Ever since he had left Mia's house, the Professor had been sleeping in the back seat of a vintage Bentley. He'd found the car covered by a blue tarp in the lowest floor of an underground parking garage. The layer of dust on top of the tarp had told him that the car hadn't been touched for months. When he'd broken in, the Bentley's alarm had gone off, but no one had been around to hear it. Once he cut off the alarm and replaced the tarp, the Professor had a safe place to spend the daylight hours.
Finding such a comfortable lair was his one and only stroke of luck. He had had no success finding his errant pupil. The Professor was an excellent tracker. At the age of eleven, he had tracked a wild boar for ten days, following the beat through forest, field and swamp, until he had finally cornered it and cut off his head. House was close, but his scent was obscured by the smells of vehicle exhaust, rotting garbage, and the various odours of the millions of human beings living around him. He left no footprints on the city's concrete sidewalks.
His search had been handicapped as well by the Professor's physical injuries. His appearance attracted unwanted attention. He'd covered his head with a grey wool cap, to hide its distorted shape, and he kept to the shadows. He waited outside the night clubs where House had worked, like a lion beside a watering hole, but House wasn't stupid enough to return to those locations once he knew he'd been discovered.
The Professor wanted to go inside – to question anyone who had seen House, to torture and kill them if necessary to get the information – but he couldn't question anyone. He couldn't speak. English words became confused with the words of the dialect he had spoken as a child. When he opened his mouth to speak all that came out were mangled syllables and growls.
Out of place in New York, the Professor took refuge in sleep. In the nameless plain that was the land between dreams, he lit a fire to keep the fog away and brooded. When he was a young man, there had been a dozen campfires on this plain, each the hearth of some powerful shaman or mystic. The fires had gone out, as the mystics died without passing on their knowledge of this place to their sons and daughters. He was alone.
Suddenly, he lifted his head, staring into the fog. He felt something. Was it a tug, a subtle magnetic pull? A scent almost too faint to detect? He stood up, shutting his eyes to concentrate better. After a few moments, eyes still shut, he took a step. He paused and then, when he was sure, he took another step, letting that unnameable sense lead him to his prey.
Cuddy slammed the door as she left House's apartment. For a moment, there was no sound except the muffled tapping of her stiletto heels on the thinly carpeted hall. Then House stood up. He turned around and removed one of the sofa cushions, throwing it to Wilson.
"What are you doing?" Wilson asked.
"Going back to bed," House said, as he removed the second cushion. "Between your tossing and turning and Cuddy's 'urgent' phone call, I've had hardly any sleep."
"Don't you think we should talk? Thirteen was buried today. She was a hand-picked member of your team; you worked together for months. You have to be feeling... "
"I thought that you and Cuddy were agreed that vampires are heartless, soulless monsters," House interrupted caustically. "One of the few advantages of being a heartless monster isn't that you don't have to discuss your feelings."
"Fine," Wilson said.
House pulled out the sofa bed. Wilson watched him, making no effort to help. Wilson rubbed his neck nervously.
Wilson said, "I think Cuddy's right. We should leave New York."
"I like New York. I want to stick around for a while, and I'm not letting some decrepit remnant from the Dark Ages scare me away."
"We aren't safe here."
"Nowhere is safe until I deal with the Professor."
"Deal with him..." Wilson said. "What do you mean?"
"I should have run over his misshapen head when he was lying in the road," House said. "I made a mistake then and I have to fix it. "
House pulled out the sofa bed.
"You can't mean that you're going after the Professor," Wilson said. "He's stronger than you are and trickier. He's lived eight hundred odd years because he's sly and nasty and he plays dirty. "
House showed no signs of having heard a word. He was undressing, pulling off his clothes and leaving them in a heap on the floor. Wilson picked up the discarded clothes and folded them, leaving them in a neat pile on the armchair that Cuddy had recently occupied.
"I won't think any less of you if you walk away. These vampire feuds are ridiculous and old-fashioned."
"I tried to kill him. The Professor isn't going to forget about that. He won't let me walk away. This is my call anyway. I make the decisions," House reminded him.
"You keep telling me you're my protector. You can't protect me if the Professor kills you. Once you're gone, he'll come after me. If you're lucky, he'll kill you quickly...but I'm sure the Professor will think up something excruciatingly slow and lingering for me. Vampires are very hardy. He could keep me alive me years."
"I promise that whatever I decide to do, I'll make sure that the Professor can't hurt you."
"You can't promise that. You'll be dead!"
"Are you getting into bed, or are you planning to stand there in the dark watching me sleep? Because that's really creepy."
"I'll stay up and read for a while. I'm not tired," Wilson said, although the dark circles under his eyes belied him.
"Come to bed," House ordered. "I sleep better when you're next to me."
Wilson turned out the light and crawled into bed. He stared at the ceiling, eyes wide open, resisting sleep.
Holding Wilson in his arms was like trying to cuddle an anchor.
Finding out the Professor was still alive had been the confirmation of Wilson's darkest fears. In vain, House had pointed out that Mia was hardly the world's most reliable source of information and that even if he were still alive, they were hidden within a city with a population of more than eight million. They were still safe. The magical word "safe," which usually calmed Wilson, had no effect this time.
In urgent need of distraction, Wilson had cleaned their apartment from top to bottom, but the place was so small that it took hardly any time at all. When that was done, he decided to re-organize and build shelves for his library of vampire literature. Halfway through this project, his nervous energy had abruptly deserted him. Piles of books were everywhere, taking over their tiny apartment, and the task of putting them back into some sort of order had suddenly seemed overwhelming.
Wilson's anxiety meant that House was sleep-deprived and living in chaos. If Wilson were human, House could have given him an Ativan or slipped him a sleeping pill in his coffee. Unfortunately, drugs intended for humans are ineffective on vampires. If only there were a way to make Wilson relax and get some sleep, so House's life could get back to normal...
"You're so tense," House said. "There's a knot the size of a beach ball at the base of your neck. Take off your t-shirt and turn over. I'm going to give you a massage."
"No"
"I know what I'm doing. I learned my technique from a five hundred dollar an hour hooker."
"Still no."
"She was a registered massage therapist before she found out how much more she could make as a prostitute," House said. "Trust me."
Wilson lay on his stomach, his head resting on his arms. House sat on the small of his back. He hooked his legs under Wilson's. He leaned forward, his hands on Wilson's shoulders supporting his weight.
"This is going to hurt a bit at first, but you'll be much more relaxed afterwards."
House leaned down and bit Wilson on the neck. It took Wilson a second to realize what was happening. This was no friendly nip; House was drinking his blood. The Wilson reacted, snarling, kicking, growling, all to no avail since House had him pinned against the mattress.
"Never trust anyone who says 'trust me'," House said. "The Professor has nothing on me. I've got a black belt in dirty tricks."
"Let go of me, you bastard!" Wilson said. "You've proved your point. Now, let me go."
House bit down again. Wilson's fought back furiously, calling House a surprisingly wide and varied selection of uncomplimentary names in the process. House could feel him beginning to weaken. The stream of profanity slowed to a mere trickle. House released him.
"Why did you attack me? What rule did I break this time?" Wilson asked. His voice was slurred and indistinct. He was too drowsy and weak from blood loss to be properly indignant.
"No rule," House said. "You're just too delicious. I couldn't help myself.
You can be angry with me later. I'll let you call me an ass as many times as you want. For now, let's just get some sleep."
He covered Wilson with an electric blanket, since the other vampire felt the cold severely when he didn't have enough blood to warm him. Then House closed his eyes and fell asleep.
House limped across the main foyer, heading for the elevators. His leg hurt abominably this morning, more than usual, and it was slowing him down. He had the annoying feeling that he was late for something important, but he couldn't remember what.
The only other person in the elevator was a young woman in a sparkly mini-dress much more suitable to an evening at a nightclub than to a morning spent at the hospital. She looked vaguely familiar. A former clinic patient perhaps? The door closed and the elevator began to ascend.
She glared at House with open hostility.
"You show up here again. You're a real bastard, aren't you?" she said, spitting out contempt with every syllable.
Definitely a clinic patient, House decided.
The elevator door opened and she disappeared.
House got off on the fourth floor and headed for the DDx conference room. His team should have been waiting for him there, but they weren't. The room was dark and empty. He switched on the light and paged his team members. He waited for a few moments for them to come to him, but nobody replied. Impatiently, he decided to track them down himself.
The hospital corridors, usually bustling with patients and staff, were oddly quiet. He caught a glimpse of Thirteen at the end of the corridor and called out to her. She turned her head looking straight at House, frowned, and walked through a swinging door, lost to sight.
House followed her through the door. Thirteen was too quick for him. She was gone. He was standing in front of the chemotherapy suite. That wasn't right. Since when was the chemo suite on the fourth floor?
The chemo suite, like much of the hospital, had glass walls; something that House thought was a mistake. It seemed unkind that the patients' private misery should be on public display. The unit's attending nurse, a middle-aged woman with bleached blonde hair, turned to look through the glass walls at House. Her expression was unreadable. The patient she was tending, a burly man in desperate need of a bath, stared at House blankly. The man turned to the nurse. Though he could not hear him, House could lip-read what he was saying.
"Is that him?" he asked, pointing at House.
House walked away, strangely unnerved.
The empty corridors were filling up, suddenly bustling with purpose. There was Birnbaum, a decent surgeon but a man with a huge natural capacity for malice. He was smirking, highly pleased about something, which undoubtedly meant bad news for somebody. Sandy, Wilson's assistant, walked past, carrying a clipboard and paying so little attention to House that he might as well have been invisible. House spotted Grace, Wilson's former patient, with whom the oncologist had had a short and highly improper affair. House thought she was dead... had died shortly after she returned from her dream trip to Europe... but there she was. He clearly remembering taking Wilson out to get drunk when his friend got the news of her death, so House's memory had to be playing tricks on him.
House felt disoriented, dizzy, but he fought the feeling. There was something he had to do, if only he could remember.
Cuddy walked past him then. She was walking with purpose but the sound of her stiletto heels was strangely muffled, as if she were walking on carpet instead of tile. House called out to her, but she didn't seem to hear him. He followed her. Cuddy was heading for the stairs and he sped up, knowing that if she reached them his chance of catching up to her would be gone. She reached the door several steps ahead of him and looked through the glass panel into the stairwell. Instead of opening the door and going down the stairs, she stood looking through the glass. She turned, walked past House, and headed back the way she had come.
House could hear someone pounding on the door. Curious, he looked though the glass panel. Wilson was on the other side of the door. The oncologist was in a state of panic – perspiring, dishevelled, pupils dilated with fear. House opened the door, and Wilson tumbled out. House reached out to catch him before he fell to the floor.
"Something was chasing me down the stairs. The door was locked, and it kept getting closer and closer, and Cuddy wouldn't let me out," Wilson gasped. "I swear it wanted to kill me. Call security."
House looked through the glass panel of the door. He was staring eye to eye with something he recognized. A white-faced monster with eyes that blazed with hatred. House knew who the creature was, and suddenly everything fell into place.
"Let's go to the cafeteria," he said to Wilson. "We need to talk."
"So none of this is real, "Wilson said. "In real life, I'm a vampire. I'm just dreaming that I'm sitting in the hospital cafeteria eating a carrot and raisin muffin. I must have no imagination whatsoever."
Wilson was in the midst of a perfectly ordinary day at PPTH, and he and House were having a mid-morning coffee. House was playing some kind of game with him. He didn't know what the game was yet, but he was interested enough to play along.
"This is where you go when you're feeling threatened. This is your safe haven, but the Professor has found his way in," House said.
Wilson nodded, obviously not believing a word of what House was saying. "Are you going to eat those chili cheese fries?"
"No," House said. "It turns out that I can't taste anything while I'm in your dream. Which doesn't seem fair, since I can feel pain. Couldn't you have set your dream a little further back in the past, before I had my infarction?"
Wilson leaned forward and took one of House's fries.
"Tastes fine to me."
"You can't really taste it. You just think you can."
"Now, you're going to get all Matrix-y and tell me to take the red pill," Wilson said. "This has been an interesting conversation, but I have patients to see."
"Wilson, do you even remember what happened ten minutes ago? Do you remember being chased down the stairway by something horrible that wanted to kill you?"
Wilson looked confused.
"There was an old man...maybe he had dementia. I was frightened. I don't know why he scared me so much," Wilson said. "I over-reacted when I couldn't get the door open. A touch of claustrophobia, I guess."
He laughed nervously.
House leaned forward. His hand brushed against Wilson's.
"That was the Professor. Not just a part of your dream, but the real thing. I know it was him, because I saw the hatred in his eyes," House said. "You just aren't capable of that kind of hatred. No matter how angry you get with me, you still love me."
Wilson looked uncomfortable. He moved his hand so House wasn't touching him anymore. House wasn't supposed to touch him. They never touched.
House had noticed Wilson's reaction. He didn't like that House was doing something that didn't fit the parameters of his dream. House briefly considered doing something wildly out of character – like kissing Wilson on the lips or stabbing him with a fork. Too risky, House thought. Upset the dream too much, and Wilson would wake up. Then their chance to break the Professor's hold over him would be lost.
"There's a connection between you and the Professor. A connection that's all about fear and secrecy and self-loathing. He's hooked you like a fish, and he can feel you struggling on the other end of the line."
Wilson picked up his empty coffee cup and put it on his tray, obviously preparing to leave. House grabbed his hand. He looked into his best friend's eyes.
"Wilson," he said. "You know I'm telling you the truth."
Wilson looked away.
"If he's in my dreams, it's because he followed you in! You broke in and you left the door wide open so that anyone could come in!"
"I did sneak in once," House admitted, "and if you remember this conversation when you wake up, you're going to be mad as hell at me for that. But I think this time, I came by invitation. This time you called out for help. Dreaming about the Professor somehow let him in and now you need my help to get him out.
I think you have to kill the Professor to get him out of your mind. It's doable. We've got him cornered. He can't leave the stairwell, because this place is full of windows and there's bright sunlight everywhere. If he steps outside, he's dust. All you need is a flamethrower or a samurai sword..."
"But you said I'm a vampire, and I'm sitting here by the window," Wilson said.
"In the real world, you're a vampire. In this dream, you're human. The Professor, however, was definitely a vampire. I saw his fangs close up. He really needs a good cleaning."
"I am not going to use a flamethrower on some poor old man."
"He's not some poor old man, and none of this is real anyway. You know it isn't."
"How do I know that?" Wilson said. "What if I'm schizophrenic like my brother, and I'm having some kind of delusional episode where I imagine some harmless old guy is the devil? I can't take the chance."
House sighed.
"Holy water," Wilson said. I'll use holy water. If he's a harmless old man, it won't hurt him, but if he's a vampire, he'll shrivel up and die."
House wasn't certain about that. He knew that faith gave religious artefacts their power over vampires, and Wilson's faith was by no means strong. Some wishful thinking about higher powers and an afterlife shakily built over a vaguely Jewish foundation. His wobbly religious beliefs certainly did not include the doctrines of papal infallibility or transubstantiation.
It didn't matter, though, whether holy water would work in the real world. They were in Wilson's dream, and dreams have a logic of their own.
"We'll go back to my office," House said, "I have some holy water there."
"Why would you keep holy water in your office?"
"Because you're too damned wimpy to dream up hand grenades and AK 47s," House said irritably.
There were three bottles sitting on House's desk. Two of them were the easily portable gallon-size and the third was the standard size for water coolers. It held five gallons. All were neatly labelled with a cross and the words "Holy water – blessed by the Pope."
"I guess this is extra ammo," House said, picking up the five-gallon jug and carrying it on his shoulder. He held his cane in his other hand. Wilson carried the smaller bottles.
The hospital corridors were entirely deserted. The only sounds were their own footsteps and the hum of fluorescent lights. They stopped in front of the door to the stairwell. Wilson peered in.
"There's no one there," he said.
"He's hiding," House said. "Be ready for him."
"You're not coming?"
House shook his head. "It has to be you."
Wilson put the bottle down for a second to take off the caps. He picked them up, and then awkwardly opened the door, sloshing holy water on the floor.
"Are you there?" he called out.
The door slammed shut behind him. Wilson could feel the Professor's presence. He was there, out of sight, waiting for the right moment to attack. Wilson put one of the jugs down on the floor at his feet. He held the other ready.
"Why
don't you come out? Don't tell me you're afraid! It's me. House's slave. I'm weak and pathetic. You eat people like me for breakfast!'
The Professor had been hiding on the stairs above, and now he pounced. He knocked Wilson to the floor. The jug of holy water went flying, soaking both of them. The Professor jumped back, screaming with pain. His skin was charred, burned black and smoking, wherever the holy water has touched him. He hissed at Wilson, eyes blazing with fury.
Wilson tried to grab the second bottle of water, but the vampire was too quick for him. The Professor grabbed it. Some of the water spilled out, burning his hands to the bone, but his grip did not loosen. He turned the bottle upside down, emptying it.
Wilson got to his feet. He was shaking. The Professor advanced upon him. His eyes were like a doorway opening into Hell.
"I had to be sure... I couldn't take the chance of harming an innocent old man..." Wilson said.
The Professor was close to him now. His taloned fingers reached out to caress Wilson's cheek. His breath reeked of decay and rot. The oncologist flinched at his touch but did not look away.
"but now that I know what you really are, there's nothing stopping me."
Wilson pulled out a sharpened stake from his belt.
The Professor froze, assessing the situation. He wasn't concerned about this last feeble gesture of defiance. His prey had a little more spirit to him than he had expected, but that would just make his inevitable death all the more enjoyable. He smiled widely, displaying his teeth.
Wilson snarled, showing his own needle-sharp teeth. In that instant, he transformed before the ancient vampire's astonished gaze, becoming in his dreams what he was in the waking world. With a vampire's strength and speed, Wilson stabbed the Professor, plunging the stake through his sternum and into his heart.
The Professor woke up. Reflexively, his hand went to his breastbone. He could feel his heart beating. He was alive.
Any loss was bitter, but losing to Wilson was especially hard to stomach. Of course, it had been his own over-confidence that had done him in – nothing to do with Wilson, really. House`s servant was the same pitiful half-human he had always been. His former apprentice had fallen in love with somebody completely unworthy of him. If this was another era, he might have suspected Wilson of practising the black arts or dosing him with a love philtre.
The Professor had long since evolved beyond any need for love and affection, but he recognized love`s power over human beings and lesser vampires. Love was a weakness that he could exploit, and Wilson`s dream had shown him how.
