitcases Addison had brought from London, Niki had taken a small but deadly looking iron mace and long ornate, but assuredly non-mystical, dagger. Addison himself carried nothing but Niki's own shotgun, resting comfortably on his left shoulder as he and the Slayer followed her new Watcher towards the darkened building.

The vampire carried nothing at all but wore an uncharacteristically amusing T-shirt bearing the slogan 'Just Say No' — deciding it would work as well, if not better than nitrous oxide in removing the fear from his attacks.

The three approached the door with a trepidation not felt even before their last visit to this place.

With a tremendous clang, the metal door swung inward into the darkness and slammed against the inside wall. Without fear, Pearce strode inside. His acute senses had already picked up the position of this building's occupants. He and the other two were expected.

As the three moved cautiously between the rows of crates and barrels, only Pearce kept his gaze directly ahead. His eyes picked up the source of the dim glow in the deep darkness. It was directly ahead.

"You think I'm infected," the human croaked, his lips dry and his eyes red. The three rounded the corner and stopped. "You think I have the Nosphoric Plague," Logan said tiredly.

As Niki and Addison took in the sight, Pearce, who had already pieced together what was likely happening here answered. "Yes, we do."

Logan dropped his gaze to the book he held open before him. "'Those suffering from the latent effects of the disease find themselves unable to resist the commands issued them by those in whom the disease is full and active–' in other words: the Nosphorus themselves." Logan slowly closed the book and set it down on a nearby crate. He moved back to the figure sitting tied to the old chair under the only lit bulb in the entire warehouse.

With a gag in his mouth and his ankles, wrists and waist bound to the metal of the chair, the junkie vampire couldn't do more than mumble curses as Logan raised his hands over him and began to recite some words in ancient Macedonian.

"What are you doing?" Addison's voice contained slightly more panic than he had intended to reveal. He lowered the shotgun to Logan's chest level.

"If a plague sufferer has to obey a Nosphorus," Logan explained wearily, as though he were speaking through a nearly debilitating migraine, "then I can show you I'm not a sufferer by creating a Nosphorus and disobeying him."

"You're fucking insane!" Niki shouted, stepping past Pearce. "If you are infected, then you'll have just released another Nosphorus on this city!"

"I'm not infected," was the man's simple answer. "And I'll prove it." With his hands again raised over his subject, he closed his eyes and restarted his recitation. Thin threads of electricity danced off his fingernails. The vampire tied to the chair struggled valiantly, mumbling behind his gag.

"Logan, if you don't stop," Addison paused for effect and cocked his weapon, "I will shoot you."

Logan ignored the old man and continued his recitation, the energy dancing over the vampire's head, making his thin greasy hair stand on end.

Niki's heart raced. With the sudden, earsplitting crack of the shotgun, she felt reality slow. Had Addison just...? Surely not. But as the slow progression of reality continued, she felt the wash of light from the business end of the gun to her left and the shower of sparks after it. Cold terror shot up her spine. The sudden premonition of Logan lying on the floor, his body riddled with buckshot fought its way, unbidden into her mind. And just as soon as reality had slowed, it resumed again with the confusion of what happened next.

Pearce was the first to duck as the pellets ricocheted off of the invisible field protecting Logan and his subject – the tiny pieces of metal screaming off into the darkness. In less than a second, Addison cocked his gun again and fired again, lower.

This time, the ricochet brought one of the pellets so close to Niki's cheek that it drew a thin line of blood and a sting of pain. She backed up a step with a frown and touched a finger to her face. Looking back to her ex, she saw the electricity building until, with a flash, it was done.

The three onlookers watched as, quite irate, the vampire in the chair began to thrash in agony. Slowly and quite obviously painfully, his normal vampiric features began to distort and change. His ears became long and bat-like, growing thin and membranous. His nose and jaw drew outward, like a rat and his already pointed teeth became even longer and more needle-like, pointing outward from his broad mouth. With a tearing sound, his new face tore through the gag, the wet hiss of his voice screaming in pain. He struggled futilely against his expertly tied bonds and shrieked as the plagued infiltrated his body.

"Logan," Niki pleased, raising her mace. "Don't do this. Kill it."

Logan ignored her and approached the new Nosphorus. "Tell me something," he requested in his tired, depleted tone.

Niki closed her eyes. Protected by Logan's new found sorcery, they could neither kill the Nosphorus, nor prevent Logan from releasing him.

The Nosphorus shifted in his restraints and looked at Logan with cold hunger. "Free me."

Logan leaned in close to the hideous thing tied in the chair. "Bite me."

Taken aback, the Nosphorus turned to the others in the warehouse. He opened his wide rodent mouth and drew a breath to command the truly infected, but he stopped suddenly. His gaze dropped to the stick of wood protruding from his chest. Logan released it just as the Nosphorus dissolved to dust on the seat of the chair, the ropes falling away.

"Proof enough?" the human asked tiredly. He sat heavily down in the chair, dropping his head into his hands. Somehow, it was clear that the shield between him and the others was dissolved.

Niki walked slowly nonetheless, eventually placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. "There was another way," she said quietly. Her fingers deftly found his shirt collar and pulled it back on either side, revealing untouched flesh. No bite marks. She let out an ironic sigh. Somehow she wasn't much comforted by his physical health.

--

The walk back was dominated mostly by silence. Addison tried to lighten the mood by explaining how he had had Logan's law firm to contact Rachel and explain how Logan was called away on a sudden, three day trip to Boston, and though Logan was grateful, he was too tired to express it.

The four passed the Nail Biter in silence, Logan completely oblivious to the nervous glances down the steps of the other two. A passing thought was that the book he had lifted from behind the bar while Hobbs wasn't looking was still at the warehouse. But he was much to drained to care.

Back in the shadows of the vast warehouse, a solitary man in a black suit, carrying a black briefcase, lifted the ancient book from the crate where it had been left. With a series of subtle clicks, he opened his case and set the book inside it, closing the case again and moving on silent shoes until he was directly beneath the single light bulb. Reaching towards it, he took the hot glass bulb between his fingers, giving it the gentlest of twists. The light went out.