((Contains somewhat disturbing imagery.))

By the time Nick arrived back at the precinct, it was nearly full dark. He swore beneath his breath, as he pushed into the building, annoyed with himself for losing track of time and staying with Tobias so long, but he'd needed the answers the vampire had provided. As soon as he stepped into the precinct, however, he knew something was wrong. Willow was nowhere to be found, not even in the Ladies' Room, and by the time Nick double-tracked to the main desk, he was about fit to be tied and close to a state of sheer panic. "Where is she?" he demanded of the officer behind the desk, eyes blazing with mingled rage and worry. "I gave explicit orders for her not to go anywhere until I got back!"

The officer himself leaned back out of the range of the fury reaching over the desk toward him, wincing. "Sir, you gave orders that your wife was not to leave the precinct unaccompanied," he pointed out warily. "She left in the company of a female officer - said she was just going to stretch her legs."

"I said she's not to go anywhere after dark!" Nick corrected, slamming a fist against the desk to make his point. He wasn't about to waste time arguing with the officer, no matter who was right or wrong. "What female officer?" Nick demanded, getting a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

At this query, the officer on duty winced more deeply. He'd been pondering that since Mrs. Gregory had left the premises. "I-I don't know, sir. She was in uniform, I ..." He cringed. "I didn't think to check."

"You didn't think," Nick growled. "Well, obviously you didn't think!" Nick clenched his jaw as he tried to get his temper under control. There was no reason to panic yet, and he needed to keep a calm, cool head if he wanted some answers. "Okay," he said, drawing a deep breath. "How long ago was this" Did they say where they were going?"

"It was at 16:07, sir," the officer rushed to tell him, glad he'd at least made a note of that. "Ten minutes before you arrived back. They didn't say where they were going, but they turned right out the main doors."

Nick didn't wait to hear what else the officer had to say. Ten minutes wasn't that long ago, and Nick had already wasted another ten searching the precinct. He stormed back out the door, searching up and down the street with his eyes, but it was already getting dark, and he saw no sign of anyone who came close to looking like his wife. He glanced down at the footprints in the snow, but there were too many prints to distinguish Willow's from anyone else's. He yanked his phone from his pocket, muttering under his breath something about stubborn women and speed-dialed Willow's number, shoving a nervous hand through his hair and pacing in a slow circle while he waited for her to pick up.

There was no answer to his call, but sharp ears could pick up the sound of a ring tone not so very far away. It was Ghostbusters - Willow's ringtone, sounding quiet and forlorn in the dark street. Thank God there wasn't much traffic, or he might not have heard it at all.

Nick heard the faint sound of Willow's ringtone, and his heart leaped into his throat. She was nearby, she was okay. He almost breathed a sigh of relief before realizing that she still hadn't picked up. He started down the street, turning to the right away from the precinct, like the desk officer had said. His call bounced to voicemail and he dialed again, following the sound of her ringtone down the street a short distance to a dark alley where he found Willow's purse on the ground, the contents strewn in the snow. He leaned over to pick up her phone, turning to let his eyes search for her again, muttering to himself, "Where are you?"

Perhaps more disturbingly, something dark had been spattered across the snow, almost lost in the to and fro of other people's footsteps. The same darkness on white that had so alarmed him the night before, yet only a few drops. But there was no denying the obvious truth - wherever Willow was, she had bled here before leaving.

Nick shoved a hand through his hair again, turning in a circle as his eyes searched the alley and the surrounding street to no avail. Think, Nick, think, he told himself, trying not to panic, knowing time was of the essence. He was a detective. There were always clues at every crime sight; you just had to find them. It was then he dropped his gaze and found the telltale drops of blood on the ground. He couldn't be sure it was Willow's blood, but nothing else made sense. "Lorelei," he deduced, realizing that was the only thing that made sense. The female officer had to be Lorelei. "Son of a bitch," he muttered again as he touched the spot where his wife's blood had stained the snow. There wasn't much, but there didn't have to be. If Tobias was right and Lorelei was a vampire, blood was sustenance to her and she wouldn't want to waste it. But where had they gone"

Tobias, Nick thought. The cops weren't going to be much help, and it was too early to file a missing person's report. Tobias was his only hope. Nick quickly scrolled through his contacts before finding the one labeled simply T and tapping the green button that would dial Tobias' number.

The phone barely rang once before it was answered, quick reflexes and a mind already on edge lending speed to the reception of that call. Tobias' voice, tense and expectant, was clear as a bell. "What is it?"

"My wife," Nick replied, swallowing down the tightness that was forming in his chest and throat, the rage and the panic and the fear. "They have my wife!" he told the vampire, unable to hide the terror from his voice.

"Calm down, detective." Tobias' voice took on an authority that was difficult to resist. "Tell me what you know. Now."

"I can't calm down," he said, gathering up the contents of his wife's purse and shoving them back inside, as if that was important. "The blood is still fresh. It can't have been more than a few minutes ago. It was Lorelei, I think. Where would she have taken her" I need to find her!" Nick didn't add the words, "Before it's too late." It kind of went without saying.

"Lorelei." The name was hissed with pain and impotent fury. "You cannot fight her on your own. Meet me at your home - that is where she will be. Do not confront her alone."

"Then you better hurry," Nick replied, hanging up the phone without another word. He didn't stop to think about how he was going to defeat a vampire or whether it was a good idea to confront her alone. The only thing that was important was finding Willow and saving her. He only hoped Tobias was right. Nick snatched up Willow's purse and wasted no time backtracking to the precinct to collect his car. Evans was outside waiting for him, wondering what had happened, but Nick only demanded the keys to the patrol car, which would get him where he wanted to go far quicker than the old clunker Willow had been pestering him to get rid of.

He flashed the light atop the patrol car, but kept the siren silent so as not to alert the vampire that he was on his way for fear she might waste no time in finishing his wife off if she knew he was close. He still wasn't quite sure why he and and Willow had been targeted, other than for what Tobias had told him, but it no longer mattered. Evil, Nick had learned since becoming a cop, required no logical explanation. Traffic parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses as he sped through the city streets toward the flat he and Willow called home. It was only a matter of minutes before he arrived, not bothering to wait for Tobias to join him. With any luck, he had arrived just in the nick of time.

Willow's voice echoed through the empty house, audible even from the street. "Nick!"

To Nick's utter shock and horror, not to mention disappointment, three carefully-aimed bullets that would have taken down the hardiest of men seemed to do nothing to the vampire but piss her off. They hardly even slowed her down. He didn't need to hear his wife scream his name to know he was in trouble - they were both in trouble. But he knew something Lorelei didn't - that help was on the way, if Nick could just slow her down long enough until Tobias arrived. As fast as the vampire was, he wasn't ready to give up that quickly.

He grunted as what felt like claws caught his shoulder, ripping cloth and flesh as he ducked and rolled out of her way. She managed to knock the gun from his hand, but it was only Round One, and he wasn't giving up that easily. Without a weapon, he had to think fast, remembering the bad horror movies he'd watched on late night TV when he couldn't sleep. He'd always thought them laughable, but he wasn't laughing now. "You want me so badly, come and get me," he taunted, wanting the vampire to chase after him and forget about Willow, at least for now.

"Nick, don't," Willow yelled to him, wanting him not to fight, not wanting to see him get hurt. The chair she was tied to scraped against the floor as she struggled, wanting to help, needing to be able to do something more than just sit there and watch her beloved husband in mortal combat.

Lorelei snarled, pausing to expend a little effort and pull Nick's gun to pieces in front of him, a little taste of the strength in those delicate seeming hands that wanted to get hold of him. The smell of his blood filled the air, and the vampire's eyes came to life, flaring yellow with the lust for his life. "You don't really think you can win, do you?" she laughed at him, feinting left and right, treating him like a child, prey ready for the killing.

Nick ignored his wife's pleas with blind eyes and deaf ears for now. If he allowed himself to think too hard about her predicament, it was only going to distract him from what he needed to do in order to save her life, or more accurately, both their lives. He figured it wouldn't be much longer before the cavalry arrived in the form of Tobias, if he could only distract and delay Lorelei a little bit longer. He tried to ignore the pain that was blazing in his shoulder, ignore the warm feel of his own blood as it trickled down his arm. None of that was important right now, and he couldn't help the rage that was bubbling up inside him at the vampire's arrogance.

"You don't think I'm giving up without a fight, do you?" he countered, picking up the closest thing at hand, which happened to be a lamp, and hoisting it across the room in the vampire's direction before making a dash for the kitchen. With any luck, he'd pissed her off enough to follow, leaving Willow alone and safe, at least for the moment.

He was lucky. Lorelei flinched as the lamp smashed toward her, thrusting out an arm to knock it off course as Nick dashed away. As Willow whimpered with fear for her husband, the vampire darted after him, anger replacing the smug arrogance on her face. "I'm going to enjoy killing you!"

Nick's brain was on fire, quickly shuffling through every crappy vampire movie he'd ever seen in hopes of figuring out a way to kill or at the very least slow the vampire down until Tobias arrived. He was quickly going over a checklist in his brain to see what he could come up with in the way of weapons. Holy water, garlic, crucifix, silver bullets - no, silver bullets was werewolves....Unfortunately, none of those things were readily at hand. Wooden stake. Right. Like he'd have one of those just lying around waiting for the right moment. He pulled open a drawer, quickly rifling through its contents, but finding nothing useful, until a thought popped into his head. Pencil! A pencil was made of wood, sort of, and it had a sharp point, albeit made of graphite. Would it work" It was a long shot. It had worked on Buffy once, but that was just a TV show.

Behind him, the vampire paused in the doorway, laughing at the sight of her prey rifling through drawers desperately. "Do you plan on basting me until I give in, detective?" she asked tauntingly. "You are cornered. You can't escape me. You can't save your pretty wife. You're nothing but dust beneath my heel." She shot forward, hands outstretched to take hold of him, fangs bared with hungry intent.

His fingers scrambled for the tiniest wooden stake in the history of vampire-hunting, just barely managing to wrap his fingers around it, turning to face her just as she managed to grab hold of him with fangs bared.

Clawed hands grasped his shoulder, his hair, wrenching his head back as Lorelei lunged at his throat. And stopped, puzzled, unable to move further. She wheezed past her fangs, the strength fading from her limbs until she staggered back, looking down incredulously at the tiny wooden cylinder sticking out of her chest. Yellow eyes rose to stare at Nick in disbelief. "A pencil?" Hacking out a coughing laugh, Lorelei dropped to her knees, releasing a howl that seemed to reverberate through the ground and up through the body, calling to her master to save her. For such a beautifully honed predator, she was helpless with a stake in her heart, falling to the floor, able only to glare balefully up at the man she had intended to make her victim.

"Worked for Buffy, bitch," Nick remarked with a satisfied smirk at the vampire's confusion, followed by her almost immediate collapse, cringing at the ear-splitting howl that rent the air and seemed to send a tremor through the very earth. Somehow, he knew he didn't have much time, but he couldn't help taunting her further, "Ever hear of body armor" Works wonders." He quickly found the sharpest knife in the kitchen, calling to Willow to let her know he was okay. "Hang on, Will! I'll be right there!" He crouched down beside the vampire who was now at his mercy, the tables turned. She was his victim now, and in that moment, he was as heartless as she was. No pity, no sympathy, only rage and hatred filled his heart. "You picked the wrong guy to screw with," he told her, just before he drove the blade into her chest, twisting the blade cruelly to carve her heart right out of her chest.

"Nick" Nick, baby, what?s happening?" But perhaps it was just as well that Willow couldn't see what her husband was doing. There was a brutality in the action of ending a vampire that would have threatened the trust she had in her husband.

Helpless, Lorelei screamed as the knife bit into her chest, unable to move, unable to defend herself, pinned in place by the wood through her heart. Some old legends evidently had a little truth in them.

"No," Nick murmured weakly, as the vampire pressed his own wrist to Nick's mouth. Not this, he pleaded silently. If he was going to die, he was going to die, but not this. He didn't want to become like them - like Josef, like Lorelei, and yes, even like Tobias. He didn't want to become a monster. He remembered Tobias' warning and wished he'd waited, but what choice had he had" He had to admit there was a horrific sense of irony in it - that he'd tried to save his wife and might end up being the one to kill her. "No," he muttered again, more vehemently, yet weaker than before. Despite his protests and his struggle to resist, he could feel himself becoming weaker, even as the vampire's blood flowed past his lips and down his throat. He sputtered, gagging on the metallic taste of it, but too weak to resist. I love you, Willow. I swear, I'll die before ever hurting you. I swear...

All those promises seemed pointless now, useless. He swore if he lost control, if he killed her, he'd never seen another night. He'd walk into the sunrise, or failing that, set himself ablaze. A single tear trickled down his cheek as the vampire took his life and then gave it back to him, his final thought as a human that of love and loss and regret. His heart slowed to a stop even as it felt like it was breaking. Her name was the last thing to enter his mind or leave his lips, whispered like a prayer to the only woman he'd ever loved. "Willow..." "Nick ..." Her voice answered his, tears streaming down her face as she watched him die, heartbroken. She barely even glanced up as the vampire rose to his feet, laughing as he wiped his mouth and wrist clean, fully intending to watch the horrific conclusion, the vengeance he believed himself so completely capable of enjoying. And finally, too late to prevent the terrible but in time to prevent the worst, another figure burst into the room.

Yellow-eyed and snarling, Tobias hurled himself at the startled Josef, nails and teeth tearing at the older vampire as he forced him back, his failure to save Nick driving him on even as Willow screamed once again. All she saw was her husband lying dead, and not one, but two vampires in the room with her, unable even to cradle Nick in her arms as the cable bit into her wrists.

Josef howled as he broke away from Tobias, bleeding from innumerable wounds inflicted by the fury of a vampire who had become what he was purely for this moment in time. Tobias stood tall, his own body barely marked, his fangs bared as he snarled once again. "Never again, Josef," he promised. "You will not destroy these people as you destroyed me."

Josef laughed once again, backing away from his attacker in delight. "You think you have saved them, Tobias?" he asked, his voice thick with contempt. "I have already won. They may have taken Lorelei from me, but I have taken something far more valuable from them."

Nick could not witness the conflict that was going on around him. He did not know that not only his life but his wife's hung in the balance in this long struggle between the two vampires. He knew nothing but darkness for what seemed like a very long time, but as he lay there silent and cold as death, pale and lifeless, something strange was going on inside him. The wounds that Lorelei had inflicted were slowly mending themselves, as were the fang marks that Josef had left on his neck. If any of them stopped to watch, they'd notice a slow transformation, subtle but very real and frightening to behold.

Not even Willow had her eyes on the man she loved, caught up in terror at the battle as it recommenced between elder vampires. Flesh tore, teeth bit down, and Josef once again howled, thrusting Tobias away from him with force. Tobias slammed against the wall behind Willow, the force of the impact buckling the infrastructure yet doing little to break his stride. Yet even as he charged at Josef once more, the older vampire was running, leaping through the broken window in the kitchen to disappear into the night.

Very slowly the man slumped against the wall - the man that Willow loved - was changing, transforming. The change was subtle at first, barely noticeable. Covered in blood, it was hard to notice, but his wounds were slowly mending, his skin changing, turning a more translucent shade of pale. A finger twitched, indicating he was not dead, his human life drained away, reborn as something else, something all at once terrible and beautiful. Though Nick had been a handsome man in life, the transformation to vampire was making him even more attractive, alluring, seductive - like any predator, beautiful to behold, but deadly and dangerous.

Only the sound of a helpless woman's tears, heartbroken and afraid, kept Tobias from pursuing his enemy into the night. He took a moment to calm himself, to force the yellow bloodlust from his eyes, the sharpness of his fangs to blunt to nothing once again, turning to Willow where she sat, captive still. She flinched away from him as he approached, crying out for help once again. His hand closed over her mouth. "Shh, little one," he said, his voice once more the calm, kind tone it had been when Nick had spoken to him earlier that day. "I won't hurt you. I came to help, though I came too late."

Wide eyed, Willow stared at him suspiciously as he released his grip on her mouth, watching him circle her until she felt his hands break the cords that bound her. "What's going on?"

In the distance could be heard the sound of police sirens slowly getting closer, a sign that time was again of the essence. Unless Tobias wanted to explain his way out of the situation, they didn't have much time before the place was crawling with men and women in uniforms.

"There is no time to explain it to you now," Tobias told Willow as he freed her. "Come with me."

She slithered from the chair, crawling over to where Nick lay slumped, gathering him into her arms. "I'm not going anywhere," she said stubbornly. "He's dead. That bastard killed him, and ....Oh God, baby, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry ..." Dissolving into tears, she wrapped her husband in her arms, rocking back and forth as the fear and pain and grief overwhelmed her.

Standing nearby, Tobias bowed his head in acknowledgement of her loss, but the sirens could not be ignored. He moved to crouch beside her, and noticed something very important. "Willow, get away from him. Now!"