Incarnations of Immortality
By The Bear!
Disclaimer: See Prologue
Nick and Natalie met with Mulder and Scully in the lobby of the Plaza and
checked out their schedule of events. All
four had the seminar on Interdisciplinary Communication and Cooperation.
Essentially it dealt with the importance of the homicide investigator
working closely with the medical examiner in order for both parties to
understand the needs of the other in order to facilitate rapid and accurate case
solutions. Mulder made a comment on
already realizing the importance of close contact with his medical examiner, and
Natalie blushed furiously, Scully only slightly less so.
Scully noticed throughout the conference that Knight and Lambert seemed to
touch quite a bit. She hadn’t
noticed that when they had picked Mulder and her up at the airport.
“Hmm, I wonder what happened after we left the Club?” she thought to
herself. “Last night she was
jealous of Mulder and I, thinking that we were together, and now she and Knight
are sure acting like a couple.
During the break between seminars they decided to eat at the hotel’s
restaurant. Knight declined,
mentioning that he had some intense food allergies and was on a special Diet.
He did have a glass of the wine they had ordered, although he only poured
about a quarter of a glass. At some
point during the conversation, while Natalie was recounting one of their cases
and asking Nick’s clarification on a particular point, Mulder noticed Scully
frowning ever so slightly at Knight’s glass.
Mulder glanced over and noticed that Knight’s glass was nearly full,
and it seemed to be very slightly darker than everyone else’s wine.
The bottle was across the table by Scully.
Surely he would have noticed if Knight had reached all of the way across
the table and retrieved the bottle. When
he looked back to Scully, she was focused on Natalie who was continuing with the
anecdote. He merely filed the
discrepancy away for future reference and continued in the conversation.
The second half of the day found them scheduled apart, Natalie and Scully
were slated for a seminar on advances in forensic technology, “New product
sales pitch session” as Scully called it.
Nick and Mulder were headed for a presentation on computerized criminal
demographics profiling.
As Nick and Mulder stood outside the entrance to the auditorium their
presentation was to be held in, Mulder was surreptitiously observing his
companion. The paleness, the refusal
to eat, the ‘mystery’ of the wine, the way he moves, the sheer presence of
him. He knew Scully would never
believe him, but he was pretty sure that Detective Nick Knight was a vampire.
“Now, what the hell do I do about it?” he asked himself.
So far as he could tell, this vampire was unlike what he expected a
vampire to act like. He was catching
killers, not killing. He’d had the
gunmen hack the Toronto PD and pull his jacket.
Not only was he clean, he seemed to be a star detective.
He and his partner, Detective Vetter- who was, coincidentally, the
daughter of one of the police commissioners- had the highest solve rate of any
of the homicide detectives in any precinct in
Nick whirled around and looked out the door.
He saw a medium height man with short black hair and a
“I think we should follow him,” Mulder said.
“We’ll find out where he is going and then call in for backup” Nick
said as they went out the door once the perp had passed.
They split apart immediately, Nick trailing about fifty meters behind,
while Mulder crossed the street and paralleled Nick.
After trailing him for about 20 minutes, he crossed over to Mulder’s
side of the street and ducked down an alley between two smaller apartment
buildings in a rather disreputable neighborhood.
As Mulder came to the corner and looked down the alley, he noticed the
perp. disappearing over top of a fire escape onto the top of one of the
buildings, 4 stories high. After
whispering a couple of harsh expletives, he took off down the alley and quickly
climbed the fire escape. As he
neared the top, he looked down and saw Knight just entering the alley.
He didn’t feel that he could afford to wait for the Detective to catch
up, so he jumped over the top and raced across the roof after the perp.
As Mulder ran past one of the large HVAC units on the roof, he was grabbed
and thrown back into the side of the unit, striking his head and tearing the
skin at his temple. He fell to his
knees, momentarily stunned. “What
the hell are you, man?” the perp asked him.
“I can barely feel you!” he said.
Mulder said, “What?” as he tried to make sense of what the guy was
saying, but his thought processes were a bit sluggish.
The perp opened his trench coat and withdrew a short, broad-bladed sword
with a plain cross hilt. He said,
“It might be weak, but I’ll take it.”
He raised his sword and said, “There can be only one!”
Suddenly two gunshots rang out and Mulder saw what looked like two puffs
of dust bloom from the chest of the perp. He
staggered back several steps and fell by the roof’s parapet.
Mulder looked over his shoulder and saw Detective Knight standing at the
other side of the roof, about 30 meters away.
A small part of his brain whispered to him, wondering how he had managed
to come up there, when the front of the building didn’t have a fire escape.
Nick quickly ran over to where Mulder was and helped him up.
“Are you alright, Agent Mulder?”
“Yeah, just a little stunned.” Mulder
said, wincing only slightly at the pain in his head.
“Nice shot, by the way,” he said to Knight’s back as he approached
the downed perp. Mulder drew his own
weapon to cover Knight, just in case. The
guy definitely looked dead, he wasn’t breathing anyway, and there were a
couple of bloody holes in his shirt right in the middle of his chest.
Nick approached the man without fear.
He couldn’t hear a heartbeat or respiration at all.
Suddenly the perp’s eyes shot open and he gasped in a lung-full of air.
He immediately thrust his sword into Nick’s chest and stood up.
Mulder immediately began firing, emptying his entire clip into the
perp’s chest. Each impact caused
him to stagger back until he fell over the parapet and down to the ground 4
stories below. Mulder ran over to
Nick, who was sitting with his back against the parapet and the sword sticking
out of the right side of his chest.
“Would you like me to call 911?” Mulder
asked, making no move to grab his phone.
“No, just pull it out please,” Nick answered.
“Will you need blood?” Mulder
asked.
“You mean, will I need your blood, Agent Mulder?”
Nick said.
Mulder just nodded his head.
“No. I have a flask in my
coat.”
“Ok.” Mulder said, and
then he grasped the sword hilt in both hands and yanked on it, jerking Knight
forward but not making much progress on freeing the sword.
“Sorry” he said. He then
put one foot on Knight’s shoulder to brace him and pulled it free with a
sickening wet sound.
Nick said, “thanks” and grabbed his flask from its pocket and drained
it in one long swallow. “You
aren’t surprised,” he said, more a statement than a question.
“I have had dealings with vampires before.”
Mulder said.
Just then they heard a clattering from below and watched, dumbfounded as
their perp stood up and ran away.
“Was he…” Mulder began.
“One of my kind?” Knight
completed the question. “No.
Frankly I haven’t seen anything like him before.”
“What are you going to do with that, Detective?”
Mulder asked, as Knight picked up the sword from where Mulder had dropped
it.
“Nick locked his gaze on Mulder’s.
He listened for his heartbeat, and asked, “Are you a hunter, Agent
Mulder?”
Mulder felt his consciousness falling into the bottomless wells of
Knight’s eyes. “What’s a
hunter?” he heard himself say as if from a distance.
“Agent Mulder, there are no such thing as vampires.”
Mulder felt his awareness snap back into his body.
“Oh, that’s funny. There
sure are a lot of people running around with prop fangs and green contact lenses
then.”
Dammit! Either Nick was
loosing his touch, or there were a hell of a lot more resistors than there used
to be! “You said you had dealings
with us before. What did you
mean?”
“I worked two cases involving vampires in the states.
One involved three of them that were stalking the gothic club scene and
killing wannabes. The other involved
a small, rural community that turned out to be entirely populated with them.”
Mulder answered.
“And what did you do with these ‘vampires’ you were dealing with,
Agent Mulder” Nick asked.
“Is that what you mean by Hunter? Are
you asking if I Hunted these creatures down and killed them?”
Mulder asked.
“Did you?”
“No. I am not a Hunter,
Detective Knight. In the first case,
one of the three torched the house they were in, killing them all.
In the second case, the entire population disappeared once we uncovered
their secret.”
“We? Am I to take it that
Agent Scully knows about us as well?” Nick
asked. He was beginning to worry
about the danger these two could represent to The Community.
Mulder chuckled. “Scully is
a skeptic, Detective Knight. She
wasn’t there for the first case, and didn’t see everything I saw in the
second. She remains unconvinced that
vampires exist. However, she is an
extremely sharp observer and medical doctor.
She has already noticed some of your, idiosyncrasies, shall we say?
She won’t automatically reach the conclusion that I did, but she will
be suspicious.”
They walked over to the fire escape and began to descend.
Mulder asked, “Why don’t you go down the way you came up?”
Damn the man! “You didn’t
see me come up, Agent. What makes
you think this isn’t the route I took?”
“That’s just it, Detective. If
you came up this way, I would have seen you.
And so would have our perp.”
They reached the alley and Knight stepped in front of Mulder and said,
“Please listen to me very carefully, Agent.
The community takes a very dim view of mortals even knowing about us.
It is forbidden. Our law
demands that those who find out be dealt with in one of three ways:
They either have that knowledge removed, they join our ranks, or they
die. There are those among us who
would kill not only you, but me as well if they found out that you knew about
us. I cannot urge you strongly
enough to keep quiet about this. Don’t
even tell your partner! If the
enforcers were to get wind of this, I couldn’t protect you.
“I will try to keep that in mind, Detective.”
Mulder said tightly. “What
about the sword, we can’t really log it in as evidence, and no one is going to
want to hear how we came across it.”
Nick thought about it for a moment and said, “Look, we’ll just keep it
to ourselves for now. We should be
able to perform a more detailed investigation anyway.
As you said, the powers that be aren’t going to be able to accept the
more unusual aspects of this case anyway.”
“I can accept that,” Mulder said, “but we are going to have to bring
Scully into this. Even if I wanted
to keep her out of it, she would figure it out on her own pretty quickly.
Skeptic or no,” Mulder said.
“Look Agent, I can understand that you want to share this with her.
But do you really want to endanger the life of the woman you love like
this?”
Mulder stopped short like he had run into a wall, “What!?
What do you mean?”
“As I explained, Agent, knowledge of my kind is dangerous…” Knight
started to say.
“No! the other part!”
Mulder choked out.
“Agent Mulder, you and your partner do not hold a monopoly on
observational ability. That’s why
they call it Detective. We
detect.” Knight said.
“We are just partners, Detective.”
Mulder said tonelessly.
“I can understand that the FBI probably has some kind of rule about
fraternization between partners. You
two do a good job of hiding it, really. However,
you have to realize that I can hear your heartbeats speed up when you look at
each other, I can see your pupils dilate and your skin flush.
You couldn’t hide your feelings for each other from any one of us.”
Knight said with a grin. “Don’t
worry, Agent. Your secret is as safe
with me as mine is with you.”
“Look, Detective, you have made a mistake here.
We care about each other, yes. We
are partners and have been for nearly seven years.
But that is all.” Mulder
said.
Nick listened to Mulder’s heartbeat and watched his eyes as he spoke.
He realized that Mulder was being honest; at least in-so-far-as the fact
that they weren’t together. “You
poor, stupid man,” he thought, comparing Mulder to himself.
“As someone who has only recently done so himself; I advise you to pull
your head out of the sand, Agent Mulder.”
Nick said softly. “I’ll
leave it to you to decide whether or not to bring your partner in on this, but
please take me seriously when I say that you will be putting her life on the
line if you do. I also think it
would be a good idea if you didn’t discuss any aspect of this unless you are
absolutely certain that you cannot be overheard by anyone.”
Knight thought for a moment and said, “Why don’t I bring you to my
loft tomorrow evening and we will discuss it.
You can take today to decide whether to invite your partner along for the
ride.”
Mulder was lost in thought and responded, “yeah, sure.”
They continued walking in silence for a bit when some of the puzzle came
together for Mulder and he said, “I’ve been thinking about the fight we saw
the other night, Detective. What if,
whatever these guys are, the only thing that can kill them is decapitation?
I mean, being shot several times, and then falling four stories didn’t
seem to kill him. And they both had
swords, right? Maybe that’s the
only way they can be killed.”
“He was dead after I shot him the first time.”
Knight said. “I heard his
heart stop and he wasn’t breathing. I
wouldn’t have been so careless about approaching him otherwise.
He was dead, and came back to life.”
“There was a pause between when he hit the ground and when we heard him
get up and run away as well. So they
can be killed conventionally, but don’t stay dead unless they lose their
head?” Mulder theorized.
“Well, the guy whose head he severed definitely stayed dead.
Of course, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t stay dead if they lost
their head.” Nick added.
“That sword didn’t seem to affect you too much.”
Mulder ventured.
“No, steel isn’t really a problem for me.
Wood is a very different story. But
even we can’t come back from decapitation.”
Knight answered reluctantly. Eager
to change the subject he asked Mulder a question, “I heard what he said to you
just before I shot him. What do you
think he meant by, ‘It might be weak, but I’ll take it,’
and, ‘There can be only one?’ Only
one what?”
“I honestly have no idea, detective.”
Mulder answered. “Believe
me, I have been shot on occasion in the past, and never once did I get up and
try to run someone through with a sword immediately afterward.”
“Really. What did you do?”
Knight asked.
“Mostly I lay on the ground bleeding until someone took me to the
hospital.” Mulder replied,
chuckling.
“Hmm, get shot a lot do you, Agent Mulder?”
Nick asked jokingly.
“Look, just call me Mulder, ok? Nobody
calls me by my first name, and I’m not sure I can listen to ‘Agent Mulder’
over and over again. It reminds me
of my Boss.”
“Ok Mulder. I’m Nick.”
“Oh, by the way, Nick. Thanks
for saving my ass up there tonight.”
“Well, I didn’t feel up to explaining to your partner that I had let
you get killed.”
“Right.”
They continued back to the hotel in silence, each lost in their own
thoughts about the events of the evening.
========== X-FILES ========== FOREVER KNIGHT ========== HIGHLANDER ==========
After listening to blatant sales pitches for questionable products Scully
and Natalie decided to skip out at the first break and hang out in the lounge
until the guys got out of their presentation.
They talked about some of the challenging cases they had worked on and
their medical backgrounds. They each
found the other surprisingly easy to talk to, probably because of their similar
situations- a woman in a ‘man’s job’ as it were- both excelling, and
working the kinds of cases that most coroners never even heard about.
Helping to catch madmen and serial killers was a normal part of their
lives. Several glasses of burgundy
helped the conversation flow as well. They
eventually fell into girl talk.
It felt so nice to sit and chat with another woman, especially one who had
such a similar job, and could understand what it felt like to dig through dead
bodies looking for clues and solving crimes for a living.
“So, Natalie, what has you so giddy today?”
Scully asked. “You seem
positively giggly.”
Natalie blushed furiously, and looked away.
“Uh, lets just say that Nick and I finally came to an understanding
last night.”
“Ahh, I see.” said Scully.
Natalie was still blushing and explained, “We have had a long and often
frustrating ‘friendship’ and finally realized that it is time to take it to
a new level. I was so afraid that he
didn’t feel the way I felt it was tearing me apart.”
“I know how that feels,” Scully thought to herself.
“I’ll bet you do, Dana. Was
it harder because you are partners?” Natalie
asked.
“Oh, no! Did I say that out
loud?” Scully thought in horror.
“What do you mean?” she said to Natalie.
“I mean, did it create problems at work?
Does the FBI have any rules against that sort of thing?”
“Uh, Natalie? I think you
might have made a mistake here, Mulder and I are just partners.”
Natalie just stared at Scully for several moments.
“Your aren’t together?” she asked.
Scully slowly shook her head side to side.
Natalie felt extremely embarrassed and could feel her face getting hot,
but the words slipped out before she could stop them, “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure, Natalie” Scully said wryly.
Natalie’s hands flew to her mouth as if to stop her from opening it
again. “Ohmygosh.
I’m sorry. You guys just
seem… that is, I thought… Uh,
sorry.” She realized that Dana and
Mulder were in the same place she and Nick had been until last night.
“Oh no! It’s got to be
eating them up! You poor, stupid
woman,” she thought to herself.
“Look Natalie, It’s complicated. We
have a very unusual partnership because of the kinds of cases we work, and the
experiences we have had. We care
about each other a great deal and trust each other absolutely, but those kind of
feelings just aren’t there.”
‘It’s complicated.’ How
many times had she uttered those very words to describe her relationship with
Nick? “Look Dana, it’s none of
my business, but take it from someone who has, up till very recently, been
exactly where you are, If you feel that way, you should tell him.
You deserve to know, and so does he.”
She stood up at that point and added, “I’m going to take a cab home
and clean up a bit. I’ll leave
word at the desk, but if you see Nick, tell him I’ll see him at his place, Ok?
I’ll see you tomorrow night, Dana.”
Scully was too stunned to think of anything beyond an automatic, “Ok,
goodnight Natalie.”
========== X-FILES ========== FOREVER KNIGHT ========== HIGHLANDER ==========
“Uh, Mulder?” Nick asked
as they entered the hotel lobby.
“Yeah, Nick?”
“You might want to head back to your room and clean up a bit before we
meet the ladies.” he said as tactfully as he could.
Mulder looked down at himself and said, “I guess that rooftop was a
little dirty.”
“A little, yes.” Knight
said. Look, I’m going to go put
this in the caddie and change my shirt. I’ll
let your partner know where you are. You
two may have some talking to do.”
“Yeah. That’s probably a
good idea,” Mulder replied.
“I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon when I get up.” and you can let me
know what you have decided.”
“Ok,” he said and then headed off toward the elevators.
Scully was still sitting in the lounge, Natalie’s admonition tumbling around
in her mind, when Detective Knight walked up to her.
“Agent Scully?” he asked, hesitantly.
Scully slowly regained focus and looked up to see Detective Knight staring
down at her. “Detective?” she
asked.
“Your partner went up to his room. He
wanted you to join him when you had a moment.” he said.
Scully was so wrapped in her thoughts that it didn’t even occur to her
to ask why he didn’t just come in with the detective.
She just stood up and grabbed her coat and seminar materials.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said.
“Not a problem, Agent Scully. Uh,
where is Doctor Lambert?” he asked.
“Oh, she said to tell you she would see you at your place.
She wanted to go home and clean up,” she answered.
“Oh, Ok. Well, goodnight
Agent Scully.”
“Goodnight Detective” she said and walked away to the elevators.
Nick shook his head and wondered if Mulder and Scully would ever get a
clue. He could sympathize.
Even with his supposedly enhanced senses, it took him six years to see it
himself.