And another warning! The story's getting darker... It's all suggestive, but just be warned.

***

George was lying on a rough looking camp bed, eyes closed. Mitchell went into the room straight up to him. He was a mess. Arlie and his friends had left him with a black eye and a split lip, while some rough and ready first aid had sealed up what had obviously been quite a nasty gash on his hairline with two small pieces of steri-strip. Blood was crusted in his hair and streaked darkly down onto his collar.

Mitchell shook him gently and said his name, but got little response.

"George?" He shook him again.

George made a small noise and his eyes opened a crack from what was clearly not natural sleep.

" – tchell," he managed, his eyes closing again heavily. But he smiled slightly at the sight of his friend, and settled back into the pillow, breathing deeply, and unconscious again almost instantly.

"What have you done to him?" Mitchell demanded.

"Just a little something to keep him calm," the man said, standing with folded arms in the doorway. "He's quite highly strung, and we didn't want him hurting himself."

Mitchell placed a hand on George's arm, glad to see him, wishing it were in better circumstances. Then he turned away and stood up.

"And what about me?" he said. "Now that you've got me here, are you going to keep me calm as well?"

The man just smiled, and indicated the doorway, silently suggesting that it was time to leave.

Mitchell took one last look at his friend, satisfied that he was safe – for the moment anyway – and did as he was asked, leaving the room without complaint or further comment.

The man locked the door behind him, and then indicated the direction Mitchell should walk.

It was a dark corridor, and like the rest of the building, revealed very little of what its origins had been. Mitchell kept looking around him, trying to absorb as much information as possible, but he'd so far learnt very little from either his captors or his surroundings. The may who'd invited him into the car – who he now knew was called Kemp – had allowed him to see George, probably because it cost him very little while keeping his prisoner happy. But he'd told him nothing else about why he was being sought, and what he should expect from the hours ahead. Instead, he just kept telling him where he should go, not forcibly, but Mitchell was certainly left in no doubt that it wasn't really a request.

Eventually, he was taken out into a larger room, and he stopped in the doorway, amazed by what was laid out before him. There were people in the room, a lot of people, and machines and computers. Everything was buzzing away and busy, but most of the activity stopped when he came in, and the people turned to stare at him.

"Ah, at last!" came an exuberant voice from in front of him. "Mr Mitchell. Do come in and join us!"

His eyes adjusted quickly to the light, and he picked out the man coming towards him, looked to be in his late 50s perhaps, not terribly tall, but with black, black hair that was showing only the merest signs of graying. He had his hands out in welcome.

"Come and sit down," he re-iterated.

Mitchell looked around without the foggiest idea what was going on. But for lack of a better alternative, he did what the man asked and walked over to the seat he'd been talking about, though he didn't sit in it.

The man came up to him, looking him up and down, obviously cataloging details and first impressions. "I'm Professor Jadat," he introduced himself, holding out a hand, which Mitchell looked at, but didn't take. The professor took the hand back quickly. "You're probably wondering why you're here?"

"It's high up my list," Mitchell admitted

"Have a seat, and I'll tell you," Jadat said placidly.

Mitchell just folded his arms across his chest stubbornly.

"I assure you this will go much easier for everyone if you do as I ask," the professor told him.

"You mean it will go easier for you," Mitchell countered. "I have a suspicious feeling that George and I aren't going to find this easy at all."

"Your friend," Jadat nodded. "You've been to see him? My colleagues very probably saved his life the other night, you know. I' d have thought you might have said thank you."

"I'd have said thank you if you'd saved his life and then let him go. It's hardly charity to deliver a man from the jaws of danger and then drug him and lock him up!"

"Mm," the professor walked away from him towards the lab equipment, slowly, deliberately. "Maybe if he was a man I might agree with you. But your friend isn't human, Mr Mitchell. I don't really think the same rules apply."

Mitchell didn't say anything, didn't deny or confirm anything.

"And he's not the only one, is he?" Jadat continued. "Those people who were attacking him can hardly be classified as human either. In fact," he picked something up from a table, but kept it out of sight as he turned back to the vampire. "They can't even be classified as alive." He started to walk back with the same deliberate gait. "And nor can you." As he got closer, he pulled out the item that he was concealing, a metal cross, around 10 inches long, and pushed it towards Mitchell.

The vampire cowered back, instantly feeling the shock and power of belief overcoming him, the light shining on his dark soul, the pain of devotion. He stumbled backwards, his knees hitting the metal chair and sending him tumbling down into it hard. Then he felt the power of the cross diminish, and risked a look from behind his arm.

Jadat had lowered the cross, and was looking at him with interest. In fact, everyone in the room was watching him with what Mitchell regarded as really rather too much interest.

"Fascinating," Jadat said eventually. "I'm not sure if I'm more curious at your reaction, or terrified at the prospect that it seems to prove the existence of a divine force controlling us from on high." He watched Mitchell glance around the room "Oh, you'll forgive my colleagues," he said. "You're our first vampire, Mr Mitchell. They're all very curious about you. We don't usually deal with your type."

"Really," Mitchell said gruffly, trying to get back some of his dignity. "So what type do you normally deal with?" His tone was sarcastic, because at this point in time, he didn't really care what they wanted or what their excuses were. He now just wanted away.

"Werewolves," Jadat explained. "All our work has rather exclusively been concerned with werewolves so far. You'll be a useful addition." He nodded to someone standing out of Mitchell's view, and a young lady came forward, walking up to the chair, where she started working on some straps intended to hold the occupier of the chair in place. Mitchell could sense her fluttering heartbeats. She was scared, terrified to be this close to him, though she barely showed it outwardly. She glanced at him as she tied his arms down, but he didn't struggle; what was the point? Then she moved to the other side.

Jadat kept the cross handy until she had finished her work, and then he ushered forward some of the other people in the room. "You don't mind if they take a few samples do you?" he asked ironically, as a man in a white coat came up to Mitchell and without pausing, jabbed a needle into his vein. Mitchell barely felt it, but watched in fascination as he clicked a glass blood suction vial onto the end, which his blood instantly spurted into. He glanced away from it.

"Do I have a choice?" he spat back.

Jadat conceded the point with a gentle inflection of his head. "Not much," he admitted. "But this gives us a chance to talk," he went on.

"About what?"

"Well aren't you curious? Don't you want to know what we're after, why we're going to all this bother?"

"Since you're clearly so eager to share," Mitchell said, as the man drew a second vial, and then scurried away. "Why not?"

Jadat's expression changed then, and Mitchell saw clearly the mask that he had been wearing fall away and crumble on the floor. The eyes it left him with were cold, monstrous. Haunted.

"My little daughter," he said quietly. "Was killed some years ago. People actually said to me at the time that it was justice, some people anyway. I'm a medical researcher, Mr Mitchell. I carry experiments on animals as part of my work. It's unpopular, but necessary for the survival of the human race. The police reported that my daughter, only 14, had been killed by an animal. I saw her in the morgue, what was left of her."

He looked down as he said this, then seemed to recover himself quickly and began to pace. "That was 10 years ago, she'd be 24 now, a young woman." He smiled. "But I never believe what the police said, that it must have been a dog of some sort." He stopped pacing and looked at Mitchell. "There are no dogs in this country that could have done that. So I started searching, researching – it is my specialty after all – trying to find out what had happened. What had killed her. And it took a long time, over a year in fact, until I learnt of a similar incident at the other side of the country, in Devon. I traveled down and listened to witness statements about some large dog-like animal which had appeared from nowhere and dragged off a teenager who had been camping with friends in the woods."

He stopped pacing again. "It had been a full moon," he said, as if that fact were a revelation. "So I broadened my search, began to read myths and legends and horror stories, the blackest tales humanity has ever produced, and I began to believe in the existence of monsters. And once you've taken that leap, once you've had that personal moment of being, of clarity, the rest becomes easy. Well – relatively easy. It took us months, 6, 7 full moons, but we got one." He smiled. "We caught our very first werewolf."

"And what did you do once you had one?" Mitchell wondered. "Take out your revenge on whoever it was – even if they had nothing to do with what had happened to your daughter?"

"This wasn't about revenge," Jadat assured him angrily. "This was about science. I'm a scientist Mr Mitchell, and these creatures had something to tell science. They were completely unstudied, unclassified. Not a single experiment or observation had ever been made of a werewolf, not one. But we changed that. Unfortunately, that first one died before we could conclude our experiments, but we found another one a few months later, and he was much more helpful. We learned a lot from him. It was almost a shame to put him down."

Mitchell was horrified. "Put him down?" he whispered. "You killed him?"

"Well we could hardly let him back out to run around in the wild and kill people," he said with a small laugh.

"But these aren't animals you're talking about," Mitchell insisted. "Werewolves are people. They're people 27 and a half days out of every 28, they only transform for a few hours, they're only dangerous for one night a month, and that's it. The rest of the time they're people, living, breathing, thinking people."

"They're animals!" Jadat yelled back in fury. "All of them, animals. They don't deserve to walk on this earth, they're monsters. But they can still be useful to humankind, and that's what we did. Found ways to make them useful. Did you know that werewolves have the most remarkable immune system? They rarely seem to get ill. In fact, we're fairly certain that with a few more specimens we may well end up with a cure for all sorts of different diseases."

"And that's what they are to you? Specimens?"

"More or less. We look for them, take them in when they can. Usually all we do now is harvest their bone marrow, but there are always one or two new experiments we need to run each time."

"My God," Mitchell said. "And just how many people have you 'experimented' on?"

"How many werewolves?" The man shrugged. "10, maybe 11," he said, not seeming to care. "Mr Tullgren, who I believe you know, was our last. Unfortunately, he escaped from our secure facility before we could conclude matters."

"You mean before you could kill him. Well at least you finished the job. Is it satisfying to shoot a man in the back?"

The professor smiled. "You persist in calling them men," he said. "These are creatures, Mr Mitchell. Granted your friend seems to be making some sort of contribution to society, but all the others we've ever come across were vagrants, layabouts. They didn't work, they didn't pay taxes. They were wastrels, moving from one place to another killing and maiming and passing on their terrible infection." He came closer. "Can't you see that what we're doing is for the benefit of society? Can't you see that stopping these animals will save lives? Don't you think your friend's girlfriend would have been better off if we'd gotten to Mr Sands before he'd infected her? Don't you think George would have been better off if we'd got to Mr Tullgren before he'd passed it on to him."

"What?" Mitchell stopped him mid-flow.

The professor looked at his confused expression. "You didn't know?"

"Tully made George a werewolf?"

The professor smiled. "Still think he was worth saving?"

Mitchell blew out a breath at the revelation, wondering if George knew. Of course he did, he must know.

Suddenly an insight into their relationship opened up, and Mitchell saw for the first time the real reasoning behind why George had such complex feelings about Tully. Logically, knowing George as he did, he didn't think Tully had been up-front and honest about everything until pretty late on, or George would have mentioned it. In fact, he wondered if the revelation had been what prompted George to end their friendship, and perhaps even it had been the cause of those scratches on Tully's face. He closed his eyes.

But it didn't change his feelings about werewolves. They were only the animal for such a short period of time, a few heartbeats, a candle burning down. Being a werewolf didn't make Tully a wanker. Being a person did. People were every bit as much monsters. More so; they didn't have such an excuse.

"You can't hold him responsible for something that he won't even remember doing," Mitchell pointed out.

"Loss of memory is convenient," the professor said. "But it doesn't negate culpability. If you got drunk and killed someone – which you may well have done, or actually, you'd probably do it the other way round wouldn't you, kill them and then drink – you'd still go to jail for it."

"Then put them in jail!" Mitchell insisted. "You can't appoint yourself judge and executioner!"

"I can when society does nothing," he said angrily. "I can when they kill with impunity and have this perfect disguise, this complete body morphic experience that makes them entirely undetectable after they've done the act. Our laws aren't designed to deal with creatures like them. Or creatures like you. Society needs me to protect it."

"How noble," Mitchell scoffed.

The professor regarded him with cold eyes. "I'm not sure that a vampire is really qualified to sit and lecture me on nobility," he said.

"So what do you want from me?" Mitchell asked, looking straight at him. "Starting a crusade against vampires instead? Think you're the first? Do you think no one else has ever tried?"

"I think no one else has ever succeeded," he corrected. "Because they didn't know what they were doing."

Mitchell laughed. "Yeah, and you knew so much to take out those vampires the other night with bullets and guns. They're all up walking around again. You barely slowed them down."

"I only needed to slow them down," the professor said. "We hadn't been intending to take George that night. The actions of your friends rather forced our hand. But I wasn't after them, Mitchell, my colleagues had no intentions of killing them. I wanted the werewolf. I was after you."

"Why?"

He drew in a long breath, taking a few steps away and placing his hands together contemplatively. "I became aware of the existence of vampires several years ago," he began. "Some time after I'd started my experiments on werewolves. Seems that we had something in common, a shared dislike for lycanthropy. One of my experimentees told me that he'd been attacked by a group of vampires, that they'd almost killed him. I didn't believe him at first, well you don't with these creatures, but with a little further investigation, quite a thorough investigation I might add, your existence turned out to be more fact than fiction.

"Of course, I considered transferring my attentions, werewolves were, after all, only contributing so much to the furtherment of science, but you proved more problematic. Where werewolves were loners, homeless, no one to miss them, we quickly learnt that vampires moved in groups. They had strong social bonds and a sense of family and brotherhood that proved difficult to overcome. To hurt one is to hurt them all, it seemed, and the last thing I wanted to do was to put my staff at danger. So, I let you be."

Mitchell snorted. "You are such a hypocrite!" he said. "You claim to be worried about the effect werewolves have on society, their mindless killing? They're amateurs when compared with vampires."

"Oh, I know. And don't think that didn't burn. But you've got to know your limits, Mr Mitchell."

"Pick on the weak and defenseless instead of going up against a real problem? Some limits."

The professor ignored him. "Mr Tullgren," he said, "however, told us about a vampire that had moved away from his family group. About a vampire who was trying to live a more 'normal' life, who was trying to be human again. Well, I was fascinated, particularly when it turned out that he was living with a werewolf. There was an opportunity not to be missed! Because there is," he came back to Mitchell. "No one to miss you, is there Mr Mitchell? You and your werewolf friend support each other, but you have no family, no friends to speak of. Your neighbours who you so determinedly invited in for tea and cake, might wonder where you are, might even ring your bell when they don't see you for a few days. But no one will kick up a fuss if you don't come home. And the nurse, your friend's partner? Well, when she's back from her trip, we'll remove her like all the others, make sure she isn't in a position to hurt anyone else."

Mitchell felt cold at his calculating statement.

"But in the meantime," he turned away again, nodding again to one of his colleagues, who began to move forward. "I think you can be a lot of use to us. After all, as I said, we haven't seen a lot of your kind." He turned back, smiling oddly. "And we have so many questions."