Chapter Text
This story has been split into two parts for easier loading.
Kiss Me Deadly
by Candy Apple
Kiss Me Deadly - part one
by Candy Apple
//Kiss me once,
Kiss me twice,
Come on pretty baby,
Kiss me deadly...//
Jim stirred and drew the covers up more tightly around himself. Caught in that realm that isn't truly sleep, and isn't truly waking, he was restless. Sounds of the night reached sentinel ears. The sounds that hid beneath the mundane, were masked by the sirens, the traffic...
The stealthy footfall in a dark alley, the prowling of cats in the underbrush and the rustle of the wings of bats as they held court over their world. The deepest, darkest part of the night, when even a sentinel should be sleeping.
With an exasperated grunt, Jim rolled over in bed again, knowing he had only precious little time until dawn, and knowing how tired he'd be if he couldn't at least catch a little solid sleep. Not really wanting to see the answer, he opened his eyes to look at the clock.
And looked straight into the eyes of Lila Hobson.
"Jim?" Blair stood at the bottom of the stairs and called up to his partner. "Jim? C'mon, man, breakfast is getting cold." He waited, and there was still no response. Worried now, he climbed the stairs and was stunned to find Jim still in bed, on his back, eyes closed, one arm slung over to the empty side of the bed...which looked strangely... rumpled. "Jim?" Blair moved closer, fear wrapping around his heart like clammy, bony fingers.
"Mm," Jim grunted, still not coming to completely. Blair exhaled. For a horrible moment, Jim had almost looked...
"Jim, come on, man, it's after seven. I thought you had a meeting first thing this morning."
"Wha...?" Jim stirred a little now and looked at Blair tiredly, blinking bleary eyes as if he were too exhausted to keep them open long.
"Are you feeling okay?" Blair sat on the edge of the bed and reached out to feel Jim's forehead but his hand was batted away abruptly. "I thought maybe you had a fever or something." Blair stood, a bit wounded at the speed and force of the rejection.
"I'm just tired. I didn't get to sleep...well, I slept...but I was awake during the night." Jim started moving and now raised his hand to his neck, wincing. "Damn, must have slept funny."
"What? Your neck hurts?"
"Yeah, just a stiff neck, I guess." Jim sat up in bed and winced again at the movement of his neck. "There's something there." Jim rubbed over the spot, his face tight with concentration.
"Let me see." Blair sat on the edge of the bed again, and Jim obligingly turned his head. "Oh, man. Those are...Jim...it looks like... Oh, man!"
"That's really helpful, Chief. You ever consider a career in medicine?" Jim nudged Blair with his knee, and the other man stood while Jim swung his legs over the side of the bed and got up, then swayed. Blair caught his arm and steered him to sit down again.
"I'm going to get you a mirror. Don't move until I get back." Blair fled down the steps, and it was on the tip of Jim's tongue to tell him there was one in the dresser drawer, but even talking seemed like an effort. He hadn't felt this sluggish since...well...ever. "Okay," Blair said, coming back upstairs. Take a look for yourself." He handed Jim a small, hand-held mirror.
"Damn, that is an ugly looking thing, isn't it?" Jim gingerly touched the edges of two large punctures. The flesh around them was swollen, and a dried rivulet of blood trailed down his neck from each small hole. "Doesn't exactly look like a rat bite, or a bug bite. It's more like a damn puncture wound." Jim frowned. But I'd feel something like this when it happened."
"Jim, you know what it looks like. Admit it."
"Just because Halloween is coming up, I don't think that's particularly funny, Sandburg. This is serious. How could I get a wound like this without feeling it?"
"You couldn't--at least, not by any natural means." Blair paused, ignoring Jim's venomous look. "Did you have any weird dreams last night? You said you didn't sleep well."
"No, I didn't," Jim responded, remembering now the strange dream of seeing Lila, feeling her close to him, holding her again...her promise to come back for him this time... Figuring that would only fuel Blair's vampire theory, Jim shook his head. "No dreams though."
"You're pale," Blair began, then felt Jim's arm, "you're a little cool, and you're dizzy. Jim, you've lost a lot of blood, but there's none in the bed. How do you account for that?"
"Maybe somebody got in and drugged me somehow. You know, some nut with a vampire thing going on."
"Oh, get real, man. I can't fart out in the parking lot without you hearing me. You seriously think some guy could walk in here, drug you, do this number on your neck and walk out without you remembering or hearing anything?" Blair shook his head. "The vampire theory is more realistic than that one."
"I hate to break this to you, Darwin, but there are no such things as vampires. When you've gotten over that, I'll tell you the real scoop on Santa and the Easter Bunny." Jim stood up, put a hand to his forehead and sat back down again. "Shit. I feel like shit. Damn, it's cold in here."
"We have to get you in to see a doctor. Whatever you want to accept as an explanation for it, something seriously weird happened to you, and you're exhibiting symptoms of major blood loss."
"Where did it go then?"
"I don't know." Blair climbed onto the bed on his hands and knees, rummaging around in the bed clothes. "Jim--what is this?" Blair held up a small gold earring accented with a tiny diamond.
"It was...oh, man..." Jim took the small piece of jewelry and looked it over carefully. "It belonged to Lila."
"Lila...how did it get in your bed? Were you looking at it or something last night?"
"No...not exactly." Jim took in a deep breath. "I...remember it because...it's the same as the pair she was wearing when I saw her... Blair, she was buried wearing these earrings."
"Dear God." Blair swallowed almost audibly, sitting on the bed now. "Oh, my God," he said solemnly. "We can handle this. We just have to be calm, and deal with it like any other puzzle. There are ways to handle these situations. Folklore is full of--"
"Blair, just hold on a minute. You seriously want me to believe that this earring is in my bed because Lila is now a vampire and showed up here last night?"
"You dreamed about her, didn't you?"
"How did you--"
"Because it's not uncommon for the victim of a vampire to wake the next morning thinking the whole thing was some 'strange dream'. Jim, please level with me. If you saw her last night, it wasn't a dream."
"I couldn't sleep...or at least, I couldn't really rest. I kept tossing and turning, and I finally decided to check out the time. When I opened my eyes, there she was. Or at least, that's how the dream started."
"Jim, try to remember what happened next." Blair found Jim's robe and put it around his partner. He felt Jim's hand, and then started peeling off his own clothes. Jim stared at him, stunned.
"Is there any special reason you're stripping, Chief?"
"Your body temperature has got to be way down. It's cold out there and I don't want to take you outside until you've warmed up a little. I don't want you to go into shock or something." Blair was down to his boxers now. "Come on, get in bed with me." Exasperated with Jim's resistance, Blair tugged on his arm. "Body heat. It might help warm you up."
"I've never felt this cold in my life."
"Let me help, then. While you're warming up, you can rest and tell me more about the dream. Maybe when you relax, it'll come back to you."
Jim obeyed, and soon found himself blanketed by Blair's warm, hair-dusted body, the covers pulled up until there was only enough of an opening to keep them from suffocating.
"Put your arms around me."
"What?" Jim looked up at Blair, confused.
"Are you always this responsive in bed?" Blair teased. "I'm sorry, I was just kidding," he said and Jim's irked expression. "I want you to take my body heat. I can't cover your arms, but if they're around my back, it'll help warm them up."
Jim obliged, and Blair shivered a little.
"No, don't pull back. See, as your body absorbs my heat, my body is bound to change temperature somewhat, but I can go a long way before it's dangerous. So don't worry about a couple of shivers."
"You're so warm," Jim commented, more to himself than Blair. His partner was just like a soft, living furnace. Sandburg liked being warm, and usually wore enough layers to keep his body nice and toasty.
"Tell me more about Lila."
"I don't remember anything else."
"Sure you do, Jim. Just relax and don't fight it. And don't hold anything back from me. We have to fight this--and you need my help."
"I only remember fragments. Her...being here, coming to me, us...I thought it was making love, but it was strangely...asexual. I mean, there was something sensuous about it, but..."
"You weren't really aroused?"
"I was, but not to the point of really craving having sex. It was as if there was something else that was the consummation. But I felt...cold..." Jim sighed. "That's all. I don't remember anything else."
"Don't you see? That's classic! It's like right out of a vampire movie."
"You're citing movies as sources now, Darwin?" Jim needled, wrapping his arms more tightly around Blair's torso, feeling stronger now that some of the chill was leaving him. The feeling of warmth and the familiarity of Blair's presence, his voice and his scent were dispelling the dark shadow of the previous night's events.
"Look, nobody takes this legend seriously. But there were a lot of people, especially in Eastern Europe, who believed in vampires, and took active precautions against them. Now sure, a lot of that stuff is just superstition--people without education or without medical understanding had to come up with folklore to explain a lot of things that happened in their world...but still, why that legend? Why stories of dead people coming back to drink the blood of the living? What would possess someone to make that up?"
"Probably the same thing that possessed someone to invent Freddie Krueger or Jason or Michael Myers--a dark side to their imaginations. Or some peasant somewhere got bitten by some animal and died, and suddenly everyone was thinking it was supernatural. I don't know."
"Getting warmer?" Blair asked.
"Much," Jim replied. Before he knew it, he was running his foot affectionately up and down Blair's leg. It was something he'd have done with a lover, and for a moment, the line had been so blurred...
"Stay here." Blair started to get up.
"Wait a second--"
"I'm going to call your doctor and see if he can work you in this morning so we don't have to sit around the emergency room for three hours. Stay here under the covers, huh?"
"Blair--"
"I'll call Simon, don't worry." Blair grabbed his clothes off the foot of the bed and hurried downstairs.
//Don't worry? You think Lila returned from the dead as a vampire and now you're calling Simon and you tell me not to worry?// Jim let out a long breath and rolled his eyes. This was going to be a strange day.
"Well, Jim, I hate to be inconclusive about this, but I honestly have never seen a wound exactly like this one," Dr. Matthews said, examining the dual puncture on Jim's neck with a magnifying glass. The older man stood back, frowning. "You said there was no blood around on the bedding?"
"Not a drop," Blair supplied helpfully, and Jim shot him a look. It wasn't that he'd had any objections to Blair being present for the somewhat simple examination of a neck wound, but he had objections to Blair sharing every peculiar detail with the doctor. If Blair mentioned the dream, Jim vowed he would not be the only one with a major wound...
"Actually, this almost looks like some sort of...suction took place. I just can't figure out what kind of device could have made it. It's also pretty hard to believe you slept through this. But we've got a blood and urine sample now, so we'll find out if there are any drugs in your system.
"What about blood loss? I mean, he was really cold this morning and dizzy and--"
"Sandburg, just settle down, okay?" Jim said sharply.
"Well, you've lost some blood, that's for sure. I didn't think it was serious enough for a transfusion, but if you were having symptoms like that--"
"I'm fine now, Doc," Jim retorted, shooting a venomous look at Blair.
"I'm compatible as a donor for Jim if he needs blood," Blair spoke up.
Jim looked into his friend's concerned face, feeling like a total ass for snapping at Blair. If he needed a kidney, Sandburg would probably volunteer one of his just as readily as he did his blood.
"How are you feeling now, Jim?"
"A little tired, but I don't feel cold anymore and the dizziness is gone."
"I don't think a transfusion is necessary at this point. Your vital signs are normal, your body temperature is 98.0, which is normal for many people, and you don't have any serious symptoms. Go home and take it easy today. If you're feeling all right tomorrow, you can go back to work. If you have any more symptoms, or you still feel fatigued tomorrow, come back in and see me."
"Thanks, Doc." Jim slid off the table.
"Not so fast. I still have to disinfect and bandage that wound. We'll call you with the lab test results later."
"This day just keeps getting better," Jim groused as he sat back on the table.
Jim sat on the couch staring fixedly at ESPN. He wasn't exactly sure what sport he was staring at, since his mind was still occupied with the events of the previous night, and his struggle to make some kind of sense of them.
Lila was dead. He knew that for a fact. He'd held her in his arms as she expelled her last breath, and when no family came forward to claim her body, he made funeral arrangements quietly, without telling anyone else, and was the lone mourner to bid her farewell before the casket was closed and she was transported to the cemetery for burial.
He hadn't gone to the actual graveside interment, as it had seemed unnecessary. Not knowing what religion Lila followed, or if she followed any at all, Jim had asked the funeral director to arrange for a minister to say a few prayers over her at the funeral home. The last time Jim saw her, the funeral director was carefully closing the lid of her coffin.
She was buried in Mountainview Cemetery, in a picturesque spot Jim had visited once or twice since her death. His last visit had been about four months ago, on a particularly bleak, rainy summer Saturday.
Lila Hobson was dead and buried. Seeing her was a dream at best, some drug-induced hallucination at worst. There was no way that Lila was anywhere but in her coffin, under six feet of earth, in Mountainview Cemetery.
"Jim? Lunch is ready," Blair said from the kitchen. Not only was Jim confined to quarters, staring blankly at a parade of stale sports reruns and inane talk shows, but Blair had cleared his schedule as well, devoting his day to looking after his partner.
"Pretty elaborate lunch, Chief," Jim commented as he sat down to a spread of tossed salad, a small but thick lean steak and a potato. Blair had a sandwich for himself.
"The meat's a good source of protein, and you need to build your strength back up a little."
"I'm doing fine, Chief. But thanks. This looks great." Jim started in on the food, and then paused, looking up at Blair, who was chewing a large bite of his sandwich. "Blair...look, I'm sorry about earlier, in the doctor's office."
"What? Why?"
"You were trying to help and I wasn't exactly...appreciative."
"Thanks, but it's okay, man. I understand. You and I just don't see eye to eye on this thing, but that's all right. I know I can prove it to you."
"Prove what? That Lila has risen from the dead and is a vampire now? Don't hold your breath."
"She isn't done with you, Jim."
"Dammit, Sandburg, this is sick!" Jim hurled his napkin onto the table angrily. "She's dead. Let her rest in peace, for God's sake."
"Jim, where is Lila buried?"
"What?"
"Where is she buried?"
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Actually, not a whole lot. If the legends are true, vampires can travel great distances. As a matter of fact, in Romania, people once believed that--"
"That's it." Jim stood up, sending his chair skidding backwards. "I don't want to hear one more word out of you about vampires and legends and any other hypothetical fictitious bullshit!!" he bellowed down at Blair. The smaller man looked characteristically unimpressed by his outburst.
"There is no feasible explanation for what happened to you last night, Jim. Now you can stick your head in the sand and refuse to accept that there is something supernatural at work here, and you can end up spending eternity wandering around in the dark sucking on strange people's necks for your sustenance, or you can listen to me before it's too late." Blair looked up into Jim's angry face with concerned eyes. "You can get as shitty with me as you want about this, but I know I'm right, and I'm not backing down. I love you too much to sit back and let some...walking dead woman drag you off into her world. If you won't fight her, I'll do it myself. But mark my words, she isn't going to win." Blair threw his own napkin down now and stalked off into his room, leaving Jim standing there, slack-jawed, still hearing only one phrase replaying over and over again in his head...
//I love you too much... I love you too much... I love you too much...//
Staring at Blair's closed bedroom doors, Jim let those words sink in, and take root. Not that Blair needed to say them--Jim knew they were true. He'd known after Borneo came and went, he'd known when Blair survived the whole mess with Alex, and understood it so completely, and he'd known when Blair had stepped into the public eye and handed off his career, dismissing it as "just a book" with a little shake of his head, and staying by Jim's side despite what had been a long, rocky road.
Now Blair was working in a local corporation which William Ellison essentially owned, being its primary stockholder with a controlling interest. Blair still went to work every day in his relaxed clothes, and the elder Ellison had done nothing to stuff Blair into a corporate mode. Actually, the younger man was starting to enjoy his job, training executives who were on their way to international assignments in more remote nations where the company had interests. When he wasn't preparing someone for a major assignment, he was managing sensitivity training seminars for employees who dealt not only with international clients and colleagues, but also in how to better relate to other cultures encountered on a domestic level.
What had begun as a contrived job Bill Ellison had strong-armed one of his corporate cohorts into creating out of gratitude for getting Jim out of the public eye, had turned into something meaningful. Jim had expected nothing less of Blair, and now his father was strutting around the quarterly board meetings, proud a peacock, for having pioneered this forward-thinking program into the company, and finding this exceptional young man to spearhead it.
Questions about Blair's press conference had arisen, but had been explained away as a misunderstanding--and since Bill Ellison's specialty was "corporatespeak", Jim and Blair had let him do the initial talking on the subject.
So as the employment prospects looked bleaker and bleaker, and Blair leaving Cascade had loomed as a more and more likely option, Bill's offer to use his influence to "fix things" for Blair had seemed like the only way out. In the end, it had been a good move. Blair was happy, the company was happy, and Jim had felt much more like working on his relationship with his father considering the way he had taken Blair under his wing, and aligned his considerable reputation behind Blair, when Blair's was at its shakiest. He might not have been father of the year material in Jim's childhood, but he had done his best to be a concerned father to both of them when they had most needed help.
Jim picked up the plates off the table and carried them to the sink. He made himself useful cleaning up lunch, and then returned to the couch. Blair was angry, and rightfully so. But apologizing to him would mean accepting the possibility of a vampire attack. So for the time being, Jim left Blair to stew behind the closed door, feeling guilty that Blair had rearranged what had been a killer line-up of work for the day to sit at home and babysit Jim. Now he was sitting in his bedroom, papers rustling. He was either catching up on paperwork from the office, or he was researching vampires in some damn book he had tucked under the bed.
Attempting vainly to focus on the television, Jim ignored the occasional long silences in the other bedroom, followed by tired sighs. Blair really believed in this vampire nonsense. Jim smiled, shaking his head. And at the same time, he felt the icy fingers of unease tickling his spine...
Life returned to normal, or at least what passed for normal, for the next few days. Jim's blood and urine tests came back clean, showing no trace of drugs in his system. Still, whatever had caused the neck wound was apparently an isolated incident. If Lila were one of the undead now, she had obviously moved on to greener pastures.
"Long night?" Jim asked, noticing how fatigued Blair looked that sunny Friday morning. It was only a couple days before Halloween, and Sandburg had blessedly stopped sharing tales of vampires and other mythical creatures. Now he was just quiet.
"Yeah, I was up late with some paperwork." Blair poured two cups of coffee and tried to stifle a yawn.
"You're up long after me and already making breakfast when I get up. Chief, if this job is getting out of hand, you should--"
"No, the job's fine. I'm used to some sleepless nights. I used to be a grad student, remember?" Blair said good-naturedly, smiling as he said it. Still, it managed to pierce Jim's heart.
"I remember," he said softly, sitting down at the table.
"Hey, I've got it great now. I like the job, it pays well--but the big thing is that I really feel like I'm doing something meaningful. These people need this kind of training, and I'm using my background a lot. Every day, almost."
"Teaching Anthropology to a different crowd, huh?"
"Yeah." Blair nodded, smiling. "I really didn't want to do this when your dad suggested it, but you know, it's been a great move."
"I'm glad." Jim leaned back in his chair as Blair joined him at the table, bringing the coffee. "I just want to be sure you're not overworked, Chief."
"No more than usual," Blair responded.
"You slow-cooking something?"
"What?"
"I smell garlic. Actually, I've been smelling it for a couple of days, but I didn't find any in the kitchen."
"Oh, man, you are good! I ate at this Italian place with a couple people from the office the other day, and man, you could just smell it in the air. Well, that and the fact I spilled some of the garlic herb sauce on my sweater," Blair admitted, smiling. "I guess I forgot to put it out to be washed. Sorry about that."
"No problem. I'm just glad to know I'm not going nuts. I kept smelling the stuff and couldn't find it."
"No, you were smelling garlic, all right." Blair took a bite of his toasted bagel.
"Blair, about the other day--I know I came down on you really hard about Lila..."
"It's a touchy subject. I shouldn't have brought up the whole vampire thing. It was insensitive of me."
"You were trying to help," Jim said, digging into his own toast and coffee, relaxed now that Blair seemed to be treating the vampire discussion as a past topic.
Both men enjoyed a pleasant breakfast together, and then headed their separate ways for the day. Some days, Blair managed to carve a few hours out of his afternoon to work with Jim at the PD, but today promised to be hectic for both, though they agreed to drop whatever was going on by six so they could have dinner together at their favorite Chinese buffet.
Sniffing at the odd scent of garlic in the air, Jim smiled with relief as he pulled the door shut behind them. For a few minutes there, he'd been afraid Blair was hanging the stuff over the doors at night.
Bill Ellison knocked on the door of the small office occupied by his son's companion. "Companion" had been the best term he could come up with for Blair's role in his son's life--he still wondered if there wasn't something more to it, but in a way, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Deciding since Blair apparently wasn't in that he would leave a note on his desk, Bill opened the door and was startled to find the other man curled up on the couch, sleeping soundly enough to be snoring lightly. A bit irritated at what he figured was Blair sleeping off a little late-night partying, he cleared his throat loudly. The sleeping man didn't even stir. So he slammed the door. Blair was up in a sitting position like a shot, eyes darting wildly around the office.
"Slow day?" Bill asked, the disapproval clear in his voice. Though he was retired, he was still chairman of the board, and spent quite a bit of time "hands on" at the corporate headquarters.
"I'm sorry. I...haven't been sleeping too well, and I just couldn't keep my eyes open any longer." Blair rubbed a hand over his face, trying to come to fully, and to calm the thundering in his chest from having his whole body jump-started out of sleep.
"Are you ill?" Bill asked, a bit concerned now. Blair really didn't look all that wonderful, and he could rarely recall seeing the younger man stationary for more than a few minutes, let alone sleeping in his office.
"No, it's not me."
"It's not you? Does that mean--is Jim all right?"
"I'm not sure." Blair got up off the couch and walked to his desk, taking a drink of the cold coffee sitting there. "Bill, something's going on. Jim won't listen to me, and if I tell you what it is, you'll probably fire me and think I'm losing my mind. But I can't take this anymore. I need to tell it to someone else. I need help."
"Why don't we sit down and talk this over?" Bill suggested reasonably.
"Okay." Blair slumped on the couch again, and Bill sat in the chair next to it. "A few nights ago, Jim had this bizarre dream, where he saw this woman he used to love, who died several months ago--"
"Lila Hobson. Jim told me about her."
"He dreamed that he saw her in his room. The thing is, when he came to in the morning, there was this wound on his neck--a dual puncture wound that the doctor said showed signs of suction. Jim had lost a significant amount of blood, but there was nothing on the sheets. He didn't feel anything, and doesn't remember the wound at all."
"Maybe he was drugged."
"That's what I thought--well, I mean, I didn't really buy that either because you and I both know what the chances are of someone sneaking up on Jim close enough to drug him without him waking up and remembering at least that much. But his blood and urine tests came back clean. Nothing. Not even too many aspirin or anything. Clean."
"That is puzzling." Bill waited a moment. "I assume there's more."
"Oh yeah." Blair took a deep breath. "I found this woman's earring in Jim's bed--"
"Blair, that could be--"
"Yeah, I figured it was just something left over from somebody I didn't know about--I mean, you live with a guy, you know when something like that happens, and Jim would have found it by now if it had been left behind from someone...who was supposed to be there. The thing is, I asked him about it, and he recognized it right away. It was part of the pair that Lila was wearing when she was buried." Blair started pacing, running a shaky hand back through his hair.
"It could have been very similar."
"It could have been, but the point is, if it had belonged to someone else, Jim would have found it before last night. It was like, right out there on the sheets," Blair stated emphatically.
"The first thing you need to do is calm down and look at this rationally, Blair--"
"I've spent the last three nights keeping watch. The folklore on vampires is very explicit on means of prevention and protection, and--"
"Just a minute here. You seriously want me to believe that this was the work of a vampire?"
"You know, despite what you or Jim might think, I don't want to believe this. I don't believe in vampires and werewolves and--well, at least I didn't. But there's no other explanation."
"There has to be."
"There isn't!" Blair snapped back, then dropped into his desk chair, leaning back in it miserably. "Jim won't listen. And I can't keep this up. I need help."
"Okay." Bill sat across from Blair in one of the two visitor's chairs across the desk. Blair was rarely behind his desk, most often perched on the edge of it or sitting face to face with his guest. Now, he slumped in the desk chair, looking as if he could drop into a dead sleep at a moment's notice. "Do you know where this woman is buried?"
"Mountainview Cemetery. All Jim would tell me was 'Cascade', so I called around."
"Have you been to her grave?"
"I just found out which cemetery this morning."
"If her grave is undisturbed, will that put your mind at ease about this?"
"No, because she may have never been actually buried there."
"You want to dig up her grave, is that it?"
"Yes!" Blair paused. "No...I...I mean...I have to find out the truth."
"Fine. Be at Mountainview Cemetery tonight, at about two in the morning. I'll make arrangements for you to find out what you need to know."
"Wait--you believe me?"
"No, not really. But I believe you believe it, and you're going to make yourself sick over it until you see for yourself."
"You know grave robbers?"
"Keep your voice down." Bill Ellison rolled his eyes. "Not grave robbers. They aren't taking anything. Just digging and looking, and filling in again. And yes, I do know a few people who are willing to do...odd jobs for a price."
"I really appreciate this, Bill. It's a lot easier than me going out there and doing it all myself. Because that was my next move. I have to know the truth about this."
"Well, hopefully this will settle the debate once and for all." Bill stood up and headed for the door. "Incidentally, I think it's best we not mention this little adventure to Jim. I don't think he'd concur."
"Do I look like I have a death wish?" Blair asked, and Bill actually chuckled.
"Maybe I better not answer that one." He pulled the door closed behind him as he left the office.
Blair pulled up to the curb on a side street near Mountainview Cemetery. Getting out of the car, he shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, feeling the cold wind bite right through the fabric of his tan shirt-jacket and two layers of shirts. He reached back into the car and pulled out the backpack that contained his supplies: a cross, holy water from a nearby church, and a wreath of garlic. He wrinkled his nose upon inspecting the last item, sadly resolving that the backpack itself was now an effective vampire repellant. Zipping the bag, he carried it along by the handle, making his way stealthily toward the cemetery.
It was a few minutes after two when he arrived at the fence that surrounded the graveyard, and he could see no signs of anyone on the other side of it. But then, he really didn't expect to see them from the fence, nor did he anticipate they'd be bold enough to show themselves. He'd have to prowl around until he found them.
After tossing his backpack over the fence, Blair carefully scaled it, skillfully avoiding emasculation on the spear-like points of the iron structure. Once inside, he began his search. Lila was buried in Section G, which was supposedly near the back of the cemetery.
//Of course,// Blair thought morosely. //She couldn't be buried in the fucking front section, now could she?//
Finding the main road of the cemetery with the help of his flashlight, Blair made his way along that path, praying he would find Section G without too much effort, and more fervently praying that Bill Ellison's hired henchmen would be there, shovels at the ready.
Blair's flashlight caught Sections A through F, and finally, when he was deep in the heart of the wooded cemetery, he discovered Section G. Trudging up the slight incline of the grassy hill that led away from the road, he began wandering among the tombstones, which shone gray-white in the darkness, illuminated by a few weak rays of moonlight. The trees rustled in the wind, and leaves scurried across the nearby road, making the sounds of tiny feet on cement.
Blair froze as his flashlight picked up a dark form on the ground near one of the graves. Reluctantly, he moved his light from a pair of black-booted feet, up a pair of black clad legs to the torso of the prone form, and then to its head.
A man of about forty years lay there, eyes glassy and staring, throat torn away, leaving nothing but a bloody pulp in its place. As Blair's eyes widened, and his chest constricted with fear at the sight, he turned to run for the road. About twenty feet away stood the figure of a woman.
"So, you have come to learn the truth. Well, now you know," Lila said calmly, walking closer, into the beam of Blair's flashlight. Her skin was china white, her eyes luminous, though not really frightening, her full mouth accented with two tiny pinpoints of whiteness that rested on the red of her lower lip. "I have no argument with you. Why do you stand in my way?"
"You want to make Jim into what you are. Into some sort of...thing that kills people and drinks blood to survive. I won't let you do that." Blair tried to fumble in the bag while he spoke.
"Please don't tell me you brought some tiresome little bag of religious icons to wave at me. I had so hoped for something a bit more creative from you." She laughed softly, the moonlight catching the bright, sharp teeth.
"Were you always...like this?"
"No. I was...initiated in Bali. It was the real reason I left Jim there."
"But now you want to make him into one of these...things?"
"I want him to live forever. Jim was the only man who ever really loved me...the only one I ever truly loved. We could live forever, and the whole world could be ours!"
"If you were initiated in Bali, how did you...pass an autopsy here, and...and how did you make love to Jim without him knowing...?"
"After we have fed, we are quite warm. You wouldn't know the difference between a vampire and a mortal. As for how I survived, how I was undetected during the...after the shooting here, I'm not sure. Much of this is mystical, supernatural...I don't suppose we ever can understand it fully." Lila paused. "When I met Jim again, he was troubled, lonely, unhappy, and it seemed he'd missed me as much as I'd missed him. So I want us to be together now."
"I can't let you do that." Blair held up the cross, and the wreath of garlic. Lila smiled indulgently.
"Are you finished, or do you have a little bottle of holy water in there too. If you'd like to throw it at me, I'll wait."
"So what does scare a vampire?" Blair dropped the objects back in the bag, the researcher in him still on overdrive, still learning from this bizarre, bloodthirsty monster in the lovely, civilized, feminine package. With Lila clad in a long black dress, Blair could barely refrain from smiling at the dark humor his mind conjured up-- "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark". He doubted Lila would appreciate the analogy.
"If you believed in the power of anything in that bag, you would be safe. But you don't believe in all this yourself--you don't honestly believe that a cross will save you from a murderer. You merely went out with some sort of vampire grocery list and picked up things you've seen them trot out in the late shows. With faith in the tools you brought with you, you would have been quite a danger, but as it stands, Mr. Sandburg, you've made a very serious miscalculation. And as much as I've tried to find a way not to confront you, not to hurt you, I'm afraid that Jim is too important to me to let you stand in the way. Your life will be what, another fifty years at best? I can offer Jim eternity. What do you have to offer him in light of that?"
"I love him," Blair responded simply, sincerely.
"As do I. So it appears we are at cross purposes, Mr. Sandburg. That is most unfortunate."
Jim shifted in bed again, sighing loudly at what was fast appearing to be another night of restlessness, and lost sleep. The sensation wasn't unfamiliar...the restlessness, the feeling of something or someone prowling about, and finally, the impetus to rouse from troubled half-sleep, to find the impossible lover standing there, smiling down at him with strangely sharp little teeth.
"Lila," he said this time, recognizing what this was, what she was, and knowing, in a moment of regretful revelation, that Blair was right all along.
"Jim. Let me love you again," she said huskily, gracefully coming to the side of the bed, sitting there, warm hands skimming his chest. "I do love you. We can be together again, my love."
"How is this possible?" Jim asked, fighting the hypnotic power of the dark eyes he could see only too well in the shadows.
"It's our second chance, Jim. We can rule the night together. Think of all we can do, all we can see...an eternity of love..."
An eternity of love...it sounded so beautiful, and yet, as he felt himself blanketed by the strange embrace of a dead lover, Jim knew there was something not right in this moment. Something dangerous, something forbidden, and something very, very wrong.
And yet, he couldn't stop himself from responding, from holding Lila closer to him, from kissing her and from offering her no resistance when she removed the bandage on his neck, re-opened the wound there and began to drink, feasting on him and marking him as her own. How easy it would be to slip into the darkness, to follow this woman he had always found so beautiful, so compelling...
Beautiful and compelling...//I love you too much...//
Blair.
With all his strength, Jim grasped the vampire's shoulders and tore her away from him, feeling the searing agony in his neck as her sharp fangs were forcibly disengaged from their feeding spot. Now, holding her back, he could see her for what she really was: pale, china-white skin, blazing eyes that seemed to hold madness behind them, her red lips slicked with his blood, which trickled down her chin in rivulets from each pointed eye tooth. Then she hissed, and angry sound like a cat about to pounce on her prey. Romance was gone and the animal had surfaced. She was no longer seducing Jim, she was attacking him. He was not to be her lover now, but her victim.
"Sandburg!" Jim let out a bellow, hoping that Blair was truly there, that it had been his distraction with Lila that was the cause of Jim not hearing the familiar heartbeat downstairs. If Blair only would show up now with some of the garlic Jim knew perfectly well his roommate had been keeping near the entrances to the loft every night.
"Don't bother calling for him. He won't answer you where he is," Lila hissed. She had obviously hoped that would weaken Jim, but it had the opposite effect. Calling on all his strength, he propelled her back off the bed and pulled his gun out from under the pillow, firing repeatedly into her mid-section.
She lurched, covered the bleeding wounds with her hands, and leaned heavily against the wall. In a moment, she straightened, as if the bullets had done nothing more than give her a minor cramp.
"You will be mine, Jim. Resisting me now is useless." She moved forward, but not fast enough to pounce before Jim had fled down the stairs toward the first floor, heading for Blair's room, dreading what he would find there.
He swung open the French doors and could barely stifle a scream when Lila stood on the other side of them, laughing.
"You want to play hide and seek, Jim?" she asked, batting her eyelashes.
"I want you gone!" Jim shouted, and was stunned when her confident expression faltered.
"You love me," she said, regaining a little of the fire in her eyes.
"I love Blair," he said, with complete conviction. "Now get out of our home! I revoke my invitation!" he shouted, remembering it from a movie he'd seen once, believing now that all the lore of vampires was true. As his own blood trickled down his neck onto his chest from the gaping wound in his neck, he belatedly acknowledged that all Sandburg feared was valid.
"You loved me once," she pleaded.
"Once, a lifetime ago, when you were...you. Now, you are not welcome here," he stated firmly.
"Please, Jim. Just, look into my eyes and tell me that you don't love me," she said sweetly, a slight pout in her voice as she tried to look beguiling. Beguiling with his blood caking and drying on her fanged mouth. A beguiling mad dog ready to pounce again.
"No. Get out!" Jim grabbed two pencils off Blair's desk and crossed them, holding them out in front of him, fully believing that she would be repelled the symbol, and she was. Shielding her face, she backed toward the fire escape door leading out of Blair's room.
"I love you! I'm offering you eternity!"
"You don't love me. A...a thing like you isn't capable of love. Now get out!" He held the crossed pencils out more aggressively, and this time, she darted out the door. When he rushed up to it to see her leave, the fire escape was empty, as was the street below.
"Oh God," he said to no one in particular, before slamming the door and staggering back toward his bedroom, stemming the flow of blood from his neck with the pressure of his hand.
He yanked on clothing, mindless of the blood from his hand and neck that stained it. He only took time to put pressure against the wound and re-bandage it to prevent excessive blood loss. If he couldn't function, he could never find Blair. And no one would believe him if he asked for their help.
Just like he had refused to believe Blair.
Blair who loved him too much to let a vampire have him.
Blair who had probably paid for that love with his life.
Again.
"We've got two male Caucasians, one about forty years of age, the other about thirty-five. Both are missing their throats," Taggert summarized, wrinkling his nose a bit as he spoke. "Looks like some sort of animal got 'em."
"Where the hell is Ellison, anyway?" Simon groused. "I paged him an hour ago."
"I haven't seen him, Simon." Taggert frowned, spotting something in the nearby bushes. "Wait a second." He pulled the backpack out of the foliage. "Man, this looks just like Sandburg's."
"There have to be a lot around that look the same."
"Not that have one of these attached." Joel fingered a hand-woven piece of fabric, brightly colored, that was attached to a key ring, which had been, in turn, attached to a metal clip on the backpack. "Blair got this on one of his trips. I don't remember where, but this is his backpack."
"What's in it?" Simon asked, holding the pack while Joel rifled through its contents. "A cross, garlic...I really hope this little bottle isn't holy water," Simon said, laughing and shaking his head. "Looks like the kid was out hunting vampires."
"Looks like he found some," Taggert gestured with his head toward the corpses of the two men.
"I'll try his office number. He's got to be somewhere." Simon punched in the numbers, but frowned when he got Blair's voicemail. "Blair, it's Simon. Call me as soon as you get in. And where is Jim? It's urgent we find both of you." He broke the connection and dialed the loft again, leaving another increasingly anxious message on the machine. Just then, he spotted a rather large, tired-looking, but familiar form trudging up the hill toward them.
"Jim!" Taggert exclaimed. "We've been looking all over for you."
"Blair's missing," Jim said, then glanced down at the covered forms on the ground, then back and the back pack in Simon's hands. "Dear God, no!" Jim raced to the bodies and yanked the sheets back. "Where is he?!" he demanded.
"We don't know, Jim. We've been trying to reach you since before six this morning." It was now close to seven, and though night still blanketed the cemetery, the first signs of daylight were beginning to encroach on the blackness.
"What happened to your neck?" Joel asked, noticing the blood on Jim's shirt and the sloppy bandage on his neck.
"Oh my God," Jim said, dropping to his knees in front of the grave, tracing Lila's name where it was carved on the slightly frosted granite surface.
"It looks like these two jokers were planning on digging up the grave. Apparently, someone...or something didn't like that idea," Simon explained. "We found shovels over there in the bushes."
"And I found the back pack not far from that," Joel added.
"No sign of Blair anywhere?" Jim rose and wavered a little, and Simon took a hold of his elbow.
"Easy there. You want to give us the whole story or should we waste time guessing?"
"A few days ago, Blair called in sick for me--remember?"
"He said you had some sort of strange...bite on your neck you had to get looked at. I figured he was talking about a bug bite--you know, something like a spider. He seemed a little flipped out about it, but I just figured that was normal Sandburg."
"That was the first night she showed up at the loft."
"Who?" Joel asked, frowning. Jim looked back at the grave. "Her?" he persisted, eyes widening. "You mean she's not really dead?"
"That's what I thought--that there had to be some kind of explanation. At first I thought it was all a dream and then I woke up with this...thing on my neck, and I had lost blood but there was no stain. I wasn't drugged but I didn't remember the wound. Blair was convinced that Lila had risen from the dead as a vampire. I didn't believe him."
"Good call," Simon responded, laughing. "The kid sure does come up with some winners."
"That may be true, but this time, he's right." Jim pulled back the bandage. "It's a dual puncture wound, which the doctor said showed signs of suction. This time, I saw her, and it was no dream. It was Lila, and whatever she was and however she got there, she wasn't normal. She wasn't alive. She had no heartbeat, Simon. And her teeth...they were fangs. I can't believe I'm saying this but Sandburg was right, and she claims she did something to him but I don't know what."
"Where is she now?" Simon asked, raising an eyebrow, a sure sign he thought Jim was a prime candidate for early retirement.
"I don't know. I emptied my gun into her, and didn't faze her a bit. I finally drove her out with a cross and--"
"Whoa, whoa, hold up a minute. You're trying to say you fired a full round into this woman and she walked away?" Simon asked, incredulous.
//I'm so sorry, Blair. Now I know how you felt...knowing you were sane and everyone telling you that you were nuts.//
"That's what I'm saying. Whatever you want to call her, she isn't human."
"Maybe you missed," Simon offered.
"Sir, how many times have you known me to miss when I fire once? I emptied a round, at close range, and she didn't drop. And I didn't miss."
"Maybe someone switched the bullets in your gun to blanks," Joel offered.
"They got it out from under my pillow without my knowing about it? I seriously doubt that, Joel."
"Okay, let's assume for a minute that this woman wore some sort of body armor--"
"No, Simon. She didn't have any kind of protective gear on. I know. I held her. All she had on was her dress."
"I know what this looks like, but hey, we know it's impossible," Joel dismissed, laughing, albeit uneasily.
"Right now, I don't care if she's the Tooth Fairy. I just have to find Blair. I have to know...what happened."
"You think he's dead?" Simon asked grimly.
"She acted like he was out of the way. It sounded pretty permanent," Jim said tightly.
"Would you excuse us a minute, Joel?" Simon asked, and Taggert frowned momentarily, then nodded, moving over to confer with the coroner's people who were removing the bodies. "This bag smells like a cheap Italian restaurant. Sandburg had to have handled the garlic in here last night. You think you could pick up on that scent out here? Might give us a clue to which direction he went."
"Right now all I'm smelling is that damn bag."
"I'll have it bagged and put in my car. It's the only thing I can think of to give us some direction to start searching."
"Hold up a minute!" Jim called out to the coroner's team as they loaded the second of the two corpses into the wagon. He partially unzipped the bag covering the older of the two victims. "I know this guy...at least, he looks really familiar." Jim concentrated a moment. "He used to work for my father--he was a driver. When there was some big event at my father's corporation, he used to chauffeur the VIPs."
"Maybe we better get a hold of your father and see if he knows anything about this," Simon suggested.
"Right." Jim took out his cell phone and dialed his father's number. When there was no answer, he tried the cell phone number, and at the sound of his father's voice, also heard the road noise. Bill Ellison was already on the move. "Dad, it's Jim. Something's going on. You better head over to Mountainview Cemetery. I'm there right now."
"Is Blair with you?" Bill asked immediately.
"What do you know about this?" Jim asked.
"I'll explain when I get there." The connection was broken.
Bill Ellison arrived only minutes later, leading Jim to believe his father had been heading in their direction anyway. Dressed in a long cashmere topcoat and a business suit, William Ellison looked like a picture from the past. The hair was more gray, the face lined, and the gait a bit slower, but he was still a commanding corporate presence. The Chairman of the Board of Pacific Coast Plastics Incorporated had not given up his old image with his retirement from his prior CEO position.
"What happened? Where is Blair?" Bill demanded.
"What do you know about Blair?" Jim retorted.
"Jimmy--your neck--"
"Forget my neck. What do you know about Sandburg?!"
"Jim, settle down. One of these men worked for you?" Simon gestured at the coroner's wagon.
"Blair wouldn't let go of this notion he had that Jim was being stalked by--"
"A vampire," Jim interjected.
"I found him sleeping on his couch in the office. He said he'd been up for three nights straight keeping watch. Jimmy, if you'd seen him...he looked like he was ready to drop and he was scared to death about this vampire thing. I figured maybe it was just stress or maybe the new job was getting to him--I never believed it was all real. But he was obsessed with finding out the truth, and his next move was to come out here and dig her up to see for himself. So I hired a couple of trustworthy people I know to take care of it, let him have a look, and then restore the grave to its prior condition."
"There is the little matter of an exhumation order for something like that," Simon chided.
"Sure. I could have called you and said 'my son's roommate thinks this woman has risen from the dead, will you please dig her up and have a look?'" Bill bellowed back at Simon. "There was no other way than to pursue this exactly the way we did. Jim wasn't willing to check it out, Blair was determined there was something to it, and the end result was that someone had to take some action. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a prolonged, unnecessary stalemate," Bill concluded forcefully. "If the argument is over whether or not this woman is really dead and buried, you dig her up and look. Problem solved."
"Maybe we should get an exhumation order, Simon," Joel suggested. "If she's still alive somehow, we should know who we're really looking for."
"Go make the calls," Simon directed, and Joel nodded, taking his leave. "Mr. Ellison, tampering with a grave is a serious matter--"
"So is a missing person, Simon," Jim interrupted. "When was Blair supposed to be here?"
"Two a.m."
"Captain Banks! Jim!" Megan was hurrying across the grass. "We just found Sandy's car on Hanover Street. It's locked, parked at the curb. Looks like he must have left it there."
"He was supposed to arrive at two a.m.," Jim recapped, and Megan frowned. She had been supervising a team of uniformed officers combing the surrounding area for clues, witnesses and anything else suspicious, and had not been aware of Blair's suspected presence on the scene. Jim briefly filled her in on the situation with Blair's disappearance.
"Sandy really believed this woman was a vampire?"
"Yeah, and Dr. VanHelsing over here hired a couple of grave diggers to check for him," Jim shot a look at his father. "You could have clued me in on this."
"And you'd have agreed?" Bill responded.
"Blair wouldn't be missing."
"All right, let's not waste time assigning blame. Jim, start looking for Blair--try following up on the leads we talked about," Simon gave Jim a knowing look, and Jim recalled the garlic. Now that the bag was gone, and the air had cleared, following the trail might be possible.
"Right, sir," he responded, wandering away from the group, first following the scent trail to Simon's car where the backpack was bagged and tagged as evidence, then resuming a stroll around the grounds. There had to be something--Blair's scent, the garlic, something.
Then he saw it, glistening there in the dewy grass. Blair's Swiss Army Knife. It was partially open, as if he might have tried to use it and then dropped it. The scent of the garlic was on it as well, and Jim focused his sense of smell as keenly as he could on that scent. While it proved elusive on the cold, breezy morning, his attention was caught by the mausoleum that lurked among the trees and considerable overgrowth at the very back of the cemetery.
Approaching it, Jim noticed the heavy chains on the doors, and recalled reading about the debate amongst cemetery officials whether to destroy the structure and relocate the corpses, or to try to restore it. The interior was judged not to be sound, and rat feces were a foot deep in some parts of the building. Officials feared the rats might be eating their way through the coffins. No one had been buried in the mausoleum after about the mid-1930's, and there were almost no survivors left to approve or object to the movement of the corpses.
Following the side of the building, Jim searched for some accessible way inside. Finally, he located a loose grating on a high window that looked just wide enough to accommodate him if he slid through it carefully. Yanking the metal away from the stone window frame, Jim managed to get a grip on the bottom edge of the window opening and struggled to keep purchase on the slippery granite exterior. After a few aborted tries, he managed to get just the right leverage to pull the upper half of his body through the opening.
The scent of old decay assailed him from all sides. The walls were alive with rats, and the smell of their waste hung heavy in the fetid air. Jim could answer one question conclusively: the rats were, indeed, feasting on the rotting flesh enclosed in these vile walls.
Ignoring his own revulsion, he shimmied through the window and managed to land on his feet, pleased that this particular spot was merely debris-littered, and didn't appear to be the place of choice as a rat's nest. Back in his youth, Jim could remember people coming to this place on dares--back before security was as tight as it was now, and before the place was as structurally unsound. As a little boy, he had kept Stephen from venturing inside on a dare, his sentinel hearing picking up the movement of rats in the walls even then.
There was no way he could open up his sense of smell in this place without making himself too ill to continue. So he relied on his superior vision, moving slowly down the shadowy corridor, noting the names on the crypts on either side of him, finding a few early generations of some of Cascade's "old money". Still, these must have been forgotten branches of even those families, as no one had taken action to rescue their remains from this hell hole.
Jim froze as his hearing picked up on something. It was faint, but now it was getting stronger as he seemed to move closer to the source.
Labored breathing, with a few weak pleas for help interspersed. Running now toward the source, Jim found a loose front stone on a ground level crypt, which he clawed at ineffectually.
"Sandburg!!" he yelled into the closed off crypt. The weak voice was Blair's, but there was no change in its mutterings. Blair couldn't hear him through the concrete. Frantic with the frustration of not being able to dislodge the barrier between himself and his partner, Jim scanned the surroundings for something, anything, he could use to pry the stone loose.
"Blair!! I'm coming back for you. I need something to move the stone!" Jim shouted at the wall. There was a lull in the sounds on the other side, and a moment later, a more frantic hollering and pounding ensued.
Racing back the way he came, Jim vaulted up and through the window, grateful for the momentary reprieve of fresh air to clear his head as he ran toward where the police personnel were still gathered with his father and Simon.
"I need tools!! He's in the mausoleum!!" he shouted, and in a moment, the group dispersed, Simon running toward him, Joel and Bill running off in opposite directions. Jim had no idea where the others were headed, but seeing that help was on the way, he rushed back to the mausoleum, and managed to scale the wall and be partway inside before Simon caught up to him.
"Jim! Is there a door you can let us in?"
"The front door is chained. This place isn't too sound, so I'm not sure. Look, just throw in the tools when you get them, okay. And stand by."
"You got it." There was a flurry of activity outside, and soon, Simon was calling out a warning for Jim to stand back. A crowbar sailed through the window, along with some rope. "Try that."
"Right. Thanks." Jim grabbed the items and ran back toward the loose stone. Attacking it ruthlessly with the crowbar, it surrendered without much of a fight. Grasping the end handle of an all-too-familiar casket, Jim pulled the dark blue coffin with the silver hardware out of the opening. He had chosen it himself for Lila's burial.
Now he hacked at the lock, springing the lid, which popped up suddenly with the blow from a tired, bruised fist. Dirty, bruised and breathless, Blair lay there on the powder blue pillow, eyes wide, chest heaving.
"Blair!" Jim wrenched the bottom half of the lid open and reached in for his partner, lifting him out of the coffin. Blair's arm came up weakly around Jim's neck and held on until he was resting across the larger man's lap as Jim knelt on the floor by the coffin, his head resting on Jim's shoulder. "You're gonna be okay, Chief. It's all right." Jim carefully checked Blair's neck, relieved to find it unmarred. Blair continued to breath heavily, lying exhausted in his arms. "How long have you been banging on that lid, huh?" Jim asked gently, checking the bruised, swollen hands.
"I'm not sure," Blair rasped, his voice hoarse from yelling for help.
"I'm so sorry, Chief. You were right about all of it. Thank God you're okay. I thought...she said she...I thought you were dead." Jim rested his head against Blair's, holding him close.
"Not your fault. She had...influence over you," Blair managed, then coughed.
"It's okay. You don't have to talk. Try to relax. Breathe as deeply as you can." Jim cradled Blair close, rubbing his back soothingly. "I love you, Blair," he said into the rumpled curls, feeling his throat constrict at the thought he might have been too late, at the thought of his beautiful Blair dying in this awful place.
"I love you too. We're going to beat her, Jim. She can't have you."
"Are you staking a claim here, Chief?" Jim pulled back, looking into Blair's tired eyes. Those eyes lit up and shone with the love that was always there for Jim.
"That okay with you?"
"Very okay." Jim gently kissed Blair's forehead, resisting the inviting lips because Blair needed oxygen more than passion at the moment. "Think if I tried to stake a claim of my own, I would stand a chance against all those leggy corporate ladies in their short skirts?"
"They don't even exist, man. It's just you," Blair whispered, brushing over Jim's face with tired fingertips. Jim gently caught the bruised hand and kissed it thoroughly.
"Let's work on getting you out of here. Simon and the cavalry are waiting outside. I'm afraid I've got to boost you through a window. The doors are chained shut."
"There's a door. You go down to the middle of the corridor and turn right at the cross hall," Blair paused, out of breath, swallowing to lubricate his throat. "There are some steps, but it leads outside."
"Okay. Think you can walk?"
"Yeah, I think so," Blair said, swallowing again.
"Throat's pretty raw, huh?" Jim asked sympathetically, standing and then hoisting Blair onto his feet.
"I guess screaming wasn't too smart with limited oxygen." Blair slid his arm around Jim's waist and leaned into him for support.
"There's such a thing as panic, Chief. The door's this way?" Jim started them down the murky hallway. "Don't worry, I can see the way."
"I thought you were dead," Blair whispered, knowing Jim could hear him. "She was going back for you."
"She showed up at the loft, and when I realized you were right about this whole mess, I fought her off."
"How?" Blair probed.
"With a couple of crossed pencils, and telling her I was revoking my invitation--or something equally theatrical. I heard it in a movie once--that a vampire can only come in if you invite her, if you want her to come in."
"You must have believed in what you were doing."
"I did, I guess. I figured it would stop her. Don't try to talk anymore, Chief. Rest your throat. I'll buy you a Slurpee later," Jim teased, and Blair managed a gravelly laugh.