Chase was sleeping. The flickering light from the television cast an eerie light on his face; he'd been too wide awake to go to bed, at first, and then abruptly too tired to get up off the couch.

He lay perfectly still, not twitching or moaning, but he was dreaming. In the dream, he was back in Renfield's first hospital room, the wind from the missing window cold against his back until, abruptly, the chill was blocked by whoever had stood behind him.

Now there was a deeper, more penetrating cold than anything the wind could manage. Chase shivered in his sleep, remembering the details he'd been too shocked to concentrate on at the time. The inhumanly hard arm tightened around Chase's chest, pulling him back, and again he heard that voice. "He is mine."

This time he recognized it. Chase awoke, gasping for breath, drenched with the sweat of irrational terror. He'd known that voice; how could he have ever failed to recognize it? He heard that voice every day.

But he couldn't have heard it that night in Renfield's room, he decided as he calmed himself. That was impossible. It must have been the dream, taking elements from his life and blurring them horribly into that nightmare visit to Renfield.

* * * * * * *

The next morning, Princeton-Plainsboro was humming with energy. Chase could feel it as soon as he walked in the door, even though he hadn't yet seen Cuddy. When he did, it was obvious the shock of energy emanated from her, as though the hospital were an extension of her own nervous system, vibrating with whatever had etched that stricken look on her face. His instinct was to ask her what was going on, but she was deep in conversation with two uniformed police officers.

He wondered, briefly, if this was something to do with his own odd case, but dismissed the thought. It was too easy to assume that whatever was central to your own life must also be preoccupying every other member of staff.

It was Cameron who told him, finally, approaching him as he stood in line to grab a much-needed coffee. "Have you heard about pediatrics?" she asked, and he automatically braced himself for the impact of someone else's emotions, a response he'd perfected in his own childhood. But she wasn't, for once, overly upset. "The past three nights, children have gone missing from the pediatrics ward. They've been finding them down in the lobby, crying. No one knows who's letting them off the ward."

"Have they asked the kids?" It was what Chase would have done first, himself.

"They're saying," Cameron hesitated, as if aware how ludicrous this would sound, "that the kids all claim a strange, bitchy lady has been coming into their rooms at night, and she took them away."

Chase couldn't help it; burst out laughing. Cameron glared at him, but that didn't help him stop any sooner. "Are they sure it was a lady?" he asked, when he could talk again. "Maybe it was House in drag."

"It's not funny," Cameron protested weakly, but she was smiling slightly. "Cuddy thinks these might have been kidnapping attempts."

He sobered at that. "The kids are saying she tried to take them out of the hospital?"

"The kids are saying a lot of things. That she tried to take them home with her; that she tried to bite them.."

"Bite them?" The note of incredulity had slipped back into his voice.

Cameron looked up at him, shadows of exhaustion under her eyes. "They aren't making it up, Chase. Two of them had neck wounds. More like punctures than bites, but still, they're not wrong that she's been trying to hurt them, whoever she is."

But he hadn't been about to accuse them of making it up. Something else entirely had struck him, finally. "I have to see to one of my patients," he said abruptly, and dashed off without waiting for a reply. Cameron stared after him, annoyed. He didn't look back; he'd moved past caring, perhaps.

He took the stairs two at a time. Renfield's Dracula fantasies had spilled over into real life, Chase thought grimly. Which meant that whatever was happening on pediatrics was down to him, or perhaps to his grim little posse of teenage girls. Time to make the little bastard talk, and then get his friends banned from the hospital.

* * * * * * *