Stopping in the doorway to the bullpen for Major Crimes, Detective Jim Ellison stared at the small crowd milling around his partner, keeping his face blank with more effort than he should have needed for something he did so often. All of Major Crimes and half of the rest of the force were trying to shake Blair's hand, thumping him on the arm or patting him on the back as they did, their words a peculiar mixture of commiseration and praise. They, like half of Cascade, thanks to an enterprising news camera crew, had watched the department's newest detective single-handedly defuse a case of road rage gone insane.

They had also watched Blair take down a third party, who, until the moment he pulled a gun, no one had known was a threat.

Civilians considered him a hero for his fast thinking under fire. His fellow officers were loudly making it known they appreciated and sympathized with what he had done and what he would go through because of it. The Mayor, damn him, was probably celebrating that one of "his" cops had provided such great press. Only Jim could see that Blair was sick at heart because of what he had done, sick all the way down to the bottom of himself. He had seen it in his partner's haunted expression in the truck on the way back to the station, could smell it contaminating Blair's scent, sharp and oily like fear or hate.

Blair's true feelings were hidden now behind a sheepish grin and the sort of crass clowning men expected from other men in intensely emotional situations. They would stay that way, even if by some miracle Jim suddenly found the words that would help his partner get through his first kill. The awkward silence in the truck had been all he had to give, a chance for Blair to face the death in his own way, away from prying eyes, and to find the strength to cope.

Unfortunately Jim had a fairly good notion of exactly what Blair was going to do to bury his sorrow and grief. As he watched, Brittany Minors, a young brunette detective in robbery, managed to work her way through the press of bodies, smiling slyly and catching Blair's eye with a blatant wiggle of her abundant chest. Suddenly, watching his partner go through his moves with the woman "du jour" was more than Jim could take; he spun on his heel and made for the elevator, moving at a brisk clip that just missed breaking into a run.

Once in the parking garage he bypassed his Ford, giving up speed for the feel of physical movement, as if something primitive and basic within him needed that more than it needed to get away. Jim walked without thought or intent; despite that, he wasn't surprised to eventually find himself at the beach, walking alone in the gray mist swirling through the late afternoon. Without any direction from him, his feet found the way to the rocky point he had found the first time instinct had driven him to find solitude within his territory.

He stood on the low escarpment and watched the waves in their eternal flirtation with the beach, unconsciously following the water's retreat with his eyes until he was out in the depths of the sea, beyond the memory of land. The vagrant thought flitted through his mind to physically follow where vision led; to dive into the ocean and swim straight out until he could swim no more. Knowing better than to listen to that momentary flash of self-destructiveness, fueled by grief and pain, Jim concentrated on his worry for his partner.

The fear he felt was hardly new. Before he'd gone to Simon for help in persuading the powers-that-be into giving Blair a badge and making him an official part of the department, Jim had had to fight long and hard with himself over what the right thing to do was. For the most part, he *hated* the idea of his gentle-hearted, shaman-touched friend facing the soul eroding damage that a cop dealt with on a daily basis. But he honestly couldn't think of another way to keep Blair with him that wouldn't dishonor the sacrifice that he had made for him, or worse yet, undo it completely.

So Jim had done what was necessary, trying to call it a makeshift solution until he could find a real answer to the problem. His only consolation was the eagerness with which Blair had accepted the badge, along with the fact that he was almost eerily good at the job. For the past few months, though, it was as if every horrifying tragedy that could happen had become their personal problem, surrounding them with dark shadows that drowned more and more of the brightness that was Blair. There was no doubt that their caseload was having a bad effect on him: frenetic coupling with everything remotely attractive, male or female, was just one symptom that Jim had seen.

He didn't know what to do about it, any more than he had known what to do in the truck earlier. Didn't know what to say, didn't know how to help, didn't know anything except that giving up and leaving the department would be the worst thing they could do, even if he could convince Blair to do so. That would be an admission of defeat that would destroy both of them; of that one thing, Jim was sure.

The rest of the answers he needed were as far out of his reach as the blue in the slowly clearing sky, or the colors of the sunset beginning to paint the horizon. Probably, if he did find them, they'd be as deceitful as a beautiful sunset, too, which was nice to look at, but caused by the pollution man and nature threw up into the air. The last thought was too cynical even for him, and he snorted in self-derision, shaking his head at himself.

"Ever wonder," a cultured, educated voice said from just below him, "Why they describe something so beautiful in terms of death?"

Startled, but too well trained to do more than turn smoothly on one heel, hand unobtrusively going up to his gun, Jim looked down on the man standing in the sand just under the rocks. He was a testimonial to understated wealth and elegance, from the top of his perfectly coiffed, lightly curly dark hair, to the rolex on his arm, to the five thousand dollar handmade Italian suit that covered a racket ball and golf-trim body. His only saving grace, in Jim's opinion, were the bare feet and rolled-up pant legs, as if he didn't give a shit about appearances or the cost and condition of his clothes, just the simple pleasure of walking barefoot in the sand and surf.

It was an intriguing contrast of values, and perhaps because he was tired of his own useless mental ruts, Jim didn't ignore the man or the comment. Instead he said blandly, "End of the day, instead beginning of the night?"

"Precisely." The unknown man took a few steps closer, shoes swinging loosely from his fingers, dark eyes bright with merriment. "Even in cultures that have reason to welcome the cool of the evening, such as desert nomads, sunset is seen as the closing of something, not the start."

Lightly climbing down from his perch, Jim said, "Could be it's one of those human instincts that the scientists are always looking for. Leftover from when the night meant predators and danger."

"Doesn't hold up," he argued. "The world is as dangerous a place in broad daylight as it is in the dark. Name is Nicholas Elder, by the way."

"Jim Ellison. Wish I could disagree with you on that, but you're right." Jim started back down the beach toward the distant boardwalk, vaguely annoyed when Elder fell in beside him. Stifling it because he *had* returned the conversational gambit, he added, "Maybe because the danger can't be easily seen in the dark."

"Ah, but why should that be associated with death?" Elder riposted quickly. "After all, death can hide in an innocuous looking mushroom, too."

Unintentionally giving the question serious consideration, Jim said, "Because of how the night changes the familiar to the unfamiliar?"

Taking a moment to dig up a shell and look at it carefully, Elder eventually said, "That's probably closer to the truth. Mankind fears the unknown as much as it fears change."

The conversation was so much like ones that he and Blair had regularly that Jim smiled, mind fleeing back to home and his partner. Suddenly he was eager to be there, even if the only comfort he could give was his presence when Blair finally rambled in exhausted from his go-round with the lucky Detective Minor. He said shortly, "Mankind just fears, period."

"Too true, unfortunately," Elder said, apparently not at all put out by Jim's sudden change in attitude. He continued casually strolling along, sharing the same bit of beach as Jim, projecting an air of having done so many times. "Which of course means that some take a perverse delight in the night; facing those fears, perhaps."

"Is that your take on it?" Jim asked, not really caring about the answer, but uncertain how to extricate himself from the conversation. Becoming rude was his usual method, but a small nagging thing deep inside kept him polite, almost against his will.

"Call it the first extreme sport, if you will." Elder chuckled, then added, "And of course, now man is the danger in the night, so the fear has been justified all along."

"I hadn't looked at it that way." Mercifully the lights of the parking lot along the boardwalk were beginning to shine through the twilight, marking the end of their walk. Whatever direction Elder headed, Jim was going to make an excuse to go the other. The slight curiosity and interest that had sparked his willingness to be near him was long gone, and the short hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to lift.

As if sensing he'd overstayed his welcome, Elder gestured toward a limo parked at the edge of the pavement closest to them. "My ride. May I offer you one?" The words were completely innocent, but under them, just barely enough for Jim to be sure it was there, was sexual innuendo.

It gave him the excuse he needed, and he said bluntly. "No, not my style at all."

"Pity," Elder said lightly, only his leer giving away his true intent. "It's a very pleasurable method of transportation."

Not at all sure why he felt compelled to stay with insinuations, Jim said, "So I've heard, and I've nothing against those who prefer it. But I'll stick with my usual."

"Could I at least be given a chance to persuade you otherwise? Dinner and a game? I have tickets for the Jag's expo game next week." The leer was completely gone, leaving behind only the suave, intelligent gentleman who had first approached Jim. "If nothing else, I have been told I'm excellent company."

For some reason that was totally beyond Jim, the offer sounded very compelling: pleasant company, completely divorced from the hell the job had been lately and in surroundings he didn't often have a chance to enjoy. He hesitated in giving an answer, not sure himself whether it would be a yes or a no, and then the evening breeze shifted playfully, with just enough change in direction for the scents Jim had automatically been sorting through to have a different source. In that moment, Elder was upwind of him for the first time since their meeting. Only a lifetime of survival training, and the deeply ingrained teaching Blair had given him, kept Jim from gagging on Elder's foul odor.

Face studiously neutral, not at all impressed by the expensive cologne intended to disguise that awful smell, Jim kicked his brain and instincts into high gear. "My job makes it hard for me to keep much of a social calendar," he said as dispassionately as possible.

"Ah, well mine is fairly flexible, given my position. I'm the C.E.O and owner of Black Gold, the company that just bought out Cyclops oil," Elder said pleasantly.

"Just moved your corporate headquarters to Cascade," Jim acknowledged dryly, not at all impressed by the information.

Obviously aware of that, Elder said cheerfully, the first hint of ire beginning to show through his debonair facade, "It's pretty much a twenty-four/seven job, but I do take a little time off just for myself every now and again. Best way to prevent burnout, so the board doesn't begrudge me my occasional flights into the real world." He lifted his shoes as if to emphasize his down-to-earth proclivities, but when Jim didn't change expression, he covered a frown and said, "Perhaps a rain check on dinner, then, for when you have a free night?"

Steeling himself, Jim met the dark eyes and said with terrifying honesty, "I'm sure we'll be running into each other again, somewhere along the line. We can talk about it then."

"I'm sure we will," Elder agreed, not at all threateningly, but as if he had just accepted a polite challenge from a prospective lover to be seduced. "Until then." He swung away, lifting a hand to get the attention of the limo driver, who sprang to attention as if his very life depended on pleasing his employer.

Believing that to be exactly the case, Jim watched until the limo was out of sight, then sank onto the damp sand, knees too weak to hold him up a moment longer. The rational part of him - his upbringing, years in the military that focused on the reality of here and now - wanted to believe that Elder just was a rich eccentric who had given up soap and water in favor of watching his employees cringe from his horrendous body odor, unable for fear of their jobs to complain. Sentinel perceptions couldn't or wouldn't buy into that; they knew evil when it was literally under his nose.

Once scent had clued him in, the other signs were there for Jim to discern: no sand had clung to the thing's feet as they walked, nor had the waves ever lapped high enough to wet the rolled up trousers. There were many other hints, all equally subtle, and equally easy to dismiss as luck or biased thinking on Jim's part once he started looking for evidence. Added to all that was a simple clarity of knowledge deep in Jim's mind, as if he'd been expecting something like Elder all along, and now that it had happened, there was the same bizarre relief that could be felt when a battle started.

As far as Jim was concerned, what Elder was or wasn't didn't matter. What he needed to know was what it really wanted, and since Jim had a nasty suspicion who that was, how to keep it from getting him. With nothing else to do but wait until Elder made the next move, Jim forced himself to his feet and started the long walk home.

Within a week Elder acted, appearing at the table Jim was sharing with his father and brother in the country club William Ellison belonged to. With no other choice than to pretend he didn't care about the intrusion, Jim introduced Elder to his family, sourly amused that his father was impressed by Jim knowing the so-called magnate. His humor died quickly when William invited Elder to join them for dinner, but Jim revived it by forcing his father and brother to help him cover not eating by using his senses as the excuse.

When Elder repeated the invasion by approaching Jim at another restaurant while with a date, it was harder to hide both his disgust in Elder's company and his refusal to eat in the thing's presence. His date, of course, did her best to monopolize Elder, since a C.E.O. was a much better catch, and that gave Jim an out for being less than polite to both of them. His only consolation was that it seemed Elder had no idea that Jim knew what it was, which meant however powerful the thing was, it couldn't read his mind or accurately anticipate how humans would react to its meddling.

It was an edge against Elder. A thin one, maybe but something he could use, and as it began to insinuate itself more and more frequently into his life, one Jim pinned his hopes on. A few months after the so-called chance meeting at the beach, Elder became active in Cascade politics, which meant that it was often at functions Jim had to attend as p art of the Mayor's security force. It supported the same charities that Jim worked for in his free time, joined his father's country club, and even somehow finagled personal involvement in a high-profile smuggling case Major Crimes was working.

Every time Jim turned around, he was face-to-face with Elder in social or business situations that demanded he be polite, giving the thing every opportunity to press its attentions on him. On the surface, it looked to the few who noticed (Blair, of course, but blessedly he was too preoccupied with his own growing misery to do more than tease Jim) that Elder had a serious romantic interest in him. Jim pretended cordial disinterest, all the while waiting for an opening of any kind that he could use to his own advantage.

Finally Elder made a large donation to the Anthropology fund at Rainier, and Jim knew that he couldn't play the waiting game any longer. So far the thing had avoided spending very much time in Blair's presence, as if it were afraid that Blair could see it for what it really was. But if it began to court Jim through his partner, to arrange for Blair to have what he'd worked so hard for if Jim would only see things Elder's way, there was no way he could believably keep up his pretense of disinterest. The worst part of it was that Jim wasn't sure he had the willpower not to give in if Elder promised to undo the damage Blair had done to himself when he'd called his diss a fake.

Telling himself firmly, uncompromisingly, that sometimes the only way to win the war was to lose a battle, Jim carefully planned his capitulation, hoping that doing so abruptly would add to his one thin edge. He spent a day taking care of personal business, doing nothing that he hadn't done a thousand times before: paying bills, balancing his checkbook, talking to his broker about a few small changes in the modest portfolio he'd built alongside a 401K, picking up his revised last will and testament from his lawyer. Thankfully, he'd asked for the changes to be made months ago and simply hadn't gotten around to stopping by to pick them up. It gave him the perfect opportunity to slip a small hand-written note for Blair into the paper work as he finished his self-appointed tasks.

Seeing that Blair was on his way out the door for yet another date, Jim called out, "Hold up a minute, will you, Chief?"

"Just a minute," Blair said distractedly, taking a jacket off the hook and trying to get it on while simultaneously searching his pants pocket for his keys. "Sam goes ballistic when I'm late."

"Sam again? How many times does this make that you've got back together?" Jim asked, going to stand by him and helping with the coat.

Grinning sheepishly, Blair answered, "I don't know if it could be called 'being together,' but I think this is the fourth time I've talked her into going out with me again after telling me to drop dead."

"Or the equivalent thereof." Jim chuckled, and smoothed Blair's collar down, not letting himself linger, much as he wanted to savor the living heat from him. Taking a step back and carefully putting an amused expression on his face, he offered up the folder of personal papers. "I was just going to ask you to take custody of this for me and put it away."

Glancing perfunctorily through the papers in the files, Blair said, "Sure, no problem. Got the new will back, I see; glad you went ahead and put your dad and brother in it." At Jim's little grunt of irritation, he looked up, smiling cheekily. "Hey, I know they don't need any of it; it's the last thought for them that's the important thing."

"Like I said when you brought it up, I don't think it matters that much to the old man." Jim waved off the explosion of explanation he could see on Blair's lips. "But I did it anyway, because it is a way of letting him know that things were getting better for us, despite everything."

A shadow crossed through Blair's eyes, and Jim could have bitten his tongue at his thoughtless choice of words. Before he could roughly apologize and point out that he didn't mean it the way it sounded, Blair said with forced cheerfulness, "Why do you want me to keep this, anyway? Given that the filing system I use for myself makes finding it problematic for anyone but me."

Expecting the question, Jim said with partial truthfulness, "Same reason I've got yours. Who else is going to be looking for it if something happens to me? Simon? He'd think of it eventually, but then no matter where I put it, he'd have to hunt for it, and good a friend as he is, I don't want to add to his misery of losing a cop under his command."

"Point," Blair agreed. He glanced at his watch and scrambled for the doorknob, file tucked under his arm, clearly thinking he was too late to take the time to backtrack to his room. Just as Jim had planned. "Sam's going to kill me.... I'll put this away when I get back. Later!"

Jim closed the door behind him, listening as he muttered to himself, rehearsing apologies for being late, all the way down the stairs. Then he went to the balcony doors and watched Blair drive away, arms crossed over his chest as if to hold off a chill. When the Volvo's lights became just one more in the string of them moving along the highway, Jim left, taking nothing with him, not even his wallet and badge

The drive to Elder's corporate headquarters was short and went faster than he wanted. Trusting that the entity had been sincere when promising that his name was all it would ever take to get him admitted to its offices, he announced himself to the receptionist on the first floor. She immediately became ultra-solicitious, all but offering to drop to her knees and give him a blow job right then and there. Mere moments later another woman, even more artificially beautiful, rescued Jim from the receptionist and led him to a bank of elevators, opening the doors to one with a pass code.

"This one opens directly into Mr. Elder's office suite," she purred, somehow managing to sound obscene as she did it. "He's waiting for you."

Jim nodded his understanding, stepping back and swallowing against the stink that poured off of her and practically everything else in the building. The ride up was claustrophobic, but was still over too quickly, and he stepped into an office the size of a football field, walled in by glass on three sides. The furnishings were all mahogany and dark leather, with blood-red accessories dotted here and there. All and all, very impressive at first glance, but he hadn't expected anything else.

Elder was lounging on a couch in a conversational grouping close to a long bar on the wall opposite the elevators, flipping through various papers and clearly in a phone meeting with several other people. It smiled brilliantly at Jim, shrugged helplessly and waved at the paperwork, then pointed at the bar, inviting Jim to help himself. Though he had no intention of drinking it, Jim poured himself a scotch on the rocks and wandered to one of the windows, staring out over the city while Elder finished its business.

"See here, Senor Degas," Elder said with forced patience, "Your problems relocating the village population are your own; mine is having that land free and clear for the mining operation when the new techniques are ready for use. It's not as though you don't have a decade or so to make this happen."

"Tradition is a very troublesome obstacle to overcome," Degas said stubbornly, but placatingly. "To them that piece of mud and jungle is sacred, and they won't leave voluntarily. And as fortune would have it, they have the eye of the church on them as well because of it. I do not wish to be in opposition to the clergy; it makes my job that much more difficult."

Jim could see that Elder was losing patience with the problem. Knowing perfectly well what its solution would be, he wandered to the couch, eyes indicating that he wanted a private word. Elder complied, hitting a button on the phone console, and asked with what looked like pleased surprise, "Yes?"

"There's a way to do it that will make your company look good and keep the church off your back, if time isn't an issue," Jim said evenly. "Hire a teacher, a good teacher, and make it his job to educate as many of the local children as he can, all the way to the college level. Provide scholarships, books, whatever it takes. When it comes time to do your mining, only the elders will be left because all the young will be in the cities, part of the working class eager to get ahead. You can probably buy out anyone who tries to stay put by going through their kids and grandkids."

"Excellent idea," Elder approved cheerfully. "Think of all the positive publicity we can spin from the scholarships and school." Hitting the button again, it went back to the phone conference, and Jim wandered back to the window. He didn't bother to listen to Elder outline the plan to its minions; he didn't pat himself on the back for saving lives either. Who was to say that he'd done anything but delay the inevitable, as far as those devout villagers were concerned?

After a few minutes Elder joined him, sipping at its own scotch. "I'd offer you a consulting fee for that timely advice, but I know better than to think you'd take it."

Shrugging, Jim put the glass to his lips, but didn't taste. "Why pay me for a random thought that seemed like a good idea at the time? Someday you can return the favor by offering me some unwanted advice."

"That's usually the best kind, ironically enough," Elder said. It stared out the window with Jim, as if sharing a companionable moment. Then it said slowly, "Is that why the unexpected visit after avoiding one for so long? Because you're in need of objective advice?"

"No," Jim said shortly, then sighed and leaned his head on the glass. "Guess I was looking for a new perspective on this." He gestured vaguely at the city on the other side. "Down there on the streets all you see is the ugliness, the violence. It's predator and prey, and the cops have the thankless job of trying to force civilization on people who have little or no use for it."

Straightening to study the many lights as if they were so many brilliant jewels scattered over a soft black fabric, he added slowly, "There is beauty in it. Art thrives here, along with the people who create it: artists, musicians, dancers. It's just so hard to remember that sometimes."

"I've often wondered if one isn't responsible for the other. The hideous inspires the artist to create the beauty," Elder said thoughtfully. It waited a beat, then said softly, persuasively, "Is there some way I can help you find the beauty, Jim?"

Shaking his head, Jim turned away slightly, hoping against hope that if Elder could pick up on the anxiety eating at his stomach, the thing would attribute it to the natural reaction of a man going against his own nature. "Too late for me," he muttered.

"It's never too late," Elder whispered. "Let me help. Tell me what you need; I can give it to you."

Laughing bitterly, Jim hung his head, afraid to look at Elder, and more afraid that he wouldn't be able to lure it into making the mistake he truly needed from it. "No one can give me what I need; it's impossible."

"Nothing is impossible, really," Elder whispered, inching closer so that it was nearly touching Jim. "Not to the determined, the disciplined. Tell me, James. Tell me what I can give you."

Though everything in him screamed a denial, Jim turned back to Elder so that they were chest-to-chest, his crotch almost but not quite brushing over Elder's. "The kind of money you have brings tremendous power," he said frankly. "I grew up with it; I know what it can accomplish, good and bad. But money can't do everything; all your power isn't equal to what chance and fate can do."

"Maybe not," Elder said silkily. "But it can compensate, find ways around or through what life can throw at you. Maybe I can't cure cancer, but I can provide anything a cancer patient's heart could desire while battling the disease. Not the same as granting a new life, maybe, but it has its compensations."

Jim took a half step forward, as if seduced by the assurance in Elder's words, then he drew back before the thing could wrap its arms around him. "You think you could promise me what I need and make it happen, no matter what I ask for?" he said skeptically.

"I could. I would, if you would give me a promise in return," Elder murmured. "What would you give, James? What price is your heart's desire worth?"

Meeting the empty black of Elder's eyes, Jim said solemnly, "Everything that's mine to give. For my heart's desire."

"Done!" Elder proclaimed, and it brushed a kiss over Jim's mouth. "Everything that's yours to give in exchange for me giving you your heart's desire."

Not returning the kiss, Jim stared at the thing, letting distrust, fear, doubt and disbelief fill his expression. "Just like that, as if you could really make it happen."

"I can, I tell you." Elder ran a possessive hand over Jim's arm. "I swear it, and I am more bound by an oath than you could possibly understand."

Looking away from the compelling gaze, Jim stared out at the city, wishing he could see Blair, wishing he could touch him one more time. Then he said carefully, "Then I swear that I give you everything that is mine to give; in return no evil, nor anything or any person touched by evil, can harm my beloved, Blair Sandburg, for the rest of his natural life." As he spoke, he swiftly closed the tiny space between him and Elder, his mouth touching the foul thing as the last word crossed his lips.

Elder jerked away, the fury on its face enough to make Jim think longingly of his gun. With obvious effort it controlled the anger, a tight smile taking its place. "You knew, then. Very clever, detective. And not unexpected that you would sacrifice yourself for that particular pretty piece of ass." The smile grew nasty, with jagged teeth where perfect ones had been only a moment before. "For all the good it does you." Long, sharp fingers pierced Jim's arms, dragging him close despite his struggles. "Once I've claimed you, you'll do anything I wish, including luring that sweet partner of yours into a bargain with me."

"What makes you think I'll do that just because you own me? Touched by evil, remember?" Jim ground out through a jaw locked tight against pain.

"Oh, he'll do it to save your soul, you see. Just as you did to save his." Pinning Jim against the glass in a parody of a lover's embrace, Elder bit the junction of Jim's neck and shoulder, chuckling as the blood began to flow. Then it stopped, body wooden and unmoving against Jim's. "No," it howled. "NO, NO, NO! You are *mine,* body and soul."

"Body, yes," Jim panted. "Soul? That's Blair's: signed, sealed and delivered just a short while ago. My gift to him, along with my heart, simply because I love him."

Power trickled over Jim's nerves, making him writhe in pain. Snarling, Elder bodily picked him up and threw him through the air. He crashed into the bar face-first, and sat up groggily, wiping the blood away from his mouth. "And if he finds out what I did from you or yours, you'll cause him harm, breaking your own bargain."

With a swipe of a hand that suddenly sported talons like knives, Elder hissed, "He doesn't love you in return. You've sold yourself for a whore who spends himself on anyone who catches his eye, yet you're not good enough for him."

The pain in his face as more blood poured was nothing compared to that truth, but Jim said simply, "No, I'm not, and his generous heart does not make him a whore, just a shaman who doesn't know any other way to heal his own pain. Don't think I don't know the cause of that, either." Summoning a defiant smile, Jim said, "I'm not going to back down on my part of the bargain; might as well get what you can out of it."

Snarling, his transformation to beast complete, Elder snarled, "Oh, I will, you stupid piece of filth. I will." Effortlessly picking Jim up by the collar, he thrust his tongue into Jim's mouth, forcing the first scream from the sentinel in a night filled with them, as the whole world changed around him.

Resisting the urge to lean his forehead into the door of his apartment and fall asleep where he stood, Dr. Blair Sandburg fumbled to fit his key into the lock without dropping any of the burden he carried. Papers, files, laptop, books, and backpack all threatened to flee from the precarious perch of his arms to the relative safety of the floor, and he swore to himself if they did, he'd simply lie down on top of them. As it was, he wasn't so sure that he wasn't going to beat the whole mess to the ground anyway; all he could hope for was that it was on the other side of the door.

A flicker of motion in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and his grip on the key became sure and tight. Keeping his head down as if he hadn't seen it, heart pounding with a heady mixture of anticipation and fear, Blair pretended to still be having trouble getting in, all the while waiting for another glimpse of movement. It came almost immediately, a flash of fluttering black, like the wings of a great bird, or a long, open coat caught in a breeze. Wishing he could scent danger the way an animal - or the sentinels he'd been vainly searching for for so long - did, he sneaked glimpses in all directions, trying to pinpoint the trouble that had brought his mysterious guardian to his side yet again.

Just as the key started to become too slick with sweat to hold onto, a familiar scent of cigars hit him. Blair was grateful that the fall of his curls around his face hid his disappointment from Simon. A split second later the big cop hailed him with a friendly call of his name, and Blair was able to muster a welcoming smile for him. He genuinely liked the captain of Cascade's Major Crimes police unit and had since the day they met, when Blair had inadvertently been drawn into the search for a serial killer named Lash. Simon's gruff and authoritarian ways had made getting to know him a challenge, but he'd never regretted the effort.

"Hey, Simon," he answered, trying to wave without dropping anything.

Catching the laptop before it could fall, Banks said, "My dad would call this a lazy man's load: carrying too much so you don't have to make two trips."

Finally getting the door open, Blair stepped into his studio apartment just in time to let it all slide onto the table he kept by the door for just that purpose. "Grad students at Rainier call it a dead man's stack, because you're too dead tired to go get the rest if you don't bring it all with you at once."

Simon frowned. "You overdoing it again, Blair?"

"Just making like Alice's Red Queen," he muttered nearly to himself. "Running as fast as I can just to stay in place." At his friend's blank look, Blair wearily put a lid on his oddball sense of humor and said louder, "What brings you to the college side of town? I haven't heard any rumors about a new designer drug on campus or any of the other teachers involved in anything shady. What can I help you with?"

"Why can't a man drop in on a friend and offer to take him out to dinner without being accused of having ulterior motives?" Simon said lightly.

Not believing the offhand tone at all, Blair said calmly, "That means this isn't an official visit. What has Daryl gotten himself into this time?" At Simon's pained grimace, he drummed up some enthusiasm, and added, "Not that I'm complaining about a free meal, man. It's just that I'm really, really beat tonight and was planning on crashing as soon as I got my coat off."

Instantly contrite, Banks said, "I did try to call, but you're a hard man to pin down sometimes, and things are about to get seriously busy on my end."

"Between classes and faculty meetings, I don't think I've been near my office all day." Though he looked longingly at the pullout couch that was his bed, still unmade from his dash for work this morning, Blair left his jacket on and ran through a mental list of what he might need to take with him to go out for the evening. Putting his key ring back in his pocket, he turned to Simon. "That special Federal taskforce is taking up residence tomorrow, isn't it? Still no clue what they're here for?"

Taking an abrupt interest in the boxes lining the wall beside him, Banks toed one and said, "You've been home from that expedition in Borneo for nearly a year, and you still haven't unpacked. I thought you signed a teaching contract with the Anthro department that was good for a couple of years."

Blair blinked, then shook his head. With an honest grin making its way through his fatigue, he said, "You do know and have been told to keep it to yourself, especially from part-time civilian consultants. Okay, I can live with that. Sushi or Thai?"

Frowning in mock aggravation, but not enough to hide his relief that Blair wasn't going to make an issue of it, Simon grumped, "What have you got against a good honest steak, anyway?"

"Want that list alphabetically or in order of just how terrible it is?" Blair said, leading the way out of the tiny apartment, spirits and energy lifting at the prospect of an evening of lively debate and good company.

"My ancestors did not fight their way to the top of the food chain just so I could become an herbivore." Simon shut the door behind them, and walked down the hall with Blair, automatically adjusting his steps to accommodate his shorter companion.

Despite himself, Blair peeked back over his shoulder, half-wishing that he would see a man-shaped shadow in some dark corner and not caring at all about the danger that seeing it would herald. Forcing himself to focus on the man by his side, he took up the figurative challenge. "Now, see, that's a common misconception...."

Simon rolled his eyes, then joined in the battle, clearly pleased to be back to their normal give and take. It took no effort to keep it going until they were in the car and well on their way to the restaurant they had finally agreed on as they pulled away from the apartment building. Blair was deep into a run-down of the methods of preservation used on so-called "fresh meat" when Simon's cell phone rang, and he had to hide a grin at his friend's flash of relief at the interruption.

Plugging the phone into the hands-free receptacle on the dash, probably to save himself a lecture on how dangerous using a cell while driving was, Simon barked, "What?"

"Banks, how fast can you get to the bad end of Lafayette Street?"

Snatching the phone out of the cradle, Simon put it to his ear, casting an uneasy glance at his passenger. "Fifteen minutes, max. What have you got for me?"

Looking out the passenger window on the pretense of giving Simon privacy for the conversation, Blair pulled in a long, shaky lung full of air, carefully hiding it from Simon. He had recognized that soft growl of a voice. Though he had only heard his unknown guardian speak a few times, the voice echoed through his dreams constantly and comforted him through the odd nightmare that came from working with the police department. As always it sent a quiver of some un-nameable feeling up his spine and into his brain, leaving him confused and unreasonably heartsick.

Illogically nodding his understanding to whatever had been said on the other end of the line, Banks asked sharply, "Do I need backup?" He nodded again, and said, "You're going to navigate me into position, like before?" Then he added hastily, "No, no, I trust you. It's just hard to go in blind. Where do you want my people and is there any chance we can get this on surveillance equipment? No? Damn. Okay, can you give me the fifteen to get everyone where they need to be? Good. On my way."

Simon hung up and dialed a new number. "Taggart? I need two detectives in an unmarked at the corner of Lafayette and Cedar. Have them stay out of sight but on their toes; something dirty might be going down." He listened again, then said, "No, make it ten. I'll get in touch as soon as I know the details."

He hit the "end" button with more force than strictly necessary, and said apologetically, "I'm going to have to renege on the dinner, Blair. I'm sorry, but the job is twenty-four/seven whether I want it to be or not. There's a really decent sports bar a few blocks from where I need to be, and I think that Jags exhibition game is tonight. You could get a good meal, a couple of beers, and I'll join you when I'm done to catch the final score and pay your tab."

"No need to go to that much trouble," Blair said, amazing himself with how calm he sounded when he thought his heart might explode from his chest. "I can just wait in the car for you while you meet with your snitch."

Abruptly all cop, Banks said, "Not going to happen. What makes you think it was a snitch in the first place?"

"One of your men or an undercover wouldn't have called you 'Banks.' The first would have said 'captain,' and the latter wouldn't have used a name at all. Must be a pretty good tip if you're willing to drop everything to act on it."

Not mollified, Banks said, "Whatever. Look, I don't have time to take you back, so it's the sports bar or getting dumped on a corner to catch a bus. Which is it going to be, Sandburg?"

"Back to my last name - must have hit a nerve," Blair said, making his voice sound cheerful. "Sports bar it is, and I may have a steak just to get your goat."

Stopping at a red light, Simon pinched the bridge of his nose. With an obvious effort, he switched gears from cop to friend. "You would have to be with me when he called," he muttered. "I don't suppose there's any way I can convince you to let this go without satisfying that overly abundant curiosity of yours?"

"No," Blair said unrepentantly. Then, to reassure him, he said, "I know there were times when we first met that you weren't sure of me, but by now you have to know that I understand the need for confidentiality, especially where sources are concerned."

"This goes way beyond protecting a snitch," Simon said, putting the car back in motion. "Calling the man that is practically an insult; same for thinking of him as a run-of-the-mill informant. Don't even have a name for him, but I've always thought he might be ex-CIA because of the quality of his goods and how he handles himself. The information is always one hundred percent, the kind of stuff that saves lives and cops dream of getting. He's never asked for a dime, and I bet I'd be eating my teeth if I offered him money."

"How long has he been working with you?" Blair asked, putting on his best listening face in hopes that Simon would keep talking.

Mind clearly back in the past, Simon said, "From the time I became captain. Took about a year for me to learn to totally trust what he gave me and even longer for him to agree to a face-to-face meet with me. Such as it was. Mostly me talking to shadows or someone standing behind me."

"Why so secretive? Though if he were a rogue agent that could make sense," Blair wondered aloud, truly interested in why the man would take such pains to remain unidentified.

"He won't let conversations get personal, so I can't ask," Banks said, still lost in his memories. "Can't even ask why he picked me to be his contact in the department, though I suspect he helps cops in other ways. For instance, there's been a rash of anonymous 911 calls, all coinciding with busts that are about to go bad, but when I hinted that I thought he was behind it, he stalked off saying he wasn't a damn babysitter for the cops."

Before Blair could choose one of the thousand questions whirling through his mind, Simon slowed the car, peering through the windshield and frowning, the friend subsumed by the police captain again. "Where's that unmarked?" he muttered. He glanced at his watch, his frown deepening. "Said time was an issue."

Reluctantly, Blair let the conversation go, taking his own turn at looking for the unmarked car. He could hear Simon speaking to someone over the cell again, then shrank back into his seat when he punched it off and violently threw it down onto the seat between them. "I can't wait for them to go around a pileup on the freeway. If he wants me there at a certain time, he's got a damn good reason for it. Which just might be because someone will wind up dead if I'm not."

"You can't be thinking of showing on your own," Blair blurted. "That's a good way for you to end up being the corpse."

Obviously thinking furiously, Simon sped up, then came to a stop at the end of the next block over. "Out. If I'm not there by the time the game's over, I'll catch you at your office tomorrow and make up for blowing off dinner."

"No way; I'm not letting you go in alone."

"I said, out."

"I may not be a cop, but I can use a phone as good as the next guy. You park close enough to the meet for me to hear if there's any trouble, and I'll call in a 911 to Taggart for you."

"And if it spills out in your direction, what then, *Dr.* Sandburg? You'll reason the crooks into leaving you alone?"

Simon's sarcastic emphasis on Blair's title was meant to remind him who was trained to deal with gunfire and who wasn't, so Blair answered him in the only way that would convince him that he knew what he was doing. "No, I floor the accelerator, screaming into the phone for help."

Simon snorted. "That won't do you any good against bullets flying all over the damn place. I don't have time for this. Out!"

Playing a dirty card, but absolutely determined not to let Simon go in without at least some support, Blair said, "Unless you manhandle me, I'm not moving. And like you said, you don't have time for that." He fixed Simon with an open, honest stare and added more softly. "What would I tell Daryl if I didn't do everything I could to make sure you didn't get hurt? He's got problems enough right now without losing his father, too."

Cursing nearly inaudibly, Simon swerved back into traffic and gunned the engine to make up for lost minutes. "I swear to God, when I get done tonight, I'm taking you down to the station and arresting you for obstruction of justice. Interfering with an official investigation. Loitering. Something!"

"Hey, how am I supposed to get the steak you promised me if I'm in jail?" Blair protested, trying to inject a note of humor.

"Steak you were promised!" Simon shot him a look of pure ire, and continued to fume silently until they reached the part of Lafayette that no sane person would travel alone after dark.

He pulled into one of the many pools of darkness where a streetlight should be, and turned in his seat to poke a finger in Blair's general direction. "Get down, cell phone out, key in the ignition, doors locked. You see anything, *anything* at all that looks even vaguely threatening, you get your ass gone, understood? No stopping to second-guess, no worrying about my skin. It's my job to take care of that; not yours."

Putting both hands up defensively, Blair said, "Hey, I'm no hero. I just want to make sure that there's another set of eyes and ears keeping track of things. Your backup shows up and I'm outta here."

Softening slightly, Simon said quietly, "See that you do. Daryl doesn't need to lose the only friend he can really talk to, either." Not knowing what to say to that, Blair looked away, then scrunched down low in the seat so that he could barely see out the window. A second later, Simon's phone rang, and he answered it with, "I'm in place. Where to next?" Without looking back, he left the car, listening intently to the directions coming over the cell.

Thoroughly intending to listen to reason and stay put, Blair peered after him, feeling conspicuous despite the cloak of night and shelter of the car. He caught a flash of material moving with the wind, outlining the indistinct shape of a man striding confidently along the edge of the rooftop overlooking the ally where Simon was walking. Forever after Blair would tell himself that it was fear for Simon from an unfriendly that made him slip out the barely opened car door. Only in the deepest part of his mind would he ever confess that it was the need to know if the man on the roof was his guardian that had him creeping uneasily after Simon, clinging to one filthy wall.

A short eternity later, Blair crouched down between two overflowing dumpsters, mildly astonished that he had made it so far through the twisting maze without making enough noise to warn Simon or anybody else he was there. The labyrinth of alleys opened unexpectedly into a small courtyard with many entrances, surprisingly clean for where it was located, and fitfully lit by bright windows several stories up. Simon was nowhere in sight, but there were enough dark corners and debris filled lanes that he could be almost anywhere. Glancing back the way he came, Blair debated a sensible retreat before whatever was going to happen went down, but even as he bit his lip, trying to reason with himself, two cars approached from different directions and a door opened to the courtyard.

Too far away to see faces, Blair did his best to memorize what details he could, though his information was limited to elegant cars, expensive-looking clothes, and a general attitude of "don't fuck with me" from the three men who met in the center of the pool of brightness created by headlights. Three more men appeared, hired muscle at its most obvious. Only after they did a cursory check of the immediate area did the first three begin to speak in earnest, somehow deadly-sounding tones. Wondering who they were and why Simon needed to know they had met, Blair strained to make out any of the conversation, but if he had been close enough to do that, he would have been found when the heavies searched for uninvited guests.

Whatever the topic of discussion was, none of them were happy with how the conversation was going. Gradually their voices became louder, the gestures more violent and aggressive, and Blair began inching out of his hiding place, not wanting to give up his entire life to the Witness Protection program for seeing a major hit. Apparently something or somebody on the other side of the courtyard had the same idea; a stack of decaying cardboard suddenly collapsed in on itself, sending a fleet of cat-sized rats scurrying in all directions.

The muscle men and their charges divided instantly, guns appearing all around as the bodyguards began searching for the cause of the disturbance and the talkers dived back into the relative safety of car and doorway. For a moment Blair was paralyzed with indecision; if he moved, they might see him, but if he stayed put there was a chance they'd find him. Before he could decide between what felt like equal risks, a homeless man staggered out of a cluster of garbage cans deep in one alley, banging them noisily, apparently spooked into running by the bodyguards. Taking advantage of the attention focused on the newcomer, Blair scrambled backwards on his hands and knees, keeping one eye on the action and one on finding a safe path out. There were muffled reports and flashes of light as the hired guns shot at the fleeing vagrant, but he cleared the corner, panic apparently giving him a burst of speed.

Once he was beyond sight of the courtyard, Blair broke into a run himself, not caring if he was spotted as long as he made it to the main street and Simon's car. As he ran he listened for Simon, positive he was good enough cop to take advantage of the distraction Providence had provided, but he couldn't hear any other footfalls besides his own. He took a sharp turn and skidded to a stop, leaned on the wall as he tried to catch his breath, and waited for some sign of Simon, muttering, "Hurry, hurry."

Eventually Blair admitted that Simon hadn't made it out. Taking out his cell, intending to call 911, he glanced around to pinpoint his location and realized that he couldn't. He didn't have a single clue where he was, relative to Lafayette Street or any other landmark he knew. Hesitantly he retraced his steps, peering ahead in hopes of seeing the bodyguards before they saw him, but by the next intersection he had to admit to himself that he wasn't sure which way was back, either.

Clutching his phone like a talisman, he turned in a small circle, looking for anything that he could orient himself by. The high walls of the buildings surrounding him blocked his view in all directions, along with much of the feeble light from the streets. Traffic sounds were distant and distorted, making it impossible to guess which way the main road was, and he tilted back his head, vainly hoping for a glimpse of the night sky with a guiding star or two.

Finally, with no other option available, he simply walked in the direction he was facing; sooner or later it had to come out somewhere. With luck, it would be a place he recognized. Calmer, although only marginally, Blair reconsidered calling in, just to touch base, in case Simon had been able to make contact with Joel or his backup. But what if Simon had to get through while Blair was tying up that line? Besides, he wasn't quite ready to deal with the repercussions of disobeying and leaving the car to start with, since he didn't have a decent reason he could give for doing it.

He'd rather get chewed out in person after his little adventure was all over, he told himself, ignoring the niggle of expectation that his guardian angel would make an appearance. Not that there was any imminent danger to draw his protector; so far the back streets and alleys had been deserted - eerily so. None of the usual denizens of the forgotten and gloomy byways of Cascade were out. He didn't see a single junkie, prostitute, dealer, homeless person, or even just a young couple looking for a relatively deserted place to make out.

About the time that began to seriously spook him, Blair finally came to a huge open space created by the immense pillars of a many-layered interstate overpass towering above him. It was littered with the battered hulks of burned-out cars and decorated with obscene graffiti, but it was beautiful to him. Now he knew exactly where he was and what he had to do to get back to familiar surroundings. Putting the river at his right, all he had to do was walk along the new overpass until he came to the off-ramp that led into the business district and eventually back to Lafayette Street and Simon.

Relieved, his worry for Simon surged to the forefront of his mind. Blair started off at a trot, finally deciding to try to call the department as he did. After three attempts to connect failed, he swore softly under his breath and put away the phone. Picking up his pace, he began to climb the manmade embankment next to the bottom layer of the highway, stumbling once in the soft dirt and weeds. The next time he slipped, he froze in place. His hand had landed in something wet and sticky, and no amount of prayers could convince him that he was lucky enough to have found only a pile of dog shit.

Reluctantly he looked at the dampness on his fingers, recognized it as fresh blood as much from the scent and feel as the sight of it, and scrubbed it away on his jeans. Walking slowly, gaze flickering over the ground and road supports, he found another splat of it on the concrete, and saw again in his mind's eye the homeless man staggering away from the gunfire. Blair had thought none of the bullets had found their mark, but it was possible that last lurch to clear the corner had been caused by a bullet finding its target. If that were the case, the man could need help and be too afraid or mistrusting of the authorities to go to the hospital.

Glancing back over his shoulder to make sure no gunmen were stealthily making their way behind him, Blair followed the blood trail himself, internally debating whether or not it could be the same person. Whoever it was, he was obviously bleeding too badly for Blair not to try to do what he could, despite the circumstances. He made his way carefully, trying to divide his attention between the possibility of hostiles and keeping on track. At one of the intersections between two levels of the overpass, the blood led into the warren of pillars and supports, some still under construction, and he muttered, "Great, trading one maze for another."

Despite that, he gingerly made his way to a large dark stain just under a ledge that led to a culvert for the highway drainage system. It looked as if the injured man had leaned there for a few minutes, gaining strength before climbing into what Blair was willing to bet was his current sleeping place. Levering himself up to the opening, he called out softly, not wanting to frighten the homeless man any more than he already was.

"Hey, in there - are you hurt? I found some blood out here. You need a ride to the hospital or something?" He kept his voice low and coaxing as he inched into the huge drainage pipe, not really expecting an answer of any kind. Surprisingly there was enough headroom in the pipe for a much taller man, and it was completely dry and rat-free. There were more tunnels leading off in several directions, and a trick of construction let in a great deal of light in from both the road above and the city stretching out below it in all directions.

It was a much better squat than Blair had anticipated, furnished with a few milk crates filled with books, and a pallet of blankets that was clean and tidy. Some groceries were on top of the crates; crackers and other foods that didn't need refrigeration. Despite the effort that had gone into making the place as comfortable as possible, he still had the impression that this was only a temporary stopping point for the occupant.

Intrigued, he stepped into the center of the makeshift room, and spotted the injured man lying on his stomach a few feet up one of the drainage tunnels. He went to his knees beside him, fingers automatically going to his throat to check for a pulse. Sighing in relief at the strong, steady beat against his fingertips, Blair felt along his limbs, looking for the bullet wound, hoping against hope that it would be minor, if messy. When that didn't produce results, he swallowed and probed under the long coat covering most of the man's body, finding what could only be a bullet wound in the lower left half of his back.

Blair peeled off his flannel shirt, wadded it up and pressed it hard into the damaged flesh, then slid both hands under the man to roll him over. Weight would help stop the bleeding, as would direct pressure, but he wanted the victim to be able to see who was helping him, too. And that he *was* helping; drunken hysterics wouldn't help staunch the blood flow.

It took a second heave to get the injured man all the way over, and Blair had to revise his opinion of his new acquaintance. He didn't smell booze at all, and the hard, ripped body didn't belong to the sort of person who aimlessly wandered the streets. Then he saw the man's face, all shadows and smudges of pale skin in the half-light, and all the air in his lungs rushed out, aided by the sudden leap of his heart to his throat. In all the times that his unknown protector had rushed to his aid, Blair had only gotten the briefest glimpse of his face once, and that only in profile. But it was him, slowly bleeding out under Blair's hands. He knew it.

Astounded, Blair stared down at his self-appointed guardian angel, who must have chosen to make himself a target to prevent Simon from being found by the henchmen. "My God, my God," he murmured. "My God."

As if in response to his voice, the man stirred painfully, uneasily, and whispered something that Blair wanted to believe was his own name. He bent to listen more closely, and the injured man turned toward him so that his features could be seen clearly. Blair stifled a small gasp of horror; what he had thought were simply shadows were scars. Deep, jagged scars that looked as if a great beast had clawed his protector's countenance with talons of fire or acid. Only the eyelids were completely spared, though the nose had just one twisting line across the side. The lips had been nearly shredded away and were merely twisted lumps of flesh that looked painful even now.

Compelled by an impulse he didn't know how to deny, Blair peeled away the sides of the old, tattered overcoat, and undid the buttons on the shirt underneath. His protector's chest was as badly mauled, the scars somehow looking more obscene because of the toned quality of the muscles underlying them. Marveling that he had been able to keep use of his muscles, let alone maintain them in such a buff condition, Blair touched the edge of one scar gently, tracing it down to where the hellish exit wound was sluggishly pumping blood.

Called back to the problem at hand, he put away the incredible wave of emotion that seeing the old wounds created, and pushed down gently at the waistband of the pants the man was wearing. The edge was at the very lip of the injury, and he undid the button to be able to apply a compress without hindrance. There were no shorts of any kind under the slacks; the zipper slid down from the pressure of Blair's cloth-filled hand under the fabric surrounding it.

What would have been a very tasty male package was teasingly revealed, but any interest that Blair might have felt was killed by the extent of the scarring on the lax penis. It was as if that had been the center of the beast's rage; the entire penis was a mass of ropey scars that radiated in all directions, including down into the crevice between his legs. Blair's dick tried to crawl up into his belly in sympathetic reaction, and he forced his mind back to the injury he was trying to treat.

Trying to judge if he could leave the tunnel long enough to contact Simon, Blair looked up and found himself caught in the vivid blue gaze of his protector. He started to stammer an apology for what had to look like a very compromising situation on the surface, but before he could speak, the injured man snarled furiously, "What in the fuck are you doing here? And how the hell did you get here?"

"Ah, Simon," Blair spluttered. "I was with him when your call came in, but he didn't have backup so I waited in the car until it came, but it didn't and I heard shots and wanted to find him, but I got lost in those back alleys, and then I found blood, and it led me here."

Struggling to sit up, the man muttered, "Damn it, Sandburg, haven't you ever heard of getting away from trouble, not into it? I left that trail on purpose so those thugs would find me and not keep looking for potential witnesses! You have to get out of here, now."

Trying to push him back without causing more harm, Blair said, "Hold on, hold on, you're in no condition to be going a couple of rounds with heavyweights like that."

With a surprisingly strong one-armed shove, the man pushed Blair away and levered himself up into a sitting position, doing up his pants as soon as he was upright. "I'll manage. Run! Take the left hand tunnel to the four way intersection, left again, and it'll bring you out right underneath the Lafayette exit ramp." With a grunt of effort, he stood, leaning heavily on a wall, and made shooing motions. "Go! I'll get in touch as soon as I can to let you know I'm okay."

Even though the man obviously had a serious home turf advantage, not to mention the fact that he wasn't the helpless vagrant the gunmen would be looking for, Blair hesitated, the need to stay with him as powerful as it was senseless. Before he could formulate a reasonable argument, his protector tilted his head as if listening, then swore. "Fuck. No time now; they'll see you. Come on." Without giving Blair a chance to argue, he dragged him toward the brightest end of the tunnel, stopping at the edge of a ledge that overlooked a thirty-foot drop to the river.

Dizzy just from thinking about looking down, Blair said, "No way am I going to jump. No way."

"Not asking you to, Chief," the man said in a startlingly gentle voice. "Just asking you to trust me a little."

Unable and unwilling to do anything else, Blair nodded, and let himself be turned so that his back was to the river and to his protector. A long-fingered hand captured one of his and guided it to the wall next to the drainage tunnel, helping him lock onto a metal step embedded in the concrete. A careful nudge put a foot on another rung, and when all four limbs were securely locked onto the ladder, the man said quietly, "Five steps down, that's all you need to do. Five easy steps down. One...."

Blair blindly took it, then the next four, and the voice above him whispered, "Reach to your left; there's a wide metal beam underneath the overhang of this culvert. Plenty of room for you to hide and no one can see it from either above or below. Even the ladder is invisible unless you know where to look for it. Come on, Chief, you can do it. It's a small half step; come on, that's it."

Even with all the patient coaxing, it took more will than Blair knew he had to follow the softly spoken commands. But he did, and he crouched down in the hidden shelter, pretending that he was secure behind a good railing. More words drifted down to him. "Now stay put, no matter what you hear. I swear, *swear* that I have a plan."

"Not moving," Blair mumbled, head down on his arms so he couldn't see the vastness in front of him. "Definitely not moving."

"Thank you," was the last thing he heard, along with the indistinct shuffling of feet away from his hiding spot.

Within a few minutes, just before a real panic attack could take hold, Blair heard distant voices, rough and cold. Indistinguishable words echoed and boomed. Hunching himself down as small as he could, he listened intently, not sure if he were imagining the injured man's drunken-sounding complaints. "Go 'way, leave me 'lone. Didn't do nuttin'!" There was no doubt about the shouts that suddenly boomed through the night, or the frantic, "No, no, no, didn't do nuttin', didn't do nuttin," that followed them. A second later he heard broken footsteps, then a "There he is!" and a gunshot.

Leaping to his feet, left hand thrown out to find the rungs, Blair didn't have time to consider his promise before his un-named protector swung down to the ledge to join him, throwing something down into the water that landed with a noticeable splash as he did. He pressed Blair into the concrete wall, holding him tightly in place, both of them barely breathing as heavy footfalls thudded overhead. His bodyguard pressed his forehead into the curve of Blair's shoulder, his free hand covering Blair's mouth. A brilliant shaft of light cut through the air mere inches beyond them, piercing all the way to the water below.

The light jerked and shifted several times, and a guttural voice said, "There, see?"

"Floater for sure," another voice agreed coldly. "Don't think we need to worry about it. Didn't have time to stop and chat with anybody on the way."

"Better check for other winos on the way back, just to make sure," the first speaker added, his voice already fading as steps retreated away from the culvert above them.

Knees shaking so badly that he would have fallen if not for the powerful body holding him upright, Blair blinked away the after-glare from the flashlight, suddenly understanding why his protector had shielded his eyes. The hand on his mouth moved away slowly, but Blair couldn't think of a thing to say. More accurately, he realized dizzily that he didn't know which of the seven million questions assaulting his brain to choose first.

Thankfully, his bodyguard had something succinct to say. Pivoting creakily, he peered over the edge and shrugged with a one-handed gesture. "There goes another coat, and, damnit, I hadn't read some of those books yet." He took a cell phone off his belt, flipped it open, and hit a speed dial. A second later, he said, "Missing something?"

Blair could hear Simon's answer clearly over the phone and he did *not* sound happy.

"No, he's safe, or as safe as he can be," his protector said, casting a dryly amused eye over Blair. "No, you better come to us. Get on Interstate 44, westbound heading toward the bay; first emergency call box after the Sorenson exit, pull over into the breakdown lane, get out, and check your car as if it's got some problem you're looking for. We'll slip into the back seat. Last thing we want is for someone to make that you've picked up passengers anywhere near that overpass."

He thumbed the phone off, put it back on his belt, and leaned heavily on the wall, head hanging. Blair moved to get a shoulder under him to help support his weight. For one long, glorious moment the aid was freely accepted, then Blair was kindly pushed away. "We can't go back through the culverts; they might be watching them. We're going to have to climb straight up. Think you can handle it?"

"If I have to," Blair said grimly. "What about you? That's a serious hole in your side, and you've lost a lot of blood."

"I'll make it. Not much choice, is there?" He guided Blair's hand to the first rung, then helped him start the long climb. By the time they reached the top, Simon was in place, pacing up and down in front of his car as if arguing with someone on his phone. The back passenger door was ajar and the two of them crept into the back seat, heads down, slamming the door closed with just enough force to let Simon know they were there.

Moments later Simon threw himself into the driver's seat, but before he could start his tirade, Blair said sharply from where he crouched on the floor, "Hospital, he's hurt."

"No!" the injured man countered instantly, stretching out as best he could on the seat. "Gunshot wounds have to be reported. Just drop me off at the next exit; I've got other places I can go until this heals up enough."

"You need medical care," Blair started to argue.

"I'm trained as a medic; I can take care of it," he insisted.

Simon spoke up, his tone all command and authority. "And if you pass out from blood loss before you can? Or if your wound gets infected? There has to be someone you trust who can look after you for a day or two."

A dull, stubborn silence answered him. Before it could turn belligerent, Blair asked hesitantly, thinking of the comforts Simon's home could provide, "Your place? I'll stay with him."

Simon glanced over his shoulder, his expression one of true regret. "Daryl's staying with me for the next couple of days. I don't want to risk getting him involved in this, no matter how slight the chance is."

"My place then," Blair said.

"Just stop the damned car and let me out," the man gritted out through a clenched jaw, muscle jumping in agitation. "It's not like I can't take care of myself."

"Oh, shut up," Simon said tiredly. "You think I don't know that you drew their fire when I got too eager to get closer and knocked those boxes over? Though I could have sworn I wasn't close enough to bump them." The last was muttered, but then he said, "My mistake; my debt. You couldn't be safer than at Blair's place. Even if they made my car and are checking me out to be on the safe side, they have absolutely no reason to connect him to me being there. I'll make sure you both have what you need for a while."

Whether it was because Simon invoked the age-old male ritual of "owing me" or because he was too hurt and tired to keep fighting, the injured man subsided, throwing his arm over his face. Blair had to hide a small smile; the gesture made him look very much like a sulky five-year-old who needed a nap.

Taking his passenger's acquiescence for granted, Simon pinned Blair with a sharp look, as best he could while driving. "Now you want to tell me why you didn't do what you were supposed to?"

Unwilling to confess the real reason he had left the car, Blair found himself giving Simon the same version of the truth that he had stammered out earlier. "I did try to call in, but couldn't connect." Then, to derail Simon, he asked, "What was it all about, anyway? What went down?"

Simon snorted in amusement and said, "Let's just say that I might have the upper hand on that Federal Taskforce tomorrow morning."

Biting his lip, suddenly unsure that he should keep his presence at the meet secret, Blair made a show of shifting to get comfortable on the unforgiving floor of the car. As he moved, he saw that his guardian angel was watching him intently from under the shelter of his forearm, his blue eyes piercing Blair, giving him the uneasy feeling that his lie was plain to see. Unable to meet that somber regard, he turned to say something, anything to Simon, and was mercifully saved by him asking, "So how are we going to get him into your place without being seen?"

The three of them discussed it for the rest of the trip, turning over several ideas before finally settling on making it look like just another casual visit. It wasn't as if Blair didn't have friends and students over occasionally and one more wouldn't particularly stand out to witnesses. Simon pulled over a short distance away from the building, planning on going around the block several times to give them a chance to get inside. After only a few steps, realizing that a stumbling man would draw too much attention to anyone casually watching, Blair wrapped his arm around the very trim waist and murmured, "Pretend to be a lover; most people automatically look away from a gay couple."

His protector did as asked without question, though he gave a nod that seemed to both approve of the quick thinking and dismiss any problems he might have with being seen as gay. For no good reason Blair found that surprising, but didn't comment; the man was heavy and depending on him for support, apparently much against his will. By the time Blair got him through his front door, his protector was nearly unconscious again and clearly staying on his feet through sheer stubbornness.

Admiring the determination, even while cursing about it, Blair got him down on the couch bed, and peeled up the dirty shirt to look at the wounds, wincing despite his best efforts not to. They were angry and ugly looking in the bright light of his home, and he wondered what the hell he had gotten himself into. He didn't have a clue what to do next.

"They have to be cleaned," his protector said tiredly. "Alcohol or some other disinfectant, hopefully to prevent infection. You'll need sterile pads, large gauze rolls, medical adhesive tape, some swabs to clear out any foreign material."

"Man, I can't even offer you an aspirin for the pain," Blair said.

"Doesn't matter, Chief," he said reassuringly. He tried to smile, but his twisted lips made a mockery of the expression, and he scrubbed at his damaged face in irritation. "Painkillers and I don't get along too well, but I was taught a few tricks by ... a good friend, that'll help. You just do what you need to do."

"Right." Blair stood, taking in a deep breath. "Right, towels first, I guess." He turned to go to the bathroom, stopping on the way to let Simon in. Thankfully, he was carrying a large first aid kit, the kind issued to police squad cars, filled with far more medical supplies than Blair had on hand.

Simon lifted it, mouth opening to say something, but he froze, nearly stumbling at the threshold as he looked over Blair's shoulder and into the room. Back to the other occupant of the room, Blair could indulge in a warning glare at his friend. Almost silently, Simon whispered, "No wonder he hid, even from me. With scars like that, I.D.'ing him would be a piece of cake."

"Don't even think about it," Blair muttered, a fierce protectiveness rising up unexpectedly from deep inside. "Just asking about a man with those kinds of marks could be enough to endanger him. Or do you really think he cares what you think of his looks?"

Clearly startled, Simon hastily said, "Of course not!" Almost irritably he pushed past him and went to the bed, setting the first aid kit on the floor beside it. "What are you doing out in the field with a half-healed wound, anyway?" he said to the injured man. "You should be in bed for another week, at least."

Puzzled by the comment, Blair ducked into his bathroom, grabbed a handful of towels and bottle of alcohol, and hurried back in time to hear his guest say, "You know the way it is on the streets; you're either predator or prey. No way was I going to be the one on the bottom of the food chain."

But the blood was fresh, Blair thought. And I'm no expert, but the wound looked fresh, too. There was no denying, though, that now the raw edges of the injuries looked pink and scabby with new healing. The thought tumbled away, though, as his protector gave a raw gasp, trying to lift himself so that Simon could get his pants out of the way. After that it took all Blair's concentration to follow the directions given to him through clenched teeth, and he couldn't help but be relieved when the man passed out from pain as Simon moved him into a sitting position so that bandages could be wrapped around his middle.

By that time the stink of the blood, antiseptic, and alcohol was turning Blair's stomach. "Good thing we didn't get that call after dinner."

"Which I still owe you," Simon said, doing his best to gently lower their patient back down.

Waving off the notion that it was a debt, Blair said, "Maybe you better tell me what brought you over, though. We might not get a chance to talk personally for a while, and I had the feeling it was a biggie."

Head bent over the medical supplies as he packed them up, Simon admitted, "I wanted you to talk to Daryl about college. He's insisting that he doesn't want to go; wants to try to make it as the bass guitar player in this band he joined a few months ago."

Uncertainly, Blair said, "I'll talk to him, of course, if you want me to. I just don't know what good it would do. If he's not committed to school, he'll just fail. It's a lot of hard work to do if your heart isn't in it."

"I know, I know," Simon said. "It's just that he thinks you're cool, and he's got a lot of respect for you as a teacher. I was hoping that you could at least convince him not to dismiss it out of hand. Maybe do the band thing part time or something. You could point him toward the courses at Rainier that are interesting, with good teachers, so it wouldn't be so much drudgery."

Pulling the top sheet over their patient and tucking it in around wide shoulders, Blair asked doubtfully, "Has he told you why he's not interested in college? And is there any reason why he can't take a year off first? Lots of freshmen take some time to check out what's out there for them before trying to make up their minds what career to study for."

Before Banks could answer, their patient said softly, "Let him try the band idea, Simon. He's eighteen; he just wants to think he's a man, making his own decisions about his life. If the band takes off, then he's got a decent living, for a while anyway. If it doesn't, he's smart enough to eventually see that going back to school is the right thing to do, if you leave the door open enough that he can back down without hurting his pride too much."

Abruptly standing, rolling down the sleeves that he had pushed up out of the way during his attempt at being a nurse, Simon snapped, "What do you know about raising kids?"

"Nothing," their patient admitted, making a small shrugging movement to adjust to some ache. "I just remember eighteen. Don't you?"

Simon didn't answer, but snatched up his coat and stalked to the door. "I'll check in with you tomorrow," he tossed over his shoulder at Blair.

Once he was gone, Blair said hesitantly, "He's a good man. Once he realizes you were right, he'll do the right thing by you."

Reading the expression underneath all the scar tissue was hard, but Blair could swear that his protector was sad - sad to the point where it was nearly grief. Despite that, his tone was bland. "No, he's right; I stepped across the line. I'm not a personal friend, not one of his detectives. All he knows about me is that I'm a reliable informant."

Blair didn't know what to say to that. It was the truth, in so far as he understood how Simon's mind worked. It just seemed very cold, especially considering that taking a bullet to protect him should have placed the man well above the status of an outsider. Not that Simon knows that, of course, but still, Blair thought. His guest didn't seem to think that anything more needed to be said. He cautiously hitched into what seemed to be a more comfortable position, giving every indication of being intent on sleep.

Blair asked uncertainly, "Is there anyone who needs to know you're okay? I could call or get a message to them."

After a pause so long that Blair wondered if he had fallen asleep, the man whispered, "No. No one, Chief."

His breathing changed to the even respirations of someone deeply under, and Blair finally got to his feet, knees creaking a bit from being on the hard floor so long. Deep in thought, trying to make sense of a long, long confusing night, Blair absently cleaned up the dirty towels and rags, left the kit where he could get it tomorrow to change bandages, and went into the kitchen. More from common sense dictating that he eat at least once in eighteen hours than because he was hungry, he put together a sandwich and took it into the bathroom to munch on while he got ready for bed. With luck he'd get five hours solid sleep before the alarm went off for work tomorrow.

It wasn't until he padded barefoot down the short hallway, turning off lights as he went, that it occurred to him that his only bed was occupied, and all the rest of his bedding was in the hamper, waiting for him to remember to do laundry. Not that he hadn't slept on the floor more than a few times in his life, but he was cold, more than tired, and not in the least inclined to waste what rest he could get tossing and turning on a bare wooden floor. Hesitantly he stood at the foot of the mattress, assessing his chances of surviving if he crawled in next to the big man already there.

His protector was on the very edge of the bed, leaving more than enough room for Blair. He also seemed to be out cold, which hopefully meant that it wouldn't cause him any discomfort if someone slept next to him. And, on the surface at least, Blair walking alongside him like a long-time lover hadn't bothered him earlier. Surely he wouldn't get bent out of shape by waking up beside him, as long as it was clear that sleeping was all that had happened. After all, it was Blair's bed.

The last thought was defiant, and holding onto that, he gingerly crawled into bed, wrapping the blanket that had been put aside earlier around him. Being prone was wonderful, the pillow was just right, and there was something very comforting about having that solid body so close to his. Listening to his protector's breathing as if it were a lullaby, Blair slipped into his own rest and dreamed of caring arms sheltering him from unnamed sorrows and dangers.

The unaccustomed sounds of movement in his tiny apartment woke him the next morning from the best sleep he'd had in forever. Blair sat up, groggily rubbing at his eyes. The lights were still off, and the clock said his alarm wasn't due to go off for another fifteen minutes, but if his guest needed something, he should be the one who was up. There was no telling what damage a wounded man could do to himself fumbling around in a strange kitchen just to get a drink of water.

"Hey," Blair said quietly, "Whatever it is, I would have gotten it for you. You need to stay still and heal."

The other man laughed softly. "Much as I appreciate the offer, bed baths have never been one of my favorite things. I had to get the stink of the blood off of me; kept waking me up to look for danger."

"No way should you be getting those bandages wet," Blair blurted, reaching for the lamp beside the couch. He clicked it on, and his guest jerked his head to one side.

"Hey, give some warning next time," he said, trying to bury the irritation in his voice by keeping the words level. "I was going to hustle up some breakfast for you, so you could sleep in a bit. Didn't mean to wake you."

Yawning, Blair mumbled without thinking, "Breakfast sounds good." He glanced back at his protector, intending to tell him what groceries there were, then had to force himself to look away before he could get into serious trouble by howling. The man was standing with his back to him, all lean, long lines of muscle, and wearing only a single towel draped loosely around his hips. From the rear he was a perfect treat, and it had been a long, long time since Blair had indulged in that particular appetite.

Vaguely thinking that he wouldn't want to put on blood-soaked clothes either, Blair scrambled out of bed, keeping his blanket around him. Either the other man didn't notice his haste, or attributed it to morning necessities. Blair made it to the bathroom without making too much of a fool of himself. Once safely on the other side of the door, he gave the erection trying to tunnel its way out of his boxers a whap, and sternly lectured himself on letting his fantasies run wild. Just because the man had inexplicably taken to watching over him years ago, didn't mean that Blair was anybody special to him. From what little he'd seen and learned last night, protecting people was what he did with his life, for whatever reason.

It was just Blair's good luck - or bad, depending on who you asked - that he had a tendency to need a little more protecting than most.

Still, it was good to have a face, a specific person, to attach to the strength that had carried him to the floor, sheltering him from the explosion that had destroyed the warehouse he'd been living in when he'd first started working on his dissertation so many years ago. If he asked right, he might even get a name to go with the man whose gentle hands had freed him from Lash's insane captivity and half a dozen other tight situations during the times he had lived in Cascade.

Promising himself that he would not ask how many others were watched over the same as he was, not even on the pretext of finding out why those particular people, Blair took care of his morning rituals, then dug out some old sweats left behind by some friend at some time or another. They were too big for him, but so old and soft that he wore them in the winter over his other clothes while he studied. Hating to give them up, but figuring they were going to a good cause, Blair went back into the kitchen in time to see his guest scrambling eggs.

Without looking up from the task, he said, "You have one seriously bare cupboard here, but I found some multigrain bread in the freezer, and a jar of salsa in the door of the fridge. Fake huervos rancheros good for you?"

Alert and mind back in thinking, not lusting, order, Blair said sharply. "You should be in bed; I can take care of that."

Then and only then did he realize that there wasn't a trace of the hole that had marred his protector's back the night before. Obviously bracing himself for a reaction, the man turned, showing that the exit wound had healed completely as well, without leaving so much as a dip in the scars covering his abdomen. Far more shocked by that than he had been by the disfiguring, Blair said stupidly, "Oh, that's how you survived being mauled so badly."

The tense line of shoulder relaxed subtly. "Something like that." Eggs done, he scooped them out onto two plates, then turned and put the dishes on the tiny counter that separated the galley kitchen from the living/bed room. He went back to the stove, and picked up the teakettle to pour water for tea.

Sitting for want of anything better to do or say, Blair picked up a fork, noticing distractedly that some of yolks had been left out to give the meal a little less cholesterol. They were cooked just the way he liked them - light and fluffy, no runny white clear hidden in the pale yellow - and he took a bite, chewing without tasting as he tried to decide how to handle this latest revelation. Indicating the clothes he'd put on the other stool, he finally said, "Thought you might appreciate a little protection against cooking splatters."

"Better late than never," his protector said with a slight crook of his mouth that could pass for a smile. He pulled the sweats on quickly, apparently unconcerned about modesty, then sat at the end of the counter and dished some of the salsa onto his eggs.

"Oh, you better watch..." Blair started to say, but before he could finish his sentence, the other man took a bite, and violently spat the food out, choking. "...out for the salsa, it's really spicy," he finished lamely.

Rushing over to the kitchen sink, the man rinsed his mouth out repeatedly, then scrabbled in the freezer. Alarmed, Blair got up to get a glass for the ice. "Water only dilutes it, you know. Bread is better; soaks up the acid."

"Not fast enough," the man mumbled. Blair saw with horror that blisters were rising on the already tortured lips; a flash of tongue as it licked over an ice cube showed more blisters there. Even as he watched, the blisters broke, bled, scabbed, then were gone, like a stop-motion film turning days to seconds.

It was one shock too many, one revelation more than Blair could handle after so many in such a short night. The questions began boiling out of him, one tumbling after the other so fast that he hardly understood his own words as they came. "Do small hurts always heal faster than large ones? How much faster? Does it matter how much skin is involved? Or how deep the wound goes? How many can you handle at a time and still heal at the same speed? Have you always had the ability? Anybody else in your family? Is the pain--"

"Enough!" His protector picked up his dish and scraped the salsa off into the sink, trying to salvage some of the eggs. He didn't look at Blair, but gave him the vast expanse of his back to shield himself from more questions. "I don't know or none of your business or I don't care to any and all of it, Sandburg."

The harshness in the tone jerked the flow of questions to a halt, and Blair covered his lips with the fingers of both hands, astonished at what he'd done. "I didn't mean... that is..." Against his will, his mouth said, "Do you have any idea what studying your gift could do for the understanding of how human bodies repair themselves? The good that could be done by studying why you are the way you are, how you do what you do?"

Eyes uncompromisingly cold, the man took three huge bites of egg, swallowed, and stalked to the couch to retrieve his boots. "So for the good of mankind I should become a guinea pig? Give up my freedom, my life, such as it is, to become a specimen in some hidden laboratory somewhere, examined and probed and treated like an unfeeling thing or a senseless animal, only to have the results of the research classified top secret, for government use only, unless you have enough money to bribe or steal the information?" His voice rose steadily as he jerked on his boots, until the last words were shouted. In the distance a neighbor shouted for quiet, damn it!

Panting harshly, fury clear in a face that could no longer readily show that emotion, he said softly, with a finality that brooked no argument, "I will not ever allow myself to be a specimen again. Not even for you." He stood, leaned in so close that all Blair could see was the painfully vibrant blue of his eyes, and whispered, "I will die first."

Then he was gone, slamming the door behind him, leaving the room feeling oddly empty and cold.

Blair didn't remember getting through that day. He must have eaten the food cooked for him, because the empty, dirty dish was waiting for him when he finally made it home late that night. He must have gone to work, taught his classes, gone to his meetings with faculty and students, done all the things that were expected of him and that he expected from himself. But the only evidence he had of that was the lack of angry messages from the Anthro department head or anyone else, the almost empty gas tank in his car, and the usual stack of papers and files he automatically piled on their proper table.

Sitting on his bed, staring at nothing, all that came to mind from the hours he'd lived through was a single thought that repeated itself over and over. "I didn't even ask his name." He said that out loud, and the hollow echo of the sound in his one-room apartment broke the paralysis that had been holding his brain. "Let alone thank him for saving my scrawny ass last night, and all the other times."

It was good getting that out, too, so he said in self-disgust to purge all the rest of it, "The man took a chance, showed me his face, knowing I could use that as a weapon against him. Hell, he could have left while I was still sleeping and I would never have known his secret, but he didn't try to hide it from me. For whatever reason, he was reaching out, reaching out to me, and in the first ten minutes I opened my mouth and said the one thing guaranteed to send him back into deep cover."

He got up and paced as best he could in the small space and asked himself the question he should have asked as soon as he realized the depth of his stupidity that morning. "How do I make it up to him? Leave town so he doesn't have to watch over me anymore? Do I even know that he will?" He stopped dead in place for a moment, shuddering from the unexpected sense of loss that thought gave him.

"It's not the protection," he muttered, running both hands through his hair and tugging at it in agitation. "It's knowing that there is actually a person in this city who cares what happens to me." He started pacing again. "That sounds so damned self-pitying, but it's not, not really. It's, it's...." Giving up trying to find a name for the emotion that he had felt from the first time his guardian angel used his body to shield him from harm, he asked himself again, "So what are you going to do about the damage you've done? Can't do anything if you don't know where he is. Which means that's the first thing you need to do: find him. How?"

Simon wasn't going to be any help. During the brief call the police captain had been able to squeeze into to his crowded schedule today, he hadn't been particularly surprised that his source had booked at the first chance he had. "Man's hiding from powerful people, is my guess," Simon had said distractedly. "Explains why he's never given me a way to contact him. I can't tell what I don't know, or have it taken from me. Don't worry, Blair, he does know how to take care of himself or he wouldn't have lasted this long."

But Blair was worrying, though not for the reasons Simon assumed. If he couldn't ask for help there, who else might know about a man with a past that let him be privy to the quality of information Major Crimes needed? For that matter, what kind of man would have that knowledge? A former crime syndicate boss might, but that didn't jibe with what Blair had seen personally of his guardian. Healing ability or not, the man hurt like everybody else, and he'd been more than willing to take on some serious pain to cover for Simon. That didn't sound like a cold, heartless, professional criminal.

That left Simon's best guess - former agent of some kind. That would also explain why the man had said he would never be a specimen again. Obviously he had been at some point, and his assessment of what would happen to him sounded suspiciously like a retelling of history, not a paranoid guess at what might be.

Blair didn't have any contacts in any government departments, but he knew who did. And Kelso wouldn't mind using them at all, if Blair could promise that he would be contributing to the general discomfort of the secret agencies that believed they alone knew what was best for Americans. At the very least, Kelso might have a clue who else to ask for help finding his mysterious guardian angel.

Reaching for the phone, Blair glanced at his watch and stopped mid-dial. It was far too late to be calling Kelso at home. Besides, this was one conversation that should probably be a private as possible. Having a plan of action revved Blair up, though, and he cheerfully grabbed a box of crackers and nibbled on them while he sorted through the paperwork he had brought home. No way was he going to be able to sleep, and grading tests would be a good way to spend time until he could get to the university - and to Jack Kelso.

Matching his steps to the speed Jack was able to make in his wheelchair, Blair said, "Thanks for making time for me on such short notice."

"No problem; I know you wouldn't ask unless it was important," Jack said.

"Nearly life and death important," Blair said, hoping he wasn't exaggerating too badly. "Thing is, I can't tell you why I'm asking."

The wheels on the chair stopped for a moment, and Jack slanted a look up at Blair. "More police work?"

Not meeting his eyes, half afraid of what the very perceptive man might see in them, Blair answered, "Not exactly; like I said, I can't really tell you. Please, just trust me that I have a righteous reason."

Nodding to a picnic table that was accessible - and blocked on three sides by trees and other obstacles that would prevent listening devices from homing in on them - Jack held his silence until Blair was seated and their lunches were out. "So talk," he said finally.

Choosing his words very carefully, Blair said, "Have you heard any rumors about an agent, or an ex-agent who might be living in Cascade, but keeping such a low profile that no one even knows what he looks like, let alone if he's really here?"

Surprisingly, Jack grinned and said teasingly, "Ah, you caught wind of our resident 'ghost' and are looking for more material for your work on closed societies."

"One wouldn't make a society," Blair corrected automatically, taking a bite of his sandwich. Then he mumbled, "Ghost?"

Shaking his head, Jack opened a bag of apple chips. "Only you. A ghost is a person that the government doesn't want dead for whatever reason, but doesn't want running loose, either. Say a man knows something they can't afford to let get out, but they can see down the road where he might be useful for something else very important. Trying to keep him imprisoned is risky on a dozen different levels, if for no other reason than an honest person might stumble onto the situation. So they make them vanish another way: they get rid of his life."

Blair swallowed hard. "Get rid of his life?"

"Jobs vanish, bank accounts, credit cards. No driver's license, no fingerprints on record. House suddenly belongs to somebody else, same with the car and everything else. School records are destroyed, service records, police records, all of it. Man's on the street, a nobody, a nothing.

"Officially, the guy doesn't exist anymore, so he has no credibility. He's just another crazy person who slipped through the social services cracks. He tries to change that, get a decent job, start rebuilding his life as somebody else, they just do it to him again. Every time he comes up for air, starts making it, they push him back down again." Looking both disgusted and angry, Jack took a vicious bite of his sandwich and chewed it while Blair stared at him, trying to wrap his mind around what he'd been told.

Finally, Blair said, "They can do that?" Then he answered his own question. "Yeah, with computers they can do that almost without trying. The rest is just judicial bullying and threats, which the government has always been too good at." Losing his appetite, he put down the sandwich. "What a fucking cruel thing to do to a person. What about his friends? His family?"

Shrugging sympathetically, Jack said, "They wouldn't try it with a serious family man, or a person with a very public persona. But for a natural loner or orphan, it's cheaper and easier than trying to keep him prisoner. Let society do it for you."

"That's why you joked that I was professionally curious," Blair mused, eyes on the tabletop. "What a unique position to be in; all societies are closed to you. You're not just marginalized like the homeless or the damaged, but truly outside it all." He met Jack's gaze. "How do they live? Ghost or not, they still have real physical needs - food, shelter."

Finishing off a bite of food, Jack said, "That's their problem. In the case of our supposed Cascade Ghost, I haven't heard anything specific. Hasn't allied himself with the criminals, like some do, to whatever degree the powers that be will let them get away with. I can tell you that there are far more levels to the underbelly of any major city than maybe even you would believe. Definitely more than the average person would know about.

"If you're careful, intelligent, and have a little imagination, there are ways to fit yourself into the seams between the levels. All you really have to do is play to your strengths, your skills. No one can take those away from you, short of destroying your mind." Jack didn't seem to be talking to Blair anymore, but to himself, and he rubbed at a thigh that could no longer feel anything.

To pull him out of black memories, Blair said thoughtfully, "So, if I want to find my ghost, first I think about what I already know about him. From that, I guess where he might be able to make a place for himself in one of those levels. Like, say, I know he's good at fixing cars, I look for him at a repair shop that's maybe on the edge of going bankrupt so the owner's not too picky about who he hires."

With a partial smile, Jack said, "The trick would be learning enough to have something to work from." Then he got very serious again. "Just remember that some very powerful people don't want their ghost found for what they consider to be very good reasons. Be sure that you really need to do this, Blair. You might be endangering yourself and the man you're looking for."

"I'll think hard on it, I promise," Blair said quickly, then he summoned a grin. "But only if you let me have some of those apple chips."

Jack laughed and they turned the conversation to harmless things, a pretense that became real by the time they finished their lunch and went back to their respective offices. Once safely behind a closed door, Blair leaned back in his desk chair and mentally listed what little he did know about his "ghost."

He had to be getting money from somewhere; one of the coats he'd been wearing a few of the times Blair had seen him was made of leather. Not cheap, and neither were books, which the man had mourned losing only because he hadn't read them, not because of the value of them. Whatever his source of income, it wasn't from being an informant. Simon had said as much already.

As pumped up as he was, and as streetwise as he seemed, he might work as a bodyguard or nightclub bouncer or some other security position. But how could he do that and keep his face hidden? If someone with those kinds of scars had any employment at all, it would be noticed sooner or later and Jack would have had more information on him than he had.

Blair sat up straight, excitement buzzing up his spine. "Wait a minute. How is he keeping pumped up like that if he can't keep a place for himself? That takes major work and serious equipment." The beginning of a beautiful idea blossomed in the back of his head, and he dug out his personal address book. He needed to make some calls.

Waiting patiently while all the lights in the gym went off one by one was hard, but Blair managed, though he had to sit on his hands to keep himself from practically exploding with the energy surge that had fueled him all week. It hadn't taken very long for one of his acquaintances from his days of hanging around boxing camps to find a place close to his apartment where a man with a ruined face sometimes filled in as a sparring partner. From there, it was easy to find two or three other gyms relatively nearby that the man went to occasionally, trading labor for the use of the facilities. It had taken every ounce of persuasion Blair had in him, but he had finally talked the owner of this one into letting him stake it out, sort of, in hopes that his sometime janitor/handyman would show before the week Blair had wheedled from him was gone.

Tonight seemed to be his lucky night; the owner had casually mentioned on his way out that he'd seen his helper in the basement working on the hot water heater. Guessing that the man wouldn't come upstairs until the place was empty, Blair hid out in the office where he'd expect someone to be, sitting in a corner where he could see out the glass windows into the gym itself. Soon the place was deserted and filled with shadows, the only light coming from a single lamp in the far corner.

A few minutes later, a lithe form padded sure-footedly past Blair's vantage point, stripping off the outer layer of his clothes as he went. The grace and beauty in that simple action, as much as the anticipation for the coming confrontation, dried out Blair's mouth, replacing the moisture with a bad taste. Despite that, the moment he was sure that his target was occupied with his weight routine, he slipped out of concealment and went to sit on the weight bench beside the one his protector was using.

Regardless of the days he'd had to think about it, he didn't know what he was going to say. A lot depended on how his guardian angel reacted to his presence; at the moment that seemed to consist of ignoring Blair with a single-mindedness that bordered on the psychotic. It was the single hardest defense to overcome, but one he had practice at, though admittedly for far different reasons. Or maybe it wasn't that different from trying to get a woman's romantic attention, he decided abruptly. The trick there was to say the last thing she expected - something honest and personal.

"When I was a kid," Blair said slowly, choosing his words with care because he wasn't trying to elicit pity, but understanding, "I was always the weird little geek that nobody knew what to make of. My mom was into the New Age thing back before it became California mainstream, and here was this short, hyper kid talking about auras and mantras and harmonic vibrations. Add that to the fact that I read everything I could get my hands on, and that I was a walking encyclopedia of stuff that no one had ever heard of, and even my teachers didn't know what to make of half of what came out of my mouth."

The steady, metronome movement of the barbells from chest to air slowed fractionally, and Blair took it as encouragement that he was getting somewhere. Looking down at the floor between his feet, he went on, "I learned way early that people wanted something they could latch onto with both hands; facts backed by figures and reliable authorities, not just speculation and unsupported theories. Always going for the measurable, the quantitative, is a good habit to have for a budding academic, I'll grant you, but it's gotten so ingrained that it's my first reaction to everything now."

He laughed a little at himself, then shrugged. "So when an angel landed in my lap, my first thought was to get a skin sample and measure his wingspan, not to marvel at the gift I'd been given."

Sitting up and shifting to hand-held weights, the other man said sourly, "I'm no angel."

Gingerly touching the place in his side where the gunshot wound had been, Blair said simply, "That was pretty miraculous to me."

The laugh that escaped the man's damaged mouth was harsh, painful and hard to hear. "Nothing miraculous about it. Anything but." Not giving Blair a chance to question that, he asked, clearly changing the subject, "How did you find me?"

Daringly, Blair ran a fingertip over a bulging biceps as it worked to move the weight it carried. "It takes effort to maintain this and I just couldn't see you hanging out at some yuppie fitness center, complete with juice bar. If nothing else, that cut body of yours would scare off all those Joe-atlas wannabes. So I asked around to find the gyms that were doing marginally enough that they wouldn't mind free help in exchange for use of the equipment, and were close enough to my place that you could get there on foot."

Grinning, the other man shifted his position, bending slightly so that he could lift the dumb bells from the shoulder. "Decent piece of detective work, Sandburg."

The praise unexpectedly warmed Blair in places he'd thought long past needing approval, but he said matter-of-factly. "Police work isn't that different from what an anthropologist does. Just our 'crime scenes' are a few thousand years older than a cop's, usually."

"Is that why you work with Simon and Major Crimes?" he asked, his curiosity plain.

"Not exactly but sort of." There was something about his protector that said, "I'm listening," so Blair admitted, "It's because of something a shaman said to me while I was in South America."

For a second the other man went completely still, then he said dispassionately, "South America?"

Puzzled by the subtle change, Blair said, "Yeah, I went to Borneo a couple of years back with Dr. Eli Stoddard to do a study of the indigenous tribal populations." He chuckled a little self-consciously. "Which you probably already know. Anyway, while I was down there a friend of mine who was working at Cyclops Oil got in touch with me. She'd found something hinky in the company's records, and would I check out a certain part of the rain forest in Peru? Janet wasn't the type to worry without a reason, so I did."

For a moment Blair became lost in his own memories, as impressed by the forest and its people now as he was the first day he'd hiked into its depths. "I thought I was going to have to do some fast-talking with the tribal elders to be able to look around for the evidence Janet needed to prove her company was illegally exploiting the area. But the shaman took one look at me, said something to the effect that he'd been expecting me, and that was pretty much that." He grinned, knowing that there was a feral edge to it and not caring at all. "Next thing I knew I was teaching the tribe to be eco-terrorists and pretty damned proud of it."

"Good for you," his companion said, an odd edge to his voice that Blair didn't really hear because he was still in the past.

"I've never been able to decide if I was doing the right thing," Blair admitted distantly. "Part of me is convinced I should have just taken photographs or something, then returned to civilization to tell the proper authorities what was happening. Maybe Janet would still be alive if I had, but they persuaded me to do it their way - it was their home, their territory being destroyed, after all. They said their sentinel was in the homeland of the Great Eye, and he would see justice done."

As always, the thought that he'd come so close to meeting a real, live functioning sentinel sliced at Blair, and he had to beat down the same old dreary frustration before he could say, "Turns out they were right. After a few months official looking people came and arrested the white men and took away their equipment. I have no idea how their sentinel accomplished that; I just wish he'd managed to do it a day or two earlier."

He said the last in a whisper to himself, shook off his grief and mental absorption, and quickly finished his explanation. "At any rate, one night I was trying to explain to the shaman what I did among the white people, and he really didn't understand it very well. Not surprising, considering my Quechua is shaky and his English was shakier, but we were managing to communicate a little anyway. He told me that knowledge for knowledge's sake, just to be passed on to other preservers of knowledge, isn't enough, either for me or the people who could benefit from it. Then he pointed out how much good I was doing by teaching his people how to deal with the 'hard demons' of their enemies."

"Good advice, Chief." This time the strange tones in the man's voice reached Blair, and he studied the too still form, but even as he did, the weights began their slow journey out from his chest and back again.

Nonplused, Blair admitted, "I didn't think so at the time, but when he died, he made me promise to use the contents of my head, not just accumulate more. So when I got back to the states and ran into Simon Banks again because of some trouble I was having with a student, I wangled my way into a consulting position in Major Crimes because of how useful I'd been to him before."

To his surprise, his protector whispered almost inaudibly, head turned so that his features couldn't be seen, "I had hoped...." Louder he said, "You were with Incacha when he died? Will you tell me what happened?"

Caught off-guard by the question, Blair said sadly, honestly, pain as fresh as ever, "We were running from the Cyclops rogues after a raid on their machinery - the last, it turned out - and they fired on us and the other warriors. Incacha was covering the back of one of his men and got hit by one of the bullets. He stumbled into me, and I pulled him into cover while the armed men ran past to chase the others. He died in my arms while I was waiting for his people to double back and show me the way to the village."

His companion turned farther away, all but dropping the dumb bells he'd been working with, putting his face in profile just long enough for Blair to realize he had tears swimming in his eyes. Only then did Blair realize that he had never told him the Chopec shaman's name. With that single bit of evidence, more tumbled through his mind - hearing the gunmen hunting them well before they reached their hiding place, moving around comfortably in total darkness, his violent reaction to the salsa, even the complaint about the scent of blood waking him up.

"You're Enqueri," he accused quietly, surprised at how much hurt and anger was hiding under the softly spoken words. "The sentinel from the Chopec. They didn't send you; you already live here."

"That's the name they gave me when I lived among them, before this," the other man admitted, gesturing vaguely to indicate his scars. "My abilities were dormant until then, and Incacha was my teacher in how to survive them, use them as best I could without a partner to work with me. Then...." He shrugged expressively, apparently unwilling to say more.

Trying to keep the sentinel's reaction to the suggestion of being studied for his rapid healing at the front of his mind, Blair said as levelly as he could, "Did you know what my dissertation was going to be about the first time you met me? When you kept me from blowing up along with that warehouse? Is that why you were keeping an eye on me in the first place? To see how much I knew about your kind and whether I was a danger to you?"

Harsh blue eyes, made all the more powerful because of the wrecked face housing them, turned to meet his, the honesty in them almost painful. "Yes, I knew what your first diss was about before the explosion. No, that's not why I was keeping an eye on you, though I'm not going to say I wasn't relieved when you turned your studies to closed societies."

"Then why?" Blair shouted, grasping after his composure the instant the sound left him.

Giving up all pretense of working out, Enqueri dropped his head into both hands, fingers restlessly digging into his scalp. When he raised his head again, he simply said, "Instinct."

It was the last answer that Blair expected, and he had no idea how to reply to it.

Fortunately the sentinel took his silence as a demand for a better explanation, and he said carefully, obviously choosing his words as precisely as Blair had earlier, "There are people born in this world who are special. Their souls, their minds, their personalities are clearer, brighter than most. In earlier times they would have been our holy men, our shamans. Now, most of them are just doing the best they can to help whoever they can. Like you, Blair; like you."

"I'm special," Blair said in disbelief.

For some reason his comment hurt Enqueri. He looked away, jaw muscle working. "You're a beacon to my senses that I can't ignore," he said softly. "Everything I have in me insists that I watch over you, shelter you from whatever danger I see, even though you're perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. I try hard not to let it interfere with your life."

"A, a beacon? How? I mean, all your senses, or, or...." Blair stuttered to a stop, not sure what he felt, let alone what to ask next. Hands locked onto the bench where he sat, he looked wildly around the gloomy gym, then blurted the first thing that came to mind. "Why not tell me what you were doing? And why? Why make like this, this, this *stalker* lurking on the edges of my life?"

Enqueri flinched as if he had been hit, then said reluctantly, "I carry some serious trouble on my coattails; I didn't want you getting tangled in my problems and dragged down because of me. You deserve to have your own life, not one twisted into something you didn't want and can't fix."

Belatedly, Blair remembered what Jack Kelso had told him about how he thought Cascade's resident "ghost" came to be, and had no choice but to accept Enqueri's reasons. Torn between so many emotions he couldn't name a single one, he stood and jammed his hands into his jacket pocket. "I shouldn't be here then, should I?"

"Probably not," Enqueri agreed, though there was a wealth of regret underneath his words.

Blair turned to leave, then asked without looking, "Are you, uh, going to, uh...."

"If it's okay with you," Enqueri said quickly.

Bitterly, Blair said, "Who am I to argue with instinct?" He walked away without giving the Enqueri a chance to say more.

Blair stumbled through the next few weeks, deliberately burying himself in the normal avalanche of work that came with finals and the end of term. When he allowed himself to think at all, he did his best to keep sentinels, guardian angels, and lost souls pushed as far into the back of his mind as he could. Despite that, at odd moments of the day and night Blair would see the man's ruined face in his mind's eye, and be torn between wanting the asshole arrested for stalking and shuddering from just trying to imagine the hell he must live with.

He couldn't dismiss the simple fact that Enqueri had come clean to him, had taken the chance that he would understand who and what he was, and not judge too harshly. At any point in their brief meetings, the sentinel could have walked away without giving Blair a solitary word of explanation, yet even with all the demons riding him, he had given the answers Blair wanted so badly. As the days slid away in a blur of classes and paperwork, he found himself not only seeing their respective situations from Enqueri's point of view, but worrying about him, almost as if he had appointed himself his keeper.

It was a monumental relief for Blair when his cousin Robert called, asking him as a personal favor to scope out a new poker game that had been set up in Cascade. As favors went, it was one that Blair enjoyed. Not only would his cousin provide the cash to get him into the game, but in exchange for a report of how honestly the game was run and the general skill level of the main players, he'd get to keep any winnings. With that to look forward to, his spirits lifted considerably, and he finished the semester with a burst of enthusiasm that could have come straight from his undergrad days.

At the appointed time, Blair presented himself at the back door of a flower shop, wearing his best nerd-teacher outfit, hair tied back and glasses on, to hopefully present the image of a clueless academic. The guise had worked for him before, since half of poker is bluffing, and the serious players tended to underestimate a man who looked like he had never been off campus before. This time, however, the pose worked too well; the bouncer at the poorly lit doorway didn't believe him when he presented his credentials.

Before the situation could degenerate, an elegant hand landed on Blair's shoulder and Enqueri said, "I'll vouch for him, Gus. I promise you none of the other patrons will regret sitting at a table with him, though their wallets might."

With something distantly resembling a grin, the bouncer stepped aside, nodding at Blair, but he hardly noticed. He looked back over his shoulder, the welcoming smile that had blossomed fading into an open-mouthed stare that would have been rude under any circumstances. His first thought was, "Damn, he cleans up good."

Enqueri was dressed in a charcoal gray suit that was perfectly cut to show off his excellent build, emphasizing his lean height while subtly taking attention away from his ruined face. Not that the possibility of being stared at seemed to bother him; he stood tall, shoulders back military style, almost as if daring someone to comment on his scars. His eyes were laughing, though, and the blue of them warmed Blair, erasing whatever lingering disappointment and anger he'd been harboring.

Smile coming back only slightly dimmed, Blair said, "I can take off if you want me to."

"Your cousin the bookie ask you to scope out the game?" Enqueri asked.

"Yeah, but I can always make it another time; all I've got scheduled for the summer break is working on a couple of papers and trying to get a head start on my lesson plans for summer classes." His smile dimmed a bit more, and Blair said without thinking as Enqueri's question sank in, "Damn, it's weird to have you know so much about me when I don't know a thing about you."

Nodding, Enqueri said sympathetically, "Been there, Chief." Placing a hand in the center of Blair's back, he guided him down the hallway to where the tables had been set up, each lit by only a single lamp hanging over it, looking strange and out of place amidst the many coolers of flowers lining the walls of the huge room. I don't see any reason for you to leave. You're just one more gambler to go through those doors as far as it goes, and since I do this for a living, it's not unusual for me to know some of the people by sight at a game."

"For a living? You use your abilities to win at poker?" Blair couldn't help but ask, ashamed of the hint of accusation in his tone.

Steadily, but not without a snap of answering ire, Enqueri answered, "No, I use them to make sure that no one is cheating. I've got a good rep so the heavies listen to me when I make a charge. The end result is that it's not hard for me to get into just about any game any time, and I'm a good enough player that I win more than I lose. It's not a steady income but it's enough for me to get by on, and I don't get any interference for doing it."

Stopping at an empty chair, Blair turned his back on the room and said softly, apologetically, just to Enqueri, "That's a sucky way to have to get by."

Shrugging, Enqueri headed toward another table where a big man who looked vaguely familiar to Blair was already setting up his chips. "It's like the weather; it just is."

He was quickly absorbed into the play, and Blair yanked his attention back to his own game in time to be dealt the first card. The warmth of Enqueri's touch lingered on the small of his back like a good luck charm, and he let the sensation ride in the back of his mind as he concentrated on his cards. Like most marathon poker sessions, the stakes were penny-ante at first, and the lackluster and tagalong players dropped by the wayside one by one as the night progressed. Blair won consistently, though not big time, and moved from table to table as the number of players was reduced and the stakes were raised. Finally it was down to eight people at one table, including Enqueri and the big, bulky man who had been at his first table, and a small crowd of onlookers.

To his delight, Blair got a lucky streak, with both the cards and his bluffing abilities all going his way. The only one he couldn't face down was Enqueri - the mask of scars did an excellent job of creating the perfect poker face - until Blair guessed that he had learned to count on the fact that most people wouldn't or couldn't look at him directly. Blair made himself not shy away from trying to read his expressions, and it worked well enough that he took him for a sizeable pot on a bluff. Enqueri had a full house and he only had a busted flush.

Then the ante went way, way up, and Blair waffled for a moment, not sure whether or not to stick with the game. It was a point of pride for him to give Robert back all of his stake money, and he had pretty much doubled the cash he'd started with. Then he caught Enqueri's eye and something he saw there had him saying, "One last hand for me; got to get up early tomorrow."

"Aww, come on, you've taken the lion's share of the pots. Give us a chance to get even," another man said. His words were the time-honored challenge that all serious players used to bully a winner into taking the risk of losing his streak, but there was a harsh edge under it that Blair wouldn't have caught if he hadn't been warned.

Pretending unwillingness, Blair said, "Better to get out while you are winning, and I do have to get to bed at a reasonable hour. The dean is hard enough to take on a full night's sleep."

The player, a pimply-faced man who, despite the gray in his hair, looked like an adolescent who hadn't grown into his bones yet, grunted in irritation. "What kind of two-bit player doesn't give a man the opportunity to get some of his own back?"

"A smart one who knows to quit while he's still hot," the elderly man directly across from Blair said.

"Are you going to talk or play?" yet another player asked, and at that the cards were shuffled. Seven Card Draw was the game declared, deuces wild, and every one settled down for some serious betting, the pimple-faced man still looking disgruntled.

Because he was expecting it by then, Blair wasn't surprised when his first two cards were aces. Despite that, as he picked up bills to make his bet, he shuffled the majority of them into a stack that would be easy to grab, and low-balled what he should have bet with the start of such a promising hand. The next card was a three, but before the bets could be laid for that round, Enqueri said loudly enough for the entire room to hear, "Dealer took a seven, man to his right a nine, then a queen, queen, three, deuce, I've got a four, then a nine. The man's stacking the deck, people."

Quick exclamations of agreement and surprise, but before anyone could speak up, Enqueri added, "He's been feeding the prof over there with small wins to keep us from noticing that all the really heavy pots have been going to his buddy with the deuce or to himself. Between them they've gotten ninety percent of the cash, which they've very carefully been putting in their pockets as they win so we won't notice they're raking it in." This time the babble of voices was distinctly angry, and Blair scooped his money up and tucked it away, ready to run the second the anger turned to violence.

Before that could happen, the massive bouncer from the door ghosted into place behind the dealer. His pimpled friend started to bolt, but a gun appeared in the hand of a one of the members of the audience, who grinned savagely and said, "My joint, and you aren't walking away from this with your pockets lined at the expense of my reputation."

Since the game, strictly speaking, wasn't legal, Blair knew that the cheating would be punished with homemade justice, and he braced himself to step in if the owner let it get too rough. But Enqueri put a hand under his elbow and murmured into his ear, "Gus is good at what he does; he won't let it go too far, and you should clear out while the attention is on them. There's always one or two who won't believe that the shill doesn't know what was going down."

That was true, and besides, resisting the invitation to go anywhere with Enqueri just wasn't in him. Blair let himself be hustled out just as a scuffle broke out in the room, causing most of the remaining gamblers to decide they needed to be elsewhere themselves. Enqueri listened, his eyes distracted for a second, and said, "Turns out they had another ringer, probably picked because he was bad enough to get caught, and he got desperate enough to take a swing at Gus. Bad idea."

The door slammed behind them, shutting off the rising racket and covering their retreat, though Blair didn't think anyone had noticed it yet. Still, he didn't have any complaints with the brisk pace Enqueri set, and he indicated the direction toward his car with a half wave and nod. "I got a good enough look at the shark that I can pass it onto Robert; I think he'll recommend his customers to that particular game despite it being crooked tonight. Not the owner's fault."

"Just tell him that the man who runs it was trained by Jesus Jones, and he can check his credentials with him," Enqueri said. "He has a real love of the game and doesn't like 'business connections' trying to take it over - probably one reason he had sharks hit him tonight. Not surprising, given who's in the city right now."

Blair nodded, and stopped by his Volvo, unlocking the door while self-consciously holding a hand on the pocket where all his money was. "Can I give you a ride somewhere, save you some wear and tear on the feet?"

Eyeing the hand on the cash, Enqueri said, "Maybe I'd better stay with you until you can get that in a bank or whatever."

Not ashamed to admit that he was relieved - and not just because of the money - Blair got into his car and started the engine while Enqueri belted himself in. Then he couldn't stand it any more and dug out the wad of bills, quickly separating out the bankroll that Robert had given him. Counting under his breath, he said as the amount began to total up for him, "Next month's rent...new brakes for the car... mom's birthday present...come on, just a tiny bit...yes!!! and groceries for the rest of the month. Yes, yes, yes!" He bounced in his seat, one hand hitting the steering wheel as the other stashed the money back in his pocket.

"Groceries?" Enqueri asked. "You having money problems, Chief?"

Sheepishly, because he'd momentarily forgotten his audience, Blair said, "No more than all new teachers do." He put the car in gear and headed out. "Mind if I stop by the store on the way? The twenty-four hour place on Smith has great buys in their day old and bruised section."

"So how bad are the money problems for a new teacher?" Enqueri pressed patiently.

Waving the concern off, Blair said lightly, "Student loan payments are a bitch. Plus when I got back from Borneo, most everyone I knew had graduated or dropped out or moved on, or whatever, so I didn't have a choice but to rent my own place. Late in the year, too, when all that's left are the expensive ones. I was going to share a house with some people I work with this year, but one of them decided to move in with a girlfriend and the other backed out last minute, so I was stuck with re-signing my lease. Not so bad really; it's close to the U so I walk most of the time and save on gas and the car."

"It can't have helped that you dug in and concentrated on your dissertation when you first got back, too. All the cash you were bringing in was from your teaching fellowship, and I know that's not enough to cover much but the basics," Enqueri said, worry beginning to show.

As dismissively as he could, Blair said, "Dr. Stoddard hinted that having those letters after my name could come in handy in the near future, and I really had more than enough to work from after doing the study with him. What he had in mind didn't pan out, but it did get me a position at Rainier, which wasn't as good, but the timing for it to fall in place for me was nearly perfect."

With what was clearly a major effort on his part, Enqueri shut his mouth over whatever he was thinking, his jaw muscle jumping from the restraint he chained over himself. Oddly, Blair was pleased that the man knew when to draw the line and rein in those instincts when it came to things that were personal. It made the hypocrisy of not hesitating to depend on that self-same protective compulsion when getting a month's salary safely to the bank look a lot more like common sense.

Instead Enqueri asked, "You'd rather be in the field than in the classroom then?"

Blair made a sawing motion with one hand. "That's where the action is, the chance to make a name for myself, get something I can write a best seller about, win the Nobel Prize. Teaching is how I pay the bills until I get the chance to go on the expeditions." At the empty expression suddenly appearing on Enqueri 's face, he added, "Not that I mind teaching. There's a lot of drudgery, but it's seriously cool when you connect with the students, make them see what's special about anthro or archaeology."

"So it's about the money and the fame, then?" Enqueri asked, his voice as empty as his eyes had become.

Blinking, wondering to himself at the change, Blair answered, "Only because that's how our society validates success, man."

"Validation?" Enqueri asked.

This time hearing the disappointment underneath the blandness, Blair admitted softly, "I want to do something important, something that makes a difference for people. Surely you can understand the need for that."

For a moment the silence between them was weighty, painful, and Blair had a moment to worry about what memory he had inadvertently dredged up for his companion when Enqueri sighed nearly silently, then said, "Yeah, I can get behind that, Chief. Guess I forget sometimes there's more than one way to do it. Is that why you were into sentinels at first?"

"Absolutely," Blair said, the old enthusiasm roaring back as if it had never been squelched by practicalities. "Can you imagine the impact it would have on our society for people to know, to have living, breathing, measurable proof that there are men born who are genetically and instinctively designed to protect? That there aren't just sociopaths and psychopaths and those compelled to destroy and kill?"

Without meaning to, Blair kept up his lecture on the social value of sentinels, and the good they could contribute to the world, all the way to the grocery store. Enqueri listened, that tiny twist of a smile in place, which somehow encouraged Blair to simply spill out all the half-formed theories and concepts he'd ever dreamed up during his grad years. Finally he pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine, bending his head a little so that his hair could hide his face, suddenly feeling sheepish. "I guess you would know more about all that than I do."

"Not really," Enqueri said. "I just live, you know? What I did for the Chopec, it was important, good, and I hated to leave them, but I never thought about anything but the obvious. Finding food, protecting them against enemies, helping Incacha with the injured and ill. Here...," He paused, and looked out the car window at the brightly lit store with its abundance of goods. "I'm not even that useful."

"Simon wouldn't say so," Blair argued quietly. "Nor any of the other people you watch over, like you do for me."

With a soft snort of amusement, Enqueri said, "You're the only one I keep tabs on and that's nearly a full time job all by itself." Opening the car door and getting out, he added, "The rest is just being a decent human being. How could I simply forget what I hear or see or whatever and not act on it if someone's going to get hurt? You do the same."

Stopping his "Yeah, but that's different" before it could make him sound stupid, and inexplicably pleased that he had the sole attention of his guardian angel, Blair got out himself and changed the subject by worriedly eyeing the entrance to the grocery store. "You going to be comfortable going in there?" he asked, abruptly realizing that Enqueri might prefer not to be subjected to the unforgiving glare of fluorescent lights.

"Night crews see stranger things than me thirteen times a week," Enqueri chuckled. "Trust me, they'll take this in stride."

"Sounds like you've got some experience," Blair asked curiously.

"Night's easier," Enqueri said, leading the way to the store.

Before Blair could ask him what he meant, the automatic doors in front of them flew open and a young woman with a very small child on her hip tiredly pushed a laden cart out. She glanced up at the two men blocking her path, shrank back and hugged her baby closer to her, then picked up her speed to get by them as fast as possible. Flinching, Blair pinched his lips together, started to apologize for the human race to his companion, and realized that Enqueri hadn't really seen her. His head was turned to one side, eyes watering, hand flung up in a warding-off gesture.

Automatically fitting himself along Enqueri 's side, Blair wrapped his arm around his waist and steadied him until he recovered from the blast of light, sound, and smell that came from the building. Mentally multiplying it a few hundred times to get what the place must be like during the day, Blair said as matter-of-factly as possible, "Easier, yeah, I can see that."

"Could be worse," Enqueri muttered, almost matching Blair's tone. "Could be a mall."

Despite his companion's discomfort, Blair couldn't help a snort of laughter at that. "Or the mall at Christmas time."

Enqueri realistically shuddered, and, apparently having adjusted to the sensory input, pulled away from Blair, though he left an arm looped loosely over his shoulders. "I try to hibernate through most of December," he said, so seriously that Blair knew he wasn't at all.

"Best idea I've heard in a while," Blair said agreeably. He grabbed a shopping cart and pushed it ahead of him, quickly falling into the pattern that he usually used to get to the necessities without being tempted by all the other goodies on the store's many aisles. Surprisingly, Enqueri fell into step with him as if he knew the drill as well as Blair did, their conversation easily slipping into favorite foods and economical menus for the next few weeks. It wasn't until they reached the biggest threat to Blair's budget, the produce section, that he lost his companion's attention, though it took him a few moments to notice because of the stern lecture he was giving himself on what he could have.

When he looked around for Enqueri, he spotted him standing in front of the apples, hand protected from insecticide residue by one of the plastic bags as he picked up and cautiously sniffed at different selections from the many choices. He didn't seem to like Golden Delicious that well, but the Granny Smith warranted two or three more sniffs. Pink Ladies were obviously his favorite, but to Blair's surprise, he didn't pick any of them out, but moved on to the citrus section, not bothering with the baggie as he gently rolled a tangelo over his fingertips, then sniffed it.

Of course, Blair thought, the difficulties a homeless man would have buying or keeping produce flashing through his mind. You don't brave the sensory hassle of a place like this for a day's worth of fruits, or one meal of veggies. You don't go into restaurants because of the same overload, not to mention that it would put off anyone's appetite to have to listen to all the whispered comments about your looks.

Picking up a large orange to take his own sniff, Blair asked curiously, "How do you stay healthy if you're stuck with what you can get in the shelters or soup kitchens?"

"Doesn't seem to be an issue for me the way I am now," Enqueri said, not at all surprised by the question. "But I take vitamins just to make sure. Easy enough to stash them here and there." Putting down the tangelo, he brushed a knuckle over a kiwi, and admitted, "I have to admit I miss home-cooking, sometimes - even my own. Hell, even a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a treat."

Looking over his basket, mentally tallying the cost of it, Blair said as casually as he could, "You could always use my kitchen once in a while, you know, and leave me part of the meal for a payment of a sort. Save me from cooking for myself when I'm running too late to take the time for it. In fact, why don't we get the makings for a chef's salad and have it tonight for a late supper?" Seeing the refusal begin in Enqueri's eyes, he added hastily, "My schedule's too ragged to keep much in the way of fresh stuff around myself; it spoils before I can eat it, usually, unless I buy just enough for the one meal and a lunch the next day."

For a moment, he thought Enqueri was still going to say no, but instead the sentinel said thoughtfully, "The deli is still open. Get one of those rotisserie chickens to put in it, along with some Swiss and cheddar? And I split the cost with you, no arguments, Chief."

"Done," he said promptly, not wanting to let Enqueri use the last comment as an excuse to back out. "Deli cheese is more expensive, though. Better just pick a small block or two out of the dairy section."

"Better to buy what you will use than to let it grow mold because you forgot you had it," Enqueri argued. He grinned as much as his deformed mouth would let him. "Not to mention you get an excuse to try out two or three of the deli selections before buying."

"Point," Blair said happily, and the two of them quickly picked out the makings for the salad, arguing amicably about the ingredients.

Enqueri approved each choice, putting a few back that looked fine to Blair's eyes, but which the sentinel said had already begun to spoil. Blair let him take the lead at the deli counter, too; watching Enqueri sample the cheeses was every bit as sensual as watching him scent the fruit had been. Eyes closed, head back, he let the flavor own him for each small bite, oblivious to the wary regard of the clerk behind the deli case. Stopping at four with an obvious effort, he selected two, asking for an amount that Blair knew was just enough to make one good-sized salad. After that, they picked out a chicken, Enqueri unhesitatingly choosing one that he said would be moist and perfectly cooked.

All in all, shopping with the sentinel was an experience that Blair wouldn't have given up for anything. He was vaguely regretful when it was over and they were loading the grocery bags into the Volvo. Night's not over, he told himself happily as Enqueri folded his long body into the small car. Not by a long shot.

Once they were at his place, Blair bustled around the tiny kitchen, putting groceries away while Enqueri made a start on fixing dinner. He cleaned and chopped, efficiently taking up as small an area as possible, but it was as if the two of them had shared this sort of chore a thousand times before. The sentinel would zig as Blair zagged, neither of them disturbed by the close contact their maneuvering caused. Dinner progressed the same way, both of them sharing the small space at the counter, knocking elbows and bumping knees and using the incidental touches as an excuse to horse around.

In fact, it was so comfortable, so right to Blair that when they finished their meal and were cleaning up after, he gave into impulse and stretched up to lightly kiss Enqueri on the lips as the taller man reached to put the salad bowls back on the top shelf. Telling himself that Enqueri had to know that he was bisexual, Blair intended to keep the caress offhand enough that if Enqueri wasn't interested, he wouldn't have trouble pretending it had been fatigue-inspired silliness. But his lips had other ideas and clung to Enqueri's, not at all bothered by the odd feel of them.

Enqueri went very, very still, not rejecting the intimacy at first, but not responding either. He murmured something soft and needy-sounding that Blair didn't understand and returned the kiss, hands coming to rest on Blair's shoulders, palms cupping them gingerly. Emboldened by that, Blair probed at his upper lip, and Enqueri hesitantly opened to him.

It took all the will power Blair had not to jerk away as the first taste assaulted him, foulness filling his mouth nearly instantly. Astonishingly, it vanished as quickly as it had hit him, leaving behind only a moist, musky flavor that was all healthy male and went straight to his dick. He moaned deep in his throat and leaned into Enqueri, heat steadily building in his middle.

Enqueri pushed him away, gently but irresistibly, until there was an arm's length between them. "I'm straight," he said firmly, not without some regret. Astonished, Blair just stared at him for a moment; a hint of color began to burn across the sentinel's cheeks. "I shouldn't have led you on by not backing off immediately - I'm sorry," he mumbled, looking straight ahead and retreating behind a wall of cold reserve.

Blair started to ask why he hadn't but stopped himself before the words fully formed in his mind. The answer was obvious. Chances were really, really good that the last time Enqueri had been lovingly touched, let alone kissed, was before he'd been mauled. After all that time, he could see where a straight man might at least test the waters with a guy he trusted. Which made the whole thing a major compliment, of the back-handed sort, and he said, "It really felt to me earlier like we were connecting. Want to tell me how I misread that?"

Looking a little relieved, but with more red coloring his face, Enqueri said, "It's the sentinel thing. I get, ah, very hands-on with people I like, who I feel comfortable with."

The scientist in Blair reared its head, but he stubbornly bashed it down in favor of being a friend. "Cultural misunderstanding then. Primitive cultures are more laid back about the touchy-feely thing, compared to American standards, which tend to consider most touches sexual in nature. And it makes sense for a sentinel even more; it's a way of imprinting friends on your senses, marking them as your tribe." Taking a deep breath, he made himself say casually, "You okay with me, then? Not going to go back on the decision to use my kitchen because you're afraid I'll make a move on you or something?"

Though there wasn't the slightest hint of accusation in his tone, Enqueri tensed back up as if there had been. But equally mildly he said, "If you're sure it won't interfere with things around here."

Shaking his head, Blair said, "Like I said, normally I don't get home for more than sleep. Finding a hot meal waiting for me occasionally would be a welcome change."

"Then I'd appreciate the chance to cook once in a while," Enqueri said too politely.

"I'll get you a key to the front door, then," Blair said, not knowing what else he could do to salvage the situation.

He went to the door to get the spare off of a ring that he had in the basket there, and Enqueri followed him, using the momentum as an excuse to get ready to leave. Pausing uncertainly as he opened the door, Enqueri said in what was probably meant to be a reassuring way, "I'll be around, Chief. Can't think of anything that would change that."

Blair couldn't quite resist saying, "Guess those instincts must make you willing to put up with a whole heck of a lot from me." Not giving Enqueri a chance for rebuttal, Blair backed several steps away and firmly shut the door, refusing to admit that painful regret was behind his actions.

Despite the awkward way they parted, Blair actually enjoyed coming home and finding the traces of Enqueri 's presence. At first it was only a pot of stew left simmering in the crock pot, or freshly baked bread lined up on the counter or dinner left in the oven to stay warm. After a few weeks though, he went back to his place earlier than he usually did because he needed to clean up before going out on an impromptu date, and found Enqueri in the middle of making a vegetarian chili that smelled fantastic. Rushed, he darted around showering and changing, stealing tastes all the while, moaning ecstatically and ignoring Enqueri's barely stifled grin at his antics.

It put them back on the easy footing Blair was discovering he craved, and soon it wasn't unusual for the two of them to share a late-night meal. Their conversations ranged wildly from sports, to Oriental Culture, to the mysteries of how women thought, to the cases Blair was helping Simon Banks with. He discovered that his new friend had a wicked, sly sense of humor and was relaxing, undemanding company that he enjoyed no matter how harried his workday had been.

By the middle of summer, Blair desperately needed the respite of those occasional evenings with Enqueri. It seemed as if everything had conspired to make the summer sessions as difficult as possible. At times, he was willing to bet that he had every problem student on campus in his classes, most of them eager and hard-working, but simply having difficulties in their lives that were keeping them from succeeding in school. Not having it in him to ignore those who needed his help, he held special tutoring sessions and arranged for private study groups.

To add to that, like all untenured teachers, he was gang-pressed into service on several committees, all of which ate up inordinate amounts of time while having no noticeable effect on the causes they supported. Not that he expected much from the Campus Anti-Graffiti Methods Study and Research Committee or the Alumna Intramural Sports Events Planning Committee besides meetings and record amounts of hot air. When he tried to bow out, or at least skip a few of the meetings, he ran into a thick wall of disapproval from the head of his department. According to him, Blair was still in the Chancellor's bad book over Brad Ventriss, so he gave in to the inevitable and went.

But he was used to being too busy to think. If pushed, he would even admit that he preferred it. It was simply too hard to face the emptiness in his heart and soul that he couldn't explain or dispel. That didn't stop him from having a momentary flash of resentment and irritation when he caught a glimpse of Enqueri's long coat turning down a dark hallway one evening between meetings.

Despite that, he didn't hesitate to follow the flash of fluttering movement; if the sentinel was on campus it had to mean there was a problem. A moment later, Blair turned a corner, was caught by the elbow and pulled into an empty office. "Trouble? Here?" he asked immediately.

"For Simon," Enqueri whispered. "Call him at his office, now. You won't get an answer, so you're going to call Joel Taggart and tell him that you need to speak to Banks. Don't let him go until you worm out of him somehow that Simon and Daryl had a screaming fight in his office. You need a legitimate reason to go to Simon's house."

Blair took his cell phone off his belt and did as he was told, keeping his voice cheerful through some feat of willpower he hadn't known he was capable of producing. It didn't take any coaxing on his part to get Joel to tell him about the fight, and it was his idea for Blair to check up on Simon to see if there was anything he could do to help.

Taking the phone, Enqueri added something to the back of it, then handed it back to Blair. "Call Simon's house. It won't connect completely now, but the phone records will show that you tried." Not waiting for him to finish following orders, Enqueri tugged Blair toward the door, pausing to listen to make sure the way was clear. Seeing that the sentinel was using his senses to guarantee they weren't seen together, Blair held his tongue until they reached the Volvo.

Once en route, he glanced into the rear view mirror to where Enqueri was crunched down in the back seat, and asked, "How bad is it?"

"As bad as it can get. You know that task force that's been eating up Simon's time? They want his source, bad, and illegally bugged his house and office to get it. When that turned out to be a bust, they deliberately leaked to the people they're chasing that Captain Banks has an inside man in their operation, hoping that the mole would bolt, or at least try to contact him directly."

"Shit." Blair slapped at the steering wheel. "And when that didn't happen because there is no mole, the bad guys decided to take out Banks instead."

"Right in one, Chief," Enqueri said tiredly. "It gets worse. The task force is the one with the inside man. He's been ordered to delay backup to make sure that the men listening on the wire tap don't stop the hit."

"When is it going down?"

Enqueri scrubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Too damned soon. I'm putting two sets of night vision goggles in your backpack. Take it and Simon to the entryway between the house and garage; there's no bug there and none of the other mikes can pick up because of how steep the steps are. Let him know what's happening, and tell him when I blow the lights, the heavies are on their way in. Soon as you talk to him, you get Daryl out of there. If the lights go before you can get that done, you grab the kid, take the other pair of goggles and wait it out in that same entryway. There's at least four ways out of the house from there; someone comes in one, the two of you get out another."

Understanding, Blair said, "You'll be Simon's backup. That's why the dark - so you can't be made."

"I'd give myself up," Enqueri said testily.

"Hey, no way. It doesn't do anybody any good, and Simon would be the first to say so. Especially if there's a leak in the taskforce. Do you know who?"

Relaxing marginally, Enqueri shook his head. "I'm hoping that we'll get a clue or two from the reason why the backup doesn't show."

"Which is why you're not just getting Simon out before trouble can start."

"And because I couldn't think of a way to warn him without getting you involved, which meant it had to look like your visit couldn't even remotely be connected to his source," Enqueri admitted. "Fortunately both your work with Major Crimes and your relationship with Daryl are common knowledge. All I have to do is make sure I'm out, with the goggles, by the time help does get there."

"You're that sure the two of you can handle the attack?" Blair asked doubtfully.

"Those idiots think they're the ones doing the ambushing," Enqueri said calmly, which was more reassuring than if his tone had been filled with confidence. "They won't even worry about the lights going out. I've made sure Simon's had trouble with the electrical system ever since the bugs were put in, and the mole has to know that from the tapes. My tampering will vanish with the goggles, and Simon will 'discover' one of the bugs tonight when he 'fixes' a shorted-out light fixture. I just hope that distracts the Feds from how convenient your timing is."

"Okay, okay." Blair thought furiously, trying to think of things that might go wrong, certain that Enqueri was doing the same thing. That occupied him until they had nearly finished the trip to Simon's house. At Enqueri's instructions, Blair stopped to let him out a quarter of a mile away. Part of him was hoping that neither of the Bankses would be home, but when he pulled into the driveway, the entire building was blazing with light - and noise.

Simon's bellows could be heard clearly by the time Blair made it to the entrance, and Daryl's answering shrieks, though not as understandable, made it plain that the younger Banks wasn't taking his father's anger passively. He hesitated, wondering if a knock would be heard, and noticed that the door was ajar. Knowing that time was a problem, Blair simply shoved through it, letting the wood slam full force into the wall.

"That is enough!" he said sternly, but quietly into the shocked silence. "You're both so angry all you can do is hurt each other. Is that what you want?"

Taking in a deep breath, Simon started to yell his answer, but Blair deliberately walked into his personal space until they were face-to-face. "Do you really want to hurt him?" he said even more softly. "Do you?" The very gentleness of his tone took the wind out of Simon's sails, and before he could redirect his anger, Blair turned his back on him and looked Daryl in the eyes. "And do you? Want to hurt? I know you're mad, but are you really mad enough for that?"

"I don't know," Daryl mumbled, unable to hold Blair's gaze for long. "If I thought it would make him listen, yeah, maybe."

Blair could almost feel Simon shrinking back from that, anger turning into regret and confusion, but he kept his attention on Daryl. "Trust me, pain isn't a good way to communicate." With a careful shove he sent him toward the couch. "Go think. Try to come up with just three short sentences that say everything you need to tell him. No accusations, no 'nevers' and no 'always.'"

"What's he going to be doing?" Daryl said sullenly, but he let Blair maneuver him into sitting.

"Taking a breather in the other room and coming up with his own three sentences. If you don't want to hear them from him, I'll act as go between." Blair's tone didn't brook any argument from either of them, and ignoring the teen's "Yeah, right," snort, he turned on his heel, snagged Simon by the arm and pulled him toward the kitchen. For a split second he had the mental image of being a little tugboat hauling the Queen Mary around, but he squelched it for the matter at hand.

Opening the door to the garage, Blair sat down on the top step, avoiding the umbrellas, coats, and other personal debris that people leave in foyers, and brought Simon down with him almost by pure will. Simon pinched the bridge of his nose under his glasses and said irritably, "Not that I don't appreciate you stopping things from getting out of hand, Sandburg--"

"Shut up," Blair ordered flatly, figuratively standing his ground at the instant fury aimed at him. "I have a message and a package from the gentleman you helped me bandage not that long ago that you have to hear *now.*"

The shift from father to cop looked painful, but Simon managed to nod to indicate that he was listening. Taking the night vision goggles out of his backpack, Blair said hurriedly, "You're bugged by the taskforce to get info on your snitch, but when it didn't work, they deliberately leaked that you had an inside man. Trouble's coming to get you, right now. You're supposed to take these, and I'm supposed to get Daryl out. The bad guys are on their way in when the lights go out, courtesy of our mutual friend. Don't count on backup: the taskforce has a mole."

"Son of a bitch, those damn glory-hunting, ego-ridden, case-stealing...." Simon swore softly, snatching up the goggles. "I told them, I *told* them that I didn't have anything on the man to protect both of us. Who?"

"Don't know yet," Blair said. "One of the reasons it has to go down like this is to find out."

"Then get going, now, Sandburg," Simon snapped. He stood, putting the goggles behind his back, and walked back into the living rooms, saying for their audience, "Look, I'm just too pissed, okay? Let me cool off, then I'll give you those three sentences." He looked at Daryl, who was carefully not looking at him, the father warring with the cop again, but he stayed with the program and added gruffly, "Why don't the two of you go get some pizza or something? We'll do it when you get back."

Daryl looked relieved by the excuse to bolt, and stood eagerly, hurrying toward the door. Simon moved to intercept, catching and holding him tightly in a one-armed hug for a second. "Remember what your mother always says about not walking out the door mad."

"Hard to do, sometimes," Daryl muttered, but he hugged back, more of his anger fading.

Simon started to say something else, but the lights flickered, then went out, and he said dully, fear and anger there only for those who knew him, "Shit. Kitchen, now, Sandburg."

Blair hadn't waited to be told. He grabbed Daryl by the upper arm and pulled him toward the garage entryway, trying to fumble out the night vision goggles one-handed. Fighting the hold on him, Daryl made Blair drop everything but the goggles, and nearly got away before Blair jerked them both down into a crouch in the middle of the steps. "What the hell is going on?" he snarled, surrendering only because he was too much of a cop's son not to know when the other person was deadly serious.

"I've worked with your dad enough to know that when he uses that tone of voice, you don't argue," Blair said, not really explaining and hoping Daryl wouldn't press. He slipped his cell phone off his belt, handed it to Daryl and said, "Dial 911, then call Major Crimes for backup."

Before Daryl had a chance react to the order, the front door crashed open and Simon barked out, "Cascade PD, freeze!!!"

Gunfire answered him, and Blair clumsily got the goggles into place, practically sitting on Daryl to keep him from running to his father, though he was doing as told and using the phone. There wasn't much for him to see in the eerie green view the lenses gave him; hearing was far more useful for the moment. He couldn't be sure, but it sounded as if there were at least three intruders, and they were all in the living room and dining room at the front of the house. They were cursing to themselves and calling out to each other as they spread out to try to pin Simon among them.

The shots stopped and Blair recognized the dull thuds and crunches of a physical struggle taking place. Then came the unmistakable thump of a human body hitting the floor hard, and that was more than Daryl could take. With a burst of fear-inspired strength, he snatched a golf club from the bag tucked in the corner and broke away from Blair. Grabbing one for himself, Blair took off after him, already half a step behind. His foot caught on the top stair, and he stumbled just enough for Daryl to be able to get through the living room door well ahead of him.

When he cleared the threshold, he saw Daryl bringing up his improvised weapon to swing at Enqueri's unprotected head as the sentinel struggled with a large black man whom Daryl had obviously mistaken for his father in the darkness. Without thinking, Blair caught the club as it came back. When Daryl tried to follow through with his blow, it yanked Blair off-balance, throwing him into the couch. He hit the back of it with a solid thud and toppled over, head first. There was time for a bare glimpse of Enqueri tossing Daryl toward his father before the solid wood of the coffee table smashed into Blair's temple, sending him into unconsciousness.

Opening his eyes to total darkness and not a small amount of pain an indeterminable time later, Blair stiffened in the arms around him, already sure that it was Enqueri holding him, but not knowing whether or not they were safe. With his lips just at Blair's ear, the sentinel was wretchedly whispering something that oddly sounded like, "Friendly fire, damn it, why didn't I think of that?" Realizing Blair was awake, his voice changed entirely to something soft and soothing. "Shhh, Chief, shhh. Bad guys are down for the count, and Daryl hasn't realized that I'm in the house."

Nodding his understanding, Blair asked so quietly he wasn't sure he actually made a sound, "You okay?"

"Thanks to you, and so is Simon. Have to tell you though that Daryl thinks that the two of you brought me down, saving his Dad. He landed pretty hard when I tossed him, and got the air knocked out of him. Gave me a chance to help Simon finish up, then get you back here. He thinks you're the one covering the back door; doesn't know you got knocked out."

"We're waiting for backup?" Blair whispered, worried that the lights were still out.

"And to see if the heavies had any."

Gulping down a fresh wave of fear, Blair tried to peer into the deep shadows of the kitchen, but Enqueri ran a calming hand down his back, massaging gently. "Shhh, take it easy. I'll let you know when and if more trouble gets here. How're you doing? I don't think you've got a concussion, but you've got to have one heck of a headache. Dizzy? Nauseous?"

Gratefully sagging into the solid chest under his cheek, Blair ran a quick inventory on himself, obscurely comforted when he realized that he was literally sitting in Enqueri's lap, head on his shoulder. "No and no, but you're right about the headache. Ow, ow, ow." He carefully took a deep breath, relieved when the dull throb across his lower chest increased only enough to make him sure that he'd be sore tomorrow.

Silent laughter rumbled through the muscles around him, making him smile despite it all. "Next time," Enqueri advised, "Don't go charging into trouble with only a five iron for defense. I would have used a wedge, myself." As he spoke, clever fingers found a knot at the base of Blair's neck and worked on it, easing the headache and somehow making breathing easier.

Eyes adjusting to the dim light coming through the windows from the street outside, Blair made out Enqueri's features, the scarring barely discernable in the gloom. Despite his joking, casual manner, he was at full alert, eyes half-closed in concentration as he scanned through his senses for signs of danger. There were lines of pain etched around the corners of his mouth and digging into his brow, telling Blair he had a problem at the moment.

Uncertain if questions in that area would be welcome, let alone answered, Blailr asked, hoping to be able to find an oblique approach, "Any clues who the leak is?"

"A few ideas, but he used a fairly non-traceable way of hampering a call for backup," Enqueri answered a little absently, "A jammer is blocking all the cell and radio calls in the immediate area, and the landline has been cut for the neighborhood."

"Damn, then Daryl's 911 didn't get through."

With a twisted grin Enqueri said, "That gadget I put on your cell is a booster as well as a damper; I switched it to booster in the car on the hunch the inside man would do something like this. A jammer is what I would use if I were in his position." He gave a soft grunt of discomfort, and lifted two fingers to his temple to rub a small circle. "The whine of it is a hassle."

That explained the pain, and Blair dug through his brain for something that might help. Before he could think of anything, Enqueri 's body tensed, as if readying for a fight. Without warning, his expression emptied, leaving behind an image of mindless existence. Blair was mystified, but only for a second. "Damn, this must be one of the zone-outs that Burton warned about," he muttered under his breath. "What the hell do I do? This is no time for him to be A.W.O.L."

He gingerly cupped one cheek in his palm, ignoring the way his skin wanted to creep away from the gnarled and twisted flesh. Sparing a split second to scold himself for such a stupid reaction, he ran his thumb-tip over the line of Enqueri 's jaw, then turned his face away in case it was sight that the sentinel was absorbed in. There was no reaction, so Blair murmured, "You mentioned something about finding a partner to work with you and the senses, so you had to know about this. Why didn't I ask you what you need to bring you out?"

Not knowing what else to do, Blair patted Enqueri's cheek. "Hey, in there. We need you out here to bring down the bad guys." Without meaning to, his touch gentled, became a caress of fingertips over the fine-boned face, teasing delicately at eyelashes and moist lips. The skin that had seemed so repellent moments before had become sensuously soft and inviting, and Blair became very aware of the strength and heat of the body holding his.

Reason unexpectedly colored Enqueri's expression, and he inhaled deeply, started to speak, then breathed again, this time releasing it in something that sounded very like a sigh. Blair had a fleeting impulse to apologize, but he forgot why as he became lost in what he distantly admitted were the most remarkable blue eyes he had ever seen. There was so much to be read in them, he knew he could spend a lifetime trying and barely scratch the surface.

The yearning to learn each and every nuance of the silent, startled man tenderly cradling him was a wholly new thing in Blair's life. It confused him, but not so much that he resisted the need to kiss him. He lifted his mouth to find Enqueri's on the way down, lips touching in a kiss unlike any he'd ever shared with any man or woman, even his very first. Innocent, sweet, almost shy, it was a loving benediction given with a moist glide of softness over softness that healed places within him that he'd never known were wounded. Nor was he alone in that; he could feel Enqueri respond, feel the minute softening in the scars covering the damaged soul, far worse than the ones in his flesh. Formidable arms tightened around Blair, trying to pull him in closer, and he went willingly, pressing tightly into Enqueri, vaguely wishing they were both naked so the embrace would be more complete.

The sentinel tensed, head snapping up, and gently pushing Blair to one side. "Sirens," he said, his voice rich with confusion and regret.

Latching onto that, Blair ran a shaking hand through his hair. "Go. If they ask me something I can't answer honestly, I'll claim that I'm shaken up from how suddenly everything happened."

"Let the EMT's check you out," Enqueri ordered huskily. With a last lingering stroke over Blair's cheek, he ran into the inky concealment of the garage.

Hours later, after obeying Enqueri then disregarding the EMT's advice to go to the hospital and spend a night for observation, Blair let himself into his apartment, heading spinning as much from the many questions and tons of paperwork as from the knock on the skull. If any of the cops or federal agents had a clue that there had been a fourth friendly in the house, none of their questions reflected that, not even the increasingly pointed and nosy ones from Halley, the man heading the taskforce. Thankfully, his interrogation had been cut short when the first bug was discovered as Simon "absentmindedly" picked up a broken lamp from the fight.

In the ensuing chaos of accusations and anger, Blair had made good his escape. All he wanted now was to fall down on his bed and dream about those incredible moments in Enqueri 's arms. He tripped, practically over his feet, but to his delighted surprise, Enquiri caught him and carefully guided him down to the mattress. Enqueri didn't resist when Blair drew him down with him, his fingers already busy with the buttons on Enqueri's shirt. When he returned the favor and removed Blair's shirt, he hissed softly and sat back on his heels, fingers imperceptibly tracing over the line of bruising crossing Blair's chest.

Positive that letting him see for himself that he wasn't seriously hurt was the fastest way to get them back on track, Blair breathed as normally as possible and waited, studying the intent concentration and wondering just how much Enqueri could perceive. It must have been very in-depth; he stopped twice and gingerly pressed, frowning to himself, but when he was done, he simply transferred his attention to the bump rising on Blair's forehead.

"Cracked in two places, so you'll be achy as hell for a while. Sleeping sitting up will help you rest," Enqueri murmured as he doubled-checked the bruising around the knot.

Ignoring that, Blair cupped Enqueri's face in his palms, scars no longer an issue. "Thank you for coming to me and not leaving me hanging."

For a second he thought Enqueri would pull away, but then he lay on his side beside Blair, fingertips trailing over his nose and lips. "I don't know how far I can go with this," he confessed.

He seemed about to add something else, but before he could, Blair said hastily, "I'm just glad you're here," and leaned up to cover Enqueri's mouth with his own. He meant it with all his heart, and honestly only wanted to share more of the unbelievable sweetness from earlier, but though the caresses started out that way, his very human needs quickly asserted themselves. Moaning from the simple pleasure of touching and being touched, he sent his hands to explore all of Enqueri that he could reach, marveling at the silky texture of skin over solid muscle, tracing over the lines of his back and shoulders. He grew heavy and hard in his pants, hips involuntarily lifting in the ancient bid for release, and he drove his tongue deep into Enqueri's mouth in time to that primal dance, desperate to arouse him into doing more than kissing.

With a soft cry, Enqueri broke away, muttering, "You taste so damned good." He began a rough trail of biting licks from Blair's mouth to his ear, where he tormented the bejeweled lobe until Blair thought he might scream in frustration. He moved to Blair's throat, and from there to first one nipple, then the other, laving both until they throbbed hungrily and Blair was begging brokenly for relief.

"Blair," Enqueri muttered. "What do you want?"

Beyond coherent words, Blair pushed at his shoulders to move him down, thrusting as he did. Enqueri stared at the hard-on straining to escape Blair's jeans, then freed it, gingerly taking it in hand, thumb skimming over the moisture seeping from the slit. His uncertainty finally penetrated Blair's lust-dazed mind. Belatedly remembering that Enqueri had never given pleasure to a man like this, he scraped together enough wits to encourage him. "Please, take me in your mouth. Please, please. Hold my hips so I won't choke you, but please!!!"

Hesitantly, Enqueri did as told, swiping his tongue over the crown of Blair's erection. The brush of rough velvet over the most sensitive spot on his body sent Blair out of control, and he fought the strength holding him down to get more, more of it right there, now! Babbling, he scrabbled at Enqueri's head and was rewarded with hot, wet suction just where he needed it most.

The ecstasy that crashed through him was too intense to endure for very long. A few heartbeat's worth was more than enough, and he tumbled into satiation, helpless to do anything but lie panting in the protective circle of Enqueri 's arms. Enqueri kissed and nuzzled him as he regained his strength, as tender in the aftermath as he had been in the foreplay, his hands cherishing every inch of Blair.

It was right, so right to be with him like this that Blair said quietly, "Stay with me? Not just tonight, but every night? I hate thinking of you out there without so much as a safe place to lay your head, let alone a friend to be with you."

Enqueri retreated, not moving so much as a twitch, but withdrawing for all that, his hands and lips stilling their mute adoration. Heart plummeting, Blair added hastily, "I won't tell anyone I have a roommate, won't let anyone know about you at all. I don't mind; it's not as though anyone will particularly notice or care that I don't have company over anymore, or that I'm always in a hurry to get home." He said the last with a hint of humor, trying to coax a reaction from his lover, anything but the motionless silence filling the place where Enqueri had been.

Enqueri rolled on top of him, just for a moment, just long enough for Blair to realize that he wasn't aroused, had probably never been aroused. Trying to curl in on himself as Enqueri moved away, Blair pulled at the sheets to cover himself, hiding his face in the pillow as he waited for him to leave. Instead Enqueri took his chin between forefinger and thumb and turned Blair to face him, not allowing the escape.

"I can't," he said simply. "You've seen the scarring, seen how far it goes. I haven't got anything to give you on that front, Blair, not even turning over for you because I don't think you'd be able to stand the pain that would cause me."

"Then why'd you, you... " Blair stuttered, the regained his composure. "If you weren't getting anything out of it, why'd you let it go so far?"

Lips moving for a moment as if trying on different words for size, Enqueri finally said, "I liked it, and I was hoping...." He swallowed hard, eyes dropping in for the first time. "It wasn't sexual for me; closer to the gratification you get from a beautiful flower garden or a perfectly cooked meal. Sensory satisfaction, if you will." Catching and holding Blair's reluctant gaze again, he added, "How long would you be content with that and only that?"

"I don't ... I don't know," Blair had to admit, wishing he could say otherwise. But love-making had always been a two person pastime for him; the one frigid girlfriend he'd had had taught him that anything else made him feel like a user very quickly.

As if reading his mind, Enqueri went on. "I don't like being a user, either. And if I move in with you, that's what I'd be doing. Taking without giving because I don't have anything to give you, not even my body. I'd be taking you away from your friends and colleagues, claiming your free time, stealing attention and effort for myself that should be spent on your work. There's even a chance I'd be taking your home from you. The moment the wrong people realize I have a place for myself, no matter that it's really yours, it will burn down. Or a water main will break and do structural damage to the building so that it has to be condemned. Or it'll be torn down so a newer, bigger structure can go in."

"You can't know that," Blair protested automatically.

"Yes, I can. I've lived like this for a long time, Chief. I know exactly how far my enemy will go to keep me powerless and on my own." Enqueri got out of bed, pulled on his shirt, then straightened the sheets over Blair, hands caring and loving as they smoothed the fabric over his body. "Once, I thought I didn't have any choice but to use someone, not if I wanted to stay alive and sane, so I did," he said as he worked. "I hated myself for being so dependent, and it made me angry and rude and petty and mean, and that made me hate myself even more." Enqueri sat beside him, finger combing Blair's curls, a small, unhappy smile hovering on the edges of his lips. Blair couldn't help but lean into the calming caress. "You deserve better than that, and I want you to have it."

Lulled by the tender attention, exhausted by the events of the day, Blair started sliding toward sleep and fought it, forcing his eyes wide and his voice clear. "I want you."

"Yes, you want me, but what do you need, Chief?" Enqueri murmured, barely above a whisper. "That's the important thing - what do you need?"

Blair tried to think about that, tried to come up with a reasonable answer, but to his distant surprise, he didn't have one. No one had ever asked him before, and for some reason, he'd never stopped to think about it. Bewildered that he would overlook something so basic, he began sorting through his memories to see why he had, and under the soothing tug and pull on his scalp, drifted to sleep.

The sentinel waited patiently until Blair was deeply asleep, fingers never resting in their journey along the curls. When he was sure that the small discomfort wouldn't awaken Blair, he stopped and re-examined his injuries, reassuring himself that they were as minor as they looked. He didn't like seeing bruises mar that vulnerable body, but he liked even less how thin and frail Blair looked to him. The man he still considered his partner and closest friend seemed to be running on nothing but pure will power, and had been for weeks.

That didn't make sense to him. In their first life together, he'd seen Sandburg easily take on as much of a workload as he was carrying now and never once lose his manic energy or high-voltage enthusiasm. Yet there were deep circles of fatigue under his eyes, and a pallor to his skin that made the sentinel uneasy, though for no specific reason that he could name. Reminding himself that the summer sessions would end soon, he decided to try to persuade Blair to take some time off, maybe go see his mother.

A sharp cry from a bird greeting the dawn spiraled through the night calm, and the sentinel unwillingly stood, bracing himself to leave his friend and find shelter for the day. A part of him - the strongest part, if he wanted to be honest with himself - wanted to take Blair up on his offer and stay, at least until dark. One day's rest beside him, listening to the vibrant life thrumming through bone and blood, scenting the subtle fragrance that said home to him though he no longer really remembered what that word meant, would have been a treasure to carry with him through the hard times ahead. The one night they'd shared this bed, despite how weak and unreliable his senses had been because of his injuries, had been enough to heal him into a close approximation of who he had been before this life had been twisted and warped beyond recognition.

The price for both of them for giving into that part was far too high, though, and the sentinel let himself out, automatically prowling as silently and invisibly as possible. He stepped through the door of the apartment building, blinked against the rising sun, and found himself in Elder's penthouse office, feet sinking into the plush carpet as the door swung shut behind him.

Not impressed because he'd seen the same trick and better ones too many times, the sentinel walked to the bar and poured himself a single shot of one hundred-year-old scotch, casting a weather eye on the being outlined against the brightness of the day being born on the other side of the glass wall. He wasn't particularly worried about whether or not he made Elder angry. Like a battered wife, he'd eventually learned that his behavior had nothing to do one way or the other with whether or not he was "punished" and everything to do with whether or not Elder felt like hurting him.

Taking a seat on the lush leather couch and stretching out his long legs, the sentinel sipped at his drink and waited for the next move in the interminable game of domination and damnation that he and Elder played. Elder seemed to be waiting for something, though he couldn't begin to guess what. The entity also seemed to be struggling with rage, the same rage that had been rising inexorably since the day the it had realized that it might never break the sentinel's spirit.

His body, yes, many times, and into so many pieces that he had been astonished he survived, despite Elder's unholy ability to put him back together. His mind had been broken, too, at least once that the sentinel was sure of, though there could have been other times lost in the haze of out of control, distorted senses and thoughts that Elder had plagued him with periodically. But perhaps because Blair held the essential part of him - his heart and soul - the sentinel had never bowed his knee to Elder, never groveled and begged for approval or relief from the hell that was his life. His body had been forced into that posture, literally physically crushed into it, but the person inhabiting it had never once willingly lowered his eyes submissively or voluntarily bent his neck.

The sentinel didn't take pride in that; it wasn't as if he had ever planned on defying Elder, it was just how he was. As far as he was concerned he had made his bed, he'd lie in it, and that meant honoring the deal he'd made with Elder, no matter what. Maybe that was the real reason for the rage; because the sentinel had the balls to bring honor and integrity into a deal with the devil and stick with it. Either way, he could feel the short hairs on his arm and the back of his neck stand straight up. Though he never lost his casual pose, he prepared himself as best he could for whatever torture Elder had in mind for him today.

To his surprise, Elder said mildly, "You're hovering over him again."

Shrugging, the sentinel said equally mildly, "We've been through this before. As long as he's alive, I'm drawn to him; I can't help it and I don't want to. Remember what you had to do to keep me in Cascade when he went to Borneo?" Despite his resolve not to let Elder see his disquiet, he shuddered from the few fragments he had of that time, but said levelly enough, "If you picked me up and put me in the middle of the Sahara, I'd kill myself trying to get back to him."

"Get too close to him and I may do that just to see how long you last," Elder said, a sharp smell of ozone and fury accompanying the words. "Or perhaps I should just send you back to the beginning again; back to the so-called hospital the Army had you in after you left Peru. This time around I'll simply make sure you don't escape, at least not long enough to make your way back to Cascade again."

"You'll do what you want to do," the sentinel said placidly, though his stomach clenched at the reminder of the years he'd spent caged in this version of his life. "You will anyway, no matter what I do."

A sharp arc of invisible power sliced through the air, but stopped just short of him. Hiding his trepidation by taking another sip of scotch, he wondered if Elder would slip and actually kill him this time, though he couldn't see why it mattered one way or the other to the thing. It had taken him a few agonizing years and many futile attempts to save the lost to realize that Evil didn't have power over life and death, not directly, but his bargain had been for everything that was his to give, including his life. Elder had taken his body, his career, his friends, his past, his future, even his name away from him, but had left him alive even when it was obvious that it wanted that ultimate revenge. One thing was certain - he wasn't going to ask why.

He took another sip of scotch and gagged on it, the flavor suddenly becoming thick and rancid. For a moment he struggled not to vomit, but his stomach violently rejected the filth flooding his mouth and hurled its contents upward. The small delay was enough to allow him to get to the sink at the bar, and he spewed into it, resigned to having his senses used against him yet again.

His abdominal muscles were knotted into agonized lumps by the time he stopped throwing up, and he rinsed his face and mouth with fresh water, hands shaking in exhaustion. He walked on shaky legs back to the couch and curled up on it to wait for the next round. He didn't have long; Elder finally left its post in front of the glass wall and stalked over to grab him by the hair and drag his head back painfully.

"Do you really care so little what happens to this pathetic body of yours?" Elder whispered silkily, the fingers of its free hand rubbing obscenely over its own crotch. "Or perhaps you're hoping to drive me into proving to you once again that it is no longer yours at all. Have you learned to love the pain that much?"

It took every ounce of will power he had to look into that handsome face, the expression twisting it into a mockery of beauty, to meet eye sockets that showed a black emptiness that made the depths of space look warm and inviting. Refusing to lick dry lips he said as genially as he could manage, "Like I said, what I like or don't like hasn't got a thing to do with it."

With a sharp shove Elder released him, then backhanded him powerfully enough to snap his head to one side. "No, it doesn't." It stomped back to its vantage point, snatching up a cigar from the box on the desk on the way. "Get your hideous countenance out of my sight."

Not allowing himself to run, he rose and went to the door, wearily worrying what would be on the other side now. Before he could brace himself enough to step through, Elder said quietly, its voice carrying clearly to hyper-sensitive hearing, "If he knew what you had done for him, he'd despise you."

Laughing bitterly, the sentinel said, "More proof that you can't read a man's mind - just the ugliness in him. If he knew, he'd be pissed enough to give me an ass-kicking to rival one of yours."

Elder had nothing to say to that, but as the sentinel crossed the threshold, power danced over his nerve endings, momentarily blinding him. When his vision cleared he was in the abandoned loft that had been his in another lifetime, the stink of the decay and waste filling it hitting him as if he were buried up to his nose in sewage. A new onslaught of nausea forced him to his knees. With no other course of action left open to him, he resigned himself to enduring until either his body gave out or Elder returned control of his senses.

However long it took in real time, for him, it was going to be an eternity.

Unsurprisingly, Blair was alone when he woke up; what did surprise him was that he was relieved. His sleep had been restless and punctuated with strange dreams that he didn't remember but left him feeling edgy and confused, Enqueri 's question flitting through his thoughts like an ill wind. He had no answer for the sentinel, no answer for himself, and rather than face that, he threw himself into getting ready for classes, scrambling around his tiny apartment like a gerbil on speed.

He kept up the breakneck pace all day long, not giving himself a chance to breathe, let alone think. It worked so well it wasn't until Simon appeared at his office door that he even remembered that he still needed to give an official statement on what had happened at his friend's house.

"Hey," Blair said, breaking into a genuine smile. "You don't look any the worse for wear for the night I know you had last night."

"Wish I could say the same for you," Simon said gruffly. He bent to eye the large purple bump decorating Blair's forehead, teeth tightening on his cigar to the point that it looked as if he might bite all the way through it. "The two of you should have stayed put."

Blair started to protest that was exactly what he'd done, at least until Daryl broke, but Simon began prowling around the small office, looking behind things and running his hands over the edges of the furniture and molding. Pointing to his ear and raising his eyebrows to question whether or not he was bugged, Blair said in exactly the right tone of false bravado, "What can I say? I heard what sounded like a body falling and wanted to make damn sure mine wasn't next."

Shrugging exaggeratedly, Simon came back to the middle of the room, took his cigar out of his mouth, and said honestly, apologetically, "You shouldn't have been there in the first place. Joel told me he was the one who talked you into stopping by to act as a control rod for the blowup Daryl and I were having."

Picking up an artifact that had been left on the corner of his desk, Blair said, "You can't be held responsible for the bad timing of Cascade's criminal element. As for volunteering to help - I like Daryl. The two of you might be going through a bad time right now, but he's a son to be proud of, and I know he loves you. I just can't stand the thought of the two of you losing sight of that." Blair hefted the heavy stone carving experimentally. "The whole father/son thing is too precious to risk."

Simon turned away, embarrassment twisting his features, and Blair gave him an excuse to change the subject. "Want to help me take this down to the artifact storage room? Guess who's just been given the job of inventorying it? And fetching back the pieces that have been loaned out." Putting the stone in Simon's hand and picking up two lighter pieces for himself, he led the way out of his office.

"Another job for you to do? Haven't you got enough on your plate as is?" Simon said, outrage clear in his voice as he followed.

"Hey, low man on the totem pole," Blair pointed out reasonably. "I have to play the politics game like everybody else, and that means sucking it up and taking on the shitty jobs until there's someone lower in the pecking order than me."

"Not that you'd pass it on, even then," Simon muttered.

"Probably not," Blair confessed cheerfully, pausing by the fire door to the stairs that led to the basement. "Though this time around I might reconsider. This is going to take my entire break and go right into the start of the fall semester. There goes that week long trip to the retreat where my mom is right now."

Frowning so deeply and ferociously that Blair wildly worried for a second what he'd done wrong, Simon said, "I may not know much about academic politics, but adding this to everything else you're doing seems excessive to me. Way excessive."

Though Blair thought so himself, he didn't want Simon to have another worry on his plate. "It's just harder for me to rationalize my way out of these assignments than for other people."

"In other words, you need to learn to say no better," Simon said bluntly.

"Something like that," Blair agreed blandly, making his way carefully down the creaky wooden steps. "So did you and Daryl get things worked out last night?"

"More like we established an uneasy truce," Simon muttered unhappily, watching his own step in the dimly lit stairwell. "I can't help how I feel about him trying to make it in the band. If he'd ever shown any ambition before this for being a musician, or even just loving music besides something to fill in the silence that kids can't seem to stand, I'd back down, I swear."

The never-ending echo of Enqueri's question in his head prompted Blair to ask, "Have you asked him what he gets from being in the band? Why he needs to give it a shot? Honestly asked and gotten an equally honest answer, not just some b.s. about how easy it is to pick up girls when you're in one?"

"What he needs?" Simon asked back, sounding truly baffled by the question.

"Well, if he's never shown any interest in music before, why now? What is it about it that he likes or wants? Find that out and you might have the tool you need to redirect him." Blair stopped by a door marked "Storage," fished the key out of his pocket, then let them both in. Mumbling, "Some security," he wrote his name and the time on a list posted on a clipboard hung by the door, then crossed to the ancient desk tucked under the single window in the basement room.

Clearly distracted by his own thoughts, Simon ambled behind him, and put the heavy stone artifact on the first empty space he found on the shelf beside the desk. Blair took out the file cards that were supposed to be filled out each time an artifact left the room, quickly located the ones he needed, then wrote in pencil on the back of one, "Can we be heard down here?" Giving it to Simon, he waited for his friend to read it, impatience abruptly rearing its head.

Taking a moment to study the crowded, dusty space, and regard the slit of a window warily, Simon said, "I don't think so. You got a message for me?"

"No, I just think it's time for me to know what the hell is going on," Blair said calmly, erasing the penciled message. "What meet did you have to check out that time we were on our way to dinner, and what's it got to do with the taskforce that's in town? Why is a federal taskforce snooping around Cascade and trying to do it quietly enough that the press doesn't pick up on it? From what I hear at the department, that's as weird as a cop bypassing a donut shop."

"Wish I could tell you to stay out of it," Simon grumbled, "but you're already in it up to your chin. Might as well let you know just how deep you could sink." He took a seat in a dilapidated chair shoved haphazardly into a corner, hands hanging loosely between his knees as he sat forward, eyes intent on Blair. "The Mafia became a major power in this country because of prohibition and the fact that they had a code of honor that allowed them to deal with each other in more or less civil terms, which is not to say that they didn't order hits on each other. Today they're not such a major player anymore, and the drug cartels that have taken their place are a thousand times more ruthless and violent. The biggest thing the law has had going for it is that they feed on each other like sharks. If you wait long enough your worst problems will get done in by their competition."

Perching on the edge of the desk, Blair said, "I've never really thought about it, or if I had, I guess I thought it was the movie version of the Mafia, not the real thing. Are the cartels really that much worse?"

"So much so that the biggest worry the Feds have had for a while is that they'll learn to negotiate for territory and resources the same way the Mafia does," Simon said tiredly.

"Oh, my, God," Blair murmured softly, remembering three elegantly dressed men in a dark alley. "Oh, my, God."

"Our mutual friend lucked into a meet for the three major players in Cascade to do exactly that," Simon confessed.

Time for a confession of his own, Blair decided. "At least it didn't go very well that time. I take it they're still giving it a shot."

Getting it immediately, Simon stared at Blair as if he were Superman and about to melt steel with his gaze. "Despite our best efforts to sabotage their efforts. I take it you left the car before the shots."

"I thought I saw someone following you," Blair said, hiding that he had thought he recognized who it was. He wasn't ready to share his long-time relationship with Enqueri, such as it was, with anyone. "The only reason I kept quiet about it was because I wasn't close enough to really see anything except that they had money and power and didn't like each other. No reason to worry you."

"Damn," Simon muttered, hanging his head and rubbing at the back of his neck. "Worry is exactly right, too." He shot Blair another penetrating look. "You haven't told anyone else, right?"

"No, no reason to," Blair assured him hastily.

"Don't find one," Simon ordered. "Things are bad enough in that court as is. The Feds are thinking that the timing of your arrival at my place is just a bit too good, despite Taggart's statement. They're assuming that if I took three heavies down by myself, I had to have warning and more help than a mere college professor. They're checking you out from head to toe, and I don't want them to find anything."

Shaking his head, wry grin in place, Blair said, "Despite my performance on how sharp your instincts must be to decide the second the lights went out to get ready for trouble, just in case?" He thought for a second, then added, "That's why you were checking for bugs in my office. I take it the Feds disavowed all knowledge of the ones at your house."

"They covered their tracks pretty well on that, but it forced them to admit that there has to be leak on their end." Simon stood, looked out the tiny window as if expecting to see a surveillance team peeking in from the other side, then turned and pinned a fingertip on Blair's chest. "Time for you to back off and put as much distance between yourself and the department - and me - as you can," he said firmly. Before Blair could object, he went on stubbornly, "I know you want to help, but the best way you can do that is to give me one less person to worry about. I'm even sending Daryl to his grandparents' on the excuse that we need time away from each other to cool down."

"Talk to him first," Blair pleaded softly. "Get things back on track just in case it all goes wrong."

"You'll stay away from our mutual acquaintance and not let him drag you back into this?" Simon asked in return.

Figuring that it would probably be a long, long time before Enqueri would do more than watch him from a distance, Blair said easily, waving at the room to take in its contents. "Hello, remember retrieve and inventory for God knows how long? Who's going to have time to get into trouble?"

"Why do I not find that reassuring, Sandburg?" Simon grumbled, but he took it as agreement and turned to leave. Blair followed him, carefully locking the store room door behind them. Simon seemed to be miles away already, and Blair didn't know what he could do about it, or if he should even try. Simon's safety might depend on how much distance was between them, but, damn it, he hated to lose two friends on the same day.

At the very top of the stairs, before they were in a position for eavesdropping equipment to pick up on them, Blair stopped Simon with a tug on his arm and gave him a fast, hard hug before he had a chance to protest. "Going to miss you. And if you don't get back in touch with me after this whole mess blows over, I'll come hunting for you - with my mom in tow!"

Clearly embarrassed at the show of emotion, Simon held up both hands in surrender, and managed a realistic grin. "Anything but that, Sandburg. I *still* haven't gotten my office back to normal after she rearranged it for that feng shu thing."

"At least she didn't burn any sage." Blair held in his laugh at Simon's pained expression, but his amusement faded quickly when Simon walked away with a negligent wave, as if they'd see each other in a few days. Hoping that would be the case, Blair went back to his office, wishing he could just go home and go back to sleep for a month or so.

Three weeks later, Blair stopped midway up the stairs on his way to his office from the artifact storeroom and sat wearily on the steps, leaning against the cool concrete wall. He was more than tired, more than exhausted, and he closed his eyes, ready to fall asleep where he sat. Remembering when he had thought longingly of a month's sleep not so long ago, he laughed weakly at himself, coughed, then muttered, "I'd settle for a full night in my own bed. I'm beginning to forget what it looks like."

He looked down at the computerized list in his lap, covered with notes written in half a dozen different colors and by a dozen different hands. "Want to tell me why, Chancellor, you had to pick *now* to harass the department into having all the artifacts -- not just the important, valuable ones, but all of them -- inventoried and put into a database? New security, that I can see; the honor system and three by five file cards weren't making it. But what difference does it make if we have a dozen Native American arrowheads from the Ohio River Valley or just six? They're worth about a penny apiece and easy as hell to fake."

The answer was, of course, because she hated his guts for reasons that were only vaguely related to him personally, and he was the one in charge of the inventory this year. Though the first part of the job wasn't really that bad - just loads of time and labor - the security part had baffled him, leaving him worried that she was going to have the excuse she seemed to be looking for to fire him. Then the plans for a new system, complete with cost estimate and equipment list, had simply appeared on his desk one evening.

Blair had no doubt who had left it for him, and the relief he'd felt hadn't been just because it meant his job was safe. It was one of the few signs he'd had that Enqueri was still nearby, the other being take-out food occasionally delivered to his desk that Blair had neither ordered nor paid for. That had made him aware, in a roundabout way, that he couldn't remember the last time he'd paid for groceries, either, despite the fact that his cabinet had stayed well-stocked all summer long.

That should have been annoying on a dozen different levels. Instead it made him long to have their last conversation over again, so he could point out as reasonably and stubbornly as possible that the sentinel did have something to offer that Blair was learning he wanted very badly: caring, sharing companionship. After a lifetime of loving the chase and the challenge of finding and winning as many lovely ladies and gorgeous men as he could woo, he had finally developed a taste for the kind of relationship he had shared with Enqueri so briefly. Or maybe he'd had it all along and simply had never had a chance to understand that about himself before.

Once that stupid taskforce endangering all of them was out of town and Blair could safely hunt Enqueri up again, he was going tell him all that face-to-face. Even if he had to resort to setting his office on fire to do it, though he might do that just so he wouldn't ever have to look at the enormous mess in it ever again. By now the top of his desk had been buried for so long it would take an archeological dig to find it, not that he was sure its existence wasn't pure myth.

Smiling at the silly notion of a lesson called "Modern Myths and Their Applications to Desks" for his Anthro 101 class, he coughed a few seconds, then heaved himself to his feet, unwillingly starting back up to his office. Sitting on the stairs wasn't going to get the syllabus for next semester done any more than it was going to get the inventory finished, and the deadline for the first was looming closer every day. And his office, at least, wasn't filled with dust that clogged his lungs the way the storeroom was. He moved quietly down the empty hallway, hardly consciously aware of his surroundings after being up and down the empty, gloomy corridor so many times.

A flicker of shadow moving across the bright rectangle of light that was his door jarred him out of his fatigue-induced daze. Blair picked up his pace, both hopeful that Enqueri was waiting for him and worried about the reason behind a visit. The flash of movement came again, and he frowned. There was something subtly wrong about the shadow, or, not wrong exactly, so much as it wasn't right. Not the right size or right shape to be the sentinel, but the few seconds it took for Blair to puzzle that out put him at the threshold and he could see for himself that the intruder wasn't anyone he knew.

And, from the looks of the long knife in his hand, he wasn't someone Blair wanted to know. Throwing himself backwards and pulling the door shut as the man jumped at him from behind his desk, Blair dropped his burden, pivoted, and ran back toward the storeroom and the security keypad mounted there. Behind him he could hear shouted curses as the intruder fumbled to get the locked door open again, then running steps as he came after him. Fear and adrenaline momentarily beat back the exhaustion that had been dogging Blair's tracks, and he scrambled down the stairs at top speed, familiarity making him sure-footed.

Slapping at the keypad attached next to the door, Blair punched in the two numbers that would open the secured door, while still alerting campus security that something was wrong. Not wanting to give his pursuer a reason to think that help might be on the way, he shut the door behind him and scanned the cluttered space for something that might be of use. A few moments later the man crashed into the door, apparently determined to get through it even if he had to hurt himself to do so. The next slam splintered the doorjamb. The blade of the knife jabbed through, biting and carving at the wood to chew the lock free.

To protect his fingers, Blair scooped up a handful of the spongy foam used to pack fragile artifacts, grabbed the blade and bent it against the doorframe. The metal was too strong to give, but snapped free of the hilt when its owner bent it the other way, trying to work it clear of whatever obstruction he thought he had hit. A kick sent the ruined knife blade under a shelf, and Blair stepped back from the door, panting heavily, swaying as he groped for something sturdy to brace himself against.

As his fingers closed around a heavy rock that had once been used as a hammer stone by a flint napper, a solid crash sent the door flying open and the intruder hurtled himself through, right at Blair. Without thinking Blair brought up his improvised weapon to throw it, but before he could, a punch to his shoulder from the other man sent it skittering across the messy desk. Throwing himself at him, Blair wrapped both arms around his upper chest in a bear hug that pinned his opponent's arms to his sides.

Though the intruder was slightly smaller, he was all wiry strength, and Blair's adrenaline-based burst of energy was fading fast into an exhaustion that he knew would leave him dangerously vulnerable to an enemy. Desperately wrestling him toward a tall shelf filled with heavy objects, Blair tried to body slam the other man into the shelf in hopes it would fall on him, but the move was countered with a fast spin that put them both off-balance. Blair braced himself to be the one taking the impact into the sturdy metal frame, but before he could hit, someone's fist shot past his shoulder and into the intruder's chin, taking him down instantly.

Blair would have fallen with him, but Enqueri caught him on the way down and pulled him to his feet, holding onto his elbow until he was steady. "Whoa!! Perfect timing," Blair muttered.

Kneeling over the prone body, Enqueri used duct tape to secure the man's wrists behind him and more on the ankles to keep him down. "Better than the security guards who are supposed to be watching over this place. They're chalking the alarm up to one of the kids forgetting the right code again. It'll be a while before they get around to checking it out, even though you haven't called like you always do to let them know when it's a false alarm."

Stumbling out of the store room toward the steps to sit, Blair gasped, "Damn, damn, damn.... Why do they think I always... made a point of calling in the false alarms A.S.A.P.? Because I liked sounding...like an idiot six times a day? Why are we paying those cop...cop wannabes the money if they're not....going to at least pretend to do the job?" He leaned into the wall, rubbing his face against the coarse surface, grateful for the cool on his flushed face. "Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid."

From far away he heard Enqueri come to sit beside him, fingertips deftly flitting over his face and throat. "Blair? Blair, you're burning up, here!"

"Just hot from the whole running, fighting thing, y'know?" Blair said breathlessly, sounding indistinct even to himself. That bothered him, and he tried to sit up straighter, automatically reaching for his cell phone. "Better call Simon. Our visitor in there probably wasn't looking for spare change in my desk drawer or an artifact that he could pawn."

He hit the speed dial, brought up the phone to speak into it, and then nearly dropped it from fingers too weak to grasp tightly enough. Enqueri caught it, helped him hold it, and Blair murmured, "Simon...problem...office...uh...." His head swam, and he lost his grip on the phone again, this time dropping it to the floor. It looked a long, long way from him, and he tried to call out a simple "help," hoping that would be all it took to summon Simon, but couldn't seem to produce sufficient air to make it loud enough.

"It's all right," Enqueri murmured, scooping the phone up and turning it off. "He says he's coming. You stay put for a moment; I'm going to do a fast check on our guest to make sure he's out and secure."

"Hey, sounds good to me," Blair said, or thought he did, anyway. His lips moved, that much he was sure of, but he wasn't positive he actually made a sound. He didn't know how that was possible, unless he wasn't really trying, but he *had* tried, right? Pondering that as if it were a choice puzzle that could win him a thousand dollars, he reran his memory tape of the words, but they made no sense this time around. Maybe they're melting because it's so hot, he thought vaguely.

"Blair," Enqueri said firmly. "Drink. Now."

A plastic straw was at his lips and Blair automatically obeyed. Delicious, delicious cold flowed over his tongue and down his throat. Water had never tasted so wonderful before, and he nursed at the straw greedily until a cough caught him mid-swallow, forcing him to turn away. Enqueri supported him while he choked, ineffectively trying to suppress the urge to hack like a smoker. By the time he caught his breath again, he was so worn out that he was nearly unconscious, aware only of an overwhelming heat frying his brain and the man tending to him so tenderly.

Enqueri said something to him that didn't quite penetrate the fiery glare shrouding his mind, but when he left his side, Blair cried out in protest, involuntarily reaching for him. Eyes flying open, he sat up as Enqueri caught his hands and held them against his chest. "No, wait, please," he whispered.

"I'm not going anywhere right now," Enqueri said grimly, belying the gentleness of his fingers as they rubbed small circles into Blair's hands. "Except to get some more water. You'll stay put until I get back? Shouldn't take a minute."

Blair thought about that very seriously, then nodded an agreement. He didn't really have anywhere to go except back to work, anyway, did he? And he would ditch that for his friend, no problem. Closing his eyes again, he did as he was asked, though he was troubled by a formless notion that there was something important that he should be taking care of. The mental search for that unknown something kept him occupied until Enqueri sat back down beside him. Blair considered asking the sentinel if *he* knew what else he should be doing, but before he could gather together the words for the question, something cold and damp was pressed against the hollow of his throat.

Nothing had ever felt so damned good, and he moaned a little in relief as the same cloth was patted over his entire face, leaving refreshing, reviving cool in its wake. Enqueri didn't stop there, but continued over his neck and onto his shoulders, wetting his shirt, which should have felt clammy and horrid, but only added another layer of relief to the heat that was baking him from the inside out. The cooling bath stopped, and Blair tried to resign himself to it, but Enqueri pressed the straw against his lips for another drink, telling him without words why the chilly comfort had stopped.

Trying to focus on Enqueri so that he could at least smile his thanks for the drink, Blair released the straw and blinked to clear his vision, with only marginal success at first. Gradually the out-of-focus blobs skipping through the dim light resolved into Enqueri kneeling in front of him, expression filled with worry and loving concern. Blair clumsily cupped his sentinel's cheek in one palm, fingers skimming into the short hair at the side of his neck. "Instinct may have pulled you to me," he murmured, as much for himself as for Enqueri, "But this," and he gestured randomly between them, "This is more than that. A lot more."

"You're delirious," Enqueri said roughly, ducking his head to hide his face. "You don't know what you're saying."

Nodding wisely in agreement, Blair said, "Yeah, I think I'm getting a good idea of just how sick I am. But that doesn't mean that I can't see the truth when it's staring me right in the eye." He tugged Enqueri toward him, guiding him so that Blair could rest his forehead in the middle of his chest. "This is part of what I need," he confessed. "Having someone to look out for me because they want to, not because they owe me or think it's their duty or something, but because it's me." Smiling, hoping the sentinel would know that somehow, Blair added, "And who can do it subtly enough that it doesn't feel like I'm the one who owes or has the obligation."

"Nothing that passed between us was ever just instinct," Enqueri said hesitantly, the words a bare stirring of air over Blair's curls. "And taking care of you is the best reason I have to keep going."

It was exactly what Blair needed to hear, and he slumped bonelessly against him, finally surrendering to the overwhelming weariness that dragged him under. From a long distance away, he felt the cooling bath begin again, first under his hair at the nape of his neck, then down his back, sending a pleasant chill down his spine and into his legs. Blair coughed hard, the harsh noise ripping at the nearly silent building as much as at his throat, and the exertion undid all the ease Enqueri had given him.

"Sorry," Blair rasped out, trying to pull himself together enough to at least not spray his germs all over Enqueri.

"For what?" Enqueri said absently, shifting positions so he was sitting on a step behind Blair, his legs spread so that he could pull him back to rest against his chest.

The damp cloth began another journey over Blair's face, and he promptly forgot that he'd even spoken as the luscious reprieve from the heat coaxed him toward the rest he needed. Enqueri seemed utterly content to hold him, peace and calm communicating itself to Blair, and he drifted along the border between sleep and wakefulness, not quite sure why he didn't simply cross.

Simon called his name, the echo of it huge in the many corridors and stairwells. Blair tried to rouse himself into at least a semblance of alertness but he couldn't do more than twitch, mumbling Simon's name in answer. Enqueri called out instead, and even through his fevered mind Blair could tell that he was bracing himself for a confrontation. That didn't make sense, but when he opened his eyes at the sound of hurried footsteps down the stairs and rolled his head back to look at Simon, he got the explanation he needed. Simon was furious and the object of his anger was clearly the man cuddling Blair as if he were a helpless child.

Not giving Simon the advantage of first blow, Enqueri said shortly. "There's an intruder hog-tied in the artifact store room, thanks to Sandburg here. You might want to call for a cruiser to take him in, and we definitely need an ambulance."

"An ambulance?" Banks crouched down next to them, reaching for Blair to look for wounds, but laid a palm on his bare forehead as understanding penetrated his rage.

"He has pneumonia," Enqueri said simply. "Fever of at least 103."

"And he took down a burglar?" Simon said in surprise, taking out his cell phone.

"Something like that," Enqueri said. Gently and carefully he sat up straighter, taking Blair with him. "Sandburg, you need to give Simon a statement now. Do you understand? You need to tell him what happened right away, before the uniforms and EMT's get here."

That was important, Blair knew, though for the life of him he couldn't remember why. But he trusted his sentinel, and as soon as Simon put up his phone, he said as slowly and precisely as he could, so the fever wouldn't slur the words, "I've been working nearly all night, every night this entire week, down here in the storeroom, but this evening I had something else that I needed to finish, and I stopped early to go up to my office. When I got up there...."

By the time he'd finished his story, he was panting from the effort, but ended it clearly with, "So I'm not sure exactly how I did it, maybe a head butt or something, but I knocked the guy out and trussed him up. Staggered out here and called you, but then it was just so hard to *breathe!*"

"Damn!" Simon took out a pad of paper and a pen, glancing apologetically at Blair. "I have some questions I have to ask. If this is a call from the cartels, I have to eliminate everything else before I go to the taskforce and ream them a new one, understand? They crossed the line when they dragged you into their investigation, and they have to stop this bullshit before someone innocent gets hurt. Have you ever seen the man who attacked you before?"

"No, not even around campus, and I'm sure he's not one of my students, either, just for the record," Blair said positively.

"Was your office locked?"

"With all the artifacts I've been temporarily storing there, yes. I set it up so that it locks every time I shut it, and I always do, even if I'm just running to the bathroom." He shrugged. "Only an expert would know the value of or how to sell most of what's in there, though."

Simon tapped the edge of his pad with his pen, mind obviously racing at full speed. "What was the perpetrator doing when you interrupted him?"

"Downloading files from my computer," Blair said, surprised at the sudden clarity of the mental image that allowed him to answer the question. At the time, he hadn't been aware of that detail. He shut his eyes to visualize the scene better, muttering, "He couldn't have been using it to access the school's server, to change a grade or something like that. Password protected, both my access and that particular file itself."

"So he wanted information, personal information that he thought you kept there. Do you have anything of that nature that would be of interest to a thief - bank account numbers or credit card records that could be used for identity theft, perhaps?" Simon's tone was neutral, but he still gave the impression of knowing the answer to that already.

"No, nothing," Blair answered, barely audibly. Closing his eyes had been a mistake, a big one, he thought dully. Staying awake was quickly becoming impossible, and both Enqueri and Simon were becoming indistinct, almost unreal to his senses.

Brushing damp hair away from Blair's forehead, Simon said gently, "One more question, and I'll let you rest, I promise. Do you know of anyone who might have a personal reason for attacking you, or maybe discrediting you with the university?"

"Not that I know of," Blair murmured. "Chancellor Edwards doesn't like me but not enough to go to this extreme."

"Simon and I will have a word about the Chancellor later," Enqueri whispered into his ear.

"Be sure you let her know I really am sick and not just blowing off my job," Blair said, or hoped he said. Things were bleeding out into glare and confusion again, and he wasn't even sure anymore why the three of them were crouched on the stairs.

"It'll be taken care of, Chief. Now rest," a familiar, precious voice said, so softly it was almost in his mind. He could trust that voice, had trusted it for a long time, so he believed that if it was important to him, it was covered, and he could finally get some sleep. But a small, nagging cough hit him every time he began to relax enough to truly go under, and he squirmed restlessly in the arms holding him, trying to catch his breath.

His lover - it was his lover, wasn't it? Didn't it have to be? The hands on him dispensing luxurious cool were so knowing and sure of what would give him comfort, of what would be pleasurable to him. That took time, days and weeks of being with each other, learning all the ins and outs of each other's needs. Surely his sentinel had held him like this before; if not now, then in another life. Yes that was it; they had shared a life before, one as, as, as.... Blair fumbled to find the word he needed, but it eluded his grasp, just beyond reach of insubstantial lips.

The world shifted dizzily as the wrong hands took him by the shoulder to pull him upright, and he was jarred back to the world of sound and his own harsh gasps for air. "What?"

"Ambulance is here," Enqueri said from too far away. "Simon will stay with you while the EMT's check you out."

"No!" Blair struggled against the hold Simon had on him, blindly reaching out for his sentinel. "No, you have to stay with me, it's important you stay!" He broke free from Simon and tumbled sideways to awkwardly huddle against his lover's chest. "Jim, you have to stay!" he said so that only Jim could hear.

The body against his went stone-still, as if caught in ice or amber. "What did you say?"

The brief scuffle with Simon had drained what was left of Blair's resources, and he slumped into a little heap of heat and hurt. "Please," he mumbled, head lolling forward onto his lover's chest. "Stay, Jim. Please. Please."

"God," Jim whispered. "Dear God."

The words were both terrified and elated, but Blair didn't care about that. He clutched at Jim's shirt, digging his fists into it. "Stay."

"Sandburg," Simon started to say uncertainly.

"You trust me, right, Chief?" Jim interrupted, his lips against Blair's temple.

"'Course," Blair muttered unwillingly, despite it all sensing where he was being led.

"I will never be more than a whisper away," Jim swore softly. "Understand? Never more than a whisper away."

"For Simon, you have to go, right? So the bad guys won't connect the three of us," Blair said unhappily.

"For Simon."

"'Kay, then." Jim transferred him into Simon's arms, and Blair hoped with all his heart he wasn't imagining the reluctance he felt in Jim's lingering touch.

Everything became very skewed after that, almost as if Blair were looking at the world through the distortions caused by heat rising up from the ground. Time skewed as well, and from one moment to the next he couldn't begin to guess how many minutes had passed for everybody else. One second he was listening to Simon doing his captain thing, chewing out someone's ass regulation style; the very next, it seemed to him, he was strapped to a gurney in an ambulance, the ear-biting squeal of the siren hurting his head.

Simon had taken over the job of washing him down to lower his temperature, despite the EMT's cluttering the small space, and his lips moved as if in prayer while he did. Startled, Blair said as lightly as he could, "You do the fatherhood thing pretty well."

The smile that Simon gave him wasn't very convincing, but he matched Blair's tone almost perfectly, "I don't think Daryl would agree with you on that."

"Like the man said," Blair said wisely, the words rising without thought on his part, "He's eighteen and trying to make himself feel like a man. A good way to do that is by testing yourself against a stronger one. Your son thinks you're the strongest, proudest, bravest man he knows; who better to stand against?"

"You really think that?" Simon said, clearly taken aback by the idea.

"I do," Blair said, then coughed, controlling it as fast as he could so that he could wheeze out the rest. "Remember eighteen yourself. Help him find a way to prove himself that doesn't put the two of you at each other's throats. Neither of you might ever heal from it."

Offering him a sip of ice water, Simon muttered uneasily, "I just don't want him making the same stupid mistakes I made at that age." When he put aside the cup, he brushed Blair's hair away from his face and said, "Right now you should be worrying about yourself, not mixing up in my problems."

"Thinking about yours beats the hell out of agonizing over my own," Blair said, pushing at the restraining straps in sudden irritation.

Time side-stepped again, and he was lying under the harsh lights of the treatment room in the E.R., trying to make sense of what an earnest Indian man dressed in a doctor's white coat was telling him. "Pneumonia," he repeated back stupidly.

"The kind commonly called 'walking pneumonia' because the micro-organisms that cause it usually produce very mild symptoms that can last for some time if the patient doesn't become aware he has it," the doctor said, taking on a lecturing tone. "In your case, however, your general health has deteriorated to the point that your condition is quite serious. You'll be checked into the hospital for several days and given intravenous antibiotics, fluids, and most importantly, plenty of bed rest."

"I can't do that!" Blair said in horror, fighting to sit up and get out of bed. "The start of the fall semester is only a week away, and I've got two weeks worth of work to get ready! And there's that damned inventory."

Without any visible effort, the doctor pushed Blair back down on the bed. "Trust me, Dr. Sandburg, I understand the demands a teacher has on his life. But your friend, the police captain, told me that he would see to notifying all the necessary people and making sure everything is covered." His tone changed from reassuring to scolding. "You are underweight, malnourished, and anemic. As important as your work is to you, you must learn to balance the demands from it with your own needs."

"Why is everybody suddenly worried about my needs?" Blair grumbled sourly. He coughed and at the end of the spasm, reality leaped from the E. R. to a bland room with disgusting green walls that screamed, "hospital." That was a good thing because for several frantic, bewildering minutes he didn't know where he was or why, until a razor-edged cough clawed up his throat to remind him. Someone offered him a straw, and he gratefully sucked at it, grimacing a little at the sickly sweet grape flavor trying to cover the medicinal undertone. "Thank you," he said hoarsely, and smiled up at Jim, not surprised he was on the other side of the cup. "Shouldn't be here."

"Relax, a hospital is the one place no one thinks twice about seeing a scarred man," Jim said softly. "And no one knows you're here yet." He bent and brushed a kiss over Blair's forehead. "Rest. You need it."

"Only a whisper away," Blair said sleepily, just to hear him say it.

"Only a whisper."

Sleep came for him and he didn't fight it, relieved that for once there was no reason not to. When he woke again, intuition told him that most of a day had passed, and the hushed clatter of the hospital itself told him it was late, well past dinner and evening visiting hours. The cough that had nagged at him for so long seemed to be resting, too, and Blair didn't move, almost superstitiously afraid that the slightest motion would wake it.

It worked well enough that he almost fell back to sleep himself, but urgent, angry voices right outside his open door pulled him back, and he opened his eyelids a crack to see what was wrong. Blinking as his eyes adjusted from the gloom of his room to the brightness of the hallway, Blair recognized Halley, the head of the federal taskforce that was making Simon's -- and his -- life miserable. He was arguing with a man Blair felt he should know, felt it so strongly that the name hovered at the tip of his tongue like a forgotten word.

Whoever he was, it was plain that Halley was terrified of him and of losing their argument. For some reason Blair didn't think it was the sheer size of the man that had the fed going; possibly because the hulking brute hadn't so much as scowled threateningly. If Halley was scared, this guy didn't give a shit about it, one way or the other, and his faint air of detachment made Blair think that he was only the messenger.

With a final shrug of unconcern the unknown man lumbered off, surprisingly graceful for his size, leaving Halley staring after him, licking his lips as if they were too dry. Visibly gathering himself together, he turned toward Blair's room, taking on the mantle of 'cop' as if it were both weapon and shield. He stepped inside, calling quietly, "Dr. Sandburg?"

Feigning sleep, Blair didn't answer him, but the fed came to stand by his bedside and reached up to turn on the light over the bed. "Dr. Sandburg?"

Letting himself stir restlessly, Blair mumbled, "Huh? 'sup? More meds?"

"I can spare you that, at least," Halley said jovially, as if they were co-workers on friendly terms instead of two people who happened to be in the same office on occasion. "Banks had a couple more questions about your attacker, but there's something major going down, so he asked me to fill in for him."

Yeah, right, Blair thought. Aloud he said groggily, "Attack? Oh, oh - the guy in my office."

"You have no idea who he is or why he would be interested in the contents of your computer files?" Halley said, voice back to all business.

"None. Why don't you ask him what he was up to?" Blair said disinterestedly. "Or is he refusing to talk? Know who he is, yet?"

"Oh, we have an I.D. on him," Halley said negligently. "One Santias Corsea, who lawyered up before he even made it to the station. But he's not going to be any help to us on his motive because he had the bad taste to insult a member of the Deuces in lockup. Got beaten to death before the uniforms could cool things down."

Truly shocked by how casually Halley dismissed the man's death, Blair shrank back into the mattress, fretfully pulling the bedding over himself, as if that could provide protection against the fed's callousness. "D - dead?"

Shrugging carelessly, Halley said, "Not as if he hadn't been looking for an early grave. Our boy had strong ties to the Degas drug cartel - minor player working his way up." Voice sharpening, expression tight, he spat out, "You're sure you don't know what he was doing in your office?"

"No," Blair said, then in a flash of inspiration, he moaned realistically. "Oh, man, oh, man. The artifacts. I've been inventorying them. Don't tell me someone is using them to smuggle stuff into the country again. The dean will have a fit!"

"Artifacts? Smuggle?" Halley said, derailed into bafflement.

"You would have thought the idiots would have learned by example last time that this shit never works. Sooner or later a goof gets made, someone slips, and then, bang, you've got the cops and the feds and God knows who else breathing down your neck, screwing everything up for everybody and anybody, but especially those who don't have a thing to do with your operation," Blair babbled, not wanting to give Halley a chance to regain his focus.

"Your department has had trouble with being used as a front for smuggling," Halley said in disbelief.

"Man, ask Banks about it, he can tell you." Blair shook his head, then groaned in real pain from doing it. "Look, I'm still pretty wasted here. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"Just one more question, if you don't mind." Halley stared around the room for a moment as if he'd forgotten why he was even there, and said in a threatening tone, "Because of your work with Banks and Major Crimes, you've been checked out; came back squeaky clean. But you've traveled pretty extensively in your life, Dr. Sandburg, including, if I'm not mistaken, in South America. While there's no reason to believe you have any connection to the drug cartels based in areas in that part of the world, perhaps you might have become acquainted with someone who does. Maybe had a relationship with them. Anyone fit that possibility, Doctor?"

Halley's really desperate to find Simon's supposed source, Blair thought tiredly. Desperate enough to risk questioning me, even though Simon has to find out that he did, sooner or later. Must think I'm still delirious, still sick enough that he can bully or browbeat me into giving him what he wants.

Like a man waking up at three a.m. with the word he'd been searching for all day long suddenly at the front of his mind, Blair remembered where he'd seen the huge man who had been arguing with Halley only minutes before. In his mind's eye he could see a dirty courtyard, lit by a single light and two sets of headlights, and three players with three bodyguards. Halley's associate had been one of those bodyguards.

That's why he's been after Simon to give his source up, Blair thought. Halley's the inside man on the taskforce and the cartels are pressuring him for the information. Something incredibly ancient and frighteningly powerful reared up from deep inside him, pulling the thinking, rational part of him back, leaving him looking out of his own eyes as if he wore a mask. He wants my sentinel, that portion of him snarled. They want to hurt my sentinel!

"Dr. Sandburg," Halley said with thinly-veiled impatience. "Do you know anyone on a personal level who might have ties to the Columbian drug traffic?"

Like a spectator at a play, Blair listened to himself giggle ridiculously. "You've been watching those Indiana Jones movies too many times," he burbled realistically, as if his temperature were still over 103. "Anthropology and archeology is mostly trying like heck to stay out of trouble with the locals long enough to find something useful to put into print - or a museum. Anybody that goes into it thinking it's about hidden treasure, exotic acquaintances and beautiful native women has never spent thirteen hours in the burning sunlight trying to coax a pottery shard out of the ground, or gotten literally pissed on by some local government official who hates their guts for coming in with their American dollars and American attitudes."

"Oh," Halley said, sounding thoroughly bewildered again. Then he regained his composure and said slyly, "Surely an enterprising and inventive person such as yourself could find ways to turn so much travel and experience into something profitable and useful."

"It's called a Ph.D." Blair told the puppet that was his body to yawn, then toss a little as if trying to get comfortable. "Course there are always people out there who think they can turn a buck, no matter what, 'specially if they don't mind ignoring a law or two here and there." He ordered himself to cough, his mental distance keeping the pain of it from being a problem, and added hoarsely, "They're usually called convicts. Duh, as if the system isn't looking at us under a microscope already just for being college students out of our own country."

He rolled to his side, fussing a bit with his IV line and the oxygen canula on his upper lip. "My mom didn't raise an idiot," he mumbled as indistinctly and vaguely as possible. "And I've got better things to do with my life than hang out with anyone stupid enough to think he can get involved with drug people and walk away from it alive."

From under his lashes, he watched his last remark hit home, but Blair had no trouble keeping his features from showing his satisfaction at Halley's barely hidden surge of anger. He was too disconnected, too removed from what was happening on the far side of his skull to worry that any of what was truly going on within him would show. A moment later, that turned into a life-saving advantage.

Instead of leaving what had to look like a seriously ill patient who was deeply asleep, Halley loitered in the hospital room, picking up things and putting them down again as he wandered from the bed to the window, then to the door and back to the bed. It was the total emptiness in his expression, especially in his eyes, that told Blair that he wasn't watching over a witness, but deciding how to turn him into his next victim. No wonder he hadn't been worried about Simon finding out that he had questioned Blair.

From behind his shield of detachment, Blair considered how he could protect himself, a challenge for a man so weak he couldn't sit up unassisted and who had a needle in his arm supplying him with fluids and antibiotics. His best defense was probably the simple fact that Halley wasn't expecting any problem from him at all. One good punch and a yell should be all he really needed. The fed struck him as being mostly a coward, and too worried about keeping suspicion off himself to hang around if his intended target made a scene.

Halley leaned in closer, and Blair braced himself, but before the fed could make a move, a mop bucket noisily banged into the hallway wall opposite Blair's room, making Halley jump back guiltily. An orderly, head bent over his mop, made his leisurely way behind it, projecting the air of a man who had a boring job to do and was in no hurry to do it. Pacing nervously for a minute, Halley watched the orderly out of one eye, fingers beating an agitated tattoo in the depths of his jacket. Adjusting the ponytail sticking out the back of his baseball cap, the orderly propped himself against the wall, dug out a stick of gum and unpeeled it from its wrapper, meticulously folding the foil into a small square. All the while he studied the floor as if he planned on doing each square of tile with a toothbrush.

It took the nurses beginning their shift change to finally break Halley. The corridor began to hum with the voices and subdued bustle of people coming and going; Halley gave Blair one last irritated glare before stalking out of the room, snarling under his breath. The orderly surreptitiously watched him go, then turned to smile at Blair. Having already recognized the broad shoulders and elegant hands of his sentinel, Blair returned it, jolting himself back into his own body, aches, fever and all.

"Tell Simon that Halley is the leak," Blair said softly. "I saw him with one of the enforcers from that meet in the courtyard."

Jim's eye's widened slightly, but he gave a short nod, then mouthed, "Covered. Sleep."

Suddenly feeling as if he'd never slept before in his life, Blair grumbled something he hoped sounded like an agreement and squirmed down deeper into the blankets, out cold by his next breath.

It wasn't any particular surprise to Blair to find Joel Taggart sitting by his bed reading a magazine the next time he surfaced for the few minutes it took for a nurse to check his vitals. After that it was Simon, doing paper work and chewing on an unlit cigar, and then Rafe, and so it went for the day. If Blair stayed alert long enough to ask, the cop watching over him would claim to be just visiting, taking advantage of a lull between assignments and the hospital's liberal visiting hours policy. He didn't think anyone outside of Major Crimes would buy it, but no one would be stupid enough to openly question it either.

He did wonder how long Simon could keep up that kind of circumspect protection without getting hassled for it, but when he woke up in the small hours of the night to find Simon standing over him, Blair's clothes in hand, he realized that it had only been a make-shift measure. "Protective custody?" Blair asked tiredly, out of necessity letting Simon do most of the work of getting him upright.

"Not good enough," Simon bit out. "Not with what we've got coming at us. So you're going to disappear completely, with a little help from your friend."

Astonished that he was too weak to put on his own pants, Blair sighed his exasperation, gestured feebly for aid, and suffered the indignity of being dressed like a five-year-old. "You're not happy about it," he said.

"No, I'm not," Simon said frankly. "But he's right; he can take you so far under that finding Elvis would be easier. Not to mention he's got training as a medic, plus medical contacts if you need more than he can do for you."

As he spoke he efficiently, impersonally pulled Blair's clothes on, then wrapped a light blanket around him, shrouding his face with one fold of it. "I hate to do this to you, but a wheelchair would draw too much attention, and I don't think you can walk fast enough. Rafe is keeping the nurses occupied, but that only goes so far." Simon scooped him up into his arms, and they left, pausing for only a moment at the door to make sure the way was clear.

"Man, you are taking that whole fatherhood comment I made earlier way too seriously," Blair joked, keeping his voice down so only Simon could hear him.

"From the looks of things, you could use someone nagging at you to eat your vegetables and get to bed early," Simon muttered. "You weigh next to nothing."

Hearing the honest worry underneath the grumbling, Blair started to explain himself, but Simon hushed him, giving a small squeeze to emphasize his demand for quiet. Unwillingly subsiding, Blair peered through the loose weave of the blanket to see where they were going. He was just able to make out a service elevator standing open at the end of a back corridor that had an air of being abandoned. Banks stepped through the doors and, the instant the door closed, turned to hand his burden over to Jim, though with a reticence that shouted his disapproval even as he did what was necessary. Overlooking that, or perhaps not noticing it in his haste, Jim hugged Blair close, laying his cheek alongside Blair's for a moment to test his fever.

Picking up a mannequin from the same deep corner that had hidden Jim, Simon arranged it in his arms to make it look as if he still carried Blair, complete with an identical blanket to shroud the plastic face. "I want you in the cold for at least seventy-two hours," he said gruffly, not looking at them. "After that, we'll see, depending on how well the sting on Halley goes."

"Seventy-two hours," Jim agreed. "It's all set up from my end with everything Blair will need, including his meds.

"Those can be traced," Simon said in alarm.

"Not the way I got them," Jim said, so flatly that Blair knew not even he could get more information on just exactly how Jim had accomplished it.

For a moment, Blair thought Simon would debate the issue with him anyway, but the sharp ding! of the elevator reaching the requested floor cut him short. Schooling his features to hide his irritation, Simon strode through the doors, holding the dummy as if it were a real person. All but holding his breath, Blair waited to be shut back into the relative safety of the elevator, all too aware that the man holding him was poised for battle if anyone tried to join them.

As soon as the elevator was in motion again, he murmured, "In the cold?"

"No contact of any kind with anyone," Jim explained briefly.

"Oh, man, the dean is just going to love that," Blair muttered. "Bet he goes running to his best bud the Chancellor bitching about me first chance he gets. At least if I were in protective custody I could messenger in my lesson plans and syllabi for the semester."

Jim made a non-committal sound and stepped deeper into their concealing corner as the doors opened on what Blair guessed was their floor. Plainly using his senses to make sure the way was clear, the sentinel hesitated, then confidently went through the doors, taking a second to punch the button for an upper floor on the way out. He stopped after only a few steps and gingerly sat Blair on a gurney, tugging away the blanket as he did.

Sparing a moment to take in his surroundings, Blair said, "Looks like the movie set for a bad horror movie. Pipes, concrete, dripping water, deep shadows and weird noises."

"This is the basement of the old hospital," Jim said, neatly folding the blanket and placing it in the middle of a stack of identical ones. "They constructed all the new buildings around it. Ninety percent of the staff doesn't know that it's down here. A few of the older nurses and doctors, and some of the supply staff, maybe. They keep excess inventory down here."

"So why are we here?" Blair asked, automatically taking the white windbreaker that Jim offered him. He helped Jim with getting it on him, though it was a feeble effort.

"Because the old place had its own physical plant, which connected to half a dozen other buildings in this section of the city," Jim said. "That's why all the heavy-duty piping. The building that it was run from still exists, though it's shut up waiting for the board of directors to finally figure out what to do with it. We're going to go out that way. No security cameras, no night watchmen, no one to see us." Surprisingly he tugged off Blair's shoes, then replaced them with non-descript white sneakers. A toss put the discarded shoes in a bin marked 'unclaimed.' "From there to a parking garage that's literally an arm's length away, then to the floor that opens into the elevators for the Cascade Mall and the walkways that connect it to the downtown hotels."

"That's why the different jacket and shoes," Blair said knowingly. "Fool the cameras there."

"Got it. Ready, Chief?" Jim scooped him into his arms again, grunting a little as he adjusted Blair's weight against him.

"Man, I can walk," Blair grumbled.

"Not long enough or fast enough," Jim said bluntly, setting off at a brisk pace that Blair couldn't help but envy.

Since it was pointless to argue with him on that, Blair settled for grumping, "This just sucks."

With a snort of laugher, Jim said, "Three more days and it'll be over one way or the other. We've got a safe house set up to look like you're in it; I'm betting it won't take twenty-four hours for Halley to give it up to the cartels that have him in their pocket. And since he's the only one besides Simon who will know who is supposed to be in that house, we've got him even if we can't get his bosses. Not that Banks is trying for that."

"What?" Blair said in confusion.

"The goal all along has been simply to keep them from negotiating a peace treaty among themselves," Jim said, breathing a bit heavier much to Blair's secret satisfaction. "It's a good bet that having an inside man in the feds has been the only thing keeping the effort going. They have too much ego and too much lust for power to work with each other unless they have something, some edge, to hold them together."

"Take away the one thing they all want and can use, and there's no reason not to go back to blowing each other away," Blair said, peering this way and that as though to find his own way through the damp gloom around them. "Please tell me that Halley didn't turn for just that reason: so he could safely work for all the cartels, freelance style."

"Could be," Jim admitted. "The reason he hasn't been suspected up until now is because we couldn't make any connection between him and any one person in any one of the drug rings. If you're working for all of them for varying prices depending on the service provided, anyone checking into your activities is going to think you're just doing the job and keeping tabs as best you can on the main players." He juggled Blair's weight for a second, arms flexing easily at the change. "For instance, Simon could pay a visit to Degas just to rattle his cage if he were trying to shake loose a bit of information on an unsolved homicide where one of Degas' men overstepped his bounds and shot, oh, say the Mayor."

"Simon would be so eager to solve that particular crime," Blair said facetiously. "Feds probably make those kinds of calls all the time, too." Yawning, he settled a bit deeper into Jim's arms, the warmth and security overriding his desire to stay awake, at least until they reached their destination. "Any chance you got some of the stuff from my office in Hargrove?" he asked, more to keep himself awake than because he was really interested in the answer. "Give me something to do when I start staying up for more than five minutes."

Jim didn't answer right away, and some subtle change in the muscles surrounding Blair told him that he didn't want to. "Jim? I do still have a job at Rainier, don't I?"

"Yes," he said so promptly and firmly that Blair couldn't doubt the truth in it, despite the fact that his fears didn't lessen at all.

"Then I'm in some serious trouble, right?" Blair asked cautiously, not sure exactly what to say to get to the bottom of Jim's sudden tension.

"Edward is setting you up to fail," Jim said tightly. "No matter how hard you work, she's going to see to it more gets dumped on you until you get crushed under the weight of it. I've heard her tell her secretary that - gloating about it almost. I've given Simon the secretary's name, along with some other people that might talk if asked by the right person in hopes he can find a way to put a stop to it."

"But why?" His voice was a plaintive wail, but Blair didn't care.

"I don't know. I just don't know." Jim's frustration was clear, along with what seemed like a profound sense of confusion, as if it were literally impossible for Chancellor Edwards to be misusing her office. Which in turn bewildered Blair; surely the man knew that academia was no haven from the human condition. He simply couldn't be that naive.

While Blair puzzled that over, Jim came to a small, dingy flight of stairs that ended with a dingier door. An almost invisibly thin wooden slab was jamming the lock, and Jim simply elbowed the heavy metal fire door aside so the wood fell, then let it slam shut behind them of its own weight. Just as he had said, another step took them into the bottom level of a large parking garage. Jim calmly walked along in the small space between a row of parked cars and the cement rear wall. All the lighting was in the central lanes of the garage, leaving the edges dim enough that Blair doubted any witnesses would see anything except a flash of movement.

"I remember this garage," Blair said softly, though the area was deserted this hour of the night and there was no one to hear him. "It's seriously huge. You don't have to keep carrying me; I could walk for a while."

"Save it until we get to the hotel," Jim said, trying to hide the pants that were beginning to break through his measured breathing. "You'll be glad you did."

Blinking, Blair asked slowly, "Hotel? We're going to stay in one of the downtown places?"

Giving up on hiding his gasps, Jim nodded once sharply.

"Man, those are the most expensive ones in the city. The Four Seasons, the Hilton, the St. George...." Jim nodded again at that one, and Blair twisted enough to be able to gape up at him. "We're going into deep cover by living at the most exclusive, poshest hotel north of Los Angeles?"

"Owner owes me a favor," Jim said shortly.

Wondering just how safe it could possibly be to stay in a place as public as a hotel, Blair held his tongue to spare Jim from talking. Though he was winded when they finally found the bank of elevators that would take them up to the rooms, he clearly didn't want to put Blair down, and it took an angry elbow in the ribs to convince him. Once he did, he shook out his arms as if to relieve cramps, then pulled the hood of the white windbreaker over Blair's head. For a second Blair thought it was to hide his curls, but Jim tugged a few of them out so that they fluffed around the edges of the hood. He wrapped an arm around Blair's waist, hugging him close, and bent so they were nearly nose-to-nose before approaching the elevator.

Two couples stepped out, laughing and obviously a little drunk, and Jim maneuvered behind them, adding his own soft laughter to the chorus. It wasn't until the door slid shut that Blair realized from their casual chatter that, not only had he and Jim been mistaken for an amorous couple, but that all four of them thought Blair was a woman. Torn between amusement and irritation, he solidly punched Jim's upper arm, despite the grin on his face.

Jim just smirked, then bussed the end of Blair's nose with a silly, smacking kiss. "That isn't for the security cameras," he murmured.

"Are we going to go through this every time we need to go out?" Blair half-laughed, thinking it could be fun to keep up the pretense.

"Who said we're going out again?" Jim said gravely, though Blair didn't miss the twinkle in his eyes.

Punching him again, this time more seriously, Blair said, "I am not staring at the four walls of a tiny hotel room for three days. No way, no how. Or by the end of it you'll be peeling me off of one of them."

The elevator opened onto a long, luxuriously-appointed hallway that had only one door on each side and one on the end. Jim murmured, "I don't think staying in is going to be a problem, Chief."

Almost timidly Blair stepped out, guided and supported by the arm still around him, and made the seemingly endless trip to the far end. To his consternation he was weaving by the time he reached it, and the air was bursting from him in short huffs of exertion. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," he mumbled, not sure if he was talking to his own beleaguered lungs or to Jim for having carried him 2000 times as far and only getting a little breathless.

He didn't even have enough air left to swat the son of a bitch when Jim effortlessly swung him up into the air after unlocking the door, then carried him over the threshold. Then he couldn't remember to punch him because he was too busy staring in amazement at the huge, sumptuous suite. The living room was twice the size of his entire studio apartment, with an entertainment center that *was* the same size as his home. A galley kitchen ran long the left wall, and the wall opposite the entrance was really just a continuous series of sliding doors that opened onto a football field sized patio, complete with pool. It was all done in whites and gold tones of understated elegance and wealth.

"I really, really don't think three days here are going to make you claustrophobic," Jim said, grinning. "Two bedrooms, one on either side of the bath, which is the door in the middle. What say food, meds, bath, then bed?"

"Yeah, sounds good," Blair answered. He titled up his head to meet Jim's eyes and said very seriously, "So where did you hide the body of the owner's mother-in-law?"

Laughing, Jim set him down at the end of the couch, propped him up in a comfortable position with the biggest, fluffiest, softest pillows Blair had ever seen, and went to get food from the kitchen. In a remarkably short time Blair had a cup of chamomile and lemon grass tea liberally sweetened with honey, two pieces of whole grain toast with home-made strawberry rhubarb jam, and enough pills to choke a horse. Jim ate with him, though his feast was turkey on rye and a bottle of beer, and tidied up while Blair aimlessly surfed through the million plus channels from the dish satellite. It wasn't until Jim made to pick him up yet again that Blair bestirred himself to take care of his own necessities.

"Save it, Chief," Jim ordered gently when the flood of protests and complaints started, easily swinging him up in his arms. "The bathroom's a dangerous place for the healthy, and to be quite frank, I've seen everything you've got so modesty is out of place."

He carried Blair past a huge round bed stacked high with pillows and cushions, into a bathroom that made the rest of the place look like a Holiday Inn business man's special. The tub alone was big enough for two hippos to have kinky sex, and it was surrounded on three sides by mirrored walls, subtly accented with white tree lights. Clusters of gold pillar candles stood on each corner waiting to be lit, enormous white towels that looked like they'd been woven from clouds before being monogrammed in gold with the hotel logo were strategically placed everywhere, and the fixtures looked as if they were made from twenty-four carat gold.

"Damn, Jim," Blair said somberly, "What did you do for the man?"

"Rescued his daughter from a suicide cult, then helped her recover from the brainwashing." He set Blair down on the edge of the tub, unselfconsciously knelt in front of him and began taking off the sneakers. "This is his personal suite when he stays in this hotel; the staff has been told that an old friend is here for his honeymoon. No one will come near the place unless we specifically ask - room service for instance - and even then they'll leave what we want at the door after a discreet knock."

"This is the first chance he's had to repay you, isn't it?" Blair asked shrewdly, shifting from side to side as Jim worked his pants down and off.

Expression and voice bland, Jim said, "She wasn't the reason I went in, and she wasn't the only one I brought out."

"You are just incredible, you know that?" Blair breathed, hearing the nearly reverent note in his voice and not caring at all.

Jim grimaced, shook his head, and finished taking Blair's shirts off. "Being a sentinel doesn't make me a better human being than the next guy," he said dismissively. "If anything, it makes me act like an asshole just to survive with something resembling sanity. Most days, anyway."

Completely taken aback by Jim's opinion of his abilities, Blair silenced the argument that had automatically sprung to his lips, and let Jim ease him into one of the seats molded into the tub. To his surprise, it was warm to the touch, and he had to shake his head at both the ingenuity that went into taking a bath a completely pleasant experience and the kind of people who would go that far to do so. Then the whole thing became even better, as far as he was concerned; Jim peeled off his clothes and sat on the ledge behind him, long legs corralling him on either side.

"Thought we'd do this Japanese style: first the soap, then a rinse, then a soak. Room's warm enough," Jim said, picking up a hand-held sprayer.

"Yes!" Blair said enthusiastically. "Hair, too?"

"I think we can manage that," Jim said dryly. Turning on the water, he spent a few moments adjusting the temperature, carefully aiming it away from both of them until he was done. He redirected the flow onto Blair, instantly covering him with a blanket of hot wetness that was precisely right for him. Blair all but melted into the support of both tub and lover, gratefully soaking up the comfort. Soap followed, fragrant with eucalyptus and other soothing herbs that he didn't bother naming, and for the next little while Blair was just one big happy mass of humming nerve endings that Jim manipulated and handled until every inch was lovingly cleaned.

Just when Blair thought it couldn't possibly get any better, Jim showed him that the high-standing faucet swiveled and operated independently of the hand-held one. With one spilling warming streams over him, the other began to pour rivulets into his hair, aided and abetted by Jim's skilled fingers. "Ohhhh, man," he moaned blissfully. "I have got to still be in the hospital. This is too good to be anything but a fever dream."

"Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you're not that sick anymore," Jim laughed, his touch changing from gentle scrubbing to out and out massaging. "Guess you're just going to have to settle for reality."

"Damn," Blair said lightly. "That means this is going to be over sooner or later. At least in a dream things can feel like they go on forever."

"I'd promise to provide the service on demand," Jim said. "But I have the feeling I'd spend the rest of my life in a tub if I did."

"Got it in one," Blair agreed. "Ooooooo, right there? Please?" Blair lost track of time, but eventually, after two rounds of shampoo, one with conditioner and all the necessary rinsing, Jim did stop, probably to rest cramping fingers. As if in apology for needing to rest, he began to fill the tub, turning on the Jacuzzi jets as soon as the water was deep enough. The hot, firm, all-over massage finished the job of erasing the last coherent thought Blair had, and he floated in a sensual haze of contentment, peace and pleasure that cushioned him as completely as the bubbling water did.

Some indefinite time later Jim sighed and reluctantly turned off the Jacuzzi. "If we stay here any longer our wrinkles will have wrinkles."

"Hmmmm." Blair groped for his brainpower and found just enough of it to sit up and lean forward so Jim could begin drying his curls. "This is what it was like for you when we made love, wasn't it?" he said idly. "This sensory bliss, I mean."

"Know how when a person loses one sense, they learn to pay more attention to the other ones to compensate?" Jim said, methodically squeezing excess water from Blair's sodden locks into a towel. "It's like that. Sensory pleasure isn't a replacement for sex, but it's pretty good compensation."

"Does it change how you look at women?" Blair asked, then added hastily. "Sorry, sorry, didn't mean to be nosy. Just too relaxed to censor my big mouth."

"Under the circumstances," Jim said, dropping a light kiss onto one of Blair's bare shoulders. "I think you're entitled to a few personal questions." He kissed the other shoulder, lingering this time with tongue and teeth. "And the answer is yes. Sexual attraction is caused by the senses, after all. She smells right, moves right, looks right and it's pretty overpowering sometimes; to the point I made some really stupid mistakes letting the little head do my thinking for me. It's almost a relief to look at a beautiful woman and appreciate her from a purely esthetic point of view."

"Huh." Blair skimmed a fingertip over one of Jim's shins, distantly admiring the silky texture of wet hair and skin. "Must be why it's so easy being naked with you. When Simon was helping me get dressed to leave the hospital, it was embarrassing, even though he treated me like I was Daryl or something. But I didn't think twice about you taking my clothes off, then getting in the tub with me."

"What do you mean?" Jim asked curiously, hands going still.

Marshalling more of his gray cells, Blair said thoughtfully, "I don't feel like you're sizing me up, either as a lover or another male. It's just skin to you, like we really were in Japan in one of the public baths."

"And you like that?"

Blair couldn't help it. He grinned and turned in Jim's arms so that he was resting sideways against his chest and could reach up to delicately touch his mouth to Jim's. "Well, I'd really prefer it if looking at me made you so horny that you got instantly hard, but since that's not in the cards, I'll settle for both of us being so relaxed in each other's company that clothing is optional."

"These really don't bother you, then?" Jim said, gesturing at the scars covering his torso. The very blandness of his voice gave away how important the answer to was to him; he kept his eyes trained on the top of Blair's head.

"To be truthful," Blair said slowly, "I've stopped seeing them." He ran his finger over the one that covered where Jim's left nipple had been, thinking that it looked especially obscene because the other nipple had been left intact.

"Only you," Jim said, shaking his head, obviously relieved.

"You've never seemed to care one way or the other about what people think of them, including me," Blair pointed out, following another jagged trail across the curve of Jim's throat, wincing a little at how deep it went.

"That's not exactly true," Jim murmured, angling his head so that Blair could continue his explorations. "It's more a case of relegating it to the realm of nothing I can do anything about and trying to forget it."

Blair hardly heard what Jim said; he had reached the gouges that disfigured his lips and stopped, stunned, because the more accurate description was *had* disfigured Jim's lips. Instead of the gnarled, misshapen lumps that he clearly remembered from the first time he had seen them, there were two smooth, firm curves of flesh, tasty looking and inviting. He glanced at the planes of Jim's cheeks and found they were not quite as flawless. Deep lines were still carved into both sides of his face, but they were even and clean-edged, nowhere near as ugly as the ragged seams that had been there.

"Earth to Blair," Jim laughed. "Come on, Chief. If you're spacing out this bad on me, you belong in bed."

Blinking, still too taken aback to know what to think or say, Blair let himself be carefully hoisted to his feet as Jim stood with him, automatically bracing himself on the rail that ran along the side of the tub. Jim quickly and efficiently dried them both off. By then, Blair really was more asleep than awake, though not by any choice of his own. Puzzle or no puzzle, his body had had enough and was putting him down for the count.

He barely registered being tucked into bed, though his delight when Jim crawled in naked beside him was enough to rouse him into curling around the big body, making happy, appreciative noises. Then there was nothing until he simply woke up, hours later to judge by the light trying to poke through the heavy drapes covering the windows. Feeling rested, really rested, for the first time in forever, he snuggled back a bit deeper into the male heat behind him and let his mind drift wherever it wanted go, completely unsurprised when it circled endlessly around the changes in Jim's scars.

Why his mouth and cheeks, and nowhere else he thought over and over. Can't be exposure to air; the throat is just as open to the elements as the face, mostly. And it can't be his healing ability finally kicking in to clean them up; that would be all over, not limited to just those areas. What could they have in common that could contribute to their healing?

Over and over, the only thing that occurred to Blair was that he had caressed them with loving intent, at least once. Jim's lips, especially, had been kissed thoroughly, not to mention they'd been wrapped around Blair's erection that one time. It didn't make any sense to him; why should *that* of all things have an effect on Jim's scars?

Moving slowly, carefully because he didn't want to wake him, Blair turned in Jim's arms until they were face-to-face. Hesitantly, he cupped Jim's face, heart dropping in a strange, thumping dive when the areas that were repaired were completely covered by his palms. Any skin beyond that touch was unchanged as far as he could see, and he slowly pulled back, hands drifting down to Jim's shoulders.

Jim had already made it clear he didn't like being on the wrong end of an experiment, and for what sounded like perfectly good reasons. But Blair simply couldn't take the evidence of his eyes at face value; he had to do something to prove to himself, at least, that he wasn't mistaken. In the dim light he looked over the rest of his sentinel's body, then covered a particularly large knob of scar tissue at the curve of Jim's shoulder and throat with his hand. For a second his whole arm rebelled at touching the coarse, knotty lump, but he ignored the impulse, chalking it up to the same very human disgust he'd experienced the first time he touched the damaged tissue.

Petting the spot as gently as he could, he bent to where the missing nipple should be, took a deep breath to fight the overwhelming urge to back off, then lovingly kissed the scars there. A thick, nauseating smell and flavor almost made him gag, but he beat that back too, making him wonder what part of his psyche was so revolted by what he was doing that it would conjure such a disgusting taste. A moment later, though, all that was left was the normal taste of human skin, and while the texture was odd against his tongue, it wasn't unpleasant. Blair nursed at the little tidbit, oddly finding comfort in his suckling, until Jim stirred restlessly, one hand coming up to cup the back of Blair's head and hold him to his task.

Murmuring wordless reassurance, Blair snuggled in closer, halfway hoping that he could overcome Jim's impotence by sneaking up on arousal in the first part of waking, when most men would get a morning hard-on. But Jim's only reaction was a few pleased noises and a general air of contentment that was the exact opposite of what Blair wanted. Smiling at himself in resignation, he gave a parting lick and pulled away, turning so that they were back to belly again.

Musing on how long it would take if there were a change, he slid back into sleep again and didn't wake up until Jim got him up for his medicine. The rest of the day slipped away in an enjoyable blur of naps or snuggling with Jim on the couch while they channel-surfed, read, or just talked about everything and nothing. They didn't call room service, but made do with simple meals from the supplies Jim had brought in, most of which were, unsurprisingly, Blair's own favorite comfort foods.

By the end of the day, Blair was feeling pretty close to normal, though walking across the room still took more concentration and strength than he thought it should. That didn't stop him from eagerly agreeing to Jim's help for another long soak, and he argued with himself all the way into the bathroom that it was because a bath would be enjoyable and not because he'd be able to see the results from his impromptu experiment. Because of that, he kept his eyes lowered while they were undressing and getting into the tub, and once there, the beating water worked its usual magic and lulled Blair into mindless bliss.

As they were drying off, though, he couldn't help sneaking a peek at Jim's chest. His breath caught at the sight of the barest hint of a nipple where there had only been puckered scar tissue the night before. The other spot showed improvement, too, though not as much, and Blair was suddenly very, very glad that Jim had picked him up to carry him to the bed. He honestly didn't think his knees would have held him a moment longer.

Studying him and trying to make it look like he wasn't as he laid him down, Jim said, "Overdo it, today?"

Must be picking up on the fast heartbeat, Blair thought. Aloud he said as dismissively as possible, "Maybe a little." From somewhere he summoned a playful smile. "Or it could be that I'm finally feeling good enough to be able to appreciate that fantastic bod of yours."

Looking shyly pleased, Jim ducked his head. "Look all you want; that's about all you're ready for yet," he teased.

"Works for me," Blair said cheerfully. Snagging one of Jim's hands, he pulled his sentinel down onto the bed with him, then rolled so that he was lying on top of him. "You just stay right like that and I'll ogle my fill of you, okay?"

Chuckling, Jim said, "Be my guest, Chief. If it helps you pass the time, who am I to say no?"

Suddenly solemn, Blair said, "You sure you don't mind?"

Matching his mood, Jim stroked one knuckle down Blair's cheek and said, "I'm sure. You've got a right to know the territory, and I know the way I am won't change the way you look at me, or what you think of me. That's just the way you are."

Too moved by the show of trust to speak, Blair kissed the finger caressing his face, then sat back on his heels between Jim's wide-flung legs. From that position the full extent of the damage done to him was obvious and even more heartbreaking. Wondering, not for the first time, how Jim had been able to survive, even with his healing ability, Blair visually followed the path of what looked like claw marks from the left side of the sentinel's face, down to his chin, over his throat, and repeatedly over his torso until they reached his groin. It didn't look like there was any unmarked flesh in that area, but as Blair looked closer, he saw that Jim's testicles were completely unharmed, though the same couldn't be said of the vulnerable tissue under them that ran into the anus.

Without thinking Blair lay down on his stomach and nudged Jim's foot so that it lifted to his shoulder, so he could see his rectum clearly. It was as abused as his manhood, and a slow, acidic anger burned into Blair, though he tentatively probed at the damaged pucker with his gentlest touch. "Anybody else would have a colostomy because of this," he muttered to himself.

"Sometimes I wish that were an option for me," Jim answered steadily. "Be a hell of a lot less painful than the alternative."

Kneeling back up, Blair brushed his fingertips over Jim's balls. "This doesn't make sense. Why would an animal leave this part and just this part of you unharmed? With those intact you have to still get horny as hell, but there's no way to get relief now."

"Never said an animal did it," Jim answered easily. "And trust me, after a few attempts at getting an erection because of hormones, the body learns to lock away desire rather than suffering through the scars splitting, then healing."

Appalled, infuriated, Blair bit out, "I thought I'd seen cruel before, but this- this is - is - is...." He stuttered to a stop and threw himself onto Jim, finding his mouth with almost by instinct. As hard and fierce as the kiss was, it wasn't intended to arouse, but to give expression to the same ancient, potent force that reared its head every time he thought of his sentinel being hurt or threatened. Jim accepted the bruising strength, meeting it, then transformed it to a loving exploration with lips and tongue over every inch of each other's bodies.

Though he was too weak and worn physically to show it, it was one of the most exciting, thrilling make-out sessions Blair had ever had the joy to experience. At first he had to be stern with himself; it was difficult to touch the crumpled and creased scars, let alone endure the brief flare of disgusting taste that came with each kiss. Briefly wondering if that was the residue of whatever was used to make the scars so terrible, Blair quickly learned to ignore the bad and savor the soft sighs and murmurs of pleasure from Jim. That quietly erotic chorus was almost more provocative than the enticing lips that nibbled at his earlobes and neck and suckled at each of his nipples until they, at least, were hard and throbbing with the attention.

Eventually Blair reached Jim's ruined cock, and he stopped what he was doing long enough to look it over completely, yet again shrinking inwardly at what had been done to it. Praying that the healing he had seen elsewhere really was from his touch, he gingerly took the lax flesh into his mouth, using his tongue to cradle it from his teeth. The noxious flavor exploded over his senses, sending a painful wave of cramping nausea from gut to throat, and it took everything Blair had not to spit out the horrid-tasting thing.

With a strength of will he found faintly astonishing, Blair withstood that flood of foulness, insisting inwardly that it would fade as it always had before. His relief when it did dissipate added to the growing enjoyment of holding Jim so intimately, and he began to suck rhythmically, matching his own involuntary grinding into the mattress under him. There was no chance he could climax, but it felt fantastic regardless, as if the simple pleasure of touching were magnified a thousand times.

Blair would have been content to do nothing more until his jaws tired or sleep overtook him, but to his delight Jim began to thrust as best he could, cock lengthening ever so slightly. Almost afraid that he was misreading the signs, Blair listened carefully, then increased the suction around his mouthful. Jim was panting harshly, muttering encouragement and half-formed pleas the way any man close to coming would. Thinking that he had read somewhere once that it was possible to have an orgasm without a full erection, Blair concentrated on giving the most stimulation he could, paying close attention to what produced the most reaction.

Without warning Jim stiffened, roaring inarticulately as Blair's mouth was deluged with the concentrated filth that had greeted him when he first went down on his lover. Grimly he held on until the incredible tension in the muscles under his hands bled away. Only then did he grab the towel from his bath and retch into it. From his few experiments at underage drinking, he knew how to keep the convulsions to quiet gasps that he could hardly hear himself. Hopefully, Jim would be too blissed out to pick up on them, sentinel hearing or not. When his stomach was back under control, Blair crawled up the length of Jim's body, so exhausted from his loving labor and dry heaves that as soon as he fit himself along Jim's side, he fell asleep.

He woke to insistent kisses being scattered over his features and knowing hands soothing and stroking over his sides and back. "Greedy," he scolded sleepily, letting himself be molded to Jim's desires.

"Sorry I crashed on you last night," Jim whispered between soft pecks. "That was the most incredible, mind-blowing, fantastic experience of my life. And as soon as you're strong enough to survive it, I'm going to return the favor." As if in rebuke, Blair's stomach gurgled at both of them, and Jim buried his face in Blair's shoulder, laughing softly.

"Hold that thought," Blair said sheepishly, though he wanted to dance or shout or do *something* to express the wild happiness flowing through him.

"No problem, Chief. We've got all day and tomorrow to fill. Necking will be a lot more fun than arguing over whether to watch the Discovery Channel or Xtreme Sports Network. Though I still can't believe that anybody really interested in snowboarding or mountain bikes would be the sort to sit down and watch other people do it on the tube."

As he spoke, Jim got out of the bed and bent over to pull the blanket back over Blair. The view allowed Blair to see that Jim had almost completely re-grown his missing nipple, and all of the scars were noticeably better, especially those distorting Jim's dick. Cupping the latter with a proprietary hand, he murmured, "After I'm through with you, you might need a new definition of extreme sport."

With a shout of laughter Jim dropped a kiss on his forehead, and gingerly pulled away to tend to morning necessities. True to his word, they spent the majority of the day on the couch, leisurely kissing and petting as they read or ate or whatever. Though Blair tried to give one hundred percent of his attention to his lover, his mind insisted on periodically wandering away to examine the puzzle of Jim's scars from every angle.

By late afternoon he couldn't stand it any longer. Banking on the fact that Jim was bound to have more tolerance for a lover than a friend, Blair pulled away from a sweet, lingering kiss and ran his thumb tip over Jim's love-swollen lips. "Have you even noticed that these have healed?"

Blinking away his bemusement, Jim ran his tongue over his lips, eyes widening as he realized what Blair was talking about. "What?"

"That's not the only place, either," Blair went on steadily. Using the same gentle touch, he outlined an erect nipple through his tee shirt. "That used to be missing."

Jim pulled away from him and scooted to the other side of the couch, his face losing its expression. "Given the way I heal, it was bound to happen sooner or later, don't you think?"

"Maybe," Blair said judiciously. "But why your lips first? Why not the same rate all over, instead of in selected areas? Most importantly, why the areas that I've been caressing?"

He could feel Jim mentally retreating, shutting himself down, but he persisted, inexplicably sure that he needed to have the answers to his questions. "I'm not being a researcher, here," Blair said quietly, insistently. "I'm being someone who gives a shit about your well-being."

"I know, I know," Jim said shortly. Dropping his face into his hands for a moment, he scrubbed roughly at his features. "It's probably got something to do with where they came from in the first place."

Trying to sound encouraging and open-minded, Blair said, "I can't even begin to imagine what could have caused them."

"No, you can't," Jim muttered uneasily. "And you wouldn't believe me if I told you." He stood, paced uncertainly to the sliding doors and back again, his body language on the trip back saying he'd decided he'd said enough and was going to leave rather than deal with more explanations.

To stop him, Blair asked as sincerely as he could, "How can you be so sure of that? Can it really be more out there than the fact that they didn't kill you in the first place?"

Blair's ploy worked; Jim sat on the back of the couch, one leg swinging slightly. "Not even in the same ballpark, Chief. It's one thing to accept that there's something unique going on; another entirely to look an impossible explanation for it in the face."

"At least try me," Blair pleaded. "At the very worst you'll convince me that whatever happened to you was so terrible that your mind had to shield itself from the memories of it." He tried for, and succeeded in finding, a smile. "Since I already think you're half-crazy just for watching over me like a guardian angel, what have you got to lose?"

"Your respect," Jim muttered sourly. "Or worse yet, I could gain your pity. You've never contaminated our relationship with that, no matter how bad my life looks to you."

Shaking his head, Blair said firmly, "Never, ever going to happen. Come on, Jim, trust me. I just want to help, even it's only by listening."

Jim studied him through lowered lashes for a moment, as if mentally reviewing everything he'd ever seen or heard Blair do. Trying his best to project patient understanding, Blair waited. Jim got up to pace again, talking rapidly, as if he were afraid that if he didn't hurry, he wouldn't speak at all.

"You told me once that one reason you got into sentinel lore was because you wanted to prove that they existed. That there was a natural opposite to those people born without conscience or heart, right?"

"Something like that," Blair agreed uncertainly.

"And I've told you that there are people who are so intrinsically good, that they, well, stand out to my senses. People like Incacha. So it follows that there are people who are intrinsically wrong, too, like the cult leaders who use people's fear of death to make themselves rich and important." He came to a standstill in front of Blair, eyes troubled and wary. "Is it so unrealistic, so unbelievable that maybe there's a distilled form of it, too? Pure good and pure evil; an avatar of light and one of dark; God and Satan?"

Not sure where Jim was going, Blair said carefully, "Most cultures believe in good and evil, though maybe not as dynamically opposed as Christian based ones. In some parts of the world, they're differing sides of the same coin."

"This is why I didn't want to talk about it with you," Jim snapped, going back to his pacing. "Tell you I see ghosts, and you hook me up to a thousand gadgets and meters. Tell you I have visions about black jaguars and you talk about Jungian archetypes and subconscious representations. Can't you just - just accept that I know for a fact that there is pure good and pure evil, and leave it at that?!"

Taken aback, Blair started to defend himself, then shut his mouth firmly and inhaled deeply. When he released his breath, he said wryly, "Measuring angel wings again, aren't I?"

Coming to kneel in front of him, Jim took Blair's hands between his own. "Sometimes that's what the world needs. But what I need right now, if you really want to hear all of this, is for you to put the academic in his box and listen with your shaman-touched heart."

Startled at the description of himself, Blair still said softly, "I'm trying; I swear, man, I'm trying."

"Good enough." Jim stared at where their hands were linked. After a moment, he said bitterly, "You know I once thought that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me was to be seen as a freak, a side-show exhibit of some kind. I subjugated my entire life to that belief, hiding what I was under a layer of stupid lies and the credulity of the average person. I told myself that I couldn't be the cop, the protector I was born to be, if everyone knew what I was capable of doing."

"From what I know of people and specifically how I've seen them react to you, I'd have to say that you aren't completely wrong," Blair said. "Under the circumstances, I can see where concealing your abilities would make sense."

With a world of sorrow and grief in his voice, Jim said, "Not if I make someone else live that lie with me, forcing him to sacrifice his right to be who and what he should be. My partner, my guide I guess you could call him, became a cop just because I needed him with me on the streets, and I couldn't imagine being anything else. And the overwhelming ugliness and misery of those streets began to wear him away, overshadowing the bright light that he was. It was like evil was closing in on him from all sides, and I not only couldn't stop it, it was all my fault to start with.

"So I despaired, and that was the chance evil had been looking for. Oh, it came to me all beauty and elegance, dressed in the trappings of power and position I understood best, but evil can't truly hide itself. The thing slipped just enough for me to know it for what it was, and that let me discover what it truly wanted from me - my partner. I was simply the lure to draw him all the way into the pit and give evil the victory it relishes most: the corruption of a pure soul. I had to prevent that, no matter what. If nothing else, I had to make restitution for my selfishness and fear."

Swallowing against a throat more dry and painful than pneumonia had ever made it, Blair said, "That sounds like an act of love to me."

With a violent shake of his head, Jim denied the idea. "Just more ego and pride on my part. I actually had the balls to think I could get the better end of a deal with the devil. When it laid the world out at my feet, I offered everything that was mine to give in exchange for what I wanted. It took it all, of course: my home, my livelihood, my past, my future, my body, my manhood, even my name. It never occurred to me that would serve the thing's purpose just as well; that not being in the picture because he would take me out of it would be just as damaging for my partner."

Groping after something to say that didn't sound skeptical or analytical, Blair said faintly, using their joined hands to indicate the room around them, "You're still doing good."

"When I can. He can't stop me, short of killing me, though he gets damn close sometimes, because my sentinel spirit wasn't mine to give. It was in my shaman's keeping, and I thought that would prevent Evil from getting anything useful from me."

Helplessly, Blair sought out Jim's eyes, unable to hide the doubt and worry that was his irresistible response to the story. Unable to speak, afraid that no matter what he said, he would do damage, Blair tightened his grip, trying that way to impart reassurance. Mercifully, Jim seemed to understand; he brushed a kiss over Blair's forehead, then stood, pulling free.

"I'm going to go check on some things, see if Halley's gone to his real bosses yet, look in on my sources, stuff like that." Already Jim's voice and mind seemed a thousand miles away, but he dragged it back, at least for a moment. "You get some rest, if you can with your mind racing a thousand miles an hour like that. And since you're thinking, consider this. We've been close enough for a while now for me to tell you my name, but I never did. I couldn't because I didn't know it. But you did. How did you know my name was Jim?"

The question hit Blair hard. While he was reeling from it, Jim made good his escape. Staring at the closed door until his eyes burned from not blinking, Blair's mind numbly skittered from image to image, memory to memory. A chill chased over his skin, pulling a hard shiver from him. That action, tiny as it was, was enough to get him moving, but all he did was pull the blanket Jim had kept handy all day over his too-cold body, and snuggle into the depths of the couch. He didn't want to think anymore, and the suggestion from his stiff muscles that he was tired enough to sleep had him scrambling after that refuge in sheer desperation.

Polite but insistent knocking at the door startled Blair out of sleep the next morning, and habit more than conscious decision had him stumbling to answer it, absently dragging his curls away from his face so he could see where he was going. Thankfully, the simple sight of the heavy ornate door was enough to jar him back to reality and let caution take over. Standing to one side as best he could, he peered through the spy hole, then fumbled hastily for the lock as he recognized the broad back and wide shoulders of Simon Banks.

"Simon! What's wrong? Why are you here?" Blair helped him with his rain-heavy coat, distractedly looked for a place where it could drip harmlessly, then hastily hung it in the closet, telling himself he'd clean up the floor later. "You shouldn't be here!"

"I know, I know, but this is important - and personal." Chewing on his cigar, Simon stalked to the couch, but didn't sit. Instead he swung around to watch Blair's unsteady approach, beating a manila file folder against his thigh as he waited for him to collapse on the couch.

Vaguely disturbed on a number of levels, but still too muzzy to be sure why, Blair curled his legs under him and huddled back into his blanket. "Personal? Daryl -- "

"No, no," Simon interrupted. "Personal for you." Without preamble he handed Blair the file, but summed up the contents with a pithy, "Chancellor Edwards is in the process of framing you for theft of University property."

"What!!!"

Taking his cigar out of his mouth and studying the end as if he didn't want to see Blair's expression when he heard the explanation, Simon said, "When Hal Buckner died, he left several very significant and valuable pieces to Rainier. The Chancellor took custody of them, faked paperwork that they'd been appropriately delivered and stored by the Anthropology Department, then hung onto them for herself. At the time, she probably thought that after a few years she'd be able to discreetly find who to sell them to for more or less what they were worth without anybody connecting them directly to Buckner or her."

"Not her best idea," Blair said dazedly. "The world of anthropologists is a small one, relatively speaking, and one thing we all love is showing off our artifacts. After a while, everybody knows where anything important is, if for no other reason than to borrow it for exhibits or study."

"She found a way to get some mileage out of them," Simon said harshly. "She was going to wait until you'd signed off on the inventory, then enter them on it herself. Shortly after that someone acting on her directive would ask to borrow them, and when they came up missing in the storeroom, they would have been discovered in your home."

"How -- how do you know all this?" Blair asked, disbelief surfacing. The Chancellor might have wanted him gone, but prison? She had no reason to hate him that much, did she?

"Our mutual, ah, associate provided a list of names and ways to put pressure on them to get the truth." Simon finally sat, hands hanging loosely between his knees. "If it's any help, kid, there was no particular malice in what she was doing. That business with Ventriss was only the latest in a series of bad judgment calls on her part; the board of directors has privately given her warning that her position is in danger. You were going to be a sacrificial lamb in her attempt to prove to the board that she can do her job. She comes off as the hero for catching a crook in the act, and takes the heat off of her own mistakes for a while."

Simon sat back on the couch, took a huge puff of his cigar, and added, "In a way, I can see where she's coming from. The board hired her because they needed someone who was ruthlessly good at fundraising - to the point that ethics or morals weren't a deterrent to keeping the cash cows happy. Then, when there's a public outcry against a series of scandals on campus, they kick her out, taking the stand of being the bastions of integrity for Rainier. Which keeps the cash coming in and maybe lures in a few more contributors who want to see that kind of reputation in their charities."

Coughing once, hard, re-awakening the tightness in his chest that he had all but forgotten in his lazy, healing days with Jim, Blair said huskily, "Hey, recovering lungs here." When Simon guiltily jumped up from the couch and went into the kitchenette to look for a way to put out the cigar, Blair asked tiredly, "Do I need to press charges or something?"

From behind the counter, Simon said, "Would you, if you had to? Or would that compassionate heart of yours let her off with just slinking away into the night, maybe to get a job running some other school?"

There was an odd note in Simon's voice, in his entire visit, but Blair couldn't thread his way through the morass of shock, worry, and disappointment filling his mind to look for the hidden meaning under Simon's words. "Why do I have the feeling we just changed the subject?" Blair said bluntly, half-hiding his face in his blanket.

"Because we have," Simon said just as frankly, slowly wandering out of the kitchen again, small plate in hand for an ashtray. "Chancellor Edwards isn't the only one out to use you. She's simply being direct about it, instead of hiding it under a false guise of friendship and caring."

"It's not like that," Blair said so flatly, so indisputably certain that Simon was clearly taken aback.

Recovering quickly, Simon said, "Think about it. The man's unemployed, homeless, probably wanted by very powerful people. He gives you a little nursemaiding, a little protection in a few bad situations, and he's suddenly got a safe place to sleep and get a hot meal. You can't trust a person who has everything to gain and nothing to lose by being with you."

"And what have I got to lose by befriending him?" Blair said tightly, the now-familiar imperative to defend his sentinel beginning to rise. "I think you're taking the fatherhood gig too seriously again, man."

"Maybe, maybe." Simon thoughtfully took another draw on his cigar, then released the smoke slowly. "And a father telling a stubborn kid 'no' is one way to push him into doing exactly what Dad doesn't want him to do. I do want you to think on this, though. Being with him is going to put you on the outside, just like him. It's going to be like having a married lover. No way to contact him when you need help, or just comfort from your loneliness. Never knowing where he is or what he's doing, or if he's giving what you need from him to someone else."

"Simon, the cigar!" Blair said irritably, stifling a cough and refusing to give any consideration to the image of isolation Simon had painted, even though Jim had done the same himself not so long ago. "Have you switched brands or something? That thing smells a thousand times worse than your usual."

"Sorry, sorry," Simon muttered, jerking the cigar out of his mouth and making as if to tamp it out. Mid-motion his hand stopped, and he said gruffly, "There is one thing you need to take into consideration. I stopped by your place to take care of the necessities - mail that had to be taken care of, emergency messages on your machine, that sort of thing. There was one from Dr. Eli Stoddard. He finally got the government grant he needed to be able to hire you as his assistant at Georgetown University. Something about a program for cultural sensitivity training for diplomats and senior military officers stationed on foreign bases?"

Closing his eyes at his guilty thrill, Blair muttered, "Dr. Stoddard's been trying to convince the current administration that we have to do something about the 'dirty American' image the CIA and culturally arrogant diplomats have fostered in the past fifty years or so, before we wind up hated by everybody on the planet."

"Sounds like the opportunity of a lifetime," Simon said neutrally.

Uneasily, Blair muttered, "It would make my career."

Swiftly crossing the small distance between them, Simon laid a heavy hand on Blair's shoulder, but said gently, "If he's really a friend, he won't stand in the way of a chance like that." As if understanding that he had pushed too far too fast, he pulled back, carelessly tossing the plate toward the coffee table. "If you want to discuss the pros and cons on the move, just remember you never did get that meal you were promised before all this started."

Simon headed for the door, and Blair automatically got up and followed him, going to the closet to get Simon's coat. The moment the door opened, a smell that Blair knew all too well wafted out, this time not disguised by the covering scent of cigar smoke. Not trusting his voice, he blindly held the coat out, hoping t he protective imperative surging through him would disguise itself as hurt confusion. Simon took the coat and left, trailing smoke. Blair slowly, carefully shut the door so that the lock would engage, then murmured under his breath an old prayer he'd heard long, long ago to banish evil and forbid it from re-entering.

He calmly went into the bathroom to take care of the necessities, working on automatic pilot as much as anything else. He carried a load of candles from around the Jacuzzi with him on the way out, depositing them on the kitchen counter, then made and ate breakfast before ferrying the rest of them out. It took several trips, and Blair had to stop after the last one to catch his breath, annoyed at himself for being so weak, and worried that the lingering effects of the pneumonia would prevent him from meditating. Finally he had everything set up to his satisfaction. He sat in the crowd of lights, took a deep cleansing breath, and let everything go but the steady count of inhale, hold, exhale, hold.

Given how long it had been since he'd last meditated -- he'd gotten out of the habit while in Borneo -- and how much he had to process, Blair expected to have to try several times to reach the level of relaxed concentration he wanted. To his surprise it was early evening when he resurfaced, clear-headed and focused. He took his time getting to his feet, gingerly stretching as he did, knowing exactly what he had to do when Jim came for him. Resolved to stay put no matter how long that took, he meandered into the kitchen to see about dinner.

On the way, he picked up the remote for the television and turned on the local news out of habit, intending to reduce the screen and call up the program listings. Before he could, a live broadcast that featured garish flashes from police car and ambulance lights caught his eye. He looked up in time to see Joel Taggart in the background of the picture, running alongside a gurney. The only thing he could see of the man on it was the hand Joel was clutching, but the terror on Joel's face told Blair everything he had to know.

A stubborn and enterprising cameraman pushed through the boundary of uniforms to get a clear shot of another downed officer's face: Rafe's. A few feet beyond him was a glimpse of the Australian exchange officer that Blair hadn't had a chance to get to know yet. All of them and a dozen more were covered in blood, and the excited, barely coherent news anchor talked about a drug ring bust that had turned into a free-for-all between multiple gangs and the cops. Intuition as much as anything told Blair that the shack in the background and its supposed occupant had really been the cause of all the bloodshed.

With a studied calm he didn't feel, he turned off the television, put on his shoes and the protective concealment of the white windbreaker, and left the suite, not giving into the need to rush until he was several blocks away. Using almost all of the cash in his pocket, he caught a cab to the hospital he dimly remembered the newscaster mentioning, barely restraining himself from begging the cabbie to ignore the lights and speed limits. Despite his urgency, he didn't lose all caution; he had the driver drop him off a few blocks from the hospital to give himself time to think.

Since it was likely that the news media weren't the only ones watching the exits and entrances, Blair turned out his pockets to look for something, anything he could use to disguise himself. The flashing light of a joke shop caught his eye and he grinned, counting his coins as he went in. Ten minutes later, he held the white jacket against his head, fake blood dripping very realistically from the soaked fabric. Between the gore covering his face, his bare chest, and the crumpled jacket, he doubted his mother would have recognized him. To add to his disguise, he had chopped most of his hair off with his knife, leaving only a crown of ringlets, and put on a pair of running shorts he had talked the guy running the shop into loaning him. His shirt was tied around his waist, disguising the lump in the back of the shorts that was his jeans.

No one seemed particularly interested in another evening ball player coming in with an injury, especially with the chaos of ambulances, police cars, news vans, medical personnel, cops, and newsmen rushing everywhere, shouting and arguing among themselves. Blair dutifully checked in with the triage nurse, using a made up name and social security number, then became one of the crowd of patients in the waiting room. When he was positive that no one was paying any attention to him, he went to the restroom, cleaned up the fake blood, and re-dressed in his jeans and shirt. He slipped from the bathroom into the employee lounge that was just off the E. R., unsurprised that it was empty because of the bedlam on the other side of the wall. A doctor's lab coat had been tossed casually over a hook near a shelf that provided scrubs. Blair helped himself to it, making a mental apology and note to make sure it was returned.

Taking a quick glance at the mirror to make sure that he would blend into the environment, Blair froze, deja vu rising up so powerfully that for a moment the whole world wavered as if seen through the heat rising off the desert. The feeling left as quickly as it came, and Blair distractedly straightened the name tag on the coat -"McCoy" -- trying to remember if his mother had ever dated a doctor when he was small so he could explain it away. Surely he'd played at doctor or dentist or something sometime in the past; didn't most kids?

The wail of another ambulance broke Blair from his stasis. He cautiously poked his head out the door that led to the main hospital floors, afraid of being mistaken for the real thing. Those corridors were as deserted as the lounge, and he hurried to the elevator, head bent over a clipboard he'd scooped off an orderly's cart. Intensive Care's location was clearly marked, both on the elevator floor list and the map beside it, and he made his way there, walking as if he were a man on a mission too important to be stopped. Just past the waiting room for the I. C. U. he ducked into one of the small cubicles intended to be used as a private conference room for doctors and patients, and peered into the waiting room through a crack in the door until he saw Joel Taggart standing by himself at the perimeter of a small crowd of cops and their families.

Using the straw in a soda can left in the consulting room, Blair blew a spit wad at him. When Joel looked up, he opened the door and showed himself clearly for a split second. Eyes widening dramatically, adding to his already mournful expression, Joel pinched his lips shut over an automatic exclamation, then edged toward Blair's location until he could slip unnoticed into the room with him.

"You shouldn't be here," Joel whispered with that peculiar intensity a man has when he wants to be shouting instead.

"I know, I know. Just tell me how bad it is, please!" Blair begged unashamedly.

Sinking heavily into one of the two plastic chairs in the room, Joel admitted, "Bad, really bad. Rafe took one to the chest, Conner got one in the shoulder, and Simon was hit in the back so bad that the doctors are worried that even if he lives, he might never move on his own again, let alone walk. Two of our uniformed officers are dead, and two feds whose only reason for being dead is trusting their boss, Halley. He's dead, too, by the way."

"Oh, my God," Blair murmured softly. "What happened? I thought the safe house I was supposed to be in was only covered by a couple of guys from Major Crimes, not the whole department."

"From what we can tell by the mess," Joel said roughly, "Halley's freelance employers decided that they could make do without his services and their proposed alliance, more or less at the same time. He went in to do the occupant of the safe house, and each of the three players sent a crew in after him to do him. Two of them caught sight of each other just outside and opened fire before Halley made his move. The next thing anybody knew, the whole area was a battlefield, dragging in every unit anywhere near by. Our only consolation is that it looks like everybody took serious losses; there were more of the bad guys on the ground than ours."

Shoving his hands into the pockets of his lab coat to hide their shaking, Blair asked unsteadily, "Can you describe any of them to me? Was there anyone who, uh, uh - " He had to stop and catch his breath in a sob, trying to hide it as a cough, head down to hide his face.

"Damn, Blair, you do know," Joel started.

Springing across the small distance, Blair laid his fingers over Joel's lips, a different fear slamming through his defenses, making his lies swift and sure. "I don't know anything that can be of any use to anybody, any more than Simon does. The source contacts him when and if he has something; I just happened to get caught on the very edge of it once. Come on, Joel. This guy knows the kind of nuclear grade trouble he's playing with. He's not about to give away anything that would make it possible for him to be tracked or caught, not if he wants to live. I was just asking because I want to know if all that death was for nothing."

Joel's velvet eyes said clearly that he didn't believe a word, but that he understood why Blair was doing it. He turned thoughtful, then said, "Anyone who looked like he was on the fringe of the fight, or who we haven't been able to I.D. yet?"

"Yeah, something like that," Blair said breathlessly.

"All the unknowns were Hispanic or black. Is that a help?" Joel asked.

Dark spots danced in front of Blair's eyes; his lungs couldn't fill because of the pressure around his heart. From a long way away, he felt thick fingers close over his upper arms, then he was sitting, head down between his knees while Joel clumsily patted his back. "Sorry, sorry," he mumbled, but his ears were ringing with Jim's cryptic, "He can't stop me, short of killing me."

If Jim hadn't been among the wounded or dead, then he had never been there; otherwise the gunfight would have gone down entirely in the cops' favor, possibly with no deaths. That meant somebody - or, he had to face it, something - had prevented Jim from being where he needed to be. Just how much abuse could be heaped on a human who could heal the way his sentinel could?

"Look," Joel said reassuringly, clearly worried about Blair. "With the cartels at each other's throats again and Halley out of the picture, they're not going to be as frantic to find Simon's so-called source, if they even know their only possible link to him wasn't in that safe house. We might even be able to convince them that Halley was double-crossing them all along and there was no source. You go back into hiding for a few days and give me a chance to see what I can salvage out of this mess. Get the rest you need before you find yourself back in a hospital."

Blair nodded, and allowed Joel to haul him to his feet. "Rest sounds good," he mumbled, heart and mind with Jim. Pulling himself together as best he could, he stepped away from Joel. "I'm going to have to sneak out by myself, same way I got in. Hope you're right about no one looking for me yet. Right now, I don't know if I could get past a blind and deaf watchdog."

"Just be as careful as you can," Joel said helplessly.

"Will do. You'd better go first." Blair gave a clumsy thump to Joel's arm, trying to both thank him and bolster his confidence.

With a last uncertain glance, Joel shuffled through the opened door, rubbing at his face as if he'd needed a few minutes of privacy for tears. No one noticed him; attention was riveted on a doctor speaking quietly to the few uninjured members of Major Crimes. Though Blair would have preferred to linger to hear the verdict on Simon and the others, he knew there wasn't a better time to make good his escape.

It wasn't until he had made it out of the hospital by ditching the lab coat and convincing the kitchen staff he was a temp cook who had been sent to the wrong hospital that Blair realized he didn't know where to go. He had never had a key to the luxury suite he and Jim had been sharing. Home and Rainier were both obviously out, along with any other place or friend he might turn to simply because the bad guys had to know all about him through Halley. For lack of anything better to do, he caught a bus that was pulling up as he left by the hospital kitchen exit and flashed his bus pass, not caring where it went.

Riding for mile after endless mile, changing buses almost at random, getting away with it only because he didn't look like the typical vagrant trying to rest his weary feet, Blair sat in the dimmest corners he could find and watched Cascade flow past the window like an old film noir movie. No matter how much he bludgeoned his mind, he couldn't come up with a single idea of how he might find Jim, especially an injured, hurting Jim who was being deliberately kept from him. The city was too vast, with too many dark and forgotten cracks and crevasses, and he was one human, weak, tired and on the run himself.

The bus stopped at Prospect Street, in front of a deserted storefront that looked as if it had been abandoned for years. A homeless man got on, pausing in front of the coin and token box to fumble in his pockets for the correct change, while the driver waited, surprisingly patient, for him to find his money. "Gabe," he said genially, after a few awkward minutes, "you know I've got a schedule to keep."

"As do we all," Gabe said in a soft, melodious voice.

Blair hardly heard him. He had caught a flicker of motion in the corner of one eye, a flapping, fluttering motion like the wings of a great bird - or the opened sides of a long coat caught in the wind. Without thinking, he hurled himself down the aisle to the door, almost knocking the homeless man over in his hurry to get off the bus. Once on the sidewalk, he stared up at the three-story building in front of him, waiting for another hint of movement, but it didn't come.

Uneasily he looked up and down the deserted street, finding only more abandoned buildings and obvious signs of neglect. This part of Prospect was one of those eerie blank spots all cities had, as if the flood of humanity filling the rest of Cascade had somehow missed this one small portion, flowing around it on all sides. It didn't seem right to Blair, somehow, and he slowly walked toward 852, trying to imagine how it should look.

Once he started, his feet kept going without any help from him, and he climbed up to the top floor as if he'd made the trip many times. Deja vu hit him again, harder than it had in the hospital, and he strode confidently down the grimy, littered hallway until he came to 307, not hesitating even at the threshold to the garbage-filled rooms. Only when he was inside did he pause and turn in a slow circle to orient himself in the dim, street-lamp lit space. The sight of the decrepit stairs along one wall jarred him back into moving, and he all but ran up them, coming to a halt when a soft moan scared him just before he could clear the top step.

Clouds moved away from the full moon, allowing silvery light to touch that small bit of the building through the shattered glass of the skylight overhead. With a choked scream, Blair clung to the brick next to him, eyes going wide as he realized how close he had come to a fatal fall. Only the farthest corner of the loft platform was intact, connected to the stairway by a single plank tossed over the bare bones of the support structure for what should have been the rest. Another soft cry and flicker of motion pulled Blair to the very edge of the drop. On the other side of the makeshift bridge, he could see a nearly naked man lying on a bare mattress, writhing in misery.

He was too curled in on himself for Blair to see who it was, but his heart knew, and he put one foot on the wooden plank. It swayed sickeningly, and he hastily stepped back again, swallowing against a suddenly dry mouth. For a moment, just a moment, he considered running back out again to call Joel for help. Jim was too big to move all by himself and they couldn't stay here, it wasn't safe, was it? He couldn't cross that frail connection between him and his sentinel; he'd surely fall to his death, possibly taking Jim with him.

Jim cried out again, this time clearly saying Blair's name, as if his only hope of surcease from torment. Taking a deep breath, Blair charged across the plank, arms outstretched to either side of him for balance, murmuring, "Please, please, please," every foot of the way. A loud creak warned him just as the wood gave way, and he jumped, teetered on the edge of the small platform, and fell forward onto Jim.

Without thinking Blair wrapped all four limbs around him, crushing his head to his chest and sprinkling hasty kisses over any part of him he could reach. The word "mine" came to his lips unbidden, and he said it over and over before each touch of his mouth, until his heart stopped racing and Jim lay quietly in his arms, clutching at Blair with all his strength. Moved by the same impulse that had prompted that one word, Blair ducked down so that he could press a butterfly-light kiss to each eyelid, then the tip of Jim's nose, then each earlobe, still repeating "mine" as he did.

It wasn't until his mouth covered Jim's that his lover responded, opening to Blair's tentative probe. They sighed into each other, exchanging life-giving breath, their kiss deepening to a leisurely re-awakening of pleasure and contentment as their tongues mated. Blair reluctantly drew back until he could look into Jim's face, awed by the dawning wonder and joy there.

Knotting his hands in what was left of Blair's curls, Jim muttered, "Chief, wha...?"

"So lately," Blair began, his voice trailing off uncertainly before firming into a telling-a-story tone. "My life has been taking this tightening spiral around the drain, ready to just slide right on down the tubes into disaster, and it's been that way pretty much since the night I decided to get out of Simon's car when I should have stayed put. My friendship with Simon, my job, the whole thing with Daryl and that damned taskforce - it's all been getting worse and worse with the only good thing to hang onto being my mystery lover. Then yesterday the man I'm really beginning to think might be the one for me tells me he's literally possessed by the devil."

As Blair spoke, all the happiness in Jim began to drain away, leaving behind an emptiness that was as frightening as it was expected. Despite that, Blair kept talking calmly, positive that getting through it from beginning to end was the only way to convince Jim that he meant every word of what was to follow. "I'm not going to lie to you; my first reaction was disbelief. We both know that. Then you asked me how I knew your name. I must have told myself a thousand times that you were just answering to it because I used it without thinking while I was fevered. Or that, since I called you Jim, you believed that was your name because I did. But the first would have meant you were lying to me, and the second that you were so insane that I should have seen it ages ago. Besides, it *is* your name; I know that all the way to the bottom of me. I fell asleep trying to reconcile what my head knew and what my heart knew."

"Chief," Jim began painfully, but Blair dropped a silencing kiss on him, then was lured by the living warmth of him to stay long enough for both of them to be breathless.

"Anyway," he said, jerking away before he lost his chain of thought completely. "I was as close to despair as I've ever been. When what looked like a friend came to my door, I let him in, though I should have known better than to think you would have told Simon where I was for any reason. And he wouldn't have asked until that seventy-two hours were up. This man finished pulling the plug on my life, but just before I went down for the third time, he offered me a chance of getting everything I ever wanted professionally, just the chance, because that I would have believed. Anything else would have had me looking for the catch."

"Smarter than I was," Jim muttered, quietly enough that Blair could ignore him and finish his story.

"All I had to do to rescue my career was turn my back on you." Jim went very, very still in his arms. Trying to give the impression of being unyielding and unrelenting, Blair went on. "So I took a leap of faith and decided that the man at the door wasn't my friend at all, only a thing that looked like him. And that you were telling the truth, not just as a delusional person might see it, but the real, unabridged, good versus evil truth. Which meant I was not going to turn my back on you: not now, not ever. Which I wouldn't have done anyway. Guess you're just going to have to show me how to survive on the streets."

"You can't, you *shouldn't,*" Jim half-growled.

Shaking his head stubbornly, Blair said, "My life, my choice. As long as you accept that, accept that my need to be with you is as strong as your need to protect me, we'll find a way to crawl back out of the pit. I promise you we'll make it somehow." He could almost see Jim marshalling his arguments, getting his own obstinacy in place, but he'd had enough. Mustering every bit of love and want that he'd been pushing down, Blair claimed his mouth again, this time with no intention of backing off.

If Jim thought of holding back, he never had a chance to try. The moment their lips touched, the passion was there, fierce and demanding, as if it had simply been waiting for them to get all the words out of the way. Blair tightened his hold until he could hear bone and muscle from both of them protest, but even if he had wanted to ease up, Jim's arms were locked around him just as securely. His erection grew quickly, pressing insistently against the restraint of zipper and fabric until it was an intolerable ache begging for the touch of bare skin on bare skin.

That necessity somehow communicated itself to Jim by moan or sigh, or perhaps the sentinel simply read it through Blair's skin. Either way he began to rip at Blair's clothing, paying no heed to the damage he did to it as long as he could satisfy the need to have nothing between them. Blair helped as much as he could, and soon they were naked, exploring each other's bodies as if they had never had a chance to caress each other before. Lips, tongue, and teeth came into play very quickly, leaving possessive love-marks everywhere, driving Blair insane with the yearning to be truly taken.

Blindly praying that the healing his touch had given Jim earlier had had time to work more of its magic, Blair took Jim's cock in hand, stroking it with what he hoped was irresistible pleasure for him. Jim moaned hungrily around the nipple he was tormenting, thrust into Blair's grip, then yanked his mouth away. "Wait, wait."

"Let me..." Blair began.

"Lube - wait." Jim reached into a stack of clothes tucked neatly to one side and drew out a small tube. "Got this earlier, for when I came back to you."

Blair hastily took it, squeezed out a palm full and went back to coaxing an erection from his partner. "If sheer wanting could do the trick," he muttered.

"Then I'd already be inside you," Jim answered hoarsely. He tunneled between them and began to match strokes on Blair's erection, their hands moving together in an undeniable demand for release.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Blair whimpered, not wanting to come, but not able to give up the intimate touch. He could feel the scars on Jim's penis split open as they stretched to accommodate the swelling in it, then mend again almost as fast. Half the time he couldn't tell if his lover's cries were of pain or desire, but he couldn't stop, wouldn't stop, and didn't think Jim could either.

"Slick me up inside," Blair ordered, when it seemed that Jim's cock was hard enough to give him what he needed. "Lots of lube, one finger."

Practically growling, Jim did as he was told, then sat up, taking Blair with him, holding him by the waist so that he was suspended over his lap. "Can we make this work?"

"God, yes. My favorite way. Hold still." A few hitches with his knees put him in the perfect position, and Blair slid down, the slickness from where they masturbated each other making the trip easy. The first nudge of the spongy crown against his opening made him gasp, then groan, and as the hunger for Jim leaped higher, he recklessly impaled himself on Jim's cock.

Jim shouted, his arms becoming steel bands that Blair knew would leave bruises. Not that he could feel any pain; his mind was consumed by a rush of sensation as he was penetrated, his body rejoicing in the promise of climax. Driven by some urgency that he didn't understand, as if they might be stopped at any moment, Blair rode Jim violently, driving him into himself as fast and hard as he could. "Mine, mine, mine," he chanted in rhythm to the pounding of his hips, not caring why he had to repeat that over and over, hardly hearing himself as he did. Locking his hands into Jim's short hair as best he could, Blair stared into his eyes, seeing that same sense of immediacy as they both rushed toward their finish.

Release was almost upon them both, a distant rumble that couldn't be heard, just felt through bone and flesh, a promise of relief from the unbearable ecstasy tightening in groin and spine. As the first spasm of orgasm jerked through Blair's gut, he realized the rumble wasn't just within his body, but a powerful vibration that was shaking the entire building, threatening to bring it down. The survivor in his mind wanted to run while he could, dragging his sentinel with him if necessary, but his body was helpless under the command of his release.

Intelligence watched from a distance while the world around them began to disintegrate, breaking away in bits and pieces that turned to nothing as soon as they were free of the structure around them. Sound crashed around them in the endless thunder of destruction, and the only way he knew Jim was roaring "No!" at the top of his lungs was because he could see the word on Jim's lips, feel the throb of it against his chest.

"Find me!" Blair shouted over the chaos, trusting his sentinel's hearing and his lover's heart. "Find me!!" Then he was ripped away and carelessly tossed into nothingness.

With a vicious snap that he experienced with all his senses, Jim found himself in the bullpen of Major Crimes, leaning on the door, staring into the room while most of his department and half of the rest in the station milled around Blair. The weight of his gun, both familiar and new, was at the small of his back, and his badge hung from a chain around his neck, just as it had many times in his first life. Staring past the people between him to the darkened windows of Simon's office, he looked at his reflection, hand going up of its own volition to touch the smooth, flawless skin of his face.

With a start that hurt his stomach and heart, Jim realized he had been sent back to the beginning. Not of his time in Cascade, or of his life as a sentinel, but to when he first despaired and took the steps on the path that led to his damnation. Not sure of what it meant, too afraid to believe that Blair had somehow undone his stupidity, he stood frozen in the doorway until Rafe brushed past, muttering, "Hey, Ellison, as a door you make a great roadblock, get me?"

Automatically stepping to one side, Jim visually sought out his partner in the middle of the small crowd of cops surrounding him, almost afraid of what he would see in Blair's expression. A split second later their eyes met, Blair's filled with sick sorrow and self-loathing, and Jim knew that he really was starting over again. There was no sign of the love and joy that had been in those jewel-bright eyes only a few breaths ago, as he measured time.

That was a punishment more cruel than any Elder had ever inflicted on him, and Jim started to turn away, just like he had before, this time knowing what he would do when he reached the ocean. As he moved, he saw a sad, painful resignation flash over Blair's features for a split second before he schooled all emotion away. Then he focused on Brittany, artificially lighting up with happiness at seeing her.

Had that happened the last time? Had he missed the clue that Blair hadn't really wanted to turn to a woman for the mindless relief of a quick fuck, but thought there wasn't any alternative? Or was there a part of Blair that remembered now, just as Jim did, what they could be, had been to each other?

Blair took a step toward the policewoman, hand already on the way up to cup her elbow intimately. Jim kicked into high gear, crossing the room with blatant disregard to whose toes he stepped on. It didn't matter what Blair did or didn't remember, or what had gone on before. What mattered was that he knew what his partner needed right at this moment, and that he was going to be the one to provide it. Ruthlessly cutting between Brittany and Blair, Jim took possession of Blair's upper arm, and bent to whisper into his ear, "We need to get out of here, now!"

Whether it was because of the urgency in Jim's voice or because he didn't really care if he scored right at that exact minute, Blair let himself be towed away, though he glared at Jim in irritation when he didn't release his arm, even on the way to the truck. Once inside and on their way, Blair shrank to the other side, and snapped, "So are you going to tell me what's wrong this time or am I going to have to wait again until you're nearly crazy from whatever's bothering you?"

Underneath the ire was a genuine frustration that Jim had always heard, but had never known how to respond to. Now, he said as levelly as he could, "I need a few minutes to find words for it; can you hang in there for a while?"

Clearly surprised, Blair said uncertainly, "Uh, sure. Is it, um, you know, a sense thing?"

Nodding his answer, Jim concentrated on their surroundings, trying to decide where to go. Neutral territory was the best; not *his* place or *their* place, and the only space Blair had left to call his own was one Jim didn't want to contaminate for him if their upcoming conversation went wrong. A hotel didn't feel right: too much potential for inadvertent eavesdroppers. Just as he was about to pound on the steering wheel in pure aggravation, he remembered a safe house not far from where they were that was kept in constant readiness for guests, in case of emergency. He turned down the right road to get there, barely reining in his impatience, grinding his teeth in an effort to keep himself under control.

"Hey," Blair said softly, putting a hand on Jim's forearm. "We'll fix it."

"God, I hope so," Jim answered truthfully. He brushed the tips of his fingers over Blair's.

Blair retreated back to his half of the truck, almost huddling against the window, his growing confusion a living thing between them. Jim endured it until they reached the safe house and drove around to the back so the truck wouldn't be seen. He unabashedly broke in by reading the keypad the way Blair had taught him, and led the way into the living room, where he indicated with a gesture for Blair to sit.

Blair did, balancing on the edge of the chair as if he expected to need to take off in a dead run in a few minutes. Afraid of how he would handle it, but more afraid Blair would bolt, Jim went to one knee in front of him, hands on either side to cage him as unthreateningly as he could. Blair didn't buy the non-threatening part; he tensed up, obviously ready to fight either verbally or physically if he had to.

Though he didn't have a clue what to say, he couldn't leave Blair like that for another second. Jim opened his mouth, relieved as hell when what came out wasn't gibberish. "I made my first kill when I was twenty-two, on my first cov-op with the Rangers."

Whatever Blair had expected from him, that wasn't it. Mouth hanging open, he slumped back into the support of the chair, his hands falling loosely into his lap. Obscurely encouraged, Jim went on. "At the moment it happened, I was too busy trying to stay alive to give much consideration to what I'd done. Later, when we were regrouping, my C.O. gave me a thump on the back, told me I did a good job, and that was pretty much the end of any talk allowed on the subject. Not that the guys didn't show support, but it was in small ways, like never commenting on the fact that I spent the entire night throwing up."

"Macho bullshit," Blair muttered to himself.

"Yeah, pretty much," Jim agreed. "There were counselors you could go to, and if I had really had trouble dealing, the C.O. would have made himself available. But there was an unspoken rule in my platoon: you cranked it up and went on. Talk couldn't bring back the dead. Eventually, I learned not to puke when it happened, but I never learned not to need to, if that makes sense."

"Good." This time Blair spoke loudly, his tone saying he wouldn't brook any argument on that point.

A small smile found its way to Jim's mouth, but he didn't lose the thread of his story. "It wasn't until I was living with the Chopec that I found a better way to deal with it besides not eating for a couple of days. Another tribe, probably desperate to expand their territory because of how the rain forest is constantly being pushed back, attacked the men when they were out on a hunting trip. The one I killed...." Jim had to close his eyes for a moment to banish the terrified face that always filled his vision when he thought about that battle.

"The one you killed," Blair encouraged quietly.

"Couldn't have been more than fifteen years old, Chief." Jim took a deep breath, then released it in a stifled sigh, forgiving himself yet again for what he had thought was necessary at the time. "After we got back and reported to the tribal elders, I retreated to my hut at the edge of the village and spent a lot of time by myself wishing I could at least get drunk. After a few days of that, Incacha showed up without invitation, sat down in front of me, and just stared at me for about five seconds. I put my head down in his lap and cried like a child for hours."

"For all of them."

Jim was willing to bet it wasn't a guess, but sure knowledge that prompted Blair's words, though he had no idea how Blair could know. He nodded. "For all of them. When I finally cried myself out, he told me that his people believed that the power of life and death was older than the earth, quite possibly older than the stars, and even the gods grasped it imperfectly. If it was the day that boy was to die, then it was his day. I was just the instrument used because his choices and mine had brought us to that. If it had been my day to die, then, even as inexperienced and callow as the other warrior had been, his blow would have been true and mine would have failed."

Drawing his legs up under him and crossing his arms over his knees so that he was huddled in on himself, Blair asked weakly, skeptically, "Do you really believe that?"

"How many cops never draw their weapon, let alone fire it, in their entire careers?" Jim asked back. Daringly he added, "How many other cops were around you today who could have been the one to bring that shooter down? But you were the one in the right place at the right time, not just because of your choices, but because of his. God, Blair, why would the man choose there and then of all places to lose it, if there hadn't been the tiniest part of him that was hoping one of us would bring him down before he could hurt anyone?"

"That doesn't make what I did right."

"I'm never going to tell you otherwise," Jim solemnly swore, wishing he could do something about the tears beginning to swim in Blair's eyes. "But it does keep it from being wrong. It makes it understandable, makes it forgivable."

"Tell that to his kids," Blair said bitterly. "Tell that to his widow, his family, his co-workers. Hell, tell that to that to his ghost when it comes to give me nightmares. Is that what you tell the ones who haunt you?"

Beyond his will, Jim's hand cupped Blair's cheek, thumb smudging at the well of dampness at the corner of his eye. Sorrow colored his voice. "Those aren't the kinds of ghosts who haunt me. Mine are always the ones that I couldn't save, but maybe could have if I had just done this or just done that."

Closing his eyes in shared pain, Blair shuddered, and tears began to seep down his cheeks. "Got a few of those, too," he said thickly.

Totally undone by the sight of Blair crying, Jim pulled him into his arms, cradling him against his chest and rocking with him, his chin resting on the top of Blair's head. When it seemed the worst of the agony had been wept away, he took his own leap of faith and said, "Wish I could protect you from them; wish you never had to hurt or be hurt again."

Instantly angry, furiously trying to break free of the hold on him, Blair spluttered, "You're not using this as an excuse to get me off the streets! I didn't take that badge because it was the only offer in town; I took it because it was the best way to keep you doing the job only you can do. And you do it best when you've got me with you, whether you like it or not!"

Not at all put out by the anger, Jim determinedly hung onto a writhing, squirming bundle of limbs. "Chief, stop it! I know I need you with me, just like I know you need to be there. That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" Blair all but bit out, not giving up his fight in the least.

"Fuck!" Jim rolled them until he could flatten out on top of Blair, grabbing his wrists and hanging onto them before the punch aimed at his nose could land. "I meant this." He dropped a kiss on Blair's mouth, a brief one that was only intended to startle him into holding still, then feathered more over his forehead, nose, and cheeks. "I meant I love you."

Blair twisted his head away to stop the kisses. "Don't say that," he said sharply. "You don't have a clue what love is."

"Yes, I do. It's Blair Sandburg living with me despite me being an anal control freak; Detective Sandburg working with me though that was never the dream he had for himself; it's Chief going toe-to-toe with me when I'm being an ass instead of a friend. All of that is love, but I thought I couldn't have the rest because I honestly believed I didn't have anything that you needed or wanted. I'm hoping you can show me I'm wrong about that." Moving slowly to give Blair time to avoid it if that was what he really wanted, Jim kissed him again, this time putting his heart and soul into it.

Blair remained motionless under the touch, and Jim finally surrendered and drew back, clinging to his dignity and sanity by only the thinnest of margins. Not daring to look at him, he started to get up, but Blair stopped him by tracing lines with shaky fingers over Jim's face, where scars had once been, then over his lips "God, it was real. It happened. I was the one you were trying to protect."

Too stunned to talk, to think, Jim absently ran his tongue over his lips, almost expecting to find the hideous lumps instead of mobile flesh.

Blair swallowed hard, eyes on that small movement from Jim. "Evil on all sides, you said, and that's exactly what it's felt like for months now. Like all the light's being blocked, leaving me in the shadow." Blair grabbed him by both arms and tried to shake him. "You idiot; that wasn't your fault! It was mine because I couldn't stop blaming myself for forcing you into making me your partner!" "Forcing me! Chief, I would have done anything to keep you with me!"

"And all I ever wanted from you was to be with you!"

They glared at each other for a split second, then Blair laughed, hard, long and so infectiously that Jim couldn't help but laugh with him. Somehow they started hugging each other through their guffaws, then they were kissing through hiccupping sobs that could have been either from crying or laughing. Finally, hugging turned into desperate clinging that became a frantic rocking and very quickly both were on the verge of coming. Too overwhelmed by the smell, taste, and feel of Blair, Jim could have willingly finished in his pants, but Blair broke off their kiss, fingers fumbling at the buttons on his shirt.

"Just like before," Blair panted. "Skin to skin, you inside me. We have to finish what we started."

The rightness of that reverberated inside Jim, kicking his arousal even higher. He hurriedly helped Blair take off his clothes and hoisted himself to the edge of the chair as Blair stood to return the favor. It put him eye to eye with his cock, which was pointing straight at him, crown darkly red and moist, as if begging for his attention. On impulse he licked it, savoring the bitter-sharp flavor, and intrigued yet again with the surprising number of textures to be found in this most intimate place on Blair's body.

"Man," Blair said hoarsely, "I can*not* believe that you will do that - have done that - for me. For someone who considers himself straight, you certainly don't have any inhibitions when it comes to gay sex."

"This isn't sex," Jim said absently, then took another lick. "This is making love to you."

"There was a time when I would have argued that was just semantics," Blair muttered, hands restlessly petting Jim's shoulders. "Now...now I think maybe I know what you mean." Strong fingers caught Jim by the chin and tugged until he tilted his head back to meet Blair's eyes. They were dark with lust and love, and he would have readily lost himself in them forever, but Blair took a small tube of k.y. from his jacket pocket and said, "Show me?"

With a growl that was both ravenous and smug, Jim snatched the lube away, and went back to adoring Blair's cock, alternating sucking and licking it as he tore off the cap and squeezed a dollop out of the tube. Bracing himself for that first incendiary clasp of the tight ring guarding his lover's body, he slid a finger into the channel, pumping it in time to the movements of his mouth. It was awkward, but it kept him from roughly grabbing Blair and throwing him down so he could put his dick in that wonderful haven before it was open and ready.

When he felt the first thrum of climax in the hardness filling his mouth, Jim drew away and sat back in the chair, hastily smearing more lube over his hard-on. "Sit on me, let me see you take my cock in you," he said, his voice so thick he didn't think Blair would understand the command.

Either he did or it was what he wanted as well. Bracing his hands on the back of the chair Blair lifted himself over the erection jutting up from Jim's lap and sat on it slowly, enveloping it with a delicious heat and tightness that slammed through whatever control Jim had. Eyes rolling back in his head, back arching violently, he thrust deep into Blair, then withdrew as slowly as he could manage, only so that he could return to that clinging warmth again.

"Can't last," he muttered. "God! Can't last."

Blair's answer was a delicious ripple of sensation through the delicate tissues surrounding Jim's cock. Even as he realized that Blair was coming, his own release slammed into him. The powerful spasms went on and on, each stronger than the last, tossing him from peak to peak of ecstasy until his body could endure no more. It dropped him into a sweet lassitude that took away all his will and thought, and he lay under Blair, sweaty and panting, content to do nothing else but hold him for the rest of eternity.

Eventually Blair stirred lazily, his internal muscles caressing Jim's still-hard length. "Mine," he murmured happily.

With a kiss to his brow, Jim agreed, "Yours." A thought drifted by and he spoke it aloud for no other reason that to hear Blair reply to it. "Probably why we made it back."

"Huh?" Blair sat up straighter. "What do you mean?"

Too sated to get annoyed at how fast Blair recovered his brain power, Jim said slowly, gathering the idea in as he spoke, "My bargain with Elder was protection for you against evil, or anything touched by evil, in exchange for everything that was mine to give. So he had no power to stop you from claiming for yourself by right of love what I had given him - body, mind and senses, whatever. When you did that, the paradox must have dissolved the bargain."

Nodding, Blair asked, "But why would that bring us back to before it was created? Why not leave us where we were, but without him interfering with our lives?"

"Our lives," Jim mused, grinning like an idiot and not caring a bit. "Yeah, *our* lives." He would have taken a kiss, but Blair swatted at him with a mock glare, so he said seriously, "Elder plucked me out of reality like a loose thread in a carpet. Events and people just kind of, I don't know, eased into the space left. Men who died by my hand in my first life still died, but someone else took the burden; the people who lived did so without my help." He frowned, futility and frustration wanting to creep into his happiness, and he shoved it away forcefully. "I guess without Elder's power to hold me away from where I was originally meant to be, I just, uh, snapped back, and events went back to the way they were."

Though the dark mood hadn't been able to get its claws in him, Blair must have sensed that it was there. He took the kiss Jim had wanted, lingering over the task until there was no room for anything in him but joy. Breaking away, he asked, "Be honest; do you really think that my life, or Simon's, or anyone in Major Crimes, was better without you? Did the things that were done by somebody else really turn out better than when you were the one to help?"

Dazed by pleasure and the hope that Blair was right, Jim didn't answer. He wove his fingers through Blair's curls, willing to admit his partner and guide usually had a better grip on things like that. Blair moved under the weight on his head, eyelids going to half-mast in pleasure, humming quietly in appreciation. "Mine," he said again, happily.

"Yours," Jim agreed readily. Heart diving for the basement, he asked, fingers tightening fractionally, "Mine?"

"Heart, mind, body, spirit, and everything else," Blair said solemnly, gaze open and alert again. "Your and yours alone." He offered up his lips for a kiss, and he began to leisurely ride up and down on the cock inside him.

Claiming his mouth, Jim let Blair lead him into the only heaven he would ever need on this earth.

*finis* 132