A/N In which Nikola decides Helen can't have all the fun...

TWO

Helen burst into the control room to see Henry frantically keying in various codes into the Sanctuary security mainframe. "What's happened?" She asked, focusing on the closed circuit camera feed. Henry tapped one of the screens and brought up some recorded footage. It was of one of the main hallways, seemingly empty, but Helen noticed a flash of movement just to the right of the screen and then the picture turned to static.

"Now if you slow it down and enhance the image…" Henry typed furiously, the image rewinding and then pausing just at the zenith of the movement. "Don't look at the hand, but further down the hallway." Henry pointed to a mirror on the wall, and then enlarged that image. Helen could see the blurry outlines of a pale figure that resembled their temple guardian.

"Bollocks. How did it manage to find us all the way here?"

"Stow-away? I'm not sure, doc, but it's already caused some mayhem. Three of the CC feeds are down, I've lost power to the southwest wing, and some of our residents are totally knocked out. Not a cut on them, but they're out cold. I think we have our intruder to thank for that."

Helen sighed. "At least it hasn't harmed them."

"I'm thinking it's trying to find its buddy but it has no idea where he is and is doing this search blind. But, it's very fast." Helen clapped her hand to his shoulder and said, "Good work, Henry. You work on trying to get power back to the southwest wing and let's put the EM shield up. I'll grab Big Guy and Kate and we'll try and corner our little guest into the main storage room. Keep an eye on the infirmary feed and let me know its movements."

Henry gave her a quick thumbs up and said, "Will do, doc" before returning to his computer. Helen called for Big Guy and Kate on her radio and grabbed one of the stunners and raced off down the hallway.

"Here, doc." It was Kate. "Big Guy's going to flank on the east end of the Sanctuary and move in, I'm taking the North end. Last we've heard of it doing anything was in the northwest resident wing, so we're going to try and herd it your way. Kate out."

Helen kept her stunner out, covering the west hallway she was in thoroughly and quickly. Luckily, this corridor of the sanctuary had only one room it connected to, so she knew the abnormal couldn't have escaped anywhere else. She pushed open the doors to her library, scouting the area, pointing her stunner methodically in each direction.

"Come now, Helen, it's rude to disable your guests."

Helen started, the stunner almost firing in her hand and whirled around to see someone standing behind her.

The tall, impossibly slender man opened his arms in an ironic gesture of greeting with a smug smile gracing his features. "You've been holding out on me, darling."

"Nikola Tesla you have the absolute WORST timing possible when it comes to surprise visits!" Helen shook visibly with irritation, her stunner slapping her thigh as she lowered it angrily.

"Is raising your voice really necessary, you know, a woman of your age shouldn't excite herself." His grin grew broader. "Though you do preserve exceptionally well."

Helen, still furious, snapped at him. "I have an angry, loose abnormal causing havoc in my house so I really don't have the time right now to exchange fripperies with you. Kindly make yourself useful or show yourself out." She stalked angrily away from him and towards the library's exit, before turning and adding as an afterthought, "And stop breaking into my house."

Tesla followed closely behind her, unruffled. "I fix your house for free, I should have some liberties." Helen sneered, "Yes, your liberties have emptied my entire wine cellar."

Tesla insisted on following right beside her as she made her way through the next wing that connected to some residents' rooms. She methodically checked in on each of them to ascertain they were fine, and move in to pincer with Big Guy and Kate.

"And an impressive collection it was at that, but tell me now about El Dorado. Even I thought it was just a myth, but it seems like daddy's little girl managed to make one dream come true. I am disappointed though, Helen, that you did not choose to share such a find with as dear a friend as me."

Helen nudged open the last door in the corridor that would take them through to the storage room where they were hoping to trap the abnormal. "Quiet, Nikola."

"Magnus." Helen grabbed her radio; it was Big Guy. "Magnus here."

"I haven't been able to contact Kate." Helen's heart fell. "Where was she last?" Her radio crackled. "The infirmary…"

"Come on!" Helen raised her stunner and bolted through the storage room, Tesla following closely behind. They pounded down the eastern hallway, Helen's heart racing in her chest as she keyed in her security code to the infirmary door. Stunner muzzle first, she burst into the room to see Kate lying prostate on the floor.

A pale woman was straddling her chest, face inches away from Kate's. Kate looked unconscious, and there was a light, whispery fog escaping her mouth that the pale woman seemed to be drinking in. The abnormal's head turned sharply to look at them when she heard them enter.

Nikola chuckled, striding forward slowly and already half-transformed, his tapered claws appearing with a dangerous snick. Helen gamely pointed the stunner at the abnormal and was about to shoot when the woman leapt away from Kate, hissing at them. Helen realized the abnormal woman was staring at Nikola with a look of such intense hatred, and yet was withdrawing into herself, her body trembling.

"Wait," Helen said, holding out an arm to stop Nikola from advancing. He cracked his neck menacingly but stopped pacing forward. Helen called out to the abnormal woman. "What are you doing here?"

The woman's eyes, like drops of black oil, snapped to her and she could see them glowering slightly, as if trying to understand what Helen was saying. Helen realized this woman was the same type of abnormal the male was, and probably wouldn't understand English, and was then surprised when she responded.

"Where is he?"

Helen knew instantly who the abnormal was referring to. "He's safe. He's here. We haven't harmed him, we don't intend to. What did you do to my friend here?"

The pale woman backed further into the corner, her body tensed like a coiled spring. She looked frightened and desperate, and Helen kept her stunner pointed at her, afraid she would get desperate enough to attack them.

"Are you of the Family?" The woman asked, looking at Helen. Her eyes kept darting nervously back to Nikola, she was obviously terrified of him for some reason. Helen shook her head, "I don't know what the Family is."

Nikola, however, had already caught on. "You mean the ancient vampires. No, she is not one of them."

"But you are…" She glared at him suspiciously, but then came forward slowly, her hands in front of her and her head bowed. "Please, take me to him. Please."

Helen's eyes widened to see the abnormal who had just caused such a ruckus in her sanctuary, suddenly groveling subserviently at Nikola Tesla's feet. It certainly wouldn't do anything for his already astronomical ego. He, of course, began grinning like a fox and he winked at Helen.

"Finally, the correct recognition and awe for an intellect as staggering as my mine. You could learn something."

Helen had Big Guy take Kate back to her room. She was alive, breathing well and seemed relatively unharmed, but was still unconscious. She and Nikola escorted the pale woman to the room where her kin was. Helen thought it odd, the pale woman seemed incredibly conscious to not do anything to offend Nikola, and yet seemed to harbour an incredible hatred for him as well.

When the pale woman was shown the glass room her friend was in, she immediately put her hand up to the glass. "He is hurting. This is not a good place for him."

The abnormal man had an air excitement about him before they even entered the room. He put his hand up to the glass as well, and seemed to be communicating with the abnormal woman wordlessly. Helen placed her stunner back on her belt, it seemed she wouldn't need it anymore. "I am sorry for that. I have never encountered your kind before, and do not know what your needs are."

"The room. It is too hard. Too cold. We need…" The woman struggled, however she had obtained her knowledge of English, there were still words that eluded her, "… we need to not… feel. No strong feelings. Very light. Let me go in."

Helen opened the door to the chamber and the woman stepped in. She breathed something that resembled the fog that was escaping Kate's mouth, that the male inhaled quickly. Suddenly, he turned to Helen and hissed, "Why were you in the temple? Why did you seek the archive of the ancestors?"

Nikola turned to her, looking altogether human again, and clucked his tongue. "Playing Lara Croft again are we? You know, some people take exception to having their family heirlooms stolen."

The two new guests of the Sanctuary had finally been able to communicate enough in their broken sense of English to accommodate themselves in shallow tanks of water. Will had been correct in his first assessment, their senses were incredibly heightened, but to the point where most outward stimuli disturbed them. Henry was already looking into modifying some of their equipment to create a sensory deprivation chamber. At the moment, the two new abnormals seemed at peace to rest and cooperate, but they were still icily angry enough to impart no information to her.

Kate woke up a half hour after she had been stunned, couldn't remember anything that had happened apart from falling to the ground, but she tested completely normal and healthy and was holed up watching television with Henry to get over the shock of the day. Will had already gained some success in talking with the two new abnormals, so Helen figured it was all best to just continue in the morning.

Tesla hadn't left, and in fact had managed to scrounge up one of the last five bottles of wine in her cellar which he was liberally helping himself to. "Some friends you've made today."

"I hope you brought a glass for me."

Nikola brought over a second glass with a flourish of his hand, grinning. "I am a gentleman." He spoke as he poured her a very full glass of wine. "You, on the other hand, have been most un-ladylike in keeping that kind of information from me."

Helen sipped from her glass and shook her finger at him. "You go and vanish whenever you want to, and you're impossible to find. You can't expect me to keep up a correspondence with a man who's supposed to be dead."

Nikola leaned over the table, unable to keep in his excitement. His face lit up like a small boy's at the counter of a candy shop. "Come on, Helen… what did you find?"

Helen couldn't help but grin back and brought out the three scrolls. Nikola snatched them up greedily, and reverently pulled the first one out of its sleeve, unrolling it. His breath hushed audibly as he stared at the pictographs. "Enchanting…"

"It's not a language I've seen before, although it looks relatively simple to decipher. I've been trying to see if I can match these images with any of the indigenous cultures in the Sanctuary database."

Nikola's fingers delicately ran over the old, thick parchment. The tip of his finger rested gently on one figure and his eyebrows raised. "Well, I can tell you one word in this scroll."

Helen leaned over to see the picture he was pointing at. It was of a tall figure, heavily jeweled, with a familiar rune in the center of a pendant around its neck. Nikola's eyes sparkled and he whispered, "Vampire…"