Disclaimer: I own nothing. Incredibly thankful beyond words for the world that Toby Whithouse has created and for the character of Hal that Damien Molony has brought to life. This is just a spark that I had to write down.

Thanks to Saemay, fantastic writer of the incredible Walking with a Ghost, for encouraging me and being my beta. :)

* A fichu is a large, scarf like piece of very light fabric worn by women in the 18th century to fill in a low neckline in the front. It's folded diagonally into a triangle around the shoulders and pinned or tucked into the bodice.

Chapter 1: The girl

1790

Hal comes to with a start, his gasp echoing in the chamber. He looks about him confused, the last vestiges of the nightmare...memories... he'd just come out of plaguing at the edge of his vision. Dark. Red. Lots of running red. Screams. Lots of juicy screams.... Blinking, the room comes into focus, the smells turn from tantalizing coppery tang to a fruity oaken perfume. Hal takes a few cleansing gulps of air. Ah, the wine cellar. Thank small mercies. Last time he'd done this he'd been in a barn...

How long? A week? Two? Perhaps three? Time has a way of getting lost in the interminable circles of ranting, pleading, sobbing, fighting. Guilt, indignation, resignation. The bloodlust, cramps, hallucinations, sweats, hunger, shivers... they take it in turns, drowning him in wave after wave. Though it really didn't matter. What was time for one like him? This was just the herald of yet another cycle...though whether the beginning or the end, he never was quite sure.

The few merciful times he manages to drift off he's plagued by dreams... nightmares... of times past. He wakes up terrified, aroused, confused. Oh how he aches to give in to the seduction of those memories...

As he strives to calm his breathing, trying to gain a few moments of respite before the next surge engulfs him, the quiet is interrupted by the small creak of the cellar door. He lifts his eyes, blinking away the last of the fuzzy film. A young girl comes into focus. She's just turning from closing the door, a slight upturn of her lips and curve of cheek hinting of a smile.

The girl is still smiling to herself at having gotten away from her governess as she closes the door. She'd slipped away while the old biddy was watching the dancing, and run down as far from the noise and people as she could. She would have run outside to lose herself in the gardens had it not been for the pouring rain. She'd found the next best thing - a long corridor at the bottom of the servant's stairs leading to the wine cellar. But as she turns around her smile breaks into astonishment. Unexpectedly, the cellar is occupied by a man in a chair in the middle of the room. A mass of tousled brown hair, the beginnings of a beard, a shocked look on his face. Sans overcoat and cravat, he's dressed only in linen shirtsleeves and dark breeches, dampness making the linen stick transparently to his chest and shoulders. He is young, though several years older than she.

Her heart racing at being caught where she shouldn't be, she shakily says "Forgive me sir, I did not realize anyone was down here. I was simply looking for a quiet place away from the ball." She takes a few steps in and sees he's tied down to the chair, leather straps across his torso, around his wrists and ankles, chained down to the stone of the cellar floor. There is padding on the armrests, stained with rusty blood, dried smears on his wrists. Paper is strewn about under him and a pail is further behind. She is immediately concerned. His handsome face is twisted in pain and he looks terrified. She's says alarmed, "Are you all right sir?"

In gasping tones he says "No. I mean yes. I'm fine. You must leave. For your own safety."

"Why are you down here like this? Who has done this to you. Here let me help you."

"I'm here of my own volition." His voice hitches shakily, "I need to be here, I want to be here."

But instead the girl advances towards him, as if drawn like a magnet. Hal rolls his eyes and sighs. Good God, here we go. If he survived this...interlude... in the chair, he really must find a way to get a few scars or some other disfigurement. Perhaps shave all his hair...

"Don't come any closer!" His voice cracks with desperation as he catches her scent. Instead of the cloying perfumes so popularly worn, she smells of the outdoors, a freshness of lavender, mixed with something sweeter. And the hint of salt - the smell that hints of the salty-sweet fluid pumping just under the surface of her delicate skin. As she comes within arm's length he can see the veins under the pale skin at her neck, can hear her heartbeat as it flutters.

The girl stops directly in front of him noting how pale he is, the sheen of sweat covering him. Perhaps he has a catching sickness? She should step back, should leave, but she wants to help him. Nurturing instincts - she'd been caring for stray animals since her childhood. She looks straight into his eyes - green? brown? amber? - such a tortured expression on his face.

She says something, but Hal is no longer listening. thud thud. thud thud. thud thud. That wet, tantalizing sound calling to him like a siren. His eyes travel to her neck, glued to the pulse easily seen. blood. blood. blood. He forces his eyes closed, desperately trying to focus, trying to fight the visceral need consuming him as the dizzy feeling of falling, of sinking, washes over him. But it's too soon. SO easy to fall...

She sees him struggling against his bonds. Oh dear, was he having a fit? Perhaps he suffered from the falling sickness. What do I do? Should I go for help... But as she's turning away he suddenly speaks to her again.

"Not so fast daarrrling." Hal drawls, having slipped into his confident skin.

As she turns back, she thinks his eyes flash strangely in the dim light, almost as if they were pure black. However, when he blinks they are that same elusive colour. Hazel she thinks idly.

"Tell me your name." He grins a crooked smirk, holding a winsome smile. It's a smile that for almost 300 years has caused women and men alike to throw themselves at his feet; the women moist with anticipation, the men soiled with trepidation. A devilish grin - no point in pretending. He is a devil and he relishes it.

She opens her mouth to tell him her name, but something stops her. He seems like... like an entirely different person. The timbre of his voice, the transformation of his face. Her instincts tell her it feels wrong. Yet she is mesmerized.

"No matter. I do not require a name, just some assistance. Why don't you bring your pretty little self over here and untie me, hmm?"

"But, sir, you just told me not to. Are you well?"

"Yesss. I feel perfectly fine now. I merely want to get out of this tiresome chair, and you have so fortuitously been delivered to me. My own angel to rescue me."

"Rescue you from what, from whom?"

"From this pointless exercise in futility. Why deny the inevitable? Come now be a good girl and release me. Then we'll go upstairs, you and I, and join in the merrymaking. Or we can just stay down here, you and I..." he trails off with another flash of that wicked smile.

She wants to do what he asks her, she is intrigued by him, his manner, his voice all velvet. But as she looks straight into his eyes - with green highlights the thought comes unbidden - something stops her. She pictures how terrified he'd looked just moments before, how he'd pleaded for her to go. As she hesitates he blinks once more and this time his eyes definitely flash black through his next blink.

"Untie me you whore!" He spits out at her and she can see his teeth protruding out. She frowns wonderingly. Was he possessed? A devil dressed up as a man, sent to tempt her with the face of an angel? Father Brunn was always sermonizing about temptation, about young women these days observing propriety. Yet still she didn't run. Father Brunn smelled of cheap whiskey and had once tried to pull up her skirt. She'd taught him a lesson about observing propriety he'd never forgotten.

"What are you?"

"I'll be whatever you want me to be," he gives her another beguiling smile "just come and undo these straps and set me free you stupid girl. Well, don't just stand there you cow!"

She comes closer and his smile widens victoriously. Thwack!

"If you think that language is going to get you anything, then you're the stupid one. I don't care who you are, what you are, you can rot here for all I care. No one calls me a cow!"

At the slap, something is dislodged within him. It's enough to untether that hungry part of him, and he comes to his previous self. "Owww!" he exclaims, outraged. Then he looks at her, the moment catching up to him and he starts panicking again.

"I'm sorry." He breathes. "You don't know how much in danger you are. He's not safe. Pleeaase. Go now. I don't know how long I can hold him at bay while you're here."

"Are you back? Who are you? Who is he? Are you possessed? You know, there's a fanatical vicar upstairs that I'm sure would take a crack at getting that demon out of you. Though he's just mostly full of hot air, liable to bungle it. Still, I can go fetch him."

He gives a small amused huff, with a shake of his head, "If only it were that easy. What I am can't be driven out, I've been incurably altered." He looks up at her again. "You don't understand. This isn't a game."

"Then help me understand." She holds her ground.

Hal takes a calming breath. "There are monsters in your world. Not everyone is what they purport to be. I..." He hesitates, then blurts it out "I'm a vampire."

"As in the tales told in the villages, with witches and fairies?"

Another shaky laugh. "No, as in 'I can rip your throat out in less than a second' if you don't leave. I can hear the blood pulsing through you, I can almost smell it. It's what I desire most. It's what I'm trying to resist. " Breathily he says, "Please, for both our sakes, go. Go, run as far as you can. Forget you ever encountered...this..." He motions his hands open.

"But."

"Run!"

They look at each other one last time.

His - fangs - are gone, his eyes normal. She sees again the haunted look she first saw when she entered - was that mere minutes ago? - a tired hopelessness in his eyes. It pulls at her - surely there's something she can do? He seems genuinely upset he'll hurt her. She would put his words to those of a madman, except for what she had seen. He'd definitely transformed into... something. He sees a young girl, perhaps a half dozen years younger than he had been when he'd been recruited; a delicate face framed by a mass of dark curls uncharacteristically worn down about her shoulders, deep brown eyes dark pools full of questions. The kind of girl his irredeemable self would enjoy quite thoroughly before taking her young life.

He thinks she'll continue to interrogate him, but she turns and leaves, the small thud of the closing door finally masking the ones of her heartbeat. He breathes a sigh of relief and starts chanting to himself.

5 years later...

A ball. How depressingly predictable. Polite society these days seems endlessly obsessed with them.

Trite conversation, followed by insipid refreshments, followed by incessant dancing. Lively dancing to some atrocious loud folk tunes, not proper dignified dancing and music. With the manner they get on, one would mistake this a gathering of a small village of peasants cavorting about rather than high society. It all gives him a headache, but one must play the part. Still, he rather likes the trappings of this modern era. He would have traded in his soul just for the indoor plumbing alone...

The hunger prowls inside him but he keeps well away from the humans, standing by the door as a precaution against murderous urges overcoming his control. He does not often go out into society, but had been obligated to this affair to preserve some of his interests and business dealings. After making a polite appearance within some of the conversing circles he'd excused himself to take up his current vigil, his demeanor discouraging company. He would have left altogether if not for the consternation of finding a vampire in the midst of all the unsuspecting humans, one he is familiar with.

Hal closes his eyes against the memories that threaten to surface. He'd worked so hard to rise to the position he'd obtained, and then... and then it had all caught up to him. Again. He wants to flee but feels the need to find out what Charles is doing this far away from the London enclave. Hal has a carefully constructed system in place to receive news of the vampires' dealings, one that preserves the secret of his new whereabouts. This ball is several counties away from his current home, and he has disclosed very little details of himself to anyone in attendance, but his penchant for caution has preserved his life on more than one occasion.

Bang!

Hal's thoughts are interrupted by a loud noise behind him through the open door. He turns with a frown but cannot see anything amiss from his vantage point. Looking back at the scene in the ballroom, the dancing portion well underway and the vampire appearing guileless in his participation, Hal thankfully embraces the excuse to go out to the corridor to investigate.

"Bloody bollocks on toast!"

Hal hears these expletives, his eyebrows rising in surprise to hear the utterer is a lady. He rounds the corner and sees her. Dewy porcelain skin, dark hair pinned up with a ribbon, wispy curls tumbling down the sides. Her delicate frame is partially turned away from him in the hallway as she looks down at her seafoam green dress.

"May I... be of some assistance?"

As she looks up she begins talking but Hal doesn't catch her words. He's seen the red on her dress and cringes as he simultaneously takes an involuntarily deep breath. Catching her scent he pulls up short as his senses smell... wait there's no heady tang. Instead he smells... He tenses all the more. No blood, but that scent is unmistakable, a lavender sweetness laced with underlying salty spice. He's smelled that particular combination before, once. It quickly dawns on him and he recognizes her, the girl from the cellar. He'd managed to convinced himself she had been a hallucination, though in truth he'd known he was deceiving himself. The withdrawal hallucinations were reliably about figures from his past, his nightmares haunting him. HER face had had no place in his perpetual memory till that day. A pretty girl who'd seen him manifest, who knew, or at the very least suspected, his secret. His kind were careful to keep that secret at all costs. If you were unfortunate enough to witness a vampire, your fate was sealed, one way or another. No witnesses. However, it had been months later that he'd emerged from the cellar a new man. Easier to pretend she'd been a hallucination than to entertain the idea of searching her out.

But here she is, no mistaking that scent, the same colour of hair, the same deep brown eyes, the same delicate features now ripened into a young woman.

He is shaken from his thoughts as her voice rises.

"Well, some knight in shining armor you are sir. Are you going to continue to stand there gaping at me like a ninnyhammer or do you perhaps have a spare handkerchief I may borrow? Though I fear this stain is set. Oh if only I'd caught it earlier, mother will be livid."

Hal is still frozen. The best course of action is to leave while he can, but...

She looks up at him again. "I do not bite."

But I do, the thought comes unbidden. With a shaky laugh, he dons his mask of civility over his tumbling thoughts.

"Yes of course, how rude of me. I beg your forgiveness." He says with a small nod and walks the intervening distance offering her a silk square.

She distractedly takes it, giving him a quick grateful smile, and begins to dab at her bodice. Hal looks away modestly, uncomfortably. "Oh bugger it." She says under her breath and he frowns disapprovingly at her, then rapidly turns his head once more in further embarrassment. She's begun removing clothing. In his presence.

"I'll just get rid of the fichu, that's really where the stain is anyway. Thank you sir. Forgive me for my most unladylike behavior. It is a curse of mine, as I'm told constantly. I just don't like to simper and titter. There, I think I can get away with this."

He looks back at her as she turns her head up with a deeper smile, a tone of satisfaction on her face. He remembers that look. But as her gaze meets his, her smile falters, turning to surprise. He remembers that look as well. He hears the acceleration in the rhythm of her heartbeat.

The girl is thinking she really should behave herself, it's not this man's fault she's in a proper bad mood at not being able to convince her mother to lay off this ball. Besides, she was about to have her payback and that thought suddenly makes her giddy. She looks up at him mirthfully as he stands slightly dazed. She prepares to thank him, when she sees his eyes. A pair of eyes she never thought to see again. An unmistakable colour she'd not seen since - hazel, with edges of green - HIS eyes. She's suddenly frightened and excited.

"It's you!" She gasps. "You're the man from the cellar."

"I beg your pardon..." He says poshly.

She takes in his countenance. The beard has been replaced by a shadow of whiskers, he wears a tailcoat in deep blue over his black breeches, and has a proper cravat, though an odd choice in red. He looks well groomed, and the picture of health rather than wearing the exhausted sheen she remembers. However, there is no mistaking those eyes. She's assured she is correct. "Do not pretend otherwise, sir, you are the man I saw some 5 years ago tied to a chair in a wine cellar. " She pauses, lowering her voice, "I remember you looking up at me terrified one minute, then you changed, became... different. For a while I thought it was a dream..."

Hal pauses, thinking of a few ways to mislead her, but at that moment a door in the corridor opens and a roundish woman with a bonnet and grey hair comes hurrying out. Her eyes light upon them, her determined expression turns at once to disapproval.

"There you are Miss Arundel, I've been searching all over for you! What mischief have you gotten into now? And what are you doing here in a deserted corridor, with this gentleman unchaperoned? Highly improper."

The girl turns to her chaperone, "Mrs. Gibbons, do not fret, no breaches in propriety have been observed. I have only just come out for some...fresh air. All the gaiety has left me faint that's all, and Mr._?" She trails off looking at him expectantly.

"Yorke" Hal says, "Hal Yorke. " He gives both ladies a curt bow.

"Mr. Yorke was kindly offering to escort me to the gardens for some fresh air, weren't you Mr. Yorke? Under your watchful eye, to be sure."

Hal gives a panicked sigh, ready to object, but again he is saved from response by the older lady. Looking quite peaked, green almost, she suddenly sputters, "I feel quite... I must... I'll just be..." and she dashes down the hallway in a bustle.

Hal raises his eyebrows perplexed. He turns back to the girl, whose lips are twitching with a suppressed smile. She gives up and lets out a delicate laugh. Looking back up at him, her fear forgotten, she conspiratorially warns him, "I would stay away from the punch." Biting her lip guiltily she takes out a bottle from a hidden pocket in her skirt and shows him the label. 'Ricinus Communis'

"Castor Oil?" Hal says, frowning disapprovingly. "Mrs. Gibbons must have been very thirsty if she's already feeling the effects."

The young lady laughs again. "Shall we to the gardens Mr. Yorke? I don't believe we'll want to linger much longer as other guests get thirsty."

"Quite. But I fear I cannot escort you as... I must..." Hal fumbles with his words as she looks up at him expectantly.

As if on cue another man walks out from the ballroom doors and heads straight towards them. This man is tall, pale, perhaps around 30 years in age, with brown eyes and a mop of curly ash brown hair that grazes his elaborately knotted white cravat over his black coat.

"Lord Harry, fancy seeing you here. It has been quite a while since I last laid eyes on you. We have been wondering how you've been getting on, where you have fled to this time. Jacob will be very happy to hear I've found you."

The man stops in front of them with a respectful air and nods deeply. Hal looks at him like he's encountered an irritating insect. The man continues his buzzing. "There are actually some urgent matters he would welcome your help with, concerning some," He pauses as he takes note of her, "dogs."

"Would you excuse me?" Hal says politely then rounds on the man, giving him a look to propel them down the hall. However, she edges herself down behind them, keeping herself within earshot. His voice hardening, she hears, "Charles, I am not interested in those... matters anymore. You can tell Jacob to do whatever he likes so long as none of you show your faces here ever again. In fact it might be... healthier for all of you, if you left this part of England alone all together."

Charles tries to make an argument but trails off at Hal's withering look. The other man quickly turns speculatively, directing his gaze at her. "And who is this exquisite creature you have here? Is this what you are interested in nowadays? I'm sure Jacob would be most interested in her as well."

Hal looks over to where the girl is standing. He frowns. Surely I walked away much further from her. He needs to get her away from Charles before he's forced to resort to more than just a veiled threat.

His voice hardens further, taking on an authoritative tone and he maneuvers out of her line of sight so that he can stealthily grab the other vampire's throat. "She is none of your concern. Do you remember Madrid 1784? Of course you do. That will seem like a fond dream compared to what I will do to you and the others if I so much as catch a rumor that you still remain within 100 miles of here. Am I understood?"

Charles blanches, unbelievably paling further. He swallows and scurries away, turning back to look once he's at the far end of the corridor.

Hal watches to make sure Charles will not come back, but to be safe he turns back to the girl, suddenly not as confident. Losing his authoritative tone for an apologetic one he says, "My sincere apologies for that unfortunate encounter, Miss Arundel. I think it would be... ah... prudent... to have that walk now. Shall we?"

She notices he doesn't offer her his arm, but stands politely waiting for her to move forward. She looks directly into his eyes, making up her mind. As they head out together she begins. "Mr. Yorke, or is it Lord Harry? I will have my explanation now. I know what I saw. I will pry it out of you even if it's the last thing I do. I'm nothing if not tenacious. Have you heard the phrase stubborn as a mule? My father coined it when I was a child."

Hal sighs resigned. "Very well. But just call me Hal."

She smiles at him. "Very well. But just call me Sylvie."