"What are you doing?" Tara muttered under her breath, her heart pounding with mingled fear and excitement as she sped away from the magic shop, and the darker side of town she would be glad to see the last of. She glanced in the rearview mirror at the tarp concealing her purchase, her stomach twisting as it occurred to her that if not for the tarp, she would have seen only an empty seat. "Tara, what the heck are you doing?"

When she had seen the same vampire from the strange, vivid dreams she had been having, bound and helpless and suffering in that shop, it had seemed that there was no other choice but to take him out of there, no matter what she had to do to do so. Now, however, Tara found herself wondering about the wisdom of her actions.

What if he was dangerous? How was she supposed to take care of the countless injuries that covered his body? Was she ready to deal with such an intense situation as this one promised to be?

*Doesn't matter,* she reminded herself firmly, her jaw setting with determination. *Gonna have to be. Couldn't leave him there...have to help him...*

In the end, Tara knew that she could have brought herself to do nothing less.

By the time she reached her house, the sun had set completely, leaving only the dim glow of twilight on the horizon. Tara opened the backdoor and gently lifted the fragile creature in her arms, once again horrified by the near weightlessness of him, the sharp feeling of bones pressing into her arms as his head lolled against her shoulder. For his size, she would not have expected to be able to lift him herself; but he was shockingly emaciated, and seemed to weigh no more than a child in her arms.

She struggled to free one hand enough to unlock and open the front door, stumbling through the doorway into the house and kicking the door shut behind her. Before the door was even closed, Macrea came padding in from the next room, his tail wagging in greeting. As he drew near, however, his tail flattened, and the large dog began to growl low in his throat, his apprehensive attention focused on the unseen occupant of the tarp.

It sent a chill through her to think of the natural aversion the dog had to the unnatural creature she had just brought into their home.

"Sorry, Mac," she sighed, her voice trembling slightly. "I haven't got a choice." She paused, making her voice stern as she commanded, "Go on, Mac. In the kitchen."

The dog stopped growling, taking a couple steps toward the kitchen before turning huge, baleful eyes on her in silent supplication.

"*Go on*," Tara insisted, though she felt terrible for banishing her beloved pet. She knew that it would be safer for all parties concerned, however, if Macrea was not around while she dealt with the injured vampire in her arms.

Once the dog reluctantly entered the kitchen, Tara awkwardly managed to pull the door shut, locking him out of the living room. She moved swiftly toward the sofa, laying the vampire down on his side and carefully pulling the tarp down as far as his waist. She had an idea that his injuries were far worse below his waist, and didn't dare venture to examine that far - not yet.

It was all she could do to come to terms with the suffering she could already see.

His face and body were caked with dried blood, making it difficult for her to see just where the actual injuries were, but she knew that he was covered with them. He was skeletal, every bone standing out in stark clarity through his bruised and broken skin. Tara wondered with dismay how long it had been since he had eaten anything at all.

His face pressed into the sofa, and she could see the rough leather strap that bound the dirty rag in his mouth, keeping him silent in the face of his torment. The heavy collar that had bound him to the wall in the magic shop seemed to have irritated his neck badly, leaving it red and raw where she could glimpse it under the edges of the collar.

In the light of her living room, Tara could better see the awkward angle at which his arms were bound, a length of thin but strong cording binding his elbows together behind his back so close that they were touching, his arms pulled so painfully tight that his right shoulder had been dislocated. A strand of the cord ran down his right arm, and then looped tightly around his wrists, again and again, biting painfully into his bruised, damaged skin.

Shaking herself out of her horrified reverie, Tara pushed herself into action. The pitiful creature needed help, and quickly. She did not have time to focus on her own shock and dismay right now. She rose and retrieved a sharp pair of scissors from the bathroom drawer, using it to cut through the cord and free his arms.

As her fingers came into contact with his skin, she was shocked to feel how very cold he was...much colder than she had expected, even knowing that he was not technically alive, not human. She knew that vampires had no natural body heat of their own, but he felt like ice under her fingertips, and she couldn't suppress a shudder.

She grimaced as she pulled the rope away, and saw that it had cut deep into the vampire's flesh, though no blood flowed from the gashes it had left. The skin on his elbows had been nearly rubbed away from the constant pressure on them, but those wounds did not seem to be bleeding either. As Tara noticed that troubling development, her eyes were drawn to a ghastly wound on his right arm, a long gash where it looked as if a slice of his flesh had been taken out. The wound had not begun to heal, but there was no blood flowing from it, either.

Perhaps he had none left to flow so freely, she realized with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Her chest tightened with nervous apprehension at what she knew she had to do next, and she swallowed hard, her throat dry and her eyes brimming with tears at the thought of causing this damaged creature any further pain. Still, she knew it had to be done.

*At least he's unconscious...*

She gripped his arm, steeling herself before giving it a hard jerk in the right direction, fighting back a wave of nausea as the shoulder popped back into place. It had not been as difficult as she had anticipated, but the sound alone made her stomach revolt, and she braced her arm across her mouth, breathing deeply through her nose for a few moments as she struggled to control her gag reflex.

Once her reactions were under control again, wanting to get a better look at his injuries so as to even find a place to begin, as well as to make sure that his other shoulder was not in as bad condition as she had found the right one, Tara gently manipulated the still form on the sofa so that he was lying on his back, while keeping the tarp over his lower body, for modesty's sake. She knew that eventually she would have to deal with the injuries there, as well, but it felt like an intrusion...a violation of his dignity.

The sight of his sunken stomach and protruding ribs, his hips jutting sharply from his bruised abdomen, reminded her painfully once more of how desperately thin he was, how starved and malnourished.

His chest did not stir with breath, and Tara had to remind herself that vampires didn't breathe. She wondered briefly whether or not it was possible that he was *really* dead...but then she remembered what she had learned, that vampires turned to dust when they died. He was alive...and therefore, he could still be helped.

*He's gotta have blood,* she reminded herself.

But blood would have to come after he woke up, and until then, she could do nothing but busy herself with the vital - and apparently never-ending - task of tending to his wounds. It seemed an impossible, overwhelming job, and once again Tara found herself wondering if she was really capable of giving the badly tortured vampire the sort of care he needed.

But then, it wasn't as if there were hospitals and clinics for this sort of thing.

There was really no one else.

Taking a deep breath and steeling herself once more for the task at hand, Tara raised her eyes for her first good look at his face, in the light of her living room, rather than the near darkness of the spooky little magic shop.

Her heart stilled for an instant in horror and dismay as she realized that the vampire was *blind*.

The area around one eye was swollen and badly bruised, as if the bones around it had been shattered and never set properly. The eye itself was tightly pressed shut, and appeared to have been that way for some time, covered over with trails of dried blood and grime that had probably been there for weeks.

The other eye...well...there *was* no other eye.

Where his right eye should have been, there was only a mangled mess of raw flesh and dried blood, as if the eyeball itself had been burned out of its socket.

Tara's stomach, just barely under control from the last such horrid shock, gave another lurch, and she was suddenly not sure she was going to be able to hold back the wave of nausea that hit her. Gasping for breath, Tara backed away from the ghastly sight, stumbling as she turned and rushed into the kitchen, barely remembering to pull the door shut behind her again before Macrea could slip out into the living room.

*I can't do this; I can't do this...*

The single thought echoed through her mind, and she fought back a rising sense of panic as she grabbed a glass from the draining pan beside the sink and filled it with cold water from the tap, forcing down a mouthful past the hard lump in her throat, in an attempt to still her queasy stomach.

Her self-doubt was answered with an echoing thought, one she knew to be fact.

*You have to. There's no one else. You *have* to.*

She drained the rest of the water and placed the glass in the sink, breathing deeply as she glanced with apprehension toward the closed kitchen door. Macrea was pacing uneasily around the doorway, stopping every now and then to sniff the space beneath it before looking back up at her expectantly, waiting for her to do *something*.

*That would be a good idea right about now...do something, Tara!*

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay...I can do this...just have to...focus. Okay. What do I need?"

Thinking about the supplies she would need to care for the vampire's wounds helped to calm her somewhat, and Tara began mentally rehearsing the things she required, the things she had on hand, and the ones she would have to get later.

She reached into a high kitchen cabinet and took down the first aid kit - and nearly laughed aloud. It was ludicrous to think that the tiny emergency kit would come anywhere close to meeting the monstrous need in the next room. She was going to need a lot more bandages and antiseptics than were in the first aid kit.

She set the kit on the kitchen table and made her way down the hall to the bathroom, where extra bandages - though still not enough, she was afraid - were kept in the cabinet under the sink. She stopped by her room to gather a couple of extra blankets from the closet, before returning to the kitchen for the first aid kit.

Carefully she pushed the kitchen door open, maneuvering it shut again with her foot as she turned to face the living room again.

She nearly dropped the supplies she was carrying, barely reining in her surprise enough to hurriedly set them down on the floor, her wide, frightened eyes scanning the room frantically.

The unconscious vampire was no longer unconscious, apparently.

He was no longer on the sofa.

He no longer appeared to be in the living room at all.