Work Text:
Like a Shepherd
by LMPayne
Disclaimers: I don't own any of these characters.
Setting: This was written between s1 and s2 of Forever Knight,
which was also just after s1 of "The X-Files," I think.
"Nicolah! You look terrible!" Janette cried
as she opened the door. Nick Knight walked into
her elegant apartment and sank into a darkly tasteful
armchair. His normally immaculate hair and clothes
were spotted with dirt, leaves, and some foul-
smelling gore. Although the sun would not rise for
almost an hour, his hair and skin seemed singed.
Janette handed him the glass she had been drinking,
and he tossed the contents back in one swallow.
"What happened to you?" Janette
demanded.
"It's a long story," the detective replied.
************************************
"C'mon, Nat, UFO's?" Knight's tone was
highly skeptical.
"C'mon, Nick, vampires?" she mocked
him. "There are more things in heaven and earth,
and all that. Besides, there's been a lot of reputable
witnesses, and no one has any other explanation for
all these disappearances."
The two were in Nat's office, which she
was usually too busy to use. The clutter testified that
she was always too busy to tidy it. "Business" was
slow, and they were at liberty to chat about mysteries
outside the responsibility of the Toronto Police
Department. There had been a rash of unexplained
disappearances up around Lake Simcoe in the past
week. A few of the missing persons had known
each other, but most had nothing in common.
"Lights in the sky" had been seen, and rumors were
flying that government radar had seen something.
Nick decided to keep the ludicrous argument going,
just to keep the doctor from noticing that he hadn't
touched his tea.
"I know all about things undreamt-of in
your philosophy, Nat. I've been around a long time.
But I've never, in all my years, run across any little
green men!"
Don Schanke walked in without knocking,
as usual. His face and hands were heavily stained
with green. Natalie took one look and burst out
laughing, causing Nick to look around and grin.
"Don't even ask, okay? Myra was dyeing a
dress, and -- I don't even want to go into it. Just
don't ask." Schanke flopped down into Nat's
remaining chair.
"Can we laugh?" Nick asked drily.
Schanke tried to change the subject. "Don't
you guys have any work to do?"
Natalie started busily searching through a
precarious pile of dusty papers from the corner of
her desk. "I'm cleaning my office," she
volunteered.
Schanke turned to Knight and tried to glare
at him. "What about you, hotshot? Shouldn't you
be out investigating a murder or something?"
Nick gave him an innocent look. "Sorry,
Schank. There's just nobody dead."
******************************************
Fox Mulder sat quietly in his cramped
basement office. He had a fresh newspaper clipping
on the desk in front of him, but he wasn't seeing the
print. He was remembering a young man, a misfit,
an epileptic -- and a promise that Mulder had failed
to keep. He whipped around at a sudden voice in
the doorway.
"Quitting time, partner. Aren't you going
home?" Dana Scully's calm gray eyes took in
Mulder's jumpiness and the pain in his face.
Although his leg had healed, he still seemed hurt,
somehow, by the recent escapade that had almost
ended his career. She was glad the Bureau had
decided to keep him on -- he was the most skillful
detective she had ever worked with. But when she
saw him looking like this, she couldn't help but
wonder whether it might not be better, for Mulder's
own sake, to try to get him reassigned away from the
X-files.
Mulder tossed her the newspaper. "Take a
look at that," he suggested.
Scully read the story. "Lake Simcoe.
Ontario, Canada? Mulder," she warned,"that is out
of our jurisdiction."
Mulder wheeled his chair around and got a
folder out of his desk drawer. He handed it to
Scully as she sat down in his spare chair, and pointed
at the newsprint as she began to read. "Look at this.
Three of these missing persons are members of
NICAP."
"Mulder," Scully began,"don't get into that
again. You know Max was a delusional...."
"And look here." Mulder turned over the
papers in the folder until he found the one he
wanted. "This small article here. They're treating
this as unrelated -- a camping accident, or an arson."
"Body of a man...charred beyond
recognition...authorities seeking any
identification...Lake Simcoe," Scully read. She
looked up at her partner. "It's still not in our
jurisdiction, Mulder. And it could all be a
coincidence."
"I've got two weeks' vacation coming." He
looked at her. "So do you."
*****************************************
Somewhat to Scully's surprise, she found herself and
Mulder on their way to Canada only two days later.
There had been no trouble about getting time off --
her supervisor seemed to think it would be a good
idea for "Spooky" Mulder to take a vacation, and for
Scully to keep an eye on him. She was fleetingly a
little angry at the nursemaid reputation she seemed to
be developing, but shrugged it off before the
supervisor had finished signing the vacation
requests.
"Mulder's car looks awfully normal," she
thought as she tossed her luggage into the back and
walked around to the passenger door. "What did
you expect," she asked herself. "A hearse? The
Batmobile?" She got into the car.
Mulder handed her the map as she strapped
herself in. "You all set?" he asked.
"Just fine," she replied. They got
underway. A few miles later, Scully found herself
wondering about the electronic device secured just
below Mulder's glove compartment. It had two
rows of LED's across the front, a couple of big
clunky knobs, and a speaker grille. It looked
obsolete. "What is this?" she asked the driver.
"That's my old police scanner," Mulder
told her. "I've never gotten around to taking it out
of the car. It's way behind the state of the art, but it
still works. Pretty much."
"I'll take your word for it," she said, but he
reached over to turn the device on anyway. It made
a terrible noise, and he automatically adjusted the
Squelch until the static was barely audible.
"My uncle used one of those things all the
time," Mulder volunteered. "He was a reporter."
"You had an uncle who was a reporter?"
"Yeah. He worked all over. Las Vegas,
Seattle, Chicago. All over."
"Your uncle ever work in Ontario,
Canada?"
"No." There was silence for a while. Then
suddenly Mulder said,"I wonder about the human
race, Scully."
Dana looked at him, but he looked all right.
"What do you mean, Mulder?"
"Well," he began, but then he had to avoid
a truck. When the car was going steadily again he
started over again. "We've encountered some very
strange people -- you could call them human
mutations -- that pyrokinetic Cecil Lively, and the
liver-eating Eugene Tooms. Even the Jersey Devil."
Scully wondered where he was going with
this. "What about them?"
"Are you familiar with the Gaia theory of
the earth?"
"Isn't that the idea that the earth is all one
organism?" Scully asked.
"And that it compensates for change, trying
to keep itself in balance somehow. I've been an
FBI agent for years, Scully. And I've been paying
attention to UFO's and paranormal activity all my
life. Almost." His voice sank to a whisper on the
last word, and she knew he was remembering his
sister. Mulder coughed once and went on. "I've
never before run into these human -- monsters. It's
like the human race is trying to evolve something
more -- dangerous. Maybe to compete? To hold
our own against the aliens in our midst?"
"You think creatures like Tooms and
Lively are coming about so as to protect the human
race from alien invaders?" The disbelief in Scully's
voice was palpable.
"I don't know, Scully. It's just a thought."
"To protect us," Scully repeated flatly.
"Too bad they're all psychopaths."
****************************************
"Well, somebody's dead now," Schanke
told Nick as he slapped the dispatch slip down on the
vampire's desk. "Charred beyond recognition," he
went on, "and it's all ours. God, I love this job."
Nick winced at his partner's choice of
words, and read the location off the slip. "That's the
north edge of town ," he mused. He tried, but
couldn't remember why the words "charred beyond
recognition" rang a little bell in his mind. "Let's
roll, partner."
Natalie was already at the site when they
arrived. An early-evening jogger had discovered the
body and called it in. The uniformed cops who had
been the first police on the scene had cordoned off
the area, but a man and a woman in a dark car with
Washington, D.C. plates had apparently gotten there
even before the police, and were poking around in a
way that irritated Nick. "Who the hell are these
people?" he demanded. "What are they doing here?"
Dr. Lambert was right next to him, leaning
over the body. "They're FBI agents, on vacation, if
you can believe that. I think they're slumming."
She looked at the body again, and said,"That's
funny."
Nick looked where she was looking, and
saw what she saw. "The body is badly burned, but
the vegetation near it isn't scorched at all." He
scouted around the body with his practiced hunter's
eyes, and added, "the victim came here under his
own power. The tracks are those of a single man,
and not someone carrying a heavy burden -- an
already charred body, for instance. He came along
here, and then stopped here for a little while --
confused? -- and then fell over dead. Charred
beyond recognition." The smell of the burnt human
flesh was making him sick, and the words "charred
beyond recognition" kept nagging at him. There
was some other smell, too, that he just couldn't
place. He tried to sample the air without sniffing too
obviously, but before he could identify the weird
aroma, Don Schanke came back from interviewing
the jogger and introduced the FBI agents to him.
"Nick!" Schanke began. "Hey, Nick, this
is Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from the FBI...."
"Aren't you a little out of your
jurisdiction?" Nick snarled. "This isn't an FBI
matter."
"We're on vacation," Dana replied
smoothly. "We happened to hear the call...."
"Have you connected this with the similar
incident at Lake Simcoe last week?" Mulder
interrupted.
"That was it!" Knight thought. "That was
what I kept trying to remember!" He told the FBI
man, "Lake Simcoe isn't in FBI jurisdiction either."
But Mulder wasn't listening to him. His
attention had been caught by a call coming in over
the police radio in the uniformed officer's squad car.
"Scully," he said, and he had gone a little paler even
than usual. "Did you hear that call?"
"It was just a report of illegal fireworks,
Mulder," she tried to calm him down.
"Lights in the sky, Scully, lights in the
sky." He was already turning back to his car. "I bet
there's another corpse just like this one in King's
College Circle, wherever that is. A nice fresh
corpse."
Nick Knight grabbed the FBI man's
shoulder and spun him back around. "Are you
withholding evidence in an arson, 'Agent' Mulder?"
He turned his head towards Schanke and the
patrolmen and snapped, "Did any one actually check
an ID on these two?"
Dana Scully wordlessly produced hers as
Don placated his partner, "Yeah, Nick, I saw their
ID's -- both of them. Looked all right to me. But I
would like to know what's going on here," this last
addressed to Fox Mulder, who had gotten his
shoulder back, slightly dented, from Knight's grip,
and was displaying his ID card to the vampire.
"If I told you all that I think is going on
here, Detective Schanke," Mulder said, "you
wouldn't believe me."
Dana knew that that had never stopped him
before, and so she hastened to put an end to the
conversation before Mulder told the Toronto
detectives all about his theories of alien invasion.
"Look," she said reasonably, "We know we're way
out of our jurisdiction here, and we're on vacation
anyway. But Mulder and I did run across some
similar deaths, and injuries, in Wisconsin a while
ago, and while it wasn't a case we solved...." It
hadn't even been a case they should have been
allowed to know anything about, but the chances of
Canadian police being able to hold that against them
were, she hoped, small.
Natalie Lambert was suddenly in the midst
of the conversation. "Did you say injuries?" she
demanded. "You mean there were people who were
burned like this -- and survived?"
Scully forced down the more graphic
memories of that night in the Townsend Hospital
ER and nodded.
"And the weapon that did it looked like a
flash of bright light, according to witnesses who
saw the attacks from a great enough distance,"
Mulder put in. "I'd say the killer is, or was, in
King's College Circle, and that the 'fireworks' that
were reported are the flash effect associated with
another killing. If you want to catch up with this
killer you should probably go there now. And you
should take us with you."
****************************************
In the enormous back seat of the Toronto
detective's classic Cadillac, Fox Mulder checked his
gun. Scully looked at him curiously. "Do you
really think that will do any good?" she asked him in
a whisper. "The military in Townsend were armed
to the teeth, but it didn't help them."
"The things are invisible, or nearly so,"
Mulder murmured. "Why would they need to be
invisible if they were also immune to bullets?"
Scully couldn't answer that, so she got out her own
gun and checked it over.
Nick Knight, driving the car, heard the
quiet conversation and the smooth metallic clicking
in the back seat, but he was fairly sure that his
mortal companions had missed it. Nat Lambert had
insisted that she come along on the grounds that a
doctor might be needed, and she was riding between
Nick and Don in the front seat of the Caddy. Her
warmth and soft human fragrance were distracting,
but not distracting enough to keep Nick from
worrying what sort of invisible killer they might be
going up against. He wondered whether his
passengers might be merely insane, but realized that
would be the "sensible" reaction if they had come
up with a story about vampires, and withheld his
judgment. "Check your gun, would ya Schank?" he
said, and Nat stared at him in surprise.
****************************************
The University of Toronto looked deserted
at this late hour of a summer's night. Nick checked
his pistol as he got out of the car, then curled his lip
in disgust. There was that unidentifiable smell
again, stronger and more disturbing than it had been
when overlaid with the stench of crisped human
flesh. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
The mortals didn't seem to notice anything.
Suddenly a scream rang out from past the
oak trees that surrounded the King's College Circle
common. Mulder, who had been heading that
direction already, broke into a run. The others followed.
"No!" the unseen voice cried out, "Don't take me!"
Mulder broke through the trees and saw just
what he was afraid he'd see. A skinny,
uncoordinated-looking young man was suspended in
mid-air, in the midst of what looked like a wide
beam of blue light. The man was obviously shaking
in terror, but no sounds could be heard from him
anymore. His grubby sweatshirt had the letters
NICAP stencilled across the chest. "Not this time!"
Mulder shouted, and sprang for the young man's
feet.
Knight and Schanke came thundering into
view just in time to see the resulting explosion.
Schanke was blown off his feet, hit his head on a
tree root, and lost consciousness. Nick narrowed his
eyes and flew at the blue column of light, suddenly
much expanded in size, which held its two victims
suspended above the turf. The light, when he
reached it, burned like morning, but he was strong
enough to throw both Mulder and the young stranger
to the ground outside its influence. Teeth bared
and eyes blazing, he wrenched himself free from the
beam's stinging grip, and it disappeared.
The doctors were already bent over the
fallen when he had cooled down enough to land.
"This man's dead," Nat announced. "Looks like
maybe a brain embollism." Despite her cool tones,
Nick knew her heartbeat sounded afraid.
"What about Schanke?" he asked her.
"He hit his head, might have a concussion,"
she answered. "Agent Mulder isn't breathing." She
gestured to where Scully was giving him mouth-to-
mouth. Nick noticed that, oddly enough, Scully's
heartbeat was quite normal. He allowed himself to
hope that she hadn't noticed him flying.
Without warning, Nick's eyes went yellow
and his teeth extended. Nat looked at him in alarm.
"Did you hear that?" he breathed. Even as she
shook her head, he realized the vibration he had
heard, and which spoke to him so much of danger,
was well outside the range of human hearing.
Suddenly, with his vampiric eyesight, he saw two
shapes moving where there had been nothing before.
He drew his gun, and told Nat to get down. She
obeyed, and he was able to concentrate on seeing the
shapes. He was dimly conscious of Nat spelling
Scully's resuscitation attempts some distance behind
him, but ahead of him the mysterious shapes were
moving in an erratic pattern that made them hard to
aim at. First one would make a quick dash in some
direction, then the other. They seemed to stop only
long enough to change directions, and he could not
tell from observation which direction they would
choose next. They were incredibly fast over short
distances, faster than any living thing he had ever
seen, and the trick would be to shoot at one while it
was stopped, and before the two could attack the
party in some sort of a pincer movement. He fired,
twice in quick succession, and was rewarded with an
unearthly wail. The surviving creature sped at him,
and he sprang straight up into the air, barely in time
to avoid its rush. The place where he had been
standing was flooded with an incredibly bright light.
Nick jammed his eyes shut, and gasped in pain and
sudden fear. If the creature got a square shot at him
with that flash of light, it could well mean the True
Death.
When Nick got his eyes open again, it took
him a second to locate the alien. Even as he got his
eyes focussed again, the thing sped towards Natalie
and the other two humans. Without thinking, the
vampire dived at the creature, matching unhuman
speed against unhuman speed. He knocked it to the
ground, and found himself contending with a
strength that matched, or maybe even overmatched,
his own. "Shoot!" he growled at Scully, who was
on her feet with her weapon out.
Scully hesitated. She still could not actually
see the alien. It looked to her as if the glowing-eyed
detective were rolling around on the ground by
himself in a heat haze.
"Shoot!" the vampire howled again.
"Go ahead, shoot!" called Nat, who had
finally gotten Mulder breathing on his own again.
"Oh, well," thought Scully. She emptied
her gun into the detective and the shifty-looking
ground which surrounded him.
Everything went still.
"Good going, Dana," she told herself,
"you've killed a Toronto cop."
Fox Mulder opened his eyes just in time to
see Nick Knight -- fanged, yellow-eyed, and covered
with ichor -- struggle out from under the dead alien
(which bore a perfect image of the vampire from
neck to knees upon its back, as well as the image of
the ground on which it had died.) The carcass
began to dissolve into a foul corrosive
smoke, and the vampire heaved it away from him
with his superhuman strength.
Nick calmed his eyes, pulled his teeth in,
and turned to Dana Scully. She met his gaze
squarely. "You don't believe I'm a vampire," he
said persuasively.
"Of course I don't believe you're a
vampire," Scully replied. She holstered her gun and
knelt beside her partner on the grass. "Are you
okay, Mulder?" she asked.
**************************************
Nat had gone to the car to call for an
ambulance, and Scully had gone with her. The three
wounded men were alone for a moment. Nick had
already satisfied himself that Don Schanke would be
all right, and now he was carefully probing the
blisters forming on his face and wondering how
badly burned he was under his clothes.
"You're a vampire?" Mulder asked
hoarsely.
Nick doubted human ears could have heard
the voice. He looked Mulder straight in the eyes and
said sincerely, "You don't believe I'm a vampire."
Mulder half-smiled. "I do now." He
closed his eyes and went on. "Don't worry; nobody
ever believes anything I tell them."
"That must be disappointing," Nick
deadpanned.
"How long have you been a vampire?"
"About eight hundred years now," Nick
admitted.
"You ever meet anything like these before?"
Mulder asked.
Nick shuddered slightly. "Never in all my
life. Never anything like them."
Mulder opened his eyes and spoke earnestly
to the vampire. "I have. And I think their activities
are increasing. What I've never seen before is a
human able to beat them."
"I'm not human. Not any more."
"But your self-interest runs with ours,
doesn't it?" Mulder's voice grew even fainter, as he
seemed to be drifting off to sleep. "Like a
shepherd."
******************************************
"What could he mean, Nicolah, like a
shepherd?" Janette had found some salve
somewhere, and was rubbing it onto Nick's burned
skin. It felt delicious.
"I'm not sure." Nick opened his eyes and
sat up. "A shepherd may eat mutton, but he also
drives away the wolves. But it doesn't really matter
what the man meant. Those things I met last night
are definitely dangerous to us. You can see the
burns I've got, and they missed me! You should
talk to the other vampires you know, and warn them
about these creatures."
"Aliens from another world? No one will
believe me. I'm not sure I believe you, cherie." But
Nick could hear the little current of fear under
Janette's silky skeptical tone.
"I don't pretend to know where they're
from. All I can say is I had never seen or smelled
anything like them before, not in eight hundred
years. But it would be mortally foolish to ignore a
threat like this. Even if nothing ever comes of it."
Nick sounded serious.
Janette did not. "But I thought you wanted
to be mortal, Nicolah." She laughed. "Lie down
again and let me dress your wounds, as fair lady's
duty to bold knight."
"You're no lady," Nick growled at her, but
he was laughing too.
*****************************************
"So you didn't see any of it. Not the
glowing yellow eyes or the half-inch fangs -- none of
it, huh Scully?" Mulder asked.
"I already told you, no. And neither did
you." Scully was driving this time, since Mulder's
hands were burned and still bandaged, and he had
been found to have a mild concussion at the hospital.
"How come he was able to see those things
well enough to shoot them, and to survive fighting
with one, and survive you shooting that one while he
was all tangled up with it? The military in the
Wisconsin case sure weren't able to do any of that,"
Mulder persisted.
"I admit he has phenomenal night-vision,"
Dana said calmly. "Dr. Lambert told me he suffers
from extreme photosensitivity, to the extent that he
can only work night shift."
"See?"
"Mulder, the world is full of people who
work nights and have good vision. That doesn't
mean they're vampires."
Mulder fell silent for a few minutes. Then
he laughed.
Scully sent him a quick smile, then turned
her attention back to the road. "Share the joke?" she
asked.
"Oh, nothing," Mulder replied. "I just
suddenly feel a little bit better about the fate of the
human race."
**********************************
[Like a Shepherd]'
by LMPayne
This story would follow my previously posted story, "Like a Shepherd," and it takes for
granted the details of LaCroix's past from Karin Welss's "Heart of Darkness." (It
therefore goes AU some time between the first and the second season of FK, which
makes sense because that's when I wrote it.) The copyright to the characters Menelaos
of Pergamon and Sharibet is owned by Marian Gibbons and Karin Welss, and they are
used here with permission. The copyright to the characters of Nick, Nat and Janette is,
of course, owned by the "Forever Knight" people, and they are used without
permission. (Is that the FCC police I hear battering down my door?) I'm sorry, but I
feel compelled to see how many stories I can write entitled "Like a Shepherd." This
would be [Like a Shepherd]', if I come up with another it would be [Like a Shepherd]'',
etc. (Alas, the end of the series was pretty much like the end of Hamlet, and I never
was able to finish the third one of these. It's languished untouched on the hard drive
since 1995.)
Nick Knight awoke in Janette's bed. His burns were worse than they had first
appeared; he was oozing blood and fluid all over her sheets. And it hurt like hell --
chalk up another disadvantage to moving more towards mortality. Bullet wounds
weren't the only things that hurt more than they used to. He sat up and looked
disgustedly at the big blisters on his hands, the small blisters on the reddened skin of
his abdomen. They had barely started healing. The music from the night club below
would have told him that it had been dark for hours, even without his vampire's sense
of time. "I don't think I'm going in to work tonight," he muttered to the empty air.
Janette breezed lightly into the room. Her hair was upswept and secured with a black
velvet ribbon. Her dress, tight, short and off-the-shoulder, was also black velvet, as
was her ubiquitous choker. To Nick she looked almost unbearably cheerful.
"Nicolah!" she exclaimed, "awake at last! Mon cher, you look terrible."
Why was everybody always telling him that? "Did you speak to the others?" he asked.
Janette fetched her jar of burn salve, and perched on the bed behind him. "Yes, Nicky.
The word is on its way out. Everyone I've spoken to so far agrees that these
*creatures* sound very dangerous, and they will keep a watch out for them."
The salve helped a lot. "Good. Thank you, Janette."
"Any little thing, Nicolah," she twinkled.
"Well, actually," Nick gestured with his burned hands, "there is another favor I'd like to
ask you. Could you call the precinct -- I'm obviously not going to make it in tonight,
and I don't think I could dial the phone. And I don't know what I'll put in the report.
Maybe you'd better call Nat instead."
Janette brought the phone over to the bed without protest, and dialed the number as he
gave it to her. She held the handset up for him to hear. "You're very accommodating
tonight, Janette," he whispered as the morgue phone rang.
"Well, you really _do_ look terrible, Nicky," she replied, just as softly.
"Nat's All-Night Diner," the answer came on the phone.
"Nat, this is Nick."
"Nick! Are you okay? Where are you? I've called your place about forty times, and
Stonetree's gone through a whole _box_ of Kleenex...."
"Listen, Nat, I'll be fine. I need you to bring some of my 'Private Reserve' over to the
Raven for me." The human blood he'd drunk last night had been a mistake, and he
didn't mean to compound it. "And bring your doctor stuff," he added reluctantly,
contemplating his burns.
Nat was instantly concerned. "Are you sure you're okay, Nick?"
"More or less. I'm not going to make it in tonight, but hey, I'll live, right? Tell
Stonetree something to make him feel better. And I need you to help me make up
something to put in the report for last night's -- incident."
"All right. Look, I've got a pretty gooey suicide here, but I could put him in storage
and polish him off in the morning...."
"No big rush, Nat. Go ahead and finish what you're doing."
"I'll see you in an hour or two then. You're at the Raven?"
"Upstairs."
"Oh? Well I'll see you in about an hour. Bye."
"Goodbye."
Janette hung up the phone for him. Wordlessly, she began to anoint his burns again.
"That's very good salve," Nick ventured. "Where did you get it?"
"This? Oh, an old woman made it up for me a long time ago. I think her name was
Buptcha...."*
Presently she added, "Roll over, Nicky, there's a good boy. Acch, these burns! It's like
crosses all over you!"
"Hmm?" Nick was half asleep again under her ministering hands. "Not like crosses --
or fire or sun. This feels like there's -- I don't know -- *malice* in it. Crosses hardly
even leave a mark anymore."
Janette stopped, surprised. "No? How remarkable." She gathered up her jar and went
into the other room to put it away. When she came back, she sat on the edge of the
bed next to the drowsing detective and said, "LaCroix told me a story once, a long time
before you were born. Would you like to hear it?"
Nick roused himself enough to smile at her and replied, "Sure. Tell me a story,
Janette."
Menelaos awoke to the smell of dust and trampled grass on the warm night air. There
were thousands of people clogging the lonely countryside, in the hills across the lake
from Bethsaida, which had been empty when he settled into his cave to sleep that
morning. They were seething like a flock of silly sheep, and he smiled to think how
rich the pickings would be around the edges of that formless mob. He was glad, now,
that Sharibet had sent him away. He could kill and kill -- he was free from the only
creature in all the world who could restrain him. Killing was good, he found. It had
been his living while he yet lived, and it was his delight now that he was dead.
The pale figure flitted soundlessly down from the hidden hillside cave he had made his
refuge. He studied the mortals, savoring the planning phase of his hunt. The humans
were slogging away from the lakeside and all chattering among themselves of some
prophet or healer -- the usual nonsense. Apparently there had been some sort of
ridiculous prayer-meeting that had gone on all day. The working class and the begging
class were heavily represented in the mob. Superstitious fools! It was a common thing
for the peasantry in the area to wander after some dreamer or charlatan who called
himself a prophet. King Herod had recently eliminated one of the rabble's filthy
leaders, but more sprang up like mushrooms every day. Ah, well. Nothing to do with
him, except insofar as _this_ prophet's followers had been led right into Menelaos's
hunting grounds.
As he floated closer to the crowd, he noticed one strange thing. These people were all
eating as they walked! Some of the filthy mendicants who clutched their bits of bread
and fish in their loathsome hands were marveling that there had been enough for all the
people, and some _leftover_! This particular prophet must be a rich man, to be able to
afford to feed such a multitude. Maybe it would be more fun to kill the idol of this
mob, rather than just picking off a few stragglers for food. Maybe there would be
money, as well as life, to rob from the man who inspired such devotion from this
enormous band of riffraff.
Menelaos the vampire, formerly of Pergamon, stalked his prey.
***The teacher sat in the dust exhausted. He and his closest friends had come to this
remote area to rest for a while after their travels and their labors. Somehow the people
guessed where they had gone, and thousands had come on foot, harassed and dejected,
to listen and be healed. How could he ignore them when they needed so much? How
could he ignore their faith? Maybe it had not been wise to feed them all -- he could
have sent them home earlier, as Peter had suggested, and they could have gotten food
for themselves. But it would have been a pity to send them away before they had
finished listening, before all those in need of healing had been cured.
The crowds had finally said goodbye and headed for home; the Twelve were in their
boat on the way to Bethsaida; he could be alone for a little while and pray.
Not alone after all -- the prophet looked up to see a tall white-haired man staring down
at him from the edge of the lantern's light. He got up. "What do you want with me?"
he asked.
The stranger only smiled.
Clearly there was something wrong with him. It did not seem to be demonic
possession, or epilepsy, or madness, or anything the teacher had encountered already
in his short period of public ministry. Had this menacing-looking man come to be
healed?
Menelaos was disappointed. The mob's leader seemed to be almost as poor and dirty
as his followers. Still, it would be good to kill him. Menelaos's eyes burned, his fangs
descended, and he attacked -- only to be abruptly and completely stopped when the
grubby little commoner grabbed him by the wrists.
The prophet looked deep into the shocked yellow eyes of his attacker. He could feel
Menelaos trying to control his mind, just as he could feel him trying to escape his
physical grip, but that was all external. The spirit was what concerned him; the spirit
was where the root of this sickness lay. "Come to me," the prophet promised, "and you
will find rest for your soul."
Menelaos was terrified, for the first time since he had been turned. He struggled
mightily, exerting his vampiric strength to the fullest, but it made no impression at all
on his captor. The ordinary brown eyes continued to study him, the calloused and
tool-scarred brown hands continued to cleave to his wrists. This could not be
happening! Even his mistress Sharibet could not have held him like this, with so little
evident exertion. As was his habit, Menelaos found release for his fear in defiance.
"Let go of me, peasant!" he hissed. "I do _not_ come to you, and I have no need of rest
for my soul!"
The brown eyes stared into the yellow ones for another full minute. They looked sad
now, but the teacher's voice was stern. "If you choose thusly, then you are none of
mine. I tell you now, STAY AWAY FROM MY FLOCK."
As the last words thundered out into the warm night air, Menelaos found his arms had
been released. He flew away as fast as he could, and didn't stop until the morning
forced him to take shelter.
Jesus of Nazareth sighed. Then he walked out across the lake to rejoin his
companions. They seemed to be having some sort of trouble with the boat.
"Later he made his way to Rome, and did all he could -- indirectly -- to snuff out the
new religion that the rabble had founded after their leader's execution. He couldn't do
as much directly as he would have liked, because their morbid little crosses (can you
imagine carrying a hangman's noose as a holy symbol?) made them so hard to get close
to," Janette finished up.
"I had asked him why he picked the name LaCroix one time, a little while after he
changed it. He told me that story as the answer. I still don't know what it means.
Maybe we weren't the only ones he never allowed to forget a mistake."
Janette saw that Nick was asleep, so she went downstairs to make sure Natalie was not
molested on her way through the club. "Sweet dreams, Nicolah," she whispered as she
left the room.
*Buptcha was an OC of Don Bassingthwaite's. I don't remember the title of the fic anymore, but it was awesome.