Nocte Eterna  (NC-17)
by Michael Aulfrey

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Okay! Welcome aboard my biggest effort yet, folks.  This
one's got an X-File, subplots, bad language, violence,
some relationshipping but no sex.  Hope you all like it
and forgive my Australian turns of phrase. :) :) :)
The Latin is a corruption of something I heard in
"Braveheart". Basically, `Nocte Eterna' means `Night
Eternal'.  Make of that what you will.

If you have *any* comments to pass, good or bad, please
put them in to mikeaulf@tartarus.uwa.eu.au ... fanfic
authors don't live by bread alone, but by every word that
comes from the mouth of the reader... :) :)

Insert the usual copyright disclaimers here.  CC and the
1013 crew own all the rights to the X-Files characters.
Whoever else I inadvertantly ripped off, put down or
prejudiced myself against in this story is also deeply
apologised to.
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PROLOGUE:

The dark was his friend as much as theirs.

That was a lesson learned after much practice, and never
forgotten.  Some of them thought they had an advantage in
the dark; but the overconfidence such an attitude
produced usually negated any perceived upper hand they
had.

He glanced at the analogue watch on his wrist, the marks
lit up with phosphorous.  Four o'clock.  They would be
here soon.  He had spent weeks tracking them, monitoring
their movements.  Creatures of habit, if nothing else.
In forty seconds, they would be here.

So he settled himself a little further back in the
shadows of the fire escape and ran through the weapons
check that was second nature by now.  First the long
recurve bow, painted matt black, and its quiver of simple
arrows.  He could have used modern fibreglass, but the
older ones were far more effective.  Next, the dai-
katana, the Japanese curved blade, forged three hundred
years ago with such arcane precision it was difficult to
tell where science ended and the eldritch began.  It,
too, rested in a matt black sheath, guarded against the
telltale glint of bared metal.  Lastly, the pistol,
though he would resort to it only case of his other
weapons failing him.

He estimated the time for the check at thirty seconds and
though he had to stop to flick an unexpected drop of oil
from the gun, got it dead on ...

He flipped an arrow from the quiver soundlessly and
nocked it to the bowstring.  Sighted experimentally along
the line of the alley wall.

The faint splash of water reached him, and he tensed.
They turned the corner into the alley right on schedule,
three dark forms walking slowly and assuredly.  One of
them said something and the others chuckled in
appreciation.  He checked himself until they were clearly
in view.  Wait ... wait ...

There.

The bow bent silently and the release produced no more
noise than the drop of a feather.  The arrow sped through
the air, delivered with almost as much pressure as a gun
would put on a bullet.  It covered the thirty or so feet
in less than a second.  It smashed into the chest of the
rightmost figure and through, throwing him back against
the wall with a wet thud.

He was moving even as the other two gave inhuman snarls
and ran towards him.  The recurve bow was dropped,
forgotten; as he jumped off the fire escape, he pulled
the metal stud holding the quiver to his back and it,
too, clattered to the steel staircase.  Then he was on
the ground, and the pair were upon him like two immense
black birds.

Iaijutsu, the art of the fast saber draw, was centred
around the dai-katana's unique curved shape.  Draw and
first strike were one mercurial movement.  He had taken
the time to become a master at it.  One of the figures
reeled back with a gurgle, sternum to larynx flopping
open from the deep cut that had appeared as though
conjured there.

The third figure's hands were inches from his throat, and
he shifted his weight down and to the right, flowing with
the movement of his opponent, shifting and turning.  Even
as the figure rushed past him, his left leg was up and
erupting into a powerful kick with the heel forward.  The
momentum of his turn added extra poundage, and he was
rewarded with the snap of the spine directly between the
shoulderblades.  The figure screamed even as it rebounded
off the wall and fell in a heap in the gutter.


He heard it cough as it looked up at him.
"Who -- who the fuck are you?"
He let his face emerge into the moonlight even as he drew
something from a belt sheath.
"I am the peacemaker," he said quietly.
Recognition flared in the figure's eyes, but it was
suddenly wiped by a telltale flicker past him.

He spun even as his second opponent, the one he'd cut,
leapt at him again.  The katana was up, one-handed, in a
dizzying series of cuts and parries.

He was almost appalled at how easy it was.  He ran,
almost perfectly, through the first three combinations.
Blood flew.  Screams shattered the air. Finally the
figure fell back.  He looked like he'd lost a fight with
a blender.  The final motion of the third combination
ended with the thrust of his other hand and the item in
it.  It slammed through the chest of the figure and would
have pierced the wall behind if it had been made of
metal.

He turned back to the other, drew another item from his
belt.
"One of us will finish you one day," snarled the
paralysed one as he approached.
"This is not that day," he replied simply, and ended it.

He stood there for a few moments, listening.  Then he
quickly retrieved the wooden stakes and the arrow,
kissing the crucifixes carved on each of them.  Wiped
them off, sheathed his blade, gathered up the bow and
quiver and was off into the night, his dark coat
billowing.

               *              *              *

NOCTE ETERNA

Fox Mulder knew it was over for him.

He studied his available resources, then his opponent's.
Not good.  He had just about run out of tricks, and his
opponent knew it.  There was -- maybe -- a way out of the
situation, but it was as likely to kill him as it was to
save him.  He grimaced.  Nothing else to be done but play
it out to its conclusion.  He breathed deeply.  Closed
his eyes for a moment.  Then moved.

It was the wrong one.  The computer figured that out in
about three seconds, and then proceeded to dispatch
Mulder's Bishop, Castle and newly-regained Queen.  The
final move of the decimation ended in checkmate, an
elegant endgame that would have made Korchnoi, Karpov and
Fischer collectively gasp in appreciation of the
computer's choices or disbelief of Mulder's.  PLAY AGAIN?
flashed up helpfully on the screen, an electronic dog
wagging its tail for another throw of the stick.  Mulder
pressed N in disgust and quit out of the program,
wondering again why he did this to himself.

Dana Scully's knock on the door and entry into his office
were one fluid motion after long practice.  Likewise the
careful steps around the cardboard boxes strewn around
the floor of the dim office.  A part of his mind that was
still sore at losing the chess game viciously wondered
what would happen if he bothered to move any of them, but
it gave way to curiosity.  She was looking at a black
file in her hands, turning one page over after another in
earnest (if mobile) study.
"Hi, Mulder.  Sorry I'm late." she said without looking
up.
"Morning, Scully.  What've you got?" he said.
She glanced up.  "I was in Forensics, and they asked me
to take a look at a case they just got in."
"Guess I'm not rubbing off on your reputation, then."

She smiled, then sobered as she lay the file in front of
him.  "Chicago Police requested the Bureau's assistance
on a multiple homicide there two days ago."
"Are they taking it on?"
"No ... Chicago said they just needed access to our labs.
Agent Pendrell said they're really pressed for time right
now, so they asked me to look over the details of the pre-
autopsy investigation and check that Chicago didn't miss
anything."
He nodded absently, scanning over the documents.
"Decapitation?"

Scully nodded.  "Chicago thinks it was post-mortem.  Each
of the victims died from puncturing of the heart."
"Punctured with what?"
"That's why Forensics was called in.  They recovered
wooden splinters of some kind from one of them."
"I thought you said they hadn't conducted autopsies yet."
"They haven't.  The splinters were found under one of the
corpses.  Forensics still has to identify the species."
Mulder closed the file and leaned back in his chair,
thinking for a long moment.  "Did they find fingerprints
matching no known offenders in the National Crimes
Database?"

She picked the file up and shuffled through the pages,
running her finger down one until it stopped at one spot.
"Yes.  How did you--?"
"All over the place, right? Enough impressions for a full
set?"
"Yeah ... but ..."
"Can't be," he said.  He knew he was speaking aloud,
giving voice to his thoughts.  "The chances against it --
"  He looked at Scully.  "Has anyone looked at the
identities of the victims yet?"
"No ... they haven't contacted any of the families."
"They won't find any, if I'm right," said Mulder, getting
out of his seat.  He hurried over and around boxes to a
forlorn filing cabinet in one corner of the office.
Light seldom penetrated this far; in Mulder's domain,
illumination seemed to take the weekend off out of sheer
exhaustion once it reflected off the thousand small items
lying around.  He pulled open the top drawer, which gave
a screech of protest.  A multitude of yellowing manila
folders confronted him.  He flicked through one after the
other, mentally putting tags on some that piqued his
interest.  Finally, the one he wanted revealed itself and
he snatched it out, trying to ignore the thin coat of
dust that had descended over it.

He carried the file to another table, pushing aside a
pile of papers sojourning next to the slide projector.  A
set of slides obligingly fell out of the folder as he
opened it up, encased in a small plastic bag.
"I thought you kept videotapes in that cabinet," said
Scully from behind him.
"If you found any, they aren't mine ..."
She walked up next to him, looking at the open file.  "So
what are we watching now? More slides that aren't yours?"
"None of it belongs to me, Scully.  It's all the property
of the FBI."

He flicked the red switch on the side of the projector,
and it moaned to life, casting a bright square of light
across the wall, banishing the dark in that part of the
room.  He hadn't bothered to take the screen down from
last time, so he peered at the first of the slides and
then slotted it into the machine.  Colour spat across the
room and splattered over the screen, then resolved
itself.  A picture of a decapitated corpse, its head
mercifully absent from the photograph.  A red sinkhole in
the chest radiated trailed rivers of blood.  He loaded
more slides into the projector as she stared at it.
"Los Angeles, 1976.  The FBI opened an investigation into
a series of decapitations and stakings in the downtown
area.  But not only do they have problems finding a
killer, but they also can't find out who the victims are.
None of the bodies even had a wallet, and not one person
came forward to identify any of them."

He changed the slide.  A similar scene of death flashed
onto the screen, the orientation of the body and size and
shape insignificant in its differences.
"New Orleans, 1965.  Same situation.  The killer leaves
fingerprints all over the place, but no arrests are made,
and the victims are never identified.  Most of them
seemed to be females in the rough quarter, though, so
they're passed over and left."  His feeling of disgust
matched Scully's expression.  "I know.  Jack the Ripper
could go to work in any major city nowadays and never be
investigated, let alone caught."

He turned his attention back to the screen, and pressed
the button again.  More scenes, similar in composition
and identical in content.
"Seattle, 1987 ... Philadelphia, 1952 ... the list goes
on, right back to the turn of the century.  After that, I
had to check the National archives, but it goes on.  I
stopped looking after 1850."
"You've got to be kidding."
"I'm afraid not, Scully.  I checked with Interpol as
well, and they've got a file of similar occurrences,
stretching over dozens of countries around the world."
"These are multiple murders! The media--"
"Not in all cases.  Over half were single killings, but
in every case, the circumstances were the same.  A John
Doe as the victim, and prints everywhere but none
matching anything in police records."

Scully nodded slowly.  "So why didn't anybody make the
connection after they had police databases installed?"
"Most of the cases were dropped, the files erased or
destroyed because they couldn't identify the victims.
Also, many of them occurred before law enforcement went
high-tech.  As it was, I had to dig for prints from the
most recent case in 1992."  He pressed the button one
more time.  A print of ten murky black ovals appeared on
the screen, run through with white lines.

Scully fished around in the black folder and came out
with the photocopy of the fingerprint data Chicago had
collated.  She looked from the screen to the paper.
Once.  And again.  She held the paper up so she could
look at the two sets of data more clearly.
"Well, Scully?"

She set the paper down and looked at Mulder with an
expression that was this side of disbelief.
"There's got to be a mistake," she protested.
"There isn't.  I remember looking at this file back when
I was still on Violent Crimes.  I must've checked into
this thing about six times by now."
"Mulder, I can see that the prints here are the same, but
you're suggesting that the killer is over a hundred years
old and insists on killing people with no identities."
"We've seen it before, Scully.  The Gregors."
"And the ones that claimed to be your sister.  You said
they were all killed."
"Maybe they were only one attempt at colonisation.  These
could have been others."  He saw that she was about to
raise an objection, and held up his hand.  "It holds as
much water as a sieve, I know.  But these killings are
all unsolved, mostly because the victims are
unidentified.  It's the same man.  And he's in Chicago
right now."

She closed her eyes momentarily.  "You want to go to
Chicago."
"There's a U2 concert there this weekend."
"I think B.B. King is more my style, Mulder ..."
"He's the lead-in act."

Silence, thick with the sound of cogs and wheels turning.

"I'm not telling Skinner you're taking over an active
case."
"Well, he's a busy man ..."
"Mulder--"
"I'll take care of Skinner.  Just pull the files down
from Forensics, okay?"
She bit her lower lip, then nodded.  He turned the
projector off.
"By the way ... what brought you up to Forensics in the
first place?"

She sighed.  "I went to check on a case."
He tried to conceal a smile.  "And?"
"The hairs on the Moretti case matched up."  She picked
up her handbag, fished around in it for a second and
proffered five dollars to him.  "And that's the last time
we're betting on the outcome of a case."
"It beats the track," he said as he took the five and
strolled from the room.

          *              *              *

As usual, the Jack Daniels struck back.

The last thing she could remember clearly was puking her
guts out on a corner near the nightclub.  The three-
hundred-dollar dress was probably ruined, but she had
other things on her mind at the time.

>From there, things got hazy.  She thought she remembered
a hand reaching for her purse.  Then a pause? Then hands
starting to drag her towards a car? She seemed to
remember trying to stop the movement at that point, but
to little avail.  And lastly, something like a dark crow
flying over her and the sounds of thudding--

Like the thudding in her head.  She opened her eyes a
crack, was grateful to see the lights were dimmed.  Even
so, that light jangled her brain, setting off the pain in
her head again.  She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut
again and moved slightly.

Smooth.  Cotton sheets, she blearily guessed.  Other
sounds.  Clink of crockery.  Soft padding of feet.  The
smell of some sort of bitterness, like herbs.  They
attacked her head unmercifully, but she had to find out
where she was and what she couldn't remember.  So she
gingerly opened her eyes again.

The first impression she got was of a back.  A well-
muscled back, visible through a loose T-shirt, capped of
with a mop of brown hair.  Beyond that back was a
cupboard door, and her dress, immaculately cleaned and
ironed.

A strong arm turned at her groan and offered a cup of hot
liquid.  It was accompanied by a soft whisper.
"Here.  This should help the headache."

She realised she was in a single bed.  She blinked,
though the movement sent a new wave of pain through her
head.  The strong arm set the cup down on a bedside
table, then folded itself back against the abdomen of the
torso it was connected to.  She tried to speak, but found
her throat was silted with phlegm.  She coughed and tried
to focus her eyes.
"Where am I?"
"Safe," said the figure in front of her.  A male voice.
Not rough, like most of the men she knew.  This voice was
careful, like icicles hanging a moment away from melting.
But still a strong voice.  Like the top edge of an
iceberg; somewhere deep within was a resounding voice,
hidden just below the surface.  He'd raised the volume of
his voice a little more.  "You won't recognise your
surroundings, I'm afraid.  My apartment was closer than
the address on your driver's licence."
"Who are--"
"Yes, of course.  I'm sorry.  My name's Kane.  Kane
Adamson."

She finally got enough control of her eyesight to focus
on his features.  It was a youngish face, about thirty or
thirty-five.  He looked faintly middle eastern in origin,
his eyes dark and smouldering with an inner fire.
Stubble shadowed the bottom half of his face.  There was
a small scar above his eye that had healed a long time
ago.

He saw her scrutiny of him and smiled faintly.  The look
seemed to make her anxiety fade, despite the fact she had
wound up in a strange place with an even stranger man
apparently waiting on her.  She managed to get herself up
on her elbows, blowing away a strand of black hair that
had drifted in front of her face.
"How did you know my apartment was--"
"Again, I'm sorry.  I had to search through your purse to
find out who you were.  All in all, Miss Chambers, I wish
we'd been able to meet under better circumstances."
"Madeleine," she said.  "My name's Madeleine."
He took the cup again and proffered it.
"What's that?" she asked, eyeing the steaming liquid
suspiciously.
"Chinese tea," he replied.  "Mostly.  There's one or two
small additions I've made to the mixture that should help
you recover your strength a lot quicker."
"I'll pass," she said.  The beginnings of fear returned
to her eyes.  He looked at her quizzically.
"How much do you remember about last night?" he asked.
"Before or after I threw up?" she countered.  He nodded
as though in confirmation.
"A couple of hoods tried to drag you into a car.  You
were yelling for help."

It came back to her a little less than dimly.
"What did you have to do with it?"
He smiled thinly as he set the cup back down.  "I ...
reasoned with them and they let you go.  You weren't in
any state to go anywhere, so I brought you back here."
"What time is it?"
"About four o'clock in the afternoon.  You slept for a
good sixteen hours."

He must have seen the tension on her face.  "What is it?"
"I'd like to call a taxi.  Do you have a phone?"
He smiled again; she blushed in sudden embarassment.
From what she could remember, he'd been more of a
protector than a rapist.  Why did trust come so slowly
these days?  For some unaccountable reason, she wanted
him to realise that she was only taking the natural
precautions.
"Certainly.  It's over there," he said, gesturing to the
far corner of the room.  "I'll leave you alone to get
dressed.  As you can see, your dress is clean.  I got you
some of my older clothes to sleep in."

She was sure her face was flaming red now, but he had
already stood and was walking out of the room as she
opened her mouth to thank him.  Instead, she decided to
just watch his motion; he moved with a cat's assurance in
his stride, as though some invisible magnet kept him on
the ground rather than the crude and primitive force of
gravity.

She set the thoughts aside and started concentrating on
the task of getting her things together.  But as she did
so, the memories began to return.  Visions of him (Kane?)
smashing his fists through three or four faces, breaking
arms and legs ... she couldn't help a shudder at the
memories, but whether it was out of awe, gratitude or
fear, she wasn't sure.  He'd taken on four men for a
total stranger.  She wondered where he hung his cape up.
She found the address of the apartment from an opened
envelope on the bedside table and called for Chicago
Taxis.

END OF PART 1/14


Nocte Eterna  (NC-17)
by Michael Aulfrey
Part 2/14

He was waiting for her when she came out of the
bedroom.She saw his admiring look, quickly suppressed, at
the way it fit.  At least the three hundred was worth it-
-

That thought led down a strange path, so she snapped out
of it.  She fumbled for her purse.  "Look, I want to give
you something for your--"
"That's not necessary."
"But--"
"No, thank you.  If I did anything besides what an
ordinary person would do, I'd like to think I didn't do
it for money."
She hesitated, then closed her purse.  "If you're sure."
"Very sure."
They locked gazes for a second.  She broke the contact
and walked over to the door.  He followed in her wake and
opened the door.  The sunlight streamed sideways onto her
face from the window at the far end of the hall, and the
hum of the city drifted up to them.  She turned back to
him.
"Listen, if there's anything I can ever do for you--"
"I've got your number," he said with a nod.  She fell
silent, just looking at him for a while.
"Thank you," she said at last.  She turned and walked
down the corridor, wondering why she felt like something
was screwed up tightly inside her.

He watched her go, and then closed the door.

He headed over to the cupboard her dress had hung on and
threw it open, pulling the dai-katana out with the
assurance of total familiarity and began running through
his daily exercise regimen.

               *              *              *

It was a 1958 Plymouth Fury, sweet old Detroit rolling
iron, black as night's shadows, its heavy engine purring
like the cat that got the cream.  It cruised at seventy
miles per hour along the Interstate towards Chicago, but
beyond that its observance of the rules of the road was
impeccable.  Not that it mattered.  No police car pulled
it over for its casual disregard of the speed limit.

When it stopped at a set of traffic lights in Joliet,
Illinois, a Porsche containing a brilliant (if
hotrodding) lawyer by the name of Harvey Bernstein pulled
up alongside it.  He revved his engine once in challenge.
The Fury had made no response, merely sat there, the
engine throbbing like some mechanical heartbeat at
overdrive.  Harvey glanced at the machine contemptuously.
Why people still drove old heaps of crap like the Fury
was totally beyond him.

That was when he noticed that the streetlights didn't
reflect off the Fury's glass; the windows were black
holes that sucked light into them and gave nothing back.
It was also when he noticed that the temperature inside
the Porsche had dropped about six or seven degrees,
despite the cold night outside and the heater blowing at
full strength inside his car.

And suddenly Harvey was thinking that he would rev his
engine harder, but this time not to simply race the old
automobile, but get away from it as fast as he possibly
could.

The light turned green.

He put the accelerator through the floorboard and tore
off down the road.  He only got about two hundred metres
or so before the beatuifully-engineered and still-under-
warranty Porsche stalled for no apparent reason.  Harvey
stared at the dashboard blankly for a moment, then madly
pushed at the key.  The Porsche gave a drunken warble and
then cut out completely.

He saw headlights in his rearview mirrors.  Something in
him made him cower down.  It was the mouse's response
when the dark cross of the hawk passes overhead.  The
Fury's engine noise was no longer a low throb, but a low,
snarling monotone as it cruised up behind, alongside and
then past the Porsche.

He didn't put his eyes anywhere above the dashboard until
the sound of the Fury had faded into the night's silence.

The car continued on its way, stopping neither for
sunrise or sunset until the lights of the Windy City were
gleaming in the distance.  Then the Fury slowed back to
fifty-five miles an hour and slid its way into the
thickening traffic, drawing no more attention now than
any other car on the road.

The driver clicked a button on the dashboard with a
gloved hand, and Chicago radio drifted through the cabin.
"In other news, three unidentifed males were found dead
on Saturday in an alley in central Chicago.    Police are
appealing for anyone with any information as to the
identities of these men or the killer to contact them."
This produced a snort from the driver.  "Though Chicago
Police are not releasing details of the killings, sources
report that the men were decapitated and impaled through
their chests."

The Fury screeched to the right, horns blaring behind it
as it pulled over to a stop at the side of the road.  The
driver tore the keys from the ignition and snapped the
door handle open, pushing his way out of the car and
standing to stare at the distant skyline of the city.  He
towered over the car.  His pasty white skin glowed in the
light of the traffic and the light burning in his ice-
blue eyes.  His hair, cut in a short-back-and-sides style
that J. Edgar Hoover himself might have admired, gleamed
black.

Despite the noise of the traffic, he stood stock-still,
staring out over the dark terrain, scanning it as though
looking for something.

He smiled, a death's-head grin that vanished somewhere
above his lips.  His eyes were as dead as Judas Iscariot.
"Dawnbringer," he whispered to the skyline, the words
rippling out into the darkness,  "This time it will be
you who dies."

There would have to be retribution, of course.  For this
incident, if not for many others.  An eye for an eye.
One of them for each one of his.

Satisfied with the course he had decided on, Sai'ten got
back into the car, started it up and pulled into the
traffic again, disappearing into the rivers of iron and
light flowing into the city of Chicago.

          *              *              *

"I hope she's as good as you say she is," said Detective
Marshall.  "We've had feds up here before.  Not many of
them knew one end of a corpse from the other."
"Agent Scully is a medical doctor," said Mulder coolly.
"She taught Forensics at the FBI Academy for two years
before she joined me."
"Yeah, yeah, I read her bio.  I also got yours. What's
this `Irregular Duty' you've been assigned to for the
past three years?"
"Mop and trash detail.  I got bored with all that serial
killer stuff in Violent Crimes."

Marshall would never know how close he came to getting
his head stuffed into the nearest water cooler.  Mulder
was sick of this case already, and they had only been in
Chicago for a couple of hours.  Granted, Federal agents
were never particularly popular at the front line of law
enforcement, but Marshall took the word `annoying' to new

levels.  Never mind that Mulder had actually only met him
fifteen minutes ago, and was becoming painfully aware of
the gun resting in his holster, out of sight.

Woman's Intuition must have told Scully something.  As
soon as they'd arrived downtown that morning, she had
asked to begin the autopsies on the three corpses found
in the alleyway immediately.  The Chicago City Coroner
was in the theatre with her now, a harried, balding man
with bags under his eyes who still managed to have a
dancing grin around his mouth.

Meanwhile, Mulder was left to meet Detective Marshall, in
charge of the case, when he came back from downtown.  The
detective's first question was expressed with several
four letter words, and things had gone downhill from that
point.

They flashed identification to the cop on the door to the
morgue, who stood aside wordlessly.  Marshall pushed
through the doors into the darkened room.  The lingering
smell of formaldehyde tickled the nose.  Across the room,
Scully and the Coroner were huddled over the illuminated
body of one of the victims, red stains over their gloved
hands and communicating as much through looks over the
white surgical masks as muffled conversation.
"So? What've you got?" said Marshall, striding across the
room.  Scully looked up quizzically, and the Coroner
turned a tired eye onto the detective.
"Agent Scully, meet Detective Lloyd Marshall of the
Chicago Police.  He's in charge of the case."
"Thank you, Frank," said Marshall without waiting for
Scully to say anything.  "Miss Scully, I trust you'll
forgive me if we don't shake hands," he continued with a
glance at the gore on her fingers.

She glanced past him to Mulder, coming up in Marshall's
wake.  He replied with only a slight lift of one eyebrow
and an odd twist of the mouth that would tell her all she
needed to know.
" ... Have you got a cause of death?" Marshall was saying.
"Well, in case you hadn't noticed, Lloyd, there's a hole
in his chest.  Call it a shot in the dark, but we think
that was what killed him."
"Don't screw me around, Frank.  Was it the decapitation
or the impaling that killed him?"
"We're ninety-percent sure that the decapitation was post-
mortem," said Scully.  "There's a lot less blood loss
than would be expected in a decapitation.  The crime
scene was also clean, from what the Coroner has told me.
If this man's head had come off first, his blood would be
everywhere.  Nerve impulses would have kept the heart
pumping for another couple of seconds.  His heart was
punctured first."

Marshall hadn't even looked at her, staring instead at
the body and then at the Coroner.
"What do you think, Frank?"
Frank shrugged.  "I concur with agent Scully, Lloyd."

Mulder walked up alongside the bed and gazed down at the
body.  "What else did you find?"
"Traces of wood lodged in the heart," said Scully.  "I'll
send them to Forensics to have them typed, but I think
it's safe to assmue they're the same type that was found
under one of the other corpses.  I also found a small
sprig of something in each of their mouths, some kind of
plant.  I'm sending that to the labs to be analysed as
well."
"So that's it? You dragged me up here all the way from
the precinct just so Miss Scully could tell me what I
already knew?" Marshall shook his head.  "Okay, but we'll
keep investigating our way.  I've got the mayor busting
my ass to find this guy before he starts finding machine
guns more to his taste.  C'mon, Frank.  I got something
else I want you to take a look at."

The Coroner gave an apologetic shrug as he pulled his
mask down and followed Marshall out of the room.  Scully
walked over to a washbasin, turning the water on and
rinsing the gloves of the bloodstains there.  She pulled
her mask down as Mulder walked up behind her.  He noticed
she did all of these actions with a little more force
than was necessary under the circumstances.
"So who was that?" she said.  Her tone confirmed his view
that Marshall had made another friend.
"That was sensitive new age detective Lloyd Marshall of
the Chicago Police.  Want a sunflower seed?"  He
proffered a small plastic bag.  She shook her head
annoyedly.
"His kind really piss me off," she said, pulling the
rubber gloves with a snap that made him wince.  "How am I
supposed to do my job with Stanley Kowalski there
breathing down my neck?"
"You want me to shoot him?"
She looked up at him, her features angry, but at his
deadpan expression, she shut her eyes and a weak smile
crept out from its hiding place.  "The worst part is,
you'd probably do it," she said.
"Oh, I don't know.  You know how mad the Armory gets when
I waste bullets."

Her smile grew larger, much to his relief.  He shoved the
sunflower seeds back in his pocket and looked at the
body, the silent listener to the conversation.
"Not much to tell from the autopsies, huh?"
Her smile disappeared.  "Actually, there was more.  I was
going to tell him," she nodded her head in the direction
of the door, "But ..." She let her voice trail off.
"What did you find?"
"The Coroner and I opened the intestinal tracts of all
three of these victims.  In each case, their bowels had
no food in them.  None of them had eaten for a while."
"Gotta love that waif look."
"I didn't say their bowels were empty.  They had a lot of
blood in them."
"The pre-autopsy reports said their bodies had taken
severe beatings and trauma before they died--"
"No, Mulder ... this blood didn't come from that.  We
checked all the possible sources for seepage, and there
was hardly any.  I don't know where it came from."
"Ingestion?"
She looked at him.  "What?"
"How much Bram Stoker have you read, Scully?"
"He was the author of `Dracula', right?"
"That's the most famous of his novels.  Some sources say
he based it heavily on fact."
"I hope you're not suggesting what I think you are."
"The vampire.  Otherwise known as nosferatu. Equivalent
creatures rise in the mythology of many cultures around
the world, but the classic example comes from the
Christian tradition where a human being turns its back on
God and as a result is condemned to eternal physical
life, as opposed to the spiritual.  They're practically
invulnerable, bar some weaknesses to sunlight, crucifixes
and wooden stakes.  They feed on the blood of the living
to survive."
"So you're saying I've been autopsying the undead."
"Not undead.  Plain and simple dead.  Wooden stakes,
remember?"
"Mulder, most vampire myths were the result of hysteria
and factual atrocities more horrific than any stories
told.  Stoker based the character of Count Dracula on
Prince Vlad the Impaler, a homicidal maniac that
slaughtered hundreds of his own people.  And there have
been many killers who seem to think that drinking blood
gives eternal life because of vampire myths, right up to
this century.  In all cases, the only benefit was a long
stint in jail for those who were caught."
"I realise that.  But these men were killed with wooden
stakes and decapitation, Scully.  That's a lot of trouble
to go to."
"That's only proof that whoever killed them is as crazy
as they are."
"What about their identities? If they can live on blood,
there's no need for them to have any form of
identification for work.  They could survive invisibly in
any large city for literally centuries at a time."
"Until I see some identification, though, there's no
telling who these men are, or whether they have a job at
all.  And it still doesn't provide any reason for why the
prints from all the different murders are the same."

Mulder nodded.  "All right.  Let's see what this does."
He walked over to a window shade where bright light
splintered underneath the edge.
"Mulder--"
He yanked the handle down violently and then released it,
letting the shade flap upwards to the top of the window.
Sunlight streamed into the room, bathing the beds in
light.  Including the autopsy table.  On the bed, the
body ...

Stayed exactly as it was.

Mulder stared at it for long moments, but nothing
happened.
"I was going to say ... they found these bodies in full
sunlight.  And none of them showed any signs of
decomposition."
He glanced up at her, and knew from her suddenly neutral
expression that he had that embarassed look on his face
again..
"Look, Mulder ... I'll have the blood in the victims'
intestinal tracts analysed.  Maybe we'll get a DNA match
with someone in the database."
He nodded slowly.  Scully started taking her surgical
gown off, the material rustling quietly.

In the near-silence, the sudden trill of Mulder's phone
was abnormally loud.  He fished it out of his pocket and
opened the cover.
"Mulder."

It was Marshall, and he had news.

END OF PART 2/14


Nocte Eterna
by Michael Aulfrey
Part 3/14

"That, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason Henry the
Fifth was perceived as such a great king.  Not because he
was necessarily a good king, but because he was first and
foremost a good general.  And because William Shakespeare
gave great P.R."
That elicited a chuckle from the class.  Kane Adamson
smiled and flipped over the final page of his lecture,
looking up at the filled seats arrayed before him.  He
picked up a piece of chalk and abesntly flipped it in one
hand.
"Never fail to understand this: it was not the medieval
kings' ability to rule wisely that determined their
places in history but rather their ability to fight.  We
like to think that we've progressed somewhat since that
time.  But consider this: until very recently, a
potential candidate for the Presidency of this nation was
a general of the army.  And our current President is one
of the first not to have served any time in some sort of
military role.  Have we progressed? Should we progress?
These are the things you should be thinking about, above
and beyond what I will be asking on your final
examination."

He was not surprised to see that he had lost the interest
of most of the first-year students.  A wave of book-
closing, pen-clicking and paper-flipping noises washed
over him; it was almost time to leave.  But he was also
pleased to see that there were one or two faces that were
still listening intently.  He could almost see the words
sinking into their minds.  It was one of the only things
that kept him at this job.

The rest of the class was quivering like a horse at the
gate, though, so he decided to end it.  "That's all for
today, ladies and gentlemen.  I'll see you here again
tomorrow."  Before he'd finished speaking, the class was
rising, new waves of conversation washing over him.  He
paid no further attention to it, but gathered his notes
and walked from the podium.  In moments, he was out into
the hallway, mixing with the students as he headed for
the outside world and home for the day.

His thoughts turned to the woman again.  Madeleine
Chambers.  A warm feeling went through his body, one that
he hadn't felt for a long time.  Thanks to his other
occupations, it wasn't every day that he got the chance
to be a vigilante.  In spite of himself, he found his
mind turning back and remembering that dark corner of the
street.  He'd been walking along and he'd seen her there,
half-falling over into the gutter, from about fifty
metres away.  Then the four men lounging on a nearby car
stop laughing and watch her with some intensity.  He was
trained to notice the beginnings of violence; their
manner as they slid off the car and sauntered across the
street towards her.

A part of him was still wondering why he had picked up
his pace and started trotting towards them instead of
simply carrying on his way.  He'd stuck to the deep
shadows of the nearest tall building, his black coat
disguising his movements until he was right on top of
them.  He'd carried his blade with him that night, but
didn't use it; it would have been both inappropriate and
undignified for a professional of his caliber to draw it
on pond scum like these four.

Instead, he'd flown from the shadows like some great dark
bird, right foot forward, the toes pulled back and the
ball aimed at the base of the skull of one of her
assailants.  That one had fallen without a fight, and
then the other three were on him.  They were all quick
with the fluidity and speed of youth, but dispatching
them to unconsciousness had required no more skill of him
than the least of his real enemies ever had.

The first had tried a regular punch, but it was
telegraphed by movement of the elbow; he locked his hand
onto the kid's wrist as the fist swung past and broke his
arm with a snap strike to the outside of the straightened
elbow.  As the thug yelled in pain, he swung the kid into
the second hood, buying himself a couple of seconds to
deal with the third.  He heard the snick of the
switchblade unsheathing itself.  He had been about to try
the long punch, but changed his mind at the sound of the
blade, feinting only and then pushing himself into a
standing jump with the front ball of his foot
uppercutting onto the third's jaw.  The knife whistled
past beneath him and the assailant collapsed.  He landed,
turned and delivered one punch to the upper lip of the
uninjured one and a midriff kick to the one clutching his
broken arm.  Both of them fell at the same time.

And he'd gathered the woman up and taken her back to his
apartment.

He got into his car, a conservatively blue Ford sedan and
started the engine up, pulling out of the University of
Chicago's parking lot.

Reminiscing on the technique used to take out four hoods
didn't help to explain why he'd done it, though.  God
knew, he'd seen a lot more death in his time than one
single gang rape.  There were certain hells he'd been in
where that was the least of a woman's concerns ... but
those times were past, now.

Looking back on it, he remembered seeing the sweep of
Madeleine's black hair and suddenly feeling the rage
build up.  Not that it overwhelmed him; he was too
disciplined for that.  But the feeling itself was almost
novel, the last time he'd felt it was so distant.  Rage.
Like the proverbial final straw, he decided he didn't
want to see another woman violated on a street corner
like he had a thousand times before.  And so, the
violence.

Still ... there was something about her more that stirred
him more than the outrage of his morals ...

He turned a corner in the long, winding road leading away
from the university and felt the old, familiar chill.
The ruined church was off this road, down that sidestreet
on his left rolling closer in his vision.  It was part of
the reason he'd taken the position at the university.
Just so he could keep an eye on the place.   His gaze
flickered that way.  Another reflex he felt the reason
for, but couldn't articulate.  Some darknesses needed no
articulation.

He saw the flash of police car lights.

Time for another almost-forgotten sensation: the
intensifying of the chill.  One part of his mind told him
to run, run, run, drive the car like Senna screaming out
of hell in a flaming version of the machine that had
killed him.  The other parts either suppressed the
feeling or resigned themselves to the inevitable.  He
slowed the car, checked forwards and back and turned into
the sidestreet.

At noon, it was a very pleasant drive through leafy, sun-
washed trees past olde-worlde style houses that had been
built to complement the stodgy academic atmosphere of the
university.  He didn't want to speculate what the place
was like at night.  He slowed down to a crawl, watching
the old, mossy stone of the place rise up before him, the
lights of the police cars flickering below it like sparks
from the blows of a blacksmith.  He drove past the church
about a hundred metres, then pulled over and slowly got
out.  He paused a moment, taking it in.

Though he knew every pebble of the place by now, his eyes
scanned it again.  On two sides, the church's walls had
fallen in, leaving mouldering piles of stone slumped at
the base.  The front and left walls were still relatively
intact.  The circular stained-glass window at the front
of the church had been shattered a thousand times,
leaving a dead hole that the sun peered through.  The
wooden doors were torn off as though vandals had done
their work, but there was not a single graffito's tag to
be found anywhere over the walls.

He walked up to the yellow police line, mingling with the
other passers-by who were looking for some glimpse of
what had happened.
" ... What happened?"
" ... Someone found bodies here ..."
" ... Place is getting more dangerous all the time ..."
" ... Tell you what, I'm locking my door around here from
now on ..."

Kane had heard enough.  He slipped from the crowd and
sauntered away from the line, his mind whirling.  He had
to get in there.  He lost the attention of the police
officers after the first house and started to act.  A
quick leap over the back fence of one house and the
gateway of another and he was in a quiet alleyway that
fed onto the back of the church.  He jogged up the byway,
ducking down behind a heavy hedge ten metres from the
police line.  A police officer was standing another ten
metres up, slowly watching the back street but facing
away from his point of concealment.  Kane waited a good
thirty seconds, judging the moments when the police
officer was looking away, then moved.

The cop never saw a thing.  Kane was out from his hiding
place, over the police line and into the grounds of the
church before the cop even started to turn in his
direction.  Kane crabbed along the line of one wall of
the presbytery of the church, making his way towards the
ruined vestry which looked like it had been gutted by
fire.  Which it had, a long time ago ... he heard voices,
and stiffened, going to his personal version of silent
running.  Made his way to the remains of a window and put
one eye around the corner.

A man and a woman were standing in the remains of the
presbytery, their faces turned away from the window.  He
considered simply ducking down and listening, but this
part of the building was in shadow; even if they looked
towards him, there was little chance they would see him.
He had always preferred to watch and listen to
conversations.

The woman was shorter than the man by about a foot.  She
had coppery hair that burned like fire in the sunlight
and blue eyes that caught that same sunlight when she
turned obliquely to Kane's position.  She was wearing a
long tan overcoat.  She absently pushed at an old
floorboard remnant with her foot, which made the man look
up from his inspection of the walls of the place.  He had
dark hair and a maddeningly neutral expression.
"So what do you think, Scully?" he said.
She -- Scully -- looked back at him.  "What am I supposed
to think, Mulder? That this proves your theory?"
"Well, those three teenagers weren't decapitated or
staked to death.  This time I think you'd have to agree
it was acute blood loss."
"All right.  That much I agree with.  But the puncture
marks on the eldest boy could have been caused by
anything ... old nails, loose boards ..."
"Yeah, but where did the blood go? Altogether, there's
about four litres of blood missing from those bodies out
there."
"I don't know where the blood went, Mulder.  But I don't
think some vampire rose up from the grave ... "

A sick feeling went through Kane's mind.  He closed his
eyes momentarily, then opened them and listened again.
" ... maybe it is someone who's acting like a vampire for
the terror value, but no more than that," the woman was
saying.  "They could have used syringes to make those
marks and draw the blood out."
"Look, only one of those kids was actually drained of
blood.  The other two look like they took on some kind of
grizzly bear and lost.  They look like wild animals got
to them."

The woman turned around to stare directly at the one
called Mulder, and even Kane could see that her look was
one of utter exasperation.  "All right.  Let's just for a
second assume that maybe these kids were killed by an
archetypical, right-out-of-the-horror-novel vampire.  A
creature of the night, nosferatu, whatever you want to
call it."
"I think you just turned me on, Scully."
"And let's assume--purely for the sake of argument--that
they were either killed here or dragged here by the
vampire.  Either way, how do you explain that?"
"Explain what?"
She pointed at the bas-relief image of a cross on the
wall.  "This is holy ground, Mulder.  Ruined, maybe, but
consecrated ground nonetheless.  If this vampire of yours
is meant to quiver in front of crosses and burn when holy
water's tossed on it, how did it set foot over the
threshold of the church?"
She dropped her hand and stormed out of the vestry, back
into the main body of the church.  The man was silent for
a few seconds, then followed her out of the ruined
doorway, absently pulling it closed behind him.

Kane saw the mark, etched gold into the dark brown back
of the door.  The sick feeling erupted into a tidal wave.
He had to kneel and grit his teeth against the bile
rising in his throat.  Dimly, one part of his mind
registered that he could have answered the woman's
question quite easily.  The remainder of his mind burned
with that mark.  It was a simple figure, really.  A
circle broken at the bottom with a vertical stroke.  Like
a letter Q rotated slightly to the left.

The Circle of Ten.

[Can't be.  They're all gone.]

Not all.  Nine of them.  Ten minus nine equals one.

[Not ... him?]

Got any other suggestions?

He very nearly did throw up, then; only the instinct that
he couldn't leave any trace of his presence kept him from
losing his last meal.  Gradually, he fought down the
memories of fire in his mind and was able to open his
eyes.  He breathed in and out heavily, slumping down
against the wall of the vestry.  Finally, he was able to
stand again and begin to plot his way of escape.

               *         *         *

Mulder stepped over a broken pew as he trailed after
Scully.  She was walking over to a raised area of ground,
where the altar of the church would have been and now was
covered in dirt and leaves.  It was where the bodies had
been deposited.  They had received their own coverage;
white sheets now.  The photographers had finished their
work; now the paramedics were moving in with the
stretchers and bodybags.  The Coroner was looking
forlornly down at the white sheets, and he glanced up at
Scully as she approached.
"Thanks again for coming down here so quickly," said
Scully.
"That's no problem," said the Coroner, making an effort
to recharge his smile.  "I figured you might still be
having problems with Lloyd."
"Where is he?" said Mulder.
"Hunting for doughnuts, last I saw," said Frank with a
tired smile.  "I know he's a problem, agent Mulder, but
give him his due.  He's one of the finest officers we
have on the force at the moment."
"Somehow that doesn't give me much cause for celebration.
What do you think about this new case?" said Scully.
The Coroner exhaled heavily.  "Well, I can't say that
I've seen much like it.  They all died of blood loss.
Only question is how it happened.  With two of them, it
was heavy trauma to the abdomen and neck.  The last one
... well, I don't know yet."

Mulder was only half-listening to the Coroner; his
attention was focused on the moss-covered walls of the
ruined church.  Something Scully had said ...
"I was wondering something, sir.  Do you know how long
this church has been this way?"
The Coroner looked at him with raised eyebrows.  "In what
way? Ruined, you mean? I'm no historian, agent Mulder.
For all I know, this place could have been like this
since the city was built."
"But City Hall would have records on the ownership and
usage of this land, right?"

Scully was looking at him with a similarly quizzical
expression now, but he kept his eyes on the Coroner, who
chewed his lip before answering.
"Yes, I think so.  You understand I'm not a town planner
or anything."
Mulder nodded.  A police officer called for the Coroner
from the breach in the wall and he smiled once more at
them before leaving them.
"Why do you want to look into the history of the
building, Mulder?"
"I could understand the state this church is in if we
were in England or France somewhere, Scully.  But how
often do you see ruined churches in modern cities like
Chicago, less than two miles from a university? Maybe the
building's got some kind of history of this kind of
thing.  Look, can you finish up here? I'll meet you back
at the hotel after I've done some scratching around."
She shrugged.  "Okay.  Oh -- that reminds me.  The
Chicago field office called this morning.  They're
sending us the results of our latest physicals from
Washington.  I'll pick yours up tonight?"
He nodded.  "Pizza sound good for dinner?"
"Great.  You know the order."
He wrinkled his nose.  "I still can't believe you like
anchovies on pizza."
"It's a habit from college.  What I can't understand is
how you can stand pineapple toppings."
"It's an experiment.  I read somewhere they're an
aphrodisiac."
"They haven't worked so far."

He grinned and started for their car.

END OF PART 3/14


Nocte Eterna  (NC-17)
by Michael Aulfrey
Part 4/14

Kane left the lights off.  He got the 1902 Johnnie Walker
bottle out of the wine cabinet and poured himself a large
glass, then sat down in the well-beaten chair in the
corner of the room, staring into the darkness and
occasionally sipping from the glass when he thought he
saw something he would rather not.

The phone rang, a thin series of trills.  Setting both
the glass and the dark thoughts aside, he picked it up.
"Hello."
"Hello, Kane? Kane Adamson?"
He recognised the voice, just couldn't believe it was
there.  " ... Miss Chambers?"
"I think I told you to call me Madeleine."
"Madeleine, then.  Ah ... what can I do for you?"
"Actually, I was going to ask you the same question.
After last night--"
"There's no need--"
"I think there is.  You saved my life, Mr. Adamson.  The
least I can do is buy you dinner."
"Are you asking me on a date?"
There was a pause from that end of the line, and he
cursed himself.  Blind stupid fool! All she wants is to
thank you for being a gentleman and you--
"Yes.  Yes, I suppose I am."
Well, that put a different light on things.  He sat
there, stunned into silence.  How long had it been since
that had happened? Not since ... and the old memories
dropped into place again, hardening like old mud on his
soul.  And with it, the warnings that his training and
experience had imposed beat a heavy staccato on his mind.
Especially now, with the Circle of Ten ...
"Kane? Are you there?"
And something in that voice of hers, the soft, musical
sound of her question, made the mud fall away, silenced
the warnings.
"Yes, I'm here.  I'd be glad to go to dinner.  Where
would you like to go, and when?"
"How about Edwardson's, tonight?  Eight o'clock?"
"I'll be there."
"And since you knew where my address was from my driver's
licence, you can pick me up," she added in a mock-
superior tone.  He smiled and almost laughed.
"Eight o'clock, then," he said, and he knew he was
grinning like an idiot.  "Goodbye, Madeleine."
"Goodbye, Kane."

               *              *              *

Mulder didn't spend much time at City Hall, as it turned
out.  The clerk at the front desk was unintimidated by
the FBI identification and told him in clipped,
bureaucratic terms that information regarding church
property was not held in the municipal office, beyond the
name of the place he had described: Saint Martin's
Catholic Church.  For that sort of information, he had to
consult their archives, held at the Cardinal's offices
across the city.

His Eminence's offices were a far cry from the stuffy
bureaucracy of Chicago's public service.  Plush sofas
dotted the hallways.  Colourful carpets abounded.  There
was a heavy chandelier in the lobby, glowing with light.
Mulder shook his head slowly to himself.

Amongst this luxury, the brown cassock and white, knotted
belt of a Franciscan friar was painfully incongruous, but
the old man's smile was worth dozens of rooms like these.
Mulder presented his FBI identification to the brother,
who regarded it through thick glasses before nodding and
handing it back to Mulder.
"What can we do for you, agent Mulder?"
"I need to do some research in your archive concerning a
disused church over by Chicago University.  Saint
Martin's, I think it's called."
The old man smiled.  "Would you care to have one of the
librarians assist you?"
"Thank you, no--"
"Before you answer, perhaps I should explain.  We have
records of virtually every marriage, birth and death of
our parishoners recorded in this diocese dating back for
about a hundred and fifty years.  Even the Cardinal has
to ask the librarians where some records for some
churches in this city are."
Mulder chewed his lip and smiled.  "I think I'd like one
of the librarians to assist me."  He sobered.  "But I
should make clear that I'm looking for this information
in connection with a criminal investigation.  In that
regard--"
"I shouldn't worry about the confidentiality of your
investigation, agent Mulder.  We priests specialise in
that sort of thing."
Mulder inclined his head in apology.

The Franciscan led him down a flight of stairs in one of
the back rooms to a large room where dust eddied in the
light of overhead lamps.  Wooden, old-styled tables
propogated as though the basement were a haven from the
natural selection of vandalism.  From within the stacks,
a young man emerged, also wearing the brown cassock of a
Franciscan friar.  The old man explained Mulder's
situation and introduced the librarian as Brother Adrian
Temple.
"It's a pleasure, agent Mulder," said Temple.
"Likewise," said Mulder, glancing after the old man as he
left.  "So what did you do to get sent down here?" he
asked, sotto voce.
Temple followed his gaze, raising bushy eyebrows.  "I
don't agree with everything they do up there."
"Sounds familiar."
Temple smiled.  "So what can we do for you?"
"There's a ruined church out near Chicago University.
City Hall said the land there was owned by the Catholic
Church, titled Saint Martin's Church.  I was wondering
why it's been left derelict."
Temple frowned.  "Derelict? There are a few churches in
the deep south that I've heard of as left in that
condition, but I can't remember there being any churches
within Chicago in that condition."
"Well, it's there, unless City Hall made a mistake on the
address."
Temple scratched his beginnings of a beard.  "I'll check
into it.  What was that address again?"
Mulder told him.

The Franciscan moved into the stacks a small way and
selected a thick, leather-bound book.  "This should have
every church in the diocese listed," he explained to
Mulder.  He opened the book, running his fingers down one
of the lists.  "No ... it isn't here.  There are a few
Saint Martin's Churches, but none listed at that
address."

Mulder began to stand up, feeling the sudden despair of a
descent into the quagmire of bureaucracy chill his bones,
but Temple held a hand out to him.
"Wait -- just a moment.  This volume is only current back
to 1920 or so.  I'll check our older records."  He
carefully put the book back and walked further into the
stacks until he was only a dark silhouette against the
light.  Stopped.  Drew out another book.

He came forward, flipping through the pages.
"Yes ... this is the one."  He ran down the list and came
to a stop.  "Yes.  The reason why we couldn't find it
before is because the street had a different name.  But
this is the address.  Saint Martin's Church, Chicago
Diocese."
"So what can you tell me about it?" said Mulder as Temple
laid the book on the table.
"Well, it had a patronage of about three thousand at the
turn of the century ... four thousand in 1910 ... four
again in 1920 ... this is strange."
"What's strange?"
"After 1920, there's no listing of a number of
parishoners.  Normally that only happens when one parish
is subsumed by another."
"Would there be any reason for it happening otherwise?"
"No ... that's the strange part.  Even where the church
is totally destroyed, it doesn't cease to exist.  I can't
find any reference to any other parish that subsumed
Saint Martin's."

He left the book for Mulder to stare at and hurried back
into the stacks again.  He reappeared with an even
dustier tome.  He wiped the dust from it.  "These are the
diaries of the Proctor of the parish for that time.  If
there's an explanation for the closure of Saint Martin's
Church, we'll find it here."

He flipped through the pages, scanning them at a speed
Mulder could never have hoped to achieve through talent
or familiarity.
"Here.  October 28, 1921.  `To-day Saint Martin's Church
was officially closed on His Eminence's strict orders.
Extreme acts of vandalism have caused this act to be
carried out.'  That's all."
"Acts of vandalism?"
"I'm as baffled as you are, agent Mulder.  I've never
seen an entry like this for the closure of a church.
More surprising is the fact that the church is still
there after all these years."
"So you're saying there's no reasonable explanation for
why the church was closed?"
"I'm saying exactly what's there in the book, agent
Mulder.  Saint Martin's was closed and effectively left
fallow for no greater reason other than some apparent
acts of vandalism."  Temple closed the book and looked at
Mulder.  "I'll have to look into this further, agent
Mulder, despite your investigation.  There must be a
reason why that church has been left to rot there."

He nodded slowly.  "You've been very helpful."  Temple
nodded and walked with him to the stairs of the archives.
"I have one more question, though.  If a church is
closed, does that mean it loses its status as a church, a
house of God?"
Temple seemed to consider the question.  "If the church
declares that it is no longer so, then yes, it's no
different to any other building.  In England, that
happened with some of their current national monuments."
"Can you find out whether that happened in this case?"
"It'll take a while," said Temple.  Mulder haphazardly
remembered from somewhere that priests didn't like to say
`No.'
"All right, if you do find anything, can you call me?"
He handed his card to the friar, who looked at it
momentarily and nodded.
"Thank you," said Mulder, and started climbing the stairs
to the outside.

               *              *              *

The time was coming.

Very soon, now.  He could feel it happening, as
intuitively as the brain knows a fire exists by the
chemicals of smoke tickling the cells in the nose.  His
entire body was feeling it coming closer all the time.

Sai'ten stood atop the building, studying the stars.
Jupiter, bloated king of the solar system, was a bright
point of light here, lumbering across the cosmos like a
rhino.  Mars, red, warlike, his totem star, strode ahead
of his leader, carrying the spear of his astrological
sign.  The time would soon be here when they stood next
to one another.

And visible to his eyes alone were the dead stars and the
black holes, cold masses of rock that burned with a
radiance that threatened to sear his eyes out even from
the awesome distances they gave.  As Copernicus' heart
had been pulled by those points of light in the night
sky, so he felt drawn by those holes in the fabric of
existence.  Sometimes he felt there was one at the core
of his heart.  It made him feel strong, potent, virile,
whatever word others used for it.  A sense of ...
immersion.

He felt one of his new confederates walk up behind him
rather than see him and smiled.  The pickings were easy
in this city.  So many souls, pulsing with life, their
energy ready to be sucked into the black hole at his
core.  He had already converted three; and of those he
had dispatched last night in retribution for the death of
three of his own, one was beginning to twitch; he could
feel it happening.

"What is it?"
"We continue our search, master.  We have found another
that may be suitable."
"Good.  Leave me."

Again, he felt rather than saw the bow and was alone
again, the confederate having departed as silently as he
had arrived.  Sai'ten was careful.  In twenty-four hours
or less, there would be a conjunction that had not arisen
for nearly three hundred years.  The last time, he had
squandered the opportunity, and many of his brethren had
suffered as a result.  This time, there would be no
mistake.  The blinding aura surrounding his quarry would
be dimmed by the power of that conjunction, and he would
strike him down in darkness, as he had been promised.

But for now, he must be careful.  Only the finest
recruits would do.  Ordinarily, he would have gone on a
spree; but that would only attract attention, and he
wanted no mistakes this time.  As it was, he regretted
acting so hastily in leaving a calling card at the scene
of retribution.  But he consoled himself with the thought
that the chances against the Dawnbringer seeing it were
miniscule.

He studied the sky.  In darkness, waiting for darkness.

               *              *              *

Mulder opened the door to the hotel with a flourish,
letting it bang back against the wall.  He pirouetted
obscenely into the room and deposited the two thin, flat
cardboard boxes on the kitchenette's table.  Something
about pizza always brought out the Nureyev in him.
"Honey, I'm home!" he called, kicking the door shut with
his foot.  There was no response.  He pulled his tie off
and dumped it on the nearest chair.
"Scully?"

He walked around the refrigerator and spotted the bedroom
door.  It was closed.  He knocked.
"Scully? It's me."  Still no response.  He gently tried
the doorknob.  Open.  He slowly opened the door.

The bedroom light was off, but from the light in the
kitchen he could make out her form lying on the bed.  She
was in the same clothes as he'd seen her last in, facing
away from the door toward the thin rectangle of the shade-
drawn window.  He was about to tiptoe out of the room,
wanting not to disturb her, when he heard her take a
shuddering breath in and a wet sound not unlike a sob.

"Scully?" he asked again, softer this time.  She didn't
reply; but another sob escaped her, and this time a small
moan.  Immediately, he was striding around the end of the
bed, though he kept his steps light.  "Scully? What's
wrong?"

He could see her eyes were tightly shut, but the glimmer
of tears shone brightly from the edges in the dim light.
He knelt down beside the bed, tracing aside an errant
lock of red hair.
"Scully? What is it?"

She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.  He nearly
recoiled at the pain there.  She lifted her legs over the
edge of the bed and sat up slowly.  He got up and sat
next to her, reaching for a handkerchief.  He waited
silently, knowing her better than having to press her any
further to get a response.

Scully took the proffered handkerchief but didn't dry her
eyes.  Instead, she stared at the drawn shades.
"The physicals came in," she said.  "Yours is on the
table."
"Forget mine.  What did they say about you?"
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"Cancer," she said.

END OF PART 4/14


Nocte Eterna
by Michael Aulfrey
Part 5/14

It took a couple of seconds to register.  When it did, it
hit him, a sledgehammer right in the guts.  He stopped
breathing.  His mind screamed at him to begin again, and
he did, with a shudder.  His heart felt like mercury had
just passed through it.
"Cancer?" he whispered.
"It's not confirmed," she said.  "But the doctors found a
growth of some kind."
"Where?"
"On  the back of my neck," she said, touching a hand to
the place.  A sick recognition flooded him.  "Right where
they found the implant."

Cancerman.  Krycek.  The bastards who'd taken her.  His
hands balled into fists, both in rage at them and rage at
himself.  He wanted to scream, smash the windows, and
then throw himself out of one.  She'd come to him about
the implant and the cancer of the MUFON members, and he'd
told her not to get too concerned until they found out
what the implant was.  In the confusion, he'd forgotten
about it ... and now, here she was, a potentially
malignant child growing within her, because he hadn't
done enough.  A weight seemed to settle onto his back,
and he leaned forward so his elbows rested on his knees,
staring at the floor.

She was still talking.  "You get the report thinking
it'll be routine and that there'll be nothing wrong.
It's just a routine thing, you know, you don't expect to
hear that you ... that you might ..."

Her lower jaw was trembling, the tears running down her
face.  Your fault.  Your fault, agent Mulder.  Another
innocent victim of your suicidal quest for the truth.
How many more, agent Mulder? How many before you pay for
all the blood you've obtained on credit?  First your
contact, then your father, then your partner's family,
and now her as well. His guilt blistered his soul,
burning it black.  He'd only felt this way once before:
when he lost the woman he thought was his sister, and he
had to tell his father he had failed again.  It came back
to him all too vividly: his father, eyes smouldering like
broken fire with anger and disappointment.

Scully wiped her eyes.  A small, simple motion, but it
sent lightning through his mind.  She needed him now.
Samantha was still missing, Deep Throat was gone, Melissa
Scully was dead.  Many deaths on his conscience.

But in his memory, he stood in that room again, and told
that dour old man that he couldn't spare any more time
for guilt or for the shame the old man personified.
Because his partner -- Dana Scully  -- needed him now,
more than ever.  Needed him to be strong.  And, he told
his father angrily, it's the living who can be saved.
Not the dead.

"Scully," he choked.  A single word.  It was all that was
needed.  She started crying again, great dry heavings of
breath that seemed to be tearing at her lungs.  Like yin
into yang, they fell into each other's embrace, hands
trembling, clutching each other like little children in
the dark, tears shining.
"There was so much I wanted to do ..." she began.
"You'll have that chance," he whispered.  His hand gently
stroked the soft, beautiful hair of her head.  Her arid
sobs slowed.  "I promise.  Whichever way it goes.  Name
some of them."
"What?" she managed.
"Tell me some of the things you wanted to do."
She sniffled.  "Love."
"That's all?"
"That's everything," she said.

He nodded silently, feeling his father's legacy loosen a
little around his heart.  And he thought of all she'd
done in her life.  Saving lives.  Looking for justice.
And now, facing death, all she wanted was to know that
someone didn't want her to leave.
"You'll find love no matter what happens," he said
quietly.
"Oh, really? And how much do you think I'll have when my
hair's falling out from the chemotherapy ... the tests
..."
"Believe me, Scully.  If any man sees half of what I've
seen about you, he'd be stupid to pass you over."

She was silent for a long moment.  Then gently pulled out
of his embrace a little so she could look at him.  Her
eyes were still red with tears, but he was caught by the
intensity of that gaze.  He wondered whether death was
like this: an eternal staring into the eyes of God,
yearning to be part of what was within.  He was acutely
conscious of the nearness of their bodies, of her
heartbeat, her breathing, the smoothness of her skin.
Some part of him registered that he had crossed over,
that they had both crossed over, pushing something aside.

And he could see that she knew it as well.

Dana Scully.  Partner, best friend, soulmate ... and
something more, a bond there was no name for, a link so
ancient and fundamental that the Magi might have passed
the time puzzling over it on the long road to Bethlehem.
He didn't know.  He didn't care.  Every mote of light in
her eyes transfixed him.  He just hoped the depth of his
belief in her was showing in his eyes as much as the fire
of desperate life in hers.
"Do you want to make love to me, Fox?"
His breath stopped halfway up his throat.  How often had
he hoped for those words? How often, during those times
he was alone in his apartment and the memory of Phoebe
Green rested heavy on his mind?

He was horrified to discover that he couldn't count them.

There was only one answer he could honestly give.  And
here, now, bared to each other, he could do nothing but
be honest.
"Yes," he whispered.  He felt her grip tighten on him
ever so slightly.  She leaned upwards, towards his lips.
And he did one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do.

He gently put his index finger on her lips.  "But not
now.  Not ... like this."

Her expression changed, but it wasn't the anger,
confusion or sadness he'd feared.  Instead, he saw the
beginnings of understanding.
"We don't know whether you've got malignant cancer or
not.  I think you've got to be sure ... before you decide
what you want."  He saw she was about to say something,
and continued before she could speak.  "If you find out
we've only got a short time together, I'm yours.  If we
have longer ... I'm still yours.  But I don't want to
make that choice for you."

She nodded slowly.  "Thank you," she said after a long
moment, the ghost of a smile returning to her face.
"Thank you for thinking of me that way.  But ... can I
ask you one thing?"
"Anything, Dana."
"Hold me.  Just for a while."

He didn't nod or offer any other confirmation, just
stood, walked around to her other side and settled
himself against the headboard of the bed.  She leaned
back against his chest.  They picked up his arms one by
one, wrapping them around herself.  He joined his hands
around her waist and she closed her eyes, nestling her
head against his chest.

In the kitchen, the pizza got cold.

               *              *              *

Kane was amazed at how well dinner went, and how much he
was getting to like the woman opposite him at the table.
She was three years out of law school and employed as a
judge's associate downtown, but her father had left a lot
to her in his will.  Kane's experience of lawyers hadn't
been especially good, but this woman seemed to break
every rule in the book about the way a money-grubbing
legal eagle should act.  She had a spontaneity and yet
quiet dignity that most of her fellow sharks didn't
possess.  When he summoned up the courage to mention this
to her, she replied that it was probably because of her
background; never wanting for money meant that it had
never really been essential to screw every dollar she
could out of her clients.

She was fascinated by medieval history, considering that
much of the law came from it; the fact he lectured in the
subject only meant that her appetite for his knowledge
was that much more voracious.

It was well after closing hour when they finally got up
from the table; at the other end of the room, the
maitre'd sighed in relief and envy as they walked out of
the little back-street place.  The woman was beautiful,
garbed in a dress that showed off every curve to
beautiful effect.  It was not lost on Kane, either.  He
steadfastly tried to stop his gaze dropping anywhere
below her neck, for fear of her tagging him as some kind
of pervert.

"Have you ever been married?" asked Madeleine as they
stepped out of the restaurant.
The question took him by surprise.  He paused, looking at
her, trying to judge what her interest was in the matter.
Only honesty shone back at him through her eyes.  He
considered giving her more of the story he'd put together
for this place and time, but decided against it.  It was
too painful.  As painful to lie as to remember.
"Yes.  A long time ago.  She died."
"I'm sorry."  He wondered if she'd heard the catch in his
voice.
"Like I said, it was a long time ago.  But ... the
memories are still strong."
"What was she?"
"A seamstr-- a dressmaker by trade.  I met her in Paris
in the spring."  He smiled in memory.  That was one of
the few good things he could recall in his past.  But he
let the memory drift away and he focused back on her.
"I trust you've had a good evening," she said with a wry
smile.
"Wonderful," he said seriously.  "You're a very pleasant
person to be around."
"I'm glad to hear it."

The conversation trailed off there, with neither of them
able to think of anything to say.

So it was of considerable surprise to both of them when
they found themselves in a tight embrace, their lips
joined together in a long, passionate kiss.  The maitre'd
in the restaurant behind them shook his head from the
vantage point of the window; he was wondering when they'd
finally get around to that.  He lowered the shades,
though, and left them to each other.

Kane's mind was alive with fire.  The air roared in his
ears as though he were flying.  His heart drummed within
him like the proudest member of a marching band.  He
tightened his close embrace of her, feeling the raven-
black hair cascading down her back, smelling the sweet
perfume she'd chosen.  He thought he heard her moan very
softly, and he loosened his grip; more than likely, he
was squeezing the breath from her.

They finally let go of each other, but kept their hands
locked together.
"So, it's to be like that, is it?" he said, softly.
"I'd say so," she replied, deadpan, and then smiled,
laughter dancing around her eyes.  He pecked her lips
again.
"I have to go," he said after another moment.  "I've got
classes to teach in the morning."
"I should as well.  When can we get together again?"
"Tomorrow sounds good to me."
"And me."
"I'll call you."
"Yeah."

He kissed her once more before she let his hand go and
walked to her car.  He watched her car start and peel
away from the kerb.  His heart blazed.  He turned away,
taking a deep breath.  He was giddy as a schoolboy again.
How was it she'd been able to walk away with his heart
like that? He didn't know.  He didn't want to know.  All
he could wait for now was tomorrow night.  He knew it.
There was no denying it.

He was falling in love with Madeleine Chambers, if he
hadn't done so already.

"There.  I've admitted it.  I love her.  Are you
satisfied now?" His words echoed up the empty street.
Why he'd said it he didn't know.  All he did know was
that it gave the greatest feeling of release he had ever
known.

Naturally, the guilt ached from somewhere in his gut.
Eleanor's shade hovered close by, wherever he went.  But
the guilt passed in a moment.  He had a strange
conviction that she wouldn't have minded.

[I think because she's much like you, my wife.]

But the part of him that was always on guard turned off
the feeling when he turned towards his car and saw the
two figures standing calmly just outside the edge of the
light.  They radiated the shadows.  No common criminal
could have emanated the air of death that clung closely
to them.

He pretended he hadn't noticed them and continued looking
across the street.  His better side submerged; the
warrior returned to the fore.

Kane concluded that he was in trouble.  The street was
quiet, thanks to the late hour.  No cars other than his
own stood anywhere nearby.  And worst of all, the dai-
katana lay safely hidden under the seat of his car,
standing in a pool of light from the headlamps below,
exactly halfway between himself and the two figures.  He
berated himself for the lapse in vigilance.  Now his only
choice was to try and get to the car before they were on
him.  Not a pleasant thought.

He started walking casually towards the car, still
pretending he hadn't seen them.  With any luck, they
would hold off until he got into the car itself, with the
restriction of movement that would entail.

But he was only halfway to the car when they stepped from
the shadows into the sickly light of the overhead lamps.
They started running at him a second after he began his
sprint to the car.  He stretched his legs out, pumping
for maximum distance.  His mind calmly estimated he had
five seconds on them when he skidded to halt outside the
car door.

No time to fiddle with keys.  He whipped his elbow
against the car window and it shattered, the glass
falling like crystals of snow.  The alarm wailed into the
silence of the street.  His hand was into the car and
down, under, slipping under -- there!  He felt the handle
of the dai-katana, felt the grooves that he'd committed
to memory now --

The two figures bowled him over, his arm dragging across
the shattered glass of the car, cutting it.  He fell to
the pavement, instinct alone preventing him from knocking
his head on the hard ground.  But the long, thin shape
was still in his iron grip and he let a long, mocking
laugh snap out.

One of the figures snarled and raised a hand for a strike
that would disembowel him.  He flexed the muscles of his
abdomen and hips, his legs flipping up, through the jaw
of the attacker.  He tucked his head under and rolled,
agility lending him time as he somersaulted backwards and
came to his feet.  As the first reeled, the second lunged
at him.  Kane went into the Earth-Sea change, was under
and to the side of the force of the strike as he absorbed
the motion of his enemy and used it to lend extra speed
to the draw of the dai-katana.  It cleared the sheath
with a serpentine hiss, and he let the scabbard fall,
spinning away in a move calculated to give him distance
from them; the sword was too long to be anything but a
hindrance at close quarters.

He reached the ready stance and they circled, one of them
trying to get behind him.  They were wary of the silver
light flashing from the blade.
"Who was the woman?" one of them gurgled.  Their smiles
were of skulls.  Calm, he said to himself.  The void.
Mind-no mind that is battle readiness.
"She's quite the catch," agreed the other.
"Will you talk or fight?" snapped Kane.
"You're outmatched, Dawnbringer.  The master wants you."
"I've killed many better than you two," he replied,
raising the sword above his head so it pointed at them,
parallel to the ground.  "And after I've sent you two on
your way, I'll kill many more.  Including your master.
Just like I killed all his brothers."

That got their attention.  They came at him
simultaneously, hands and teeth first.  He reached inside
himself and found the space of the void, where the
strength of the universe was concentrated.  Unbidden, the
kiai screamed from his throat, the powerful energy of the
spirit stabbing out at them with greater efficiency than
any weapon the world had ever known.  The force of the
cry directed to his assailants' eardrums was like a blow.
They hesitated, slowing for a second--

And the dai-katana sprang out in one cut, a silver wing
taking flight, slicing through flesh, bone, spine, neck.
Blood spattered.  The bodies collapsed, their heads
rolling down into the gutter.  The smell of death clouded
from them.  The dai-katana sang as it completed the cut,
then clattered against a metal pole, sparks erupting from
its honed edge as it dug into the tin of the pole.

Kane wrenched the blade free, breathing slowly.  He
listened momentarily.  No sounds.  Good.  There was no
time or sufficient privacy to deal with the bodies
properly.  He could only hope that what remained of the
Circle would not be able to revive them in their current
state.

The sudden thought of Madeleine being drawn into his own
personal circle of violence and death sent splinters of
ice through his blood.  He stared at the bodies of the
two creatures in sudden sickness.

[Please, God.  Don't let them find us.  Give me time.
Just a little season of rest before I have to begin
again.  Please.]

He unlocked his car door hurriedly, got in, started up
the engine and screamed off into the night.

END OF PART 5/14


Nocte Eterna
by Michael Aulfrey
Part 6/14

The results arrived the next morning.

When one of the agents from the Chicago field office of
the FBI called the hotel and told her, she felt a pang of
fear until he started talking about Forensics.  The
results from the wood tests.  She was halfway into the
call before realising that the phone had been her alarm
clock; it was 9:30 a.m. already.  Next to her, the
bedsheets were rumpled but empty.

"Agent Scully?"
She shifted her attention back to the phone.  "Yes,
sorry, I'm still here.  What did you say?"
"I said they're ready to be picked up whenever you need
them."
"Okay, thanks.  I'll come down a little later on."  She
put the phone down and got up from the bed, looking
around.  She walked through the open bedroom door to the
kitchen.  It adjoined the living room-cum-entertainment
area.  Mulder was curled up on the sofa, a few blankets
and sheets tossed over him.  He'd brought his pillow from
next door.  He was snoring softly.  She smiled to herself
and tiptoed over to him. Kneeled down and nudged his
shoulder.  No response.  He wasn't a light sleeper, she
remembered, and nudged him again.

He took a deep breath and frowned with his eyes closed,
then exhaled and opened the lids.  He focused on her and
grinned weakly in response to her smile of greeting.
"Hey," she said quietly.
"Oh.  Hi, Scully."  He pushed himself to his shoulders,
rubbing his eyes.  "What time is it?"
"Nine-thirty."
That woke him up.  "Jesus.  How late were we up?"
"Too long, I guess.  I can't remember what time I got to
sleep."  She got to her feet, giving him room to throw
the blankets off and stand up.
"Did the office call?" he asked.
She nodded.  "The wood fibres came in.  They're waiting
to be picked up."
He looked at her with sudden seriousness.  "How do you
want to handle ... you know?"

She paused, considering.  She'd been hurting last night,
that much was for certain.  And it would have been easy
for her to simply sit back and feel sorry for herself.

But she was still an FBI agent.  And there were still
bodies out there demanding justice.

"Let's just do our jobs, Mulder.  This other thing ...
it's for later.  We've got a murder investigation to
run."
He nodded.  "Okay."
"Mulder -- one other thing.  I don't want you to think
you have to look out for me any more than you did.  I'm
not made of glass.  Okay?"
"Roger that, partner."  He winked at her and headed for
the door.  "Last one dressed's a rotten egg."

She dressed in silence, her hand going occasionally to
the spot where they said the cancer was--

[You don't know that for sure yet.  Not yet.]

Finally, there was nothing left but to step into the
heeled shoes and walk out into the sunlight again.  She
took a deep breath, taking a final moment to smooth her
clothes down.

[Here goes.  You can do this.  You're no different from
when you last looked in the mirror.  You're still Dana
Scully.]

She left her room to find him waiting for her.  The look
on his face was still uncertain.
"Guess I'm the rotten egg," she said.  She was pleased to
see that brought a smile out of him.
"You get to drive, then," he said, and walked around to
the other side of the car.

They were halfway to the office when his cel phone rang.
He answered it and had a truncated conversation with
someone on the other end.  Finally, he snapped the phone
shut with a curse.
"What is it?" she asked.
"They just found another two bodies outside a restaurant
downtown.  They're in the same way as the three you
autopsied yesterday.  Decapitated."
"Did he give you the address?"
"Yeah, 1121 Valleywood Avenue."
"Well, that's not far from here.  I'll drop you off and
come back when I've picked up the results of the lab
test."
He nodded.  She glanced around, and turned down the first
available street.

The place was a back-street restaraunt, a little more
stylish that one would have expected for its
neighbourhood.  The circus of police cars had shown up
there as well, the light show happening once again.  She
stopped the car and let him get out, then peeled away
from the kerb and continued on to the office.

Agent Harry Randquist of the Chicago FBI was a muscular
man with a crew cut, his suit barely containing his
biceps.  He nearly crushed Scully's hand when she met
him.  She had felt petite next to Mulder.  She felt
dwarfed by this man.
"Good to meet you, agent Scully.  Our new recruits still
remember you from Quantico.  You come very highly
recommended."  His voice rattled roofbeams.
"I'm pleased to hear that, agent Randquist.  I believe
you have some laboratory results for me?"
"Yes.  An agent Pendrell sent them down."  He handed a
copy of the fax transmission across to her and then
looked at his own copy.  "In summary, the lab referred
the research on the species of the plant and the wood you
found to the Smithsonian Institute.  Which were you more
interested in hearing about?"
She considered reading the abstract herself, but
Randquist had a pleasant enough manner about him.  "Well,
both, really.  What was the wood type?"
Randquist shuffled through a couple of papers.  "Yeah.
Even the Smithsonian had a problem finding a reference to
this one.  Apparently, the wood comes from a very rare
type of deciduous tree that grows in central Europe."
"What part of Europe, exactly?"
"The Czechoslovakia-Hungary area.  In particular, a small
province of one of those countries in there called
Transylvania."
"Transylvania?"
"Yup.  Transylvania.  You know any vampires, agent
Scully?"
She raised her eyebrows, the coincidence tingling in her
mind.  "Not personally.  Does it grow anywhere else in
the world?"
"Not according to the Smithsonian.  Apparently, it's
specific to that area.  Very difficult to get."
"But it's living matter, isn't it?"
"Yeah, but -- ah, I see.  I'll start the checks with
Customs now, see who the major importers are of plant
material into the United States.  Maybe we'll nail the
guy who brought the stuff in here."
Scully nodded in satisfaction, feeling a little better
about the investigation than she had since its inception.
"What about the plant they found in each body's mouth?"
Randquist looked at another sheaf of papers.  "Labs
checked the type with the Smithsonian again and found
that it was a pretty common herb.  Wolfsbane."
She nodded, making a note on the top sheet.  "What about
the blood typing on what we found inside one of the
corpses?"
"Nothing yet.  There isn't anything on file, but we're
checking."

She nodded.  "You've been very helpful, agent Randquist.
Thanks."
"That's our job," he said.  She smiled and left the
office, carrying the papers of the lab reports.  Later,
when she had time, she'd go back and look over them
again, if only to satisfy herself that she'd got
everything right.  Still, there was something that sent
small chills down her back when she thought about what
Randquist had said.  Transylvania.  And wolfsbane, of all
things.  Which, as Mulder would undoubtedly remind her,
was a common ward against vampires and other evil spirits
along with garlic.

She was just about to get back into her car when the
voice came from behind her.
"Agent Scully!"

She turned to see a black suit coming towards her.  The
memory of their experiences with such men instilled in
her an instinct to pull her gun, but she spotted the
small white square below his throat and calmed the
reflex.  She looked at his face, then.  And almost
dropped the papers she was holding.

Father Peter Slattery.

He was a relatively tall man, a few inches under Mulder's
height and about her age.  He had yellow straw for hair,
and his eyes were a disconcerting grey in this light, but
she knew from experience that they could be green or blue
at a particular time of day in a particular shadow.  The
lighter-coloured burn scar stretching down one cheek drew
attention away from his eyes, and that was perhaps to his
advantage; those eyes seemed to pierce right down to the
soul.  And perhaps did more than seem to do so, one part
of her mind registered.

They'd dealt with the Jesuit priest twice before, both
times in relation to a series of murders.  The FBI had
taken little interest in the killings other than to send
the cases on to the basement.  The Catholic Church had
sent Slattery specifically to deal with it.  Because he
was an exorcist.  And because he claimed to by psychic.
Both times, his involvement had been justified many times
over.  The last they had seen of him was boarding an
airplane to Rome with two orphaned children that he said
were the instruments of destiny.

Scully didn't know what to think of him, much like God.
She believed God's hand could be witnessed.  She wasn't
so sure about the theological concept of a Holy human
church.

"Can we speak a moment?" he was saying.
"What are you doing here?" she asked as the young priest
walked over to her, putting his hands back in his
pockets.
"I came here because of some questions that agent Mulder
has been making."
"What do you mean?"
"Yesterday I was told that an FBI agent had been making
some inquiries about a certain church over by Chicago
University.  Specifically, reasons why it had been
closed."
"And you came all the way from Rome to see why?" Her
voice was incredulous in her own ears.  Suspicion stirred
in its sleep at the back of her mind.
"Not exactly.  I still lecture in the United States.  I
was asked to come and look into the investigation.  Your
partner hit a nerve when he started asking questions in
the Cardinal's archives."
"What kind of nerve?"
Slattery sighed.  "Agent Scully, I'm not here to harm you
or your partner, or hinder your investigation.  I know
that's what you're probably thinking of me right now.
It's just that the Church has an interest in its
parishes.  When we heard the FBI were investigating here,
I was sent to see why."
"No.  That's not it.  If that church is closed, why are
you so concerned with it?"
Slattery thinned his lips, looking distinctly
uncomfortable.  He shifted his feet.  "There isn't much I
can tell you.  As a Catholic, you understand the sanctity
of the confessional.  I must tell you that there are some
matters where confidentiality applies not only upwards
but downwards in the church hierarchy."
"Who sent you?"
"I can't tell you that."
"You could before."
"I was cleared to do so, if necessary.  It became
necessary ... last time."
"Then at least tell me why you came to see me.  Why you
aren't just watching from the shadows, like you did the
first time round?"
She could see that hurt, and she was immediately sorry
she'd said it.  But he inhaled heavily and looked at her
again.  "All right.  I came to tell you that you and your
partner should drop this investigation."
"Is that a threat?" she asked quietly.  She'd heard
threats before.  Had some of them carried out, though she
had been lucky enough to avoid their impact, if not their
fallout.
"No.  I'm not an animal, agent Scully.  Nor is the Church
the threatening organisation that people are so quick to
remember the Inquisition for.  This is honest advice.
There are some things that you shouldn't become involved
in, that none of us should be onvolved in.  This is one
of those situations.  For your own safety -- from what it
is you're hunting, not from us -- you should leave this
case alone."

His half-pleading tone relaxed her.  He wasn't Deep
Throat or Krycek.  He'd saved their lives at some points.
She looked down at the ground, and then back at him.
"I'm sorry, father.  I can't.  There are too many dead
men involved.  And if agent Mulder's right, there are
many more.  They need justice."
He nodded sagely, though his eyes were tinged with
sorrow.  "I understand.  I can't agree with this course
that you take, agent Scully, but at least I know you
pursue it for the right reasons."  He smiled once more.
"Say hello to agent Mulder for me.  I'd see him
personally, but I have some pressing business."

He turned and walked away, leaving her standing there,
speculation running wildly through her mind.  After he
had gotten into his car and driven away, she moved to her
own car and turned the key in the ignition, peeling out
of the parking lot and back downtown.

The picture hadn't changed substantially when she arrived
at 1121 Valleywood Avenue, apart from the additional
ambulance and the fire-red T-bird that looked like it
belonged in an off-Broadway (and low-budget) production
of "Grease."  She glanced at the green-on-white vanity
plate as she got out of her car.  MARSHALL.

Beautiful.  Just beautiful.

And there Lloyd was, prancing around like an Arab horse,
officiously pointing out which way the police
photographers ought to be taking their pictures, loud
tie, rumpled overcoat and braying voice giving half the
area a headache.  The journalists were watching his every
move and enjoying the show.  She closed her eyes and
sighed for a moment, then looked around.

Mulder was leaning up against a metal pole about ten
metres away from the rest of the circus.  His black coat
hung limp from his shoulders.  He was turning a small
plastic bag over in his hands.  She walked across the
street, and he looked up as she approached.
"Hi, Scully.  Thanks for ditching me."  He smoothed it
with a wry smile.
"When did he show up?" she asked, putting a heavy
emphasis on the third word.
"Oh, you mean Sherlock Holmes? He arrived right after I
did.  He's had a positive effect on me, though."
"How?"
" I've come to realise Forrest Gump was right all along.
Stupid is as stupid does."
She weakly smiled at that.  "So what did they find down
here?"
"Much the same as the other murders.  Two men,
decapitated, no matching prints, both unidentified
bodies.  But this one was a little different."
"How so?"
"These ones were just decapitated.  No staking through
the heart.  And from the looks of it, the killer was
caught off guard.  There's some broken glass on the
pavement and some tire marks.  Also, we found a heavy cut
into a tin pole.  Columbo there got most of it," he said,
holding up the bag,  "But I managed to get my hands on a
few small splinters."
She took the plastic bag and peered at it.  The pieces
were small, but there was something wrong with them even
from this point of view.
"If they look too bright, it's because they are.  I don't
think it's steel in there.  More like silver.  And I
think they came from the killing weapon."
"A silver knife?"
"More like a silver sword.  Forensics only has the
preliminaries, but it looks like these two were killed
with one cut of the long blade of a sword.  There's a
metallurgist they've referred me to, and I'm seeing him
right after we finish up here.  But I think this is an
important step, Scully.  Whoever these guys were, they
were looking for the killer, and he fought back in self-
defence."
"So you're saying there's a private war going on here."
"Why not? That reminds me, what did you find out from the
labs?"

She told him.

"Slattery warned us off the case?"
"He said it would be for our own good.  You must've
stirred up a hornet's nest when you started asking
questions, Mulder."
"I've heard of `Thou shalt not', but that takes it a lot
further than I would've guessed.  Still, that news about
the wolfsbane and the Transylvanian wood is useful--"
"I hope you're not still thinking that this was the work
of vampires."
"It's fitting pretty well, Scully.  Wooden stakes from
Transylvania, wolfsbane in their mouths.  What I can't
figure out is who their killer was, and where he fits in.
But I think this," and he touched the bag she was
holding, "Is a start."

END OF PART 6/14


Nocte Eterna
by Michael Aulfrey
Part 7/14

"It's Japanese," said the old man.

He took the splinter out from under the microscope and
laid the glass frame aside.  It glinted in the light of
the overhead lamps.  Scully was reminded of the
description she'd read once of Nostradamus' study: dark,
flickering candles, bowl of foretelling before him ...
but this was the office of Graham Johnson, metallurgist
by trade.  He looked at them through a pair of artist's
working glasses that made his face look like a pair of
television screens.  Around his worktable were
bookshelves filled with texts.  Scully hadn't belived so
many books existed on the common properties of metals.
"How do you know?" said Mulder.  Avoiding Detective
Marshall and the media circus trailing in his wake, they
had driven halfway across the city to Johnson's office,
where FBI identification sufficed to gain his undivided
attention.  Mulder had handed over the small splinters
and watched Johnson go to work, a gnome in some larger
machinery he was part of.

"Well, there are two reasons," replied Johnson, his voice
cracked and squeaky with age.  "Firstly, the metal has
been folded a certain way.  In most antique swords from
Western cultures the style is very primitive.  A crude
beating of the metal until it serves its maker's wishes.
But Japanese katana--"
"What?"
"Katana.  Long sword, literally.  In the katana the metal
is folded exquisitely, every step more intricate than the
last, until a blade is produced that will cut iron, such
is its strength.  The finest blades were made in Japan,
that much is for certain."
"You said antique.  What did you mean by that?"
"The techniques used to fold the metal leave certain
marks on the blade.  We can judge the age of such a sword
by the technique used at the time.  This metal is at
least three hundred years old.  I could confirm by
running a sample through an analyser."
"We'd like that.  What was the second reason you know
this sword is Japanese?"
"Because of the composition of the metal.  You were right
when you said this doesn't look like steel.  It isn't,
exactly.  It's a silver and steel combination.  Very hard
to make, even by today's standards.  There aren't many of
these blades around."
"Why should that determine it as Japanese?" asked Scully.
"There's an old legend about this type of sword.  In
Japan, several hundred years ago, historians record a
number of unexplained disappearances in the Ega and Koga
provinces.  Japanese historians attribute the
disappearances to the actions of Ninja clans that were
resident in that area at the time.  The legend, though,
is that an Oni demon -- a creature of the night -- was
stealing people away to keep as his prisoners.  The
swordsmiths of the area therefore set about creating a
blade that could kill such a spirit.  They took the
purest of metals known to them -- silver -- and weaved it
into the swords of the samurai sent out to kill the
thing.  It was believed that a silver-steel blade could
not only kill the demon but surround its wielder in light
so that the demon could not see the samurai's location."
"So this metal came from one of those weapons?"
Johnson gave a chuckle.  "Not likely.  The metal wouldn't
be in such a beautiful state of repair.  No, this metal
is only three hundred years ago.  If it came from a
Silver Rivers blade, it was a ceremonial copy made for
some daimyo who fancied himself as a monster-killer."
"A Silver Rivers blade," echoed Scully.
"That's the term.  I don't know what the Japanese word
is."
"If such a sword existed, what would it look like?" asked
Mulder, getting a pencil and paper out.
"Well, much like a normal Japanese katana.  Like that one
on my wall."  He gestured at a dark, curved shape hanging
on a nearby hook.  It was a slim, evil-looking weapon,
curved in one direction, the guard a square of iron.
"With one exception.  Silver Rivers blades were without
exception dai-katana."
"Which means ... ?"
"Big sword.  Longer than the average katana.  It was
believed they had to be made large to hurt the Oni
demon."
"I see."  Mulder scribbled the details down.  "Thank you,
Mr. Johnson.  You've been very helpful."

He showed them out of his study, and they walked down the
creaky, wooden stairs.
"Well, that tells us a lot," she said heavily.  "We can
now tentatively say that our description of the killer is
ten-fingered, kills people without names or relatives,
and carries a three-hundred-year-old knife."

He didn't respond.  She nudged his side.  "Hey, you
awake?"
"Hm? Oh, yeah.  Listen, Scully, there's something I want
to look into at the University library.  Can you check
into the blood typing and customs checks that you wanted
done? I've got to do some research."
"What are you onto, Mulder?"
"I don't know, yet.  I've just got a feeling about
something.  Can you do that?"
She hesitated, then shrugged.  "All right.  I've got
something else I want to do this afternoon, anyway.  I'll
drop you off at the University?"

He nodded, and they hurried to the car.

               *              *              *

Kane slowly went through the last of the exercises,
bringing his sword back to the ready position in front of
his bared chest before relaxing and allowing the point to
drop.  He breathed slowly despite his fast-beating heart,
knowing that to control the heart rate was to control the
mind.  He'd finished all the regimens, sharpened the
blade so the nicks became smooth again, gone through all
the directions.

None of it helped.  The memories gnawed at his mind.  The
raw ball of rage that had dropped over his vision in
those final moments of last night's skirmish kept coming
back to him as remembered their words.
--Who is the woman?--
--She's quite the catch--

A snarl escaped his throat.  He didn't throw the sword
down, but the force with which he laid it on the sofa was
a little more than what was strictly required.  He put
his hands behind his head, taking a few steps in a
circle, trying to regain his control.

It was the threat to Madeleine, of course.  And the
knowledge that they'd been watching him.  What if one of
them had got away and told ... him?  He shook his head
angrily.  Might as well admit it to yourself.  Sai'ten.
The last of the Circle of Ten, and the deadliest.  And of
all times for him to surface again, it was now, just when
he thought his heart wasn't turning to stone in his
chest.

And despite his best intentions, that set off the chain
of memories again.  Like fire finding dry tinder, the
images raced back through his mind.  Eleanor.  The
apartment became colder, darker.  Less light, except from
the closed windows, where the light from snow was enough
to scorch and blind the eyes at midday.  Zurich was in
the grip of the heaviest snowstorm in its pentacentarian
history.  Kane -- or Koenig, as his name had been then --
hadn't cared.  It meant he had more time to work on the
timepieces.  Strange how someone of his nature would be
so fascinated by time, considering his movement outside
it.

Granted, he hadn't been working on his clocks at all
today.  Instead, he'd gone down to see Olafssen again.
The man had been suitably unimpressed with Koenig's
newest request for parts; he demanded the highest
standards, and the blacksmith was more accustomed to
making horseshoes than cogs.  Koenig had haggled, though,
and eventually the blacksmith had come round to his point
of view.  But the process had taken a full day, and it
was only now, as the sun painted the distant mountains
purple with sunset, that he trudged back to the arched
alpenhausen.  He saw the smoke rising from the chimney,
and his heart warmed.  It would soon be Yuletide, and the
year of the Lord 1560 would be greeting them.  He was
coming home to his wife Eleanor, and tonight he would
give her a son, which she had been pestering him for
since July.  In concluding their business, Olafssen and
Koenig had sampled a bottle of the man's home brew.
Koenig normally wouldn't have cleaned a gear with most of
the fire-water brewed around the city, but Olafssen was
as much a genius with stills as he was with metal.  The
brew was (my God!) nectar.

He took the heavy snowshoes off and pushed in the door.
"Eleanor, I'm home!" he called.  There was no answer.  He
smiled to himself.  Well, maybe she'd read his mind and
was waiting upstairs for him already.  He pulled the
scarf off, walked through the kitchen and started up the
steps to the bedroom.
"Eleanor, I have some good news to--"

He stopped when he saw the blood.

It had been thrown everywhere.  The walls dripped.  The
floor was awash with it.  But more than anything, the bed
was covered in it.  And at the centre of that bed--

He screamed.  He ran to the bed.  He jumped onto it,
ignoring the gore that covered him.  Eleanor was
pristinely beautiful.  They had stopped to arrange her
clothes perfectly.  The only blemishes on that beautiful,
pale body were the two spots on the neck where blood
glimmered and trickled.  Koenig listened frantically at
her chest.  Nothing.  Her hand.  Her throat.  Nothing.
Only the still, cold silence of the grave.

He sat back on his knees, staring at her.  Dimly, part of
his mind glanced upward above the bed, where more blood
had been painted.  A symbol.  A circle.  A circle with a
stroke through the bottom.  The Circle of Ten.

God Almighty, he had been coming back here to--to--

He clamped a hand over his mouth and stumbled off the
bed, not getting as far as the stairs before he threw up.
Bile and the smell of the alcohol he'd ingested combined
into a sickening stench as it came upwards and out of
him.  He heaved.  And heaved.  And heaved.  Until there
was nothing left in his stomach, and his abdomen ached.
Then the tears began.  Guilt.  Rage.  Fury.  Grief.  But
more than anything, the tears.  He gritted his teeth,
felt the racking sobs begin.

It was then he noticed a twitch from her foot.

He was back at her side in a second, listening at her
chest.  Still nothing.  He snapped his gaze at her face,
incomprehension blurring perception.  Her teeth clenched,
and he saw her eyes flicker under closed lids.  The sun's
last gleaming vanished over the horizon.  He staggered
back from the bed.  Her heart was not beating, but still
she moved.  How--?

There was only one answer.

He felt himself tumbling down, away from his eyes, as
though he were descending into the earth.  The darkness
was cool, inviting.  His grief, his rage subsided.  He
watched himself calmly from twenty metres away as he
turned and walked from the room.  He descended to the
kitchen and picked up the sword, which hung over the
fireplace, Damoclean.  He watched as he stopped by the
railing of the stairwell and swung the sword through one
of the palings.  It shattered without noise.  He saw
himself hit by a couple of splinters, but felt nothing of
the pain.  He picked up the loosed paling and began to
sharpen it against one of the sword's double blades as he
walked back up the stairs.  He walked into the room and
sat calmly on her dressing-table, pushing aside the
brushes and combs she used to put in her hair ... he sat
there and sharpened the paling to a point.  He was very
careful.  Ten years of watchmaking had turned him into a
figure of patience.  It took him a good fifteen minutes.
Meanwhile, her body twitched and clenched on the bed.  He
stopped occasionally to look at her, and thought he felt
something twitch inside himself.  But, mistaken, he
lowered his head to his work again.

Finally, he finished it.  He felt himself flying
backwards, even further away from the scene unfolding in
the bedroom as the man holding the stake and the sword
set to work.  It took a few seconds.

He spent the next two hours methodically packing
everything he could find of his.  Then he had pulled the
snowshoes on again, glanced around a final time and
walked into the kitchen.  He snatched a burning log from
the fireplace and threw it onto the stairs.  It was old
wood.  It caught light very quickly.  He watched it for a
second, then turned and opened the door.  He slammed it
behind him, and started out, knowing it would be a long
night, heading for the nearest border of Switzerland.
Only when he crossed the border would he know he was
safe.

There was no feeling.  Nothing.  He walked alongside
himself.

He wondered at the preponderance of moisture on his
cheeks, and the sick feeling in his stomach.

The night faded; afternoon returned to his vision.  The
drifting noise of traffic echoed in his ears.  And now
the tears were cascading down his cheeks as he stood
there, grieving for a past he wished he never had, for a
time he wished could have continued forever.

But there was no stopping the whirlwind now.  It would
pick him up and throw him into the malestrom regardless
of what he did.  The time had come round again.  He would
find Sai'ten.  Madeleine would not suffer her fate.  He
was tired of running.  Whenever they came for him, he
would be ready.  He calmly picked up the dai-katana and
began running through the practice again.  He was seeing
Madeleine tonight.  He had to be ready, if they chose
that time to come for him.

Sai'ten thought to trap him by his love, perhaps.  But
this time, he would break the trap and rage free upon his
captors.

END OF PART 7/14


Nocte Eterna
by Michael Aulfrey
Part 8/14

Mulder found his way to the Mythology section of the main
Chicago University library by way of several jeans-
clothed, sneaker-footed students who pointed him in the
right direction.  He checked in the online catalogue
under IMMORTALITY and cross-referenced against
TRANSYLVANIA and found the place under the Dewey Decimal
System.

The way to finding the book led him down into the
basement of the library, where the stacks were as shadowy
and dusty as those of the Cardinal's archives.  Here and
there students hid in the blissful silence, either to
study or get down to more important business.  Mulder
tried to steer clear of the necking couples in his search
for a seat.  He eventually found a place and settled a
notebook there, then ventured into the stacks again to
find the book he was searching for.

He found it settled amongst a dozen dry academic
treatises on the nature of mythology.  "The Concept of
Immortality in Eastern European Cultures", by Victor
Gemmell.

He skipped the introduction and most of the early
chapters, looking instead for the concrete examples that
the author had probably gone into.  VAMPIRICISM was
Chapter 11.  He scanned through most of it, but stopped
at one passage:
`The section of the world described as Transylvania in
Stoker's novel "Dracula" is well-chronicled in that work
of fiction.  The author complements Stoker in that
regard.  Transylvania, until the twentieth century,
remained one of the most remote and superstitious areas
of the world, rivalled only by such exotic places as the
Mosquito Coast in South America and Outer Mongolia in
Asia.  Fitting enough, then, that the legend of
immortality should be set in such predominantly rural and
superstitious surroundings.  Add to the remoteness of the
region the many feudal princes and principalities that
existed at that time, and one has a breeding-ground for
some of the eldest traditions in the world.'

Mulder considered it and skipped ahead more.  Dracula and
other supposed vampires were covered in exquisite detail.
He was surprised such writers as Stephen King didn't
consult it more often.

However, it was the fourth section of the chapter that
caught his attention.
`NEMESES OF IMMORTALITY: Fighting fire with fire.
As vampires were seen as the enemies of God and Man, it
was only appropriate for converted Christians and semi-
pagan storytellers to invent some form of Adversary to
provide the balance for good and evil.  It was also only
logical that such an adversary should be able to combat
the vampire as an equal.  Thus the legend of the
Peacemaker or Dawnbringer arose in this same region.  The
essential content of this myth appears to have been that
while vampires prey on men, there is always the Hand of
God ensuring they do not obtain too much power over
mortal men.  A physical reminder of God's protection, to
supplement the spiritual belief in the supernatural.
The kernel of the Dawnbringer myth is of an eternal
hunter of vampires, his sole charge from God being to
slay each and every one in existence.  Naturally, he
cannot complete this Sisyphean task in one lifetime, and
therefore is granted the special dispensation from God
that he cannot die.  It is said in some villages that
vampires fear the Dawnbringer above and beyond the
traditional banes of stake, crucifix and sunlight; while
these things can be avoided, the Dawnbringer cannot; the
vampire must always know that one day, the Dawnbringer
will turn his attention the vampire's way, and will
conduct a search and hunt as tireless and endless as the
vampire's very existence.
It must be noted that the precise nature of the
Dawnbringer is uncertain; the stories vary from one
village to the next.  The Dawnbringer may be an army of
angels in one village, a single man in another, or
anything in between.  The central focus in this legend is
on the Dawnbringer as eternal champion or knight of God,
representing all humanity against the forces of
darkness.'

The chapter continued on in more detail, but Mulder
leaned back in his chair.

Could it be true? Was the Dawnbringer in Chicago right
now?

He dismissed the concept of living immortality; that went
against both Scully's and his own beliefs.  He could
perhaps accept the notion of vampires, though Scully's
objections were pointed and well-founded.  She would have
been surprised how little he actually believed it
himself.  But if all the killings were was the
dramatisation some form of Transylvanian legend, they
were taking it very seriously indeed.

Something else gnawed at the back of his mind.  What
Temple had said about the church, and what Slattery had
said about stirring up a hornet's nest in looking for
reasons for the building's closure.  And more than that;
the agonising uncertainty that he might have missed
something, that he hadn't looked in every corner of the
church.

He had to look over Saint Martin's Church again.

               *              *              *

Scully also decided to go to church.

There was a small, modern chapel called All Saints' just
up from the FBI's main office in Chicago.  It nestled in
a building's side, set back into the wall so going into
the front office seemed to be like going into some
concrete tomb.  Yet the same aura of peace that she'd
known in churches as a child washed over her again.
She'd asked her father once why it happened.
"Because they're safe, Dana," said her father seriously.
"They're the safest places I know."

That time was long past, now, and she'd drifted away from
the church, but the rudiments of peace remained.  And God
knew, she needed a little peace.  She'd been able to cope
with her potential condition while she still had her work
to do, but the investigation had ground down to that
awful waiting that every cop, from the Commissioner to
the lowest flatfoot pounding the beat, knew all too well.
Waiting for the labs.  Waiting for the usual suspects to
be rounded up.  Too much time to think.

The cargo manifests from a dozen aircraft and ships were
being faxed to the Chicago field office, but none of them
offered a lot of hope.  Whoever had brought bloodbirch
into the United States must have been moving it into the
country as matches.  There had been no importation of
wood of that type on the East Coast.  They were waiting
for confirmation from California that none had come
through there.

She opened the door and walked in, across soft carpets to
the chapel proper.  The small font of holy water at the
entrance was still, silent.  She dipped right hand's
index and middle fingers into it and crossed herself.
The ceremony came back comfortingly fast to her memory.
She started down one of the aisles.  There was no Mass
on; the church pews were silent, empty.  Light glowed
from fluorescent lamps in the top of the chapel's ceiling
onto the large wooden cross hanging above the altar.  The
white walls looked down at her quietly.  She picked a pew
at random, genuflected and sat down.  For a few moments
she just sat there, unmoving, listening to the silence.

Cancer.

It was one of the things she'd come to despise most while
she was studying medicine.  Not simply because it killed
people; there were many diseases that did that.  It was
the mocking nature of the illness.  It took people
slowly, gently, not humiliating them in the way a broken
arm, leg or other body part did, but instead turning them
into something awful over a period of years.  Taking
their hair away.  Wasting them, turning their bodies into
bundles of sticks that doctors mistakenly called bones.
Leaving them strung up to so many machines Giger could
draw his best work from a portrait.  She hated the
illness.  Sean Connery, in `Medicine Man', had once
described it as the Plague of the Twentieth Century.
Naturally, she'd liked that movie more than the reviews
had given it, because it was a search for The Cure.

But this was not South America, and she was not Lorraine
Bracco to Mulder's Sean Connery.  She had the illness.
Where it had come from was irrelevant.

She stared up at the cross.  You were more than Man, she
thought.  I know it.  Not because it was taught to me,
but because every time I hear your Sermon on the Mount
something echoes and resonates inside my heart.  Most
speeches get boring after the first five minutes.  You
didn't have the benefit of amplification or nice seating
arrangements or even prepared notes.  And they listened
to you.  In their hundreds, in their thousands, down
through the centuries.  But you'll have to forgive me --
and if you are all you say you are, you will -- if I ask
why you did this to me.  I can bear this.  I'll have to,
if the results come out the way I think they will.  What
I want to know is why you chose me and now.

Are you carrying a grudge against Fox Mulder? Is that why
you hit him with this? He may not believe in you, but he
carries about as many sins on his back as you did under
that chunk of tree.  First his sister, then his father,
then my sister, and now me.  He doesn't take it on
himself in so many words, but I can see it.  I saw it
last night.  Is that how you want to prove to me that you
exist? By grinding him down? I don't believe that any
more than you probably do.  When I ask, all you say is
"Where were you, when I made the world?" but you're a God
of love.  I have to believe that.

And as for Mulder ... I really don't care what you think
of him.  I only know that he's been there for me when I
needed him, and he's given me my space when I wanted it.
I don't know what will happen between us.  This thing has
been eating me up inside so much that I can hardly think
straight any more.  He'd give his life for me.  Would I
do the same for him? He trusts me.  With everything
that's happened in his life, that's a hard-won victory.
I know he thinks I've given my life for his quest
already.  I guess the answer is yes.  I'd sacrifice my
life for him.

If something does happen between Mulder and me because of
the cancer, I'll thank you for it.  If it turns out I
don't have cancer, I'll thank you for it.  But please,
God, don't let me have this disease.  Not for me.  For
him.  He doesn't deserve it.  Stop hurting him.  For a
while.  Please.

There was silence, both in her mind and in the church.
She listened, hoping to hear ... she didn't know what.

Her hands absently wandered over to a thick book on the
ledge where hymnbooks and flyers lay supine in the light
and the silence.  The book was a missal, a volume that
chronicled the readings and prayers for every church
service in the Catholic calendar.  She opened it at
random.  It fell open on a page of the Good Friday mass,
where the trial, crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ
were chronicled and recounted.  A reading from the Book
of John caught her eye.

`The high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and
his teaching.  Jesus answered, "I have spoken openly for
all the world to hear; I have always taught in the
synagogue and in the Temple where all the Jews meet
together; I have said nothing in secret.  But why ask me?
Ask my hearers what I taught: they know what I said."
At these words, one of the guards standing by gave Jesus
a slap in the face, saying "Is that the way to answer the
high priest?"
Jesus replied, "If there is something wrong in what I
said, point it out; but if there is no offence in it, why
do you strike me?"'

She closed the missal and breathed deeply, then stood,
genuflected and left the church.

               *              *              *

By the time he got to Saint Martin's, twilight was
stinging the streets a dark blue.  Thunderclouds rolled
overhead, a storm in progress.  Lucky he'd brought his
umbrella.  He had walked from the university.  It was a
lot further than he thought.  He stood there for a
moment, looking at it.  The police tape was still up, the
yellow tape flapping in the breeze, and small remnants of
police presence remained: dead cigarettes, discarded
coffee cups.  They were inconsequential, though, against
the size and shape of the church.  It sat there as it had
for the past eighty years, unchanged, the moss less than
a distraction as it ruminated on some purpose he didn't
know the nature of.

He walked across the road and up to what remained of the
front door of the church.  And it was only then that it
struck him.  There was no graffiti.  Within walking
distance of a university and a public high school, and
not a mark of graffiti had touched the place.  Talk about
miracles.  He pushed in the front door.  The leaves
stirred at his entry in a breath of wind.  The pews still
lay broken here.  The dirt piled up.

He glanced at the remaining parts of the building.  The
walls had been carved beautifully.  Though the stained-
glass had been smashed out of the windows, figures and
patterns weaved intricately over the walls.  He walked
on.  Above him, the remains of the choir loft jutted out
like the bottom jaw of an animal.

Further ahead was the vestry.  He stopped for a second,
trying to get a feel for the atmosphere of this place
when it was still functional.  He failed.  The air seemed
to whistle bleakly through very stone in the building.
He could not imagine this place ever being a house of
worship.

The thunder rumbled.  He glanced up, then carried on to
the remains of the vestry.  He walked in, staring around.
Here the priest would have dressed for church, saying his
prayers.  It just felt like an old, battered room now.

He turned to leave, suddenly feeling very silly.  What
was he doing in this old ruin of a place, anyway? It
wasn't like he'd find--

He saw the carved mark on the back of the door.  Stared a
little closer.  Some kind of circle with a stroke in it.
He fumbled for a sketchpad.

Sudden pain smashed through his back.  Fire raced up his
spine and he tumbled.  A feeling like sweat trickled down
his back, but he knew it wasn't sweat, had to be blood--
A foot smashed into his ribs.  He couldn't breathe.  His
eyes slammed shut, even as his hands went to clutch that
area of his body.  Something grabbed him, lifted him.  He
managed to get his eyes open.

He saw teeth.

He heard an animal roar, then felt himself flying.  His
injured back hit the door of the vestry and crashed
through it, splinters flying.  He screamed.  Fresh blasts
of pain assaulted his nervous system.  He managed to open
his eyes.

It was the teenager.  The one they'd found here.  The one
with hardly a mark on his body.  Except for the two spots
of blood on his neck.  His skin was slightly grey.  The
pupils of the eyes were impossibly wide.  Two points of
whiteness poked out from below his top lip.  Teeth.  He
was naked, and muscles rippled along his arms, legs and
torso.  Mulder's mind whispered to him.  The kid was
dead.  Dead, gone.  Deceased.

Or not.

Vampire.  Nosferatu.

It started towards him, grinning, the teeth filed to
sharp points, when another dark shape suddenly interposed
itself between the naked figure and him.  Mulder heard a
scream and a strong, powerful voice before he passed out.

END OF PART 8/14