never cool down love - Chapter Five

If her heart could still beat in the regular sense of the word, it would be pounding right now. As it is, she feels the phantom thud against her sternum, the memory of her body's visceral reactions to outside stress.

And god, she is stressed right now.

Something had felt off the other day, the day the first note arrived. It had tickled at the edge of her senses, right there at the back of her mind, but she hadn't been able to place it. Now, with Lewis lying on the ground in that alley and a similar threat on his body, it makes a grotesque kind of sense, but it also brings the danger into sharper focus. And every instinct she had tried to ignore, tried to push aside and pretend didn't exist is screaming at her to run. She has to get away, has to protect herself – protect Castle from the inevitable fall-out.

He's not going to let it go, not now. Not after seeing her reaction in that alley. Of course, she could persuade him. She does have that gift, but it's not something she does to others unless she's out of options (and to be fair if she hadn't used the ability when Castle first started shadowing her to make him go away, using it now when she actually does like him feels even worse somehow). So, if he won't let it drop and she won't force him to leave it alone, she has no other choice; she has to tell him something.

The entire drive to her place, she considers her options, weighs what she wants to tell him. She could make something up, spin a tale about a case to infiltrate a gang or the mob or a drug ring. He would want to believe a story about being undercover and being "made" that way, but it won't convince him. He knows just enough about the time she spent with Vice as a rookie for it to be a believable enough lie. And that might placate him for a while, but it'll fall apart eventually – when the next note shows up or the next body drops and he puts two and two together and gets five instead of four.

No, she needs to tell him the truth. Whether she wants to or not.

"You didn't want to go back to the precinct?" he asks as she leads him into her building.

Beckett looks around, keeping her eyes open and her eyes trained for anything out of the ordinary. The lobby is quiet as it always is during the days, making her heels echo a little louder as she leads her partner through the open area to the stairs instead of taking the elevator. It's a bit of a stalling tactic, a way to keep from having to look at him and try to gauge exactly how this discussion might go.

"Not yet," she says, keeping it quick. "I didn't want to do this there."

He nods, following her to her floor. "What happened?"

She exhales, closing her hand around the handle to her front door, sliding her key into the lock.

He moves around her, looking around her entryway. Kate does the same, glancing at the rug under her feet to be sure there's nothing new.

"You know him," Castle says instead of waiting for her to begin, "the victim."

She bites her lip, giving him a short nod. "Yeah," she says after a moment. "Yeah, I know him."

"How? The note was talking about him making people – what does that mean? Making people? Making people do what?"

Kate licks her lips, clasping her hands in front of her. There's no way this is going to go over well; he's going to think she has lost her mind – sometimes she's still not sure if she hasn't.

"Castle…" she sighs, looking past him to the couch. "We should sit. Come sit."

She moves to him, curls her fingers around his arm, giving him a single gentle tug before letting go. "Come sit," she insists again.

Her partner follows her, looking as uncertain as she feels. It's comforting in a way, the fact that he's serious, no quips, no conspiracy theories. At the same time, the lack of his typical dramatic fanfare makes her stomach churn too.

"Beckett," he says, breaking her concentration. "Just tell me. Who is that guy and why do you look like you've seen a ghost?"

A humorless laugh escapes her lips. "Not a ghost."

"I know, I know, you don't believe in ghosts." He waves a hand. "Tell me."

"Okay," she exhales, "but you have to listen the whole time. You can't – you just have to listen."

Her partner nods. "Lips zipped. Whatever it is, Beckett, I'm listening."

She nods in return, pushing her hair behind her ears. "After my mom died, my dad wasn't doing well; he dealt with all the arrangements, all the paperwork, and then he started to slip away. I was trying so hard to keep it together, but I just couldn't. I went out to blow off some steam and I ended up at a club."

She swallows. "That's where I met Lewis – the victim we just left."

Castle opens his mouth once before deciding better off it and motioning for her to continue.

"He was, god, he had this pull. I was enthralled with him immediately. We danced, we… spent time together," she hedges, seeing her partner's wince. The last thing she wants is for him to get stuck on that detail in this story. "When I went home at the end of the night, he was all I thought about, and so I went back the next night, and the one after that. And there he was, ready to … well, help me."

She knows she could leave it at that, use the cover of a youthful affair as a reason for her response today, and Castle would accept it (even if he doesn't like it), but if someone is after Lewis – was after Lewis – and that someone is the same person sending her these notes… half a story isn't going to be enough.

"I was infatuated with him, Castle. He made everything seem so alive," she says, keeping her voice low. Castle leans in, his brow furrowed at her words, where she's taking him. She inhales again, shaking her head at herself; get it over with, just say it. "And when he bit me, it was a rush I'd never imagined."

"Bit you? Beckett, what-"

"Please, just let me…" She runs a hand through her hair. "He bit me and at first it was incredible, unlike anything I'd ever experienced, but then it… then it all changed. Everything started to hurt – blinding pain, Castle, it was like my blood had started to boil and I was burning from the inside out."

Horror fills her partner's face. "What did he do to you? Did he-?"

She shakes her head quickly, reaching out to rub Castle's arms. Her hands make slow swipes over his sleeves. "No, no. I thought maybe he had drugged me or something. Everything seemed sideways, dim, and when he put his hand over my mouth, I bit him so hard, I drew blood. I blacked out after that."

His muscles twitch underneath her hands. She swallows at the way his blood pressure increases, the way his anger makes his temperature rise and his skin flush.

"Beckett, I'm – I'm so sorry. I-"

She stops him with the circle of her arms, giving him a hug as much as she's taking one for herself; possibly the last hug she'll ever get from him, depending on how he takes her next revelation. Castle's arms band around her waist, his embrace tight and certain, comforting in a way she's not even sure he understands.

"When I woke up," she continues, speaking into his jacket, "I was… I knew something was different. I felt this gnaw inside, a hunger that was beyond just not having eaten more than a package of crackers in hours. Lewis was there, looking on with this expression I'd never seen from him, and when I asked what he'd done to me, he told me he had changed my life forever."

Castle's heart pounds against her chest and she shuts her eyes for a moment, just feeling the proof of his life. Letting the waves of his love wash over her.

"He told me I was feeling the last of my old life slip away, and that I had to let it go if I wanted to survive; I had to embrace everything that was new. And that started with feeding."

She feels the rumble of the question in his throat before it tumbles from his lips. "Feeding?"

It takes everything she has, but she steps away from him, dropping her arms down at her sides. The words stick in her mouth, the confession, the revelation. "Castle, he turned me into a vampire."

Thanks for reading! And for being patient with ffnet's struggles and the wait for this chapter.