A/N: Sorry about the delay in updating, but I had a really crazy schedule of Pre-Halloween/Halloween stuff (including my first Rocky Horror Picture Show). Anyway, the chapter's finally here, so enjoy!

Also, I've been wondering if I should change the rating of this. I find myself catching myself as I'm writing it and having to tailor it to fit the T rating. I honestly didn't realize how borderline some of the content in this story originally was (the fight scene between Julien and Raphael was extremely toned down before it was posted, and, though I may be paranoid, I think some if this chapter's content is a bit iffy) until I started trying to put a rating to it. So, depending on the feedback I get, I may or may not switch the rating. What we really need, however is a rating for stories somewhere between PG-13 and R, like manga and anime released in the US has T+.

Chapter Four

Raphael was careful to stay far enough behind Julien to avoid being noticed, yet also careful to remain close enough to note his movements. It hadn’t taken very long for him to catch up with him even after the interruption of the coming of daylight. The scent trail of Julien’s fear was so strong, and his gait so confused, meandering, and slow that Raphael was able to gain on him with only a few hours of darkness on his side. He had noted that they were approaching the Lammermoor mansion with some interest, remembering that Julien had been involved with that family—his “high profile” had at first made him a questionable selection as a target, but in the end, the benefits had far outweighed the risks. When Julien rounded the back of the mansion, Raphael’s interest was further piqued. He skirted around the edges of the back lawn, hiding behind the column farthest from the one that Julien had chosen to approach, and watched.

His assumption had been correct. Julien’s column was the one closest to the outer wall, and it was of little to no difficulty for Julien to wedge himself between the two, shinnying up towards the triangular overhang. Raphael, with silent, feline movements, did the same on his side. He reached the top more quickly than Julien: he had learned long ago to maneuver in unconventional ways, to climb up this and to hide in that and find a way out of something else. He was careful not to swing his leg over and climb on to the awning until a few seconds after he heard Julien do so with a terrified whimper. Then, in perfect mastery of every bone, every joint, every muscle, he slid his foot and leg on to the awning, and rolled his body over the ledge, clinging to it as a wild cat would a tree on which it was sharpening its nails. Quickly, he pressed himself against the marble edge of the mansion, blending in with the shadows of the new-moon night.

Julien was still recovering from his climb, panting on his hands and knees. Shaking so badly Raphael wondered if he might fall off the ledge, he got to his feet, stumbling over to the little window encased in the mansion’s triangular roof. He fell just before he reached it and collapsed against the glass. He lay motionless for a few seconds, breathing audibly even from Raphael’s distance. He moved his head a little, and Raphael could see that his brow was heavily creased, and dripping with sweat. Absently, he wondered if the man might die. He most certainly wasn’t in the best of conditions, and considering the long journey he had just made…

Then, suddenly, Julien’s body tensed, convulsed, and he threw his head back, and screamed.

Raphael instantly jerked back to reality at the sound. He realized that it wasn’t a cry of pain. No, far from it—Julien had his head tossed back, his teeth bared, his bony hands curved into talons. The cry, coming from the throat of that fainting, stuttering little man, was one of animal fury. Raphael could smell it wafting towards him on the night air, thick as blood.

Julien smashed through the window with his bare fist, paying no mind to the cuts he received or the hundreds of tiny, glittering shards of glass sent flying though the air, raining off the ledge to the ground below. He leapt though the broken window feet first, the noise that followed suggesting that he landed in a roll on the floor. Raphael dashed to the window, eager to see what waited inside.

He was not disappointed. Julien lay crouched on the floor resembling nothing so much as a wild dog: brown hair bristling, nose and forehead furrowed into a snout by rage, rearing and grunting in preparation to strike. Meanwhile, in a pristine white bed on the other side of the room, a blonde girl in an equally white and pristine nightgown was backing against the wall in terror. She did not scream. She did not, in fact, make any sound at all. Her chest only heaved, up and down, up and down, like an old squeezebox. Her pupils were islands of blue in a vast ocean of white, streaked with red reefs. For a few moments, save for Julien’s demoniac, animal grunting, the room was completely silent.”

“Julien.” She whispered. It was not a question, but a statement.

Julien took that statement as his cue to pounce.

There was no way for the girl to escape. Julien had her tangled in the white sheets, hands tightening closer and closer around her throat. They rolled over and over each other, a godless perversion of the image of a couple in an embrace that made Raphael’s lips curl into a grin. The girl’s first and only scream was cut off and turned into a choke as Julien’s hands constricted around her neck.

Suddenly, the door opened. A dark, human blur flashed across the room too fast for even Raphael’s vision to fully calculate, flying at Julien with a blurred weapon held high in his hand. He landed slightly off of his target, accidentally shoving the girl out of death’s gaping maw as he tumbled onto the bed. Julien’s body contracted in instant agony as the blur’s weapon, now clear enough in Raphael’s vision to be recognized as a hunting knife, ran against his shoulder. With all the urgency of a predatory animal, he rolled off the bed and sprang to his feet. The blur, sharpened into a fuzzy image of a wiry, dark-haired young man, grabbed on to the edge of Julien’s jacket. Julien continued to move, and the jacket fell discarded into the young man’s arms as the wearer escaped. Julien careened out of the window and flipped over the ledge, hugging the nearest pole and sliding down without the slightest knowledge that Raphael was there.

Raphael looked back into the room, getting his first good look at Julien’s attacker. He was on his hands and knees on the bed, hands clenched into the sheets in frustration. His grey eyes flickered, and Raphael suddenly knew from his snarling face what he felt. He had not only been unable to apprehend Julien—he had been unable to stop him from attacking in the first place, and that made him curse himself more than his escaped quarry.

With a sudden pang of recognition, Raphael realized that the young man’s feelings were so familiar because he had seen them before, in the very same face.

When the blonde girl burst into hopeless tears, Raphael hardly noticed. When the young woman who had been wavering, shocked, in the doorway came to the blonde girl’s aid, he did not notice at all. Instead, he fixed his green eyes on the dark-haired man, and kept them there for a long, long time.

He had expected difficulty, taking on the assignment of Julien Auber. He had expected trouble from the doctors, a flurry of penny papers journalists chronicling any incidents that may have come up.

He had not, however, expected Kurt Vandermeer.

Kurt was down on all fours on the bed, his dark hair limp in his face, his heart thudding against his chest from the shock. He looked up, glancing at the broken window, then at Aurora, weeping uncontrollably on the floor, then at the window again. A shudder of hate ran through his body as he looked at the empty space.

Then, calmly, he climbed down from the bed, and began to pace. Shards of glass crunched beneath this black boots.

Aurora owed her life to the fact that he had decided he wasn’t in the mood for sleep that night. If he had been asleep, it would have taken him twice as long to respond, and for Aurora, it would have been too late. For Detective Kurt Vandermeer, that was unacceptable.

He looked down at Aurora. Addie was now at her side, rubbing her quivering back and shoulders, making soft, soothing sounds. Kurt was struck, not for the first time, at how maternal she could be when the need arose. Though she was no better or worse looking at the average woman, it seemed at times that she was completely unaware of her own femininity. When dealing with men, she seemed devoid of any recognition of what made her different from them. To women, however, Addie was a mother and a sister. Sometimes it helped them solve cases, and others, thought Kurt would never say this to her face, he believed it to be a detriment.

“How is she?” He asked quietly.

“How do you think?!” Addie shot back. Her tone was sharper than she usually used with him, and her tone with him was often very sharp.

Aurora muttered something, choking it out through the endless stream of her tears. Her words were muffled by her hands, which she had clapped against her mouth. To prevent herself from screaming, Kurt presumed.

“What was that?” Asked Addie, leaning in closer.

“….wasn’t…Julien…”

Addie let out a long, slow breath, and closed her eyes. The sorrow of many, many cases not unlike this one could be seen etched in her face. “Aurora…” She began.

“It…wasn’t…Julien!” Aurora shouted. She shook her head violently, further scattering her already disheveled hair as if it would aid her point. “It wasn’t!” She repeated. “It wasn’t!”

Kurt turned to face Aurora and Addie. “There’s no sense in hurting yourself, Miss Lammermoor.” He said firmly. He realized the coldness of his own voice as it echoed in the air around him, explaining the look of disgust Addie was giving him.

With a sob, Aurora leaned forward on all fours, a faltering hand reaching for the coat that Kurt had ripped from Julien’s body. When she reached it, her small, trembling hand clenched down in the fabric in the shape of a claw, dragging the garment towards her. She clutched the jacket tight to her chest, sobbing over it as if she held the body of the Julien she had once known in her arms. Then, suddenly, she paused. Her expression changed from unadulterated, absolute sorrow, to that same sorrow, tinged with curiosity and fear. She dipped her hand into the pocket of the jacket, and a grim, hopeless ghost of a smile appeared on her face when she found that she had discovered something. Slowly, she slid her hand out of the pocket, holding her discovery close to her face. Pressed between her thumb and forefinger was a tiny wooden cube.

“Aurora?” Addie whispered. “Do you know what that is?”

Aurora shook her head. “But…but he’s trying to…” She drew in a deep harried breath. “He’s…he’s trying to…send a message to me…”

Kurt abruptly looked at the two women again. He took a single step towards them, more shards of glass crackling beneath his feet. “Miss Lammermoor…” He began. “Given the circumstances, I would say that is simply…irrational.”

Aurora shot to her feet, wobbling on her trembling legs once she was upright. Addie had to rise to meet her to prevent her from falling. “It is not irrational!” She shrieked. “This…this is…his sign! He…he didn’t want to attack me, he…someone forced him, he…this is his way of telling me!” She wrenched herself away from Addie’s supportive arms, spinning loose and stumbling around the room for a few seconds. Her face bore the giddy, lopsided smile that can only be found on the hopelessly insane or the hopelessly in love. “I…I have to…I have to go…after hiiim!!!”

Kurt and Addie both lunged to stop her, but both had moved too late. Aurora dashed from the room, beginning her movement at an impossibly fast pace and using the doorframe as a springboard to go even faster. By the time Kurt and Addie had passed through the almost pitch black hallway that lead to the main stairway, Aurora appeared as a flutter of white nightclothes and blonde hair, halfway across the foyer to the double doors and still sprinting. Addie quickened her pace with a cry of determination, but Aurora was already at the door by the time Addie reached the bottom of the steps, and Kurt was even farther behind. Aurora, in her frenzy, fumbled with the chain, then attempted to open the door the wrong way. She lost her footing as she swung the door wide, tumbling out onto the porch. As Kurt and Addie reached the door, two things occurred to the detectives simultaneously. One, that there had not been one cry of shock and collision, but two. And second, that the sound that emanated from the porch was not one of a human body colliding with marble, but of a human body colliding with another human body.

When Kurt and Addie reached the doorway, they saw, with a blessed sense of relief mixed with utter bewilderment, that Aurora was indeed sprawled over another human body, and not Julien’s. Instead it was a girl who lay, equally bewildered, beneath Aurora’s trembling form, of an age with her, or perhaps a year or two younger. Gently, with a few muffled, inarticulate requests that Aurora allow her to stand up, the girl wriggled herself out from under Aurora just enough for Kurt and Addie to catch a glimpse of her dark red curls in the meager moonlight. Then, suddenly, she paused. She wrapped her hand around Aurora’s cheek, and it was plain from her quizzical expression that she was getting her first good look at the woman who had fallen on her. Within a few seconds, her expression morphed from surprise to utter, rapturous relief. She flopped to the side, leaning against a column, and allowed a few joyous tears to spill down her face.

“Why…why are you crying?!” Asked Aurora, her face still red from her own tears.

“You’re…” The girl appeared to have difficulty getting the words out with the shock of her relief. “You’re alive. I was so worried…the dream…so worried…that I was too…but you’re alive.” Suddenly, she leaned forward and caught Aurora in a tight embrace. Aurora, regardless of her brush with death only minutes ago, took this complete stranger at her word, and returned her embrace. Renewed tears raced down her flush cheeks, though whether these were tears of sorrow, joy, or some mixture of the two, it was impossible to tell.

The entire scene was completely unlike anything Kurt had ever seen before, in all the years he had devoted to his rather unusual trade. He shifted around agitatedly, making several weak scoffing noises and gesticulations in the direction of the embracing girls. Finally, he managed to articulate his utter lack of knowledge of the situation into a single sentence. “Do you know what this is?!”

“I know what it isn’t.” said Addie softly, herself taken aback.

“Well?!”

Addie smiled weakly. “It isn’t a coincidence.”