Title: The Ultimate Prey, 1/3
Author: Amiroq. aka Gypzy
Email: fitchett@netaccess.co.nz 
Size: 15K
Series: Vampire's Kiss
Rating: R (eventually, for blood and guts.)
Codes: Au?, V; K/T
Teaser: Sequel to Vampire's Kiss. Harry comes face to face with an old foe.

Disclaimer: Paramount owns Star Trek, I own Kalisha and the Vampire's Kiss possible alternate universe.

Note: Currency. 190 gold reysins is equal to about NZ$1710... 20 silver resos is about NZ$60. To convert to US currency, try halving the NZ dollars. For Brits, try I *think* dividing it by three. Although you may want to check the exchange market, I hear we're getting stronger now.

Warning: last time I wrote a story with this much violence, I think it was the Price of Love, I was told by an irate mother to put little warnings on my stories like 'do not do this at home'. Me, being me, took her advice to heart and this is my little list of warnings for kids.

Do not play with stakes without adult supervision. These may cause serious injury, blindness or death.
Do not attempt to fly out of windows if you are higher than one storey, or off the top of a cliff. This will most probably result in broken bones, the number of these being relative to your altitude.
Do not suck blood at home. If you take more than two litres from an adult, they will start to feel dizzy, and no matter how much you take you'll probably be carted off to a looney bin.
Do not pick up drunk, seedy men in bars. This can result in sexual assault and/or emotional trauma.
Most importantly, do not forget to leave donations of food on my front porch with a label reading, "For Amiroq. aka Gypzy, because I love her stories so much." Forgetting this may result in lack of feedback from said author, refusal of archive rights and the silent treatment.


The Ultimate Prey, 1/3


"Wait..." Harry cautioned B'Elanna gently, seeing her tense and begin to stand as the man in front of them began to collect his things. With some subterfuge, they'd taken his very full bag, taken out some money and put in B'Elanna's bracelet, a gift from Harry a week ago, and returned it to his side. It may have been easier to just take it, but the fee for theft here was good, and this way they could get away scot-free. The man stood. "Stop!" Harry cried out. "Thief! That's my bag!"

The man turned as Harry ran up to him. "You're mistaken," he said, forcing civility. "This is *my* bag."

"No way. That is like, everything we *own*. I'm not going to let you just take it."

"Is there a problem, gentlemen?" The commanding voice broke through the gathering crowd, and they parted humbly as the Guard stepped through. Perfect.

"He stole my bag!"

"He's *lying*," the man insisted, the look on his face so stricken and even terrified of the Guard that B'Elanna kind of almost felt sorry for him.

"What is the content?" the Guard asked the man.

"One hundred and ninety gold reysins. I was just going to the bank." There was a slight muttering among the crowd at the huge amount - could one man carry so much with him?

"And you?" He turned to Harry.

"One hundred and *seventy-five* reysins, and a gold bracelet belonging to my fiancee." He glanced at B'Elanna. "It's a family heirloom." The crowd exchanged murmurings of favouritism.

The Guard took the bag from the man and poured the contents into his hand. As he did so, a gold bracelet slipped to the ground, and he picked it up. "Madam, I believe this is yours," he said, handing it to B'Elanna with a slight nod before counting the reysins. "One hundred and seventy-five. I suggest, sir," he gestured toward the man while putting the money back into the bag and giving it to Harry, "that if you do not have the 20 silver resos fine on you you hand it in to the Yainam Centre as soon as possible before you find yourself... incapacitated. In the mean time, sir, madam," he took out the coins from a pouch at his belt, "I am terribly sorry for any inconvinience." He disappeared, the crowd dissippated, and Harry and B'Elanna slipped away, an extra 15 reysins in B'Elanna's pocket as well as the money the Guard had just handed to them.

"A hundred and *ninety*!" she whispered. "We could live on that for... weeks, months."

"I told you he looked rich. Let's go drop this stuff off, then hit the bars. Time to eat, I think."

---

The second nightclub they found looked promising. Near the Red Light Zone, but far enough away to avoid inspections by the Guard, it looked seedy enough to make them inconspicuous; it would be common enough for people to pick each other up in a place like this, and the prospect of making a little money on the side was good, too. They split up with a silent agreement, one heading to the bar, one to the corners. B'Elanna spotted her Prey quickly enough. Sitting alone, half full glass in hand, a little flushed and woozy, by the looks of things he'd probably had a few too many to drink. "You alone?" she asked, sitting down on the next barstool.

"I hope not," he slurred, raking her with his eyes. She fought not to shiver under his gaze.

"Got cash?"

"Dependsh. How mush you want?"

"How much you got?"

"Enuff."

"Well, that's a matter of opinion, isn't it? How about nine in silver?"

"For you, yah." He drew it out sluggishly, much more than the nine she'd asked for, although not enough to fill his wallet. He'd probably come from the bank, or else had just been paid. She reached for it, but he pulled back. "Later, honey."

"Seven now, two later."

"Kay." She pocketed the cash he handed her, knowing she could just take more later. Not that they'd need it, with today's booty, but it was always good to have as much as possible. "Maybe we should head somewhere more private," she whispered, purposely making her voice slightly husky. "You got a place near here?"

"Yah." He stood, draining his glass, and lead her outside.

---

Later, she walked calmly away from his flat, acting as if there wasn't an unconscious man lying on the bed inside, the weight of his money in her pocket and the taste of his blood in her mouth.

---

Back in their room, she found Harry already there, lying stretched out on the king-size bed, looking very pleased with himself. "What?" she asked, taking off her light jacket and stashing some of the cash in their increasing supply, the rest in her wallet.

"You'll never guess what I found out."

"Probably not. What?" The bed was soft, and bounced slightly as she sat on it, then more when he pulled her down on top of him, eliciting a smile from her.

"I found a sort of messege-sending place on the way back, and turns out Voyager just caught up with us. They've given up on getting home and are just exploring now. Tom's got things back into some semblence of normality, and him and Reagen Lang - one of those two who was on guard before the..." he swallowed, then finished, "the mutiny - are going steady now."

She waited until he'd finished before asking, "They're in orbit?"

"Been and gone, apparently. They didn't realise we were here, or they would have stopped by." He steadied her, slipping hands around her waist to rest on her back, and kissed her long and slow. "Tom says hi."

She mumbled something incoherent, re-capturing his lips with her own and working at his collar, trying to focus her motor functions enough to get his shirt undone. This was the sort of thing she enjoyed about being with him; being free to work their own hours and just mess around if they wanted. Living two lives, one as respectable fiancee, one as Night-Stalker, picking up men in seedy bars and sucking them dry of blood and cash. It was the sort of dark existence that had always intrigued her, ever since her father had read her stories of vampires and werewolves as a child.

He flipped her over onto her back and pinned her hands to the bed, running kisses down her neck toward her collarbone. He'd just slipped one hand under her shirt to pull it off when the sound of the window shattering pulled them both back to total awareness of their surroundings. "What the hell was that?" B'Elanna whispered, grabbing the lamp from the bedside table and pulling it out from the socket.

"What's that for?" Harry asked.

"Weapon," she answered, then realised what she was doing and set it down. "Oh." She didn't *need* a weapon.

Harry walked slowly toward the source of the noise, and paused before the doorway, listening. "There's no one there." He went through into the other room, and she followed hesitantly. She was still getting used to the idea that she could hear people breathing from a hundred metres away if she wanted to, or the mechanic hum of a bug that would be silent to human ears.

He was right, there was no one there. But the window facing the countryside that they had admired earlier was broken, and amid the shards of glass on the carpet was a rock that had presumably had a piece of paper tied around it. The paper was now in Harry's hands and he read it with an expression that she now associated with trouble. "What?"

"Kalisha," he said grimly.

---

"I was still young, only about a thousand year old--"

"Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?" They were sitting on a small cliff - actually, it was hardly a cliff, more like a ledge, about a metre high - in the middle of a field from where they could see anyone coming towards them. It had been Harry's idea, of course, although they agreed it wouldn't be much help if a vampire decided to run toward them at full tilt.

He grinned and shook his head slowly. "You don't know how good it is to have someone take you seriously and still tell you when things sound ridiculous. Alright, in vampyr terms I was young. It was 16 AD, I was in Aswan, in what's now Egypt. I was working the feluccas on the Nile when we met, about the only job I could get there, actually, under the name of Rahan. We.. dated for a while. I knew who she was, she knew who I was, or she would have just killed me. Eventually she found out something else. She was my inuktu. I'd been hesitant, I guess, because..." He hesitated, staring at the ground, then continued, "I was in love with her. But when she found out, she disappeared. Left a note saying she knew. I never saw her again. I heard things, though - she got powerful. Really powerful. Some things were probably exaggerated, but I heard she could hide her aura from other vampyrs, make it look red, like Prey, and the vampyrs she created could survive after she died. I didn't hear anything that could explain how she got out here, though."

B'Elanna was silent a moment, then said slowly, "So she's here to kill you, because you didn't kill her in Egypt because you were in love with her."

"It gets worse. She has some of my soil."

"She has your dirt," she repeated. "Okay. This sounds really strange."

"I'm serious, B'Elanna. If I know her, she'll have kept it all this time, and that means she can use it against me."

"How?"

"Well, I don't know, I've never done it. But I know whatever she can do with it, it's not good."

"I would generally say that *any* past lover from two and a half millenia ago who is a vampire and has come from halfway across the galaxy to kill you is not good."

"Well, yeah, generally, but this makes it doubly not good."

"That's not good."

"Exactly."

"So what do we do? How do you kill a vampire anyway?"

"Wooden pointy things usually hurt. I'd normally tell you to steer clear of them, but I suppose these aren't normal circumstances."

"Believe me, these haven't been normal circumstances since before I found out you were a bloodsucking vampire who took people under your power by kissing them."

He started laughing, and after a brief second she joined in, glad to be free of the tension that had surrounded them previously, if only for a few moments.

END PART ONE
2B CONTINUED IN PART TWO