Title: Vampire's Kiss, 2/3
Author: Amiroq. the KiTfox
Email: fitchett@netaccess.co.nz
Size: 21K
Rating: PG
Codes: A, slight V; K/T
Summary: A vampire is aboard Voyager. Appropriate chaos ensues.

See part one for disclaimers

	Vampire's Kiss, 2/?
		c. Amiroq. 1999


He'd known she would be there. Even though, when he'd been 'questioned', he'd been told she'd denounced him, he'd known. After all, they didn't entirely believe the stories about vampires. They didn't *know* that she couldn't leave him, denounce him, or step away from a door if he didn't want her to.

So he knew she'd be there.

"You shouldn't be here," he told her, taking off his uniform jacket, turtleneck - B'Elanna noted with anger that the solitary pip that had been long overdue for a partner was gone - and shoes, and lying down on the bed.

"I don't care." She lay with him, curled up in the warmth of his body heat. She hesitated, then asked, "What did they do?"

"You tell me first."

"Replicator priviliges revoked for two months; confined to quarters, messhall and Engineering for a week starting after my next shift."

"Demoted to crewman, off the senior staff, two weeks solitary confinement in the brig starting tomorrow then two weeks confined to quarters only, replicator priviliges revoked for three months."

She growled quietly. "It's not fair."

"I know. And there's another problem. You know that locket I have? The silver one with the jade symbol?"

"Yeah, the one that meant death and was supposed to ward against it."

"She confiscated it. There's actually two things in it I need - the jade and the soil inside."

"Why?"

"Jade symbolises death, you know that. Because it protects the wearer from death, I can't die, at least from old age, while I have it. After a week without it, though, at this age, I'll die. The soil is from China, and the same goes. I'll get weaker and weaker, as long as I don't have it, until I die."

"And since you'll spend *two* weeks in solitary confinement..."

"I won't. Either I'll die, or she'll take me out."

"Don't you have another?"

"One. But she'll just take that, too. She doesn't understand!" He rolled over partway and held her tight - a little too tight, maybe forgetting his own strength. "Do me a favour. Hold on to it for me, and if you hear word I'm in Sickbay, take it down for me."

"Where is it?"

"In the jewelbox on the mantelpiece."

"I promise."

"Thanks." He let his hold loosen, brushing an imaginary lock of hair from her face, then said quietly, "You should go."

"Yeah." She started to stand then looked at him with a sort of half smile on her face. "See you in two weeks."

***

By the fourth day, things were happening both inside and outside the brig. Inside, the guards had started to notice things. Some things, of course, they attributed to vampirism and a few crossed themselves when they left and entered. Other things went unexplained. Why was he getting so sick? They already knew he should be able to survive the two weeks without blood *easily*, without any side effects. Rumours started. People started saying he was claustrophobic, in a strange vampire way, or maybe he was dying? And that the Captain knew. She knew, and yet she made no effort to move him to sickbay.

When the rumours reached the crew, the second thing happened. Murmurings or discontent sprang up. Seeds of doubt were planted. Some higher officers started to get the cold shoulder - Tuvok, Chakotay, the Captain. Except for the group of colonists who had only known the worse vampires, most of the crew couldn't care less whether Harry was human or not, or what he needed to survive. After five long years on the same ship as him, they had only noticed two deaths, both entirely accidental, which he had paid for dearly already with remorse, written all over his face, according to the various securists assigned to the brig. Was the Captain going to let him die in there?

B'Elanna listened and learned, remembering names and faces of those who were most vehemently on his side, and who gave the most accurate information. Not that she would need accuracy, as it would be all over the ship when - or if - he finally was transferred to sickbay. After her shift, listening to rumours while she worked with micro-spanners and plasma coils, she took the most direct route back to her quarters, the only route she was allowed, and wrote down what she knew.

Early on the sixth day she heard what she'd been waiting for with every cell of her body.

She was stopped halfway to Sickbay. Was she ok? Chakotay asked. She wanted to speak to Harry. *Oh*. He was too sick to see anyone, she was told. She could come back in a few days, maybe.

She folded her arms. "I need to see him *now*."

"Why?"

"Because he'll die otherwise. And because half the crew would mutiny as soon as they heard if he died." That, of course, was a huge understatement. Probably only about ten to fifteen of the crew fell under the 'I hate Harry Kim' category.

Chakotay considered this comment carefully, drawing on his experience with her to try to work out whether she was bluffing. "How could you possibly stop him from dying when the Doctor has no idea how?"

"The *Doctor* doesn't know anything about what's happening. I do."

"Alright. Straight in and out. You aren't supposed to be anywhere near Sickbay."

She shrugged him off and continued, aware but not caring that he was following her. If he wanted to think she was dangerous, let him. It just went to show what a terrific friend he was, after all.

He was in a bad state; that she saw as soon as she walked in the door. He was lying curled up on a biobed in the surgical bay, obviously unable to move, let alone get up and hurt anyone, yet when the Doctor saw her and Chakotay and came out, she saw the flicker of a forcefield, and had to force back a growl. At least he wasn't still in the brig.

As she stood watching, Chakotay said something briefly to the Doctor, and the latter approached her. "I hear you've turned expert on medicine, Lieutenant. Would you care to share this new-found knowledge?"

"I would have cared to share it a while ago, if the *Captain* had thought it prudent to let him come here sooner," she snapped, biting the words and her lip in her anger. She walked a few steps toward the force-field, then stopped. "Let me in."

He looked even worse close up. His skin was the grey of death, pulled taut across his thin face, and she could see pain etched in his expression, contrasting angrily with his comatose appearance. She winced, feeling what she could only describe as an aura of suffering, and slipped the pendant around his neck quickly, needing to get away from him. But at the same time, she knew he must have been in pain at least a hundred times greater than what being near him made her feel, and wanted to stay with him until he woke up. If he woke up.

The decision was made for her by Chakotay, telling her that if she had finished would she care to go back to her quarters, and she told him no she wouldn't, but she'd have to, wouldn't she? and walked out without waiting for him to follow her.

***

A week passed. She heard a lot, working quietly and diligently for once, even though her confinement had passed; that he'd been sent to his quarters, rather than the brig, after he got better and was dismissed from Sickbay; that the Captain was scared of him. Maybe starting to believe, in something if not vampires. What else could explain the way she hid away from the ship, the crew that had supported *him*, and not her and her witch-hunt?

When two weeks had passed since the first day he'd been put in the brig, she went to his quarters. She put up a fight to be allowed in, and eventually the guards decided they may as well let her, and found Harry folding pieces of paper, origami cranes scattered all around him, littering almost every surface in the room. "This is what you've been doing all this time, hey?" she asked quietly when he glanced up.

He laughed bitterly. "Apparantly, if you fold one thousand cranes your wish will come true. What's happening?"

"Most of the crew's on our side. Someone actually told me they'd support me if I was going to mutiny. They all think the Captain's scared of you, and I think I see why. She's hiding away in her quarters or ready room all the time, now, and Ensign Culhane got confined to quarters for a week a few days ago for not following an order."

He frowned, silently finishing his crane - a light blue colour - before answering. "I never wanted this to happen."

"I know. Things were fine *before* all of this."

"People are going to get hurt." He looked up at her with serious eyes. "It doesn't matter what you say, things are going to go too far, someone's going to mutiny, and it's all going to be my fault."

"Don't say that!" She crouched down next to him, slipping her hand over his. "It's not your fault, Starfleet. Don't say it."

"It's true, B'Elanna. If I had never been here, or if I'd been more careful, or if I'd just left the ship or *something*, I'd never have been caught and none of this would have happened. It's *my* fault."

"Harry... when Tuvok was asking me about Murphy, when I said you were asleep... where *were* you, really?"

"Deck eight. You never thought I was asleep until Tuvok asked you. You were looking right at me, remember? It was kind of easy to place the suggestion in your mind that I was in your quarters."

"You rat!" She grinned at him to show she didn't really mean it, then sobered up quickly. "Do you... Is there a way you could make me... like you? A vampire?"

"You're crazy."

She shook her head. "No. No, I've been thinking about it, and... I don't want to live without you. I want to live forever with you, or at least a really long time, and... Hell, I don't know. I just know I *want* this."

"But... *now*? What would you do for blood? Everyone's going to be on guard now."

"You haven't heard the latest. Diosa McCormick was feeling guilty, she's the one that told Mack Daamen, who told Chakotay, and she and Cassie organised some sort of blood pool or something, discreetly so the Captain couldn't interfere, and apparently there's about at least a litre from every crewman on our side."

"How many's that?"

"About ninety, if my sources are right. I think Cassie said there was about a hundred and *thirty* litres in there."

"How did they manage that?"

"Tom helped grudgingly, and the Doctor. It's all in a dis-used storeroom behind Sickbay."

He looked at her seriously. "You've really been thinking seriously about this, haven't you?"

She nodded. "Please?"

He hesitated. "It will hurt. A lot."

"I don't *care*, dammit. Whatever it takes."

Another pause. "See if you can get about a half a litre down here. If you can do that, I'll do it."

She hugged him, getting to her feet. "You're the greatest. I love you."

"Me too," he called as she left.

***

Chakotay strode down the corridor, ignoring the looks from some passing crewmen that almost bordered on insubordination. He was too caught up in his thoughts to worry about that right now, instead wondering what B'Elanna could have been doing in Harry's quarters for the past seventeen hours. He'd always wanted to protect her, like a younger sister, no less now that Harry had pulled her into this... whatever it was. Probably some weird cult. There were no such things as vampires, anyway, not on a Federation starship in the middle of deep space in the year 2375, not on European Earth in the Middle Ages.

Harry was in the process of hanging strings of five paper cranes, all the same colour on each thread, from the roof in a seemingly random pattern when he went in. "Where's B'Elanna?" he asked, noticing the sharp tone in his voice and not particularly caring.

Harry nodded to the bedroom, a piece of thread between his teeth, then took it out and elaborated. "I didn't want to wake her. Tom said she hardly slept at all when I was in the brig." He said it matter-of-factly, as if he was talking about a vacation he'd taken or something.

He looked at her, sound asleep, and sighed. "Tell her to report to me when she wakes up." He walked out without waiting for a response.

As soon as he was gone, Harry put down his cranes and went into the bedroom. B'Elanna stirred at his approach, smiling a little in her sleep. When he caressed her soft skin gently, she woke up, groaned, and buried her head under the pillow. Harry grinned. "Headache?"

She nodded, resurfacing. "It feels like someone's opened my skull with a hacksaw, taken out my brain, played catch with it for a few hours and put it back in."

"Feeling nauseous at all?"

"A little."

"Surprisingly, that's a good sign. Just a moment." He moved out of her field of vision for a moment, then returned with a cup of something, putting it to her lips and tipping it, practically forcing her to drink. From the taste, she realised it was blood. Actually, it tasted pretty good, and soon she was downing it eagerly. #Just don't think about it,# she told herself.

"If you still feel sick in a minute or two, tell me." He settled down next to her, draping one arm across her waist, and she buried her head under his jaw, enjoying the feeling of being protected that his closeness gave her. Pretty soon, her head- and stomach-aches both dissipated, disappearing somewhere in her train of thought, and when she realised she nipped him gently as if to say, 'hey, I'm ok, I love you'.

"Feeling better?"

"Mmmhmm." Her fingers found the collar of his top and fiddled, teasing them both until he pulled away reluctantly.

"Chakotay said to tell you to report to him when you woke up."

"How's he to know? He didn't bug your quarters or anything, did he?"

"No. Well, actually, yeah, but I took care of that."

"How did you know?" She half-sat, leaning on her elbow.

"I heard it. Listen." She did, hardly moving except to breathe, and pretty soon she smiled. 

"I can hear the engines. And the replicator going next door."

"Three doors down, actually. What about Milano and Jackson? Hear what they're saying?"

She listened, trying to pinpoint their voices on the deck below. "Something about the Captain. Doing her *in*? What?"

He nodded. "They've been planning a mutiny, I think. It wasn't too serious before, but... I think you should talk to them."

"I will." She kissed him gently, then pulled back before he could get the chance. "I should go see what Chakotay wants."

---

She returned later, a confusing mess of emotions and noises and smells swimming round inside her. Every sensation, every *thought* seemed to be about ten times stronger now, and she got the feeling Chakotay had gotten rather suspicious each time she'd got distracted by some noise she shouldn't have been able to see, or when she'd seen a Security PADD and had read it from the other side of the room. He hadn't known what she was doing, hadn't even thought it possible, but to all appearances she zoned out on him, and he obviously linked that to what she'd been doing in Harry's quarters... whatever that might have been.

The security guards had changed since she'd left that morning, and she recognised their replacements as Ayala and Gennaro - the latter was for the mutiny, as she recalled, though Ayala seemed to be dubious and had taken no sides, that she'd heard. She nodded briefly as she passed.

Harry had apparently given up on the cranes; although there were still a lot scattered round, he'd managed to get most of them hanging from the roof, which was rather remarkable given how long it had been since he'd started. He was now studying a dagger, wavy-edged and similar to, although quite different to at the same time, Klingon daggers. "What's that?" she asked, sitting down next to him and allowing him to put an arm around her.

"A ritual dagger. It's used for Ultimate Prey, among other things."

"Ultimate Prey?" She smiled a little. "Sounds like something out of a bad horror novel."

He laughed, handing it to her. "No! Ultimate Prey is the person who, basically, is either going to be killed by you, or kill you. It's one of the few parts of our culture still around," she thought she heard a touch of sadness in his voice when he said that, and leaned her head on his shoulder. Consciously, she thought she should probably be upset or repulsed or *something* by the idea, but it just seemed... natural, somehow.

"How do you know who it is?"

"There's a ritual you do. I need a candle. Just a moment." He got up and went into the bedroom for a minute, then returned with a blood-red candle and a Starfleet-issue matchbook. Clearing a space, he sat down and lit the candle. "Sit like this," he instructed, "and look deep into the candleflame. Try not to think about anything else. Just look past the flame. Through it, I mean."

She nodded, slowing her breathing.

"The flame is like a window to the spiritual world. Look through it, and you can see the one the Shikha has chosen for you, your Inuktu. Remember the face you see. Don't ever forget it. Keep it in your mind, heart and soul as long as you live. When you get the chance, let your instincts release themselves and your destiny unfold."

A figure was forming, beginning at the wick and growing larger. Soon she could make out details - a Starfleet uniform, red; dark hair. A tanned face.... An inky tattoo. She stared, shook her head, blinked, and the image was gone. For a moment she thought maybe she'd imagined it. Her Ultimate Prey wasn't, couldn't *be* Chakotay! He'd saved her life more times than she could count. He was her mentor, her brother and father, her friend. Was she supposed to kill him? Or be killed?

"Bad news?" Harry asked softly. She nodded slowly, staring at the now harmless flame that had just sealed her fate. Kill or be killed. Neither choice particularly appealed to her.

END PART TWO
2B CONTINUED IN PART THREE