"Bloodborne" by ellijay

Summary: The Doctor joins the Torchwood team to go vampire hunting in Cardiff, but his past catches up with him as he becomes the target of revenge.

Author's Notes: Many, many thanks to readerjane for her extraordinary beta-reading skills. Her input and spot-on critique illuminated my blind spots and challenged me to consider aspects of the story that weren't even on my radar. As a result of her tireless efforts, this story has come a long way from where it began and is hopefully much better now at the end of the journey.

Thank-you to reddwarfaddict as well for her beta-reading and encouragement early in the writing process. Her enthusiasm lifted my spirits on many occasions and kept me going during times when I was asking myself, "Why am I writing a vampire story? I don't do vampire stories!"

Thanks also go to aranhe for doing a run-through on the first couple of chapters to make sure I'd crossed the i's and dotted the t's, in particular keeping me from having American expressions break into the p.o.v. or dialogue of British characters. If anyone sees errors in that respect in later chapters, please feel free to let me know. I'm completely willing to make adjustments even after posting.

And yet more thanks to the creators of the Visual Guide to the Torchwood Hub ( porto/guides/hub/). I can be a real stickler for accuracy, and the amazing level of detail on the site was of enormous value to me in building a mental landscape of the Hub so I didn't have to do so much guessing or plain making stuff up.

Warning (of a sort): Realizing that readers will have varying levels of tolerance for certain types of subject matter, I want to point out that this story does contain situations with erotic subtext that some might find disturbing. It is not, however, an erotic story, rather a hurt/comfort story with vampires as antagonists. There is nothing that I would call blatantly sexual, only the kind of hints and innuendo that are often found in tales about vampires.

Chapter 1 – "Concerning Vampires"

Jack Harkness had met quite a variety of aliens in his lifetime so far, but he had yet to meet a vampire. Sure, he'd known a handful of people capable of making him feel as if every bodily fluid had been sucked out of his body, and he'd met more than a few that liked to bite or preferred night-time to the day, but those were just quirks – apart from the one who really had been natively nocturnal. But he'd never run into a real-life, fanged, blood-sucking vampire.

Now he was trying to track down a group of them, at least if vague eyewitness reports of shadowy figures were to be believed. Jack was tending towards accepting the accounts of multiples rather than just one. That's just how his luck tended to run, but he hoped it was going to turn because he desperately wanted and needed to put an end to the trail of bodies they were leaving across Cardiff. He and his team had just ended a particularly grueling vampire hunt that had been set in motion by the discovery of the sixth body in as many days. Puncture wounds on the neck and sucked dry of blood, every single victim.

Over thirty-six hours of almost non-stop searching, and they'd come up empty. The vampires must've caught wind of their investigation and gone to ground because there hadn't been a body found in all of that time. He supposed it was possible they'd moved on or someone else had already dealt with them, but his instincts told him it was only a matter of time before they emerged again.

He'd sent his team home for a rest, but warned them to keep their mobiles charged and on in case he needed to call them in again. He hadn't been able to settle his racing mind, though, so he'd decided to fill the time going over the vampire research Gwen had already done. He fully trusted in her abilities, but with the vast majority of the information they had at hand consisting of myths and legends, he figured it wouldn't hurt to have another set of eyes searching for the needle of truth in the folklore haystack.

He really hadn't been hoping for much. He'd found in the past that specific stories or historical accounts sometimes yielded useful information, but he considered generic superstitions to be suspect since they often proved to be based on little more than fear or ignorance. Unfortunately his pessimism seemed to be well-founded in this case. Even the stories surrounding Vlad the Impaler were varied and conflicting and further muddied by countless fictionalized versions.

He growled in frustration, raised his arms over his head and stretched until his spine popped. That took care of one problem. He rubbed at dry and scratchy eyes and squinted at the computer screen, but was unable to focus well enough to continue reading. And he was generally tired in a way that went beyond simple fatigue. He'd either have to take a long break or go rummaging in Dr. Inman's medical supplies until he found something that would help with his exhaustion. Considering her reaction the last time he'd done that without her permission, he should probably go with option one.

He took one last glance at his computer screen and suppressed a shudder at the drawings and photos scattered over the page. It wasn't their appearance that made him uneasy. He'd seen aliens who looked far stranger and more intimidating. And he'd known aliens – and humans – with some truly repugnant eating habits. But the thought of someone drinking blood from living creatures turned his stomach for some reason. Then could I drink hot blood. That line from Hamlet always made him queasy.

The sound of the blast door rolling open made him turn quickly in his seat, pulse and breathing speeding up a bit. Reading account after account of meetings with vampires, some of them nauseatingly graphic, had made him a bit jittery. None of his team was supposed to be back at the Hub for at least another four hours, so he either had an unannounced and possibly unwelcome visitor, or one of his team was in for a dressing down.

He grabbed his revolver out of the desk drawer, turned off his desk lights and went out and across the workspace outside of his office as quickly and quietly as he could. As he crouched down behind the balcony stairs at the far end of the platform, he saw a figure that was at least human-shaped standing at the top of the steps leading down from the blast door. Jack couldn't make out much detail because of the low level of light in the Hub and the brighter backlight coming in from the entrance tunnel.

He cocked his gun as he aimed it at his visitor's head – the head did the trick for most aliens – and said quietly but clearly, "Hold it right there."

The figure turned towards him, the red light next to the storage area entrance illuminating the face just enough for him to realize who it was. "Doctor?" Jack hadn't expected to see him again so soon. It had only been a couple of months. But then it might've been much longer for the Doctor.

"Last time I checked," the Doctor said dryly, then pointed at Jack's gun. "You can put that away now."

"Oh." He'd forgotten he was still aiming it at the Doctor. He carefully released the hammer as he stood up and reached behind his back to tuck the gun into the waistband of his trousers. "What are you doing here?" He winced at the impatience in his own voice. Well, that was what happened when someone traipsed right through his supposedly secure front door, especially when he wasn't expecting anyone. Tended to make him just a bit jumpy.

"Oh, I was in the neighborhood, thought I'd pop in for a visit." The Doctor welcomed himself into the Hub, both the barred and blast doors automatically closing behind him as he hopped down the handful of stairs. He slid his hands into his trouser pockets, hitching his long coat behind his elbows, and walked away from Jack, across the grating over the waterfall's drainage ditch.

"Yeah, right," Jack replied, one side of his mouth twitching upwards as he also descended to the main level. The Doctor had stopped walking and was looking around and up at the Hub's interior. "You don't do popping round to visit. Not that you're not always welcome, but why are you really here?"

"Jack…" The Doctor looked back towards him, a wounded look on his face. "Do you honestly believe there has to be some kind of trouble for me to stop by to see an old friend?"

Jack crossed his arms over his chest. "Yes," he said, equal measures of humor and seriousness mixed in his tone.

The Doctor glared back at him for a moment, then raised his hands in surrender. "All right, then. Fine, you're right." He tugged at his ear. "I sort of need a … favor. Well, a loan. Well, not really a loan because I probably won't give it back. Is it rude to ask for a gift?"

Jack raised an eyebrow and nodded. "Yeah, it is generally considered rude on this planet to ask for a gift, but I'll make allowances since you're not from this planet. What is it you need?"

"Well…" A scuff of the foot, a shrug of one shoulder. "The TARDIS is sort of … misbehaving at the moment."

"Misbehaving?" Jack smiled at the Doctor's reluctance to admit that yes, his ramshackle old time machine was yet again on the fritz. "She's being naughty? Maybe she needs a good spanking."

"Jack," the Doctor drawled, annoyance evident in his voice. That really put a smile on Jack's face. Oh, how he loved to goad the Doctor. He'd love to kiss him, too, but was fairly certain he'd get little more than a disapproving stare and possibly a raised eyebrow in response. Not much appeal or satisfaction in that.

The Doctor gave Jack a beleaguered look, then shifted his weight from one foot to another and went on. "She's just sort of … being a bit inaccurate with landing coordinates at the moment. I would've preferred going somewhere more technologically advanced, but she knows this place and time well, and she was a bit low on fuel, so it was a moth to the candle flame, right to the Rift. You've got a fairly good assortment of alien bits and bobs here, so I thought maybe you might have something or other rattling around that I could use to repair her."

"Bits and bobs? I should be insulted. We've got some very useful stuff here, as you well know. Don't suppose you brought that cube thing back with you?"

"Cube thing?" the Doctor asked, his face wrinkled in confusion. Uh-oh. Maybe it had simply been a long time for the Doctor, but it was also possible that incident hadn't happened for him yet. This Doctor could be from before the Crucible.

Jack was beginning to worry about paradoxes and how they could be created with a single misplaced word when the Doctor finally said, "Oh, that!" He gave a shamefaced grin. "I'm not quite sure where I put that. I'll have a look for it later."

"And you accuse us of being disorganized?" Jack exclaimed with a pointed stare, but with an inward sigh of relief. At least now he knew the Doctor's visits were sequential from his own perspective. "I'll have you know, we've cleaned up our act on that count since the last time you were here. Everything's secured, nice and proper. We even have a swank new server for our tracking database. Very cutting edge stuff." About the only good that came out of that sorry excuse of a computer specialist I hired, he added to himself. That one had lasted all of two weeks. A fleeting thought crossed his mind that maybe he was being too critical. There'd never be another Tosh.

"Ooo, shiny new toys. Can I look?" The Doctor was rubbing his hands together with a look of childish glee on his face. Jack refrained from making a rude comment about shiny new toys, but only just. At the moment he was simply pleased to see the Doctor in much better spirits than he had been during his last visit. He wondered how long it had actually been for him.

"Sure," Jack replied. "Probably be easier for you to look through the database for what you need rather than rummage around in storage. That still needs … a bit of sorting out."

The Doctor snorted but didn't say anything else as he followed Jack up the stairs and over to his office. He knew it was too much to hope the Doctor's silence was because he was busy admiring the view in front of him. He didn't know why he persisted in thinking things like that. It was never going to happen. For any number of reasons, including the fact that he was Wrong as far as the Doctor was concerned. The conversation they'd had on Utopia still stung.

At least the Doctor seemed to have learned since then to cope with the primal urge to run away from him. Or maybe that was wishful thinking. The last time he'd seen the Doctor, he'd attributed the dark mood and abrupt demeanor to his recent loss of Donna, but maybe Jack had been too willing to believe that. He couldn't help but have noticed when the Doctor had entered the Hub this time, he'd deliberately walked in the opposite direction instead of stepping towards him for some kind of greeting.

Jack flipped the desk lights back on, dropped his gun into the drawer, and turned toward the computer desk against the opposite wall. He'd intended to close the various pages holding his vampire research, but the Doctor was already seated there. "Oooh, vampires," he said with apparent delight as he took out his glasses and put them on before beginning to merrily click around the screen.

Jack squinted and pinched the bridge of his nose. Just glancing at the computer screen again was giving him a headache. He moved to the end of his main desk and propped himself against the edge, his hands braced on the desktop behind him. He might've been imagining it, but he thought he saw the Doctor's shoulders tense a bit as soon as he moved that small distance closer. He briefly gritted his teeth, blew out a breath and said with exasperation, "We've been having a bit of a problem with them recently."

"With vampires? Really?" The Doctor swiveled the chair a bit and looked over his shoulder, peering steadily at Jack over the top of his glasses. "Vampiric species are rare in this part of the galaxy. Then again, you do get all sorts dropping out of that Rift of yours."

"Yeah, I did sort of notice that," Jack said sarcastically.

The Doctor finished turning the chair away from the computer and towards Jack. He rubbed uncomfortably at the side of his own neck. "I met a vampire once. Well, a Plasmavore. One of the humanoid vampiric species. Only she didn't have fangs. She had a straw."

"A straw." That was a mental image that just didn't compute. "You're joking, right?"

"No, I'm not," the Doctor said with a shudder. "Wouldn't joke about something like that. It was a very pointy straw." He tilted his head and winced. "She would've had fangs when she was younger, but they often wear down or fall out with age. This one was on the oldish side. More of a grandmother type." Jack frowned at the thought of a grandmotherly vampire. That one sort of computed, but it was a very strange image.

"It was here on Earth, actually," the Doctor went on, looking up at the ceiling and absently massaging his neck. "Well, we were sort of involuntarily relocated to the Moon. Along with an entire hospital. Which had a very nice little shop by the way."

A corner of Jack's mouth quirked up at the Doctor's tendency to notice the strangest details. "The Royal Hope incident," he said knowingly. "I thought you might've been involved in that one. We couldn't track down very many details, apart from some raving about talking rhinos in body armor. Judoon, I assume?"

The Doctor had turned back to the computer and was switching screens and scrolling through them so quickly it was making Jack dizzy. "Yep, H2O scooping away," he replied, but then he paused on one page and sat up straighter. "What?! Oh, that's just ridiculous. Amazing what people will dream up to explain something they don't understand." He slouched down a bit and went back to his info feeding frenzy. "I don't suppose you would've found very many details since there were only a handful who knew what really happened. The Judoon. The Plasmavore. Me. Oh, and Martha of course."

"Martha?" That surprised Jack. He hadn't realized Martha had been there. He should have put two and two together since he knew she'd done some of her medical training at the Royal Hope, but he hadn't known she'd been on duty at that particular time.

"That's where we met," the Doctor explained. "With the Judoon platoon upon the Moon. She's never mentioned it?"

"No she hasn't, but you're not the only thing we talk about, you know," he said with a touch of annoyance. The Doctor made a humming sound, but was apparently too involved in the rapidly changing series of pages he'd brought up on the monitor to comment any further.

Really, Jack didn't know much at all about what had gone on when Martha had been travelling with the Doctor. Discussing the Doctor was a sort of no-man's-land between them. He wasn't quite sure why. Probably because of the Year. Sometimes it seemed that Year tainted every memory he had of the Doctor. It might well be the same for her.

The wildly flashing images on the computer screen were now starting to make Jack nauseous. He shifted over to the wall next to the computer desk, leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. Now he could see the side of the Doctor's face but not the monitor. Much better. Or not. The Doctor seemed to be sitting a bit more stiffly now, and Jack was sure he saw him glance quickly out of the corner of his eye, as if keeping tabs on how close the Wrong was. Jack knocked the back of his head lightly against the wall and closed his eyes.

So much for the Doctor not finding it unsettling to be around him. He couldn't delude himself. A twitchy reaction or two he could ignore as coincidence, but it was obvious to him now that his proximity to the Doctor was causing him discomfort. The realization brought with it a heavy sadness, and he allowed himself a moment of pained regret before gathering his composure and opening his eyes. Nothing he could do about it but try to maintain his distance as much as possible.

He jerked away from the wall and walked quickly to the door of his office, then stopped and propped himself against the doorframe. He didn't particularly care how the Doctor interpreted his shift in position. He was probably oblivious. Or maybe keenly aware. Jack didn't waste any effort on trying to figure it out. He had more pressing matters to attend to. "Is it possible one of our vampires is the same one you ran into?" he asked,

"No. Definitely not," the Doctor said as he swiveled the chair and leaned back, folded his arms over his chest and crossed his legs at the ankle. Apparently Jack was now a sufficient distance away for him to relax. There. Problem solved. Move on.

"She was executed," the Doctor explained. "She was being hunted by the Judoon when I ran into her, and they … took care of the matter." He paused, his eyes becoming unfocused for a moment, then he sucked in a deep breath and took his glasses off. "You may not even be dealing with Plasmavores. What have they been feeding on?"

Jack blinked several times in confusion before he realized he hadn't given the Doctor any of the details yet. There must be vampires who preyed on animals or who perhaps didn't kill when they fed. Human mythology mostly focused on the more horrific facets of vampirism. He hadn't really considered other options, mainly because they weren't relevant in this case.

His hesitation was apparently enough for the Doctor to supply himself with the answer to his own question, though. "Oh. Oh, no. They've been feeding on humans, haven't they?" Jack nodded. "Killing them?" Jack nodded again. The Doctor paused, then asked quietly, a mixed expression of sorrow and grim determination on his face, "How many?"

"Six so far." There would be more. He'd be a fool if he tried to convince himself otherwise.

"Has anyone actually seen them? Apart from the victims, obviously."

"Yes, but nothing more than shadowy figures, running away. The only other evidence we have beside the bodies is the messages they've been leaving: 'We will find him,' written on the nearest available surface in the victims' own blood." The gory memories stirred up anger and disgust and burned his guts with acid.

"Oh," the Doctor said, his lip curling in distaste. "That's rather … barbaric."

"Just a bit." As if committing murder to satisfy their appetites wasn't horrific enough, they'd had to add that sadistic flourish.

"Any idea who they might be referring to?"

"Not a clue. They're obviously trying to bait whoever they're looking for, but beyond that, we don't have much to go on." Frustration was taking over now. He'd have to keep a careful rein on that. Could be volatile when indiscriminately mixed with anger. "The victims don't have anything in common as far as we can tell. They might just be … collateral damage." He hated referring to people that way, but he couldn't think of any better way to describe it. He didn't want to use any term related to food, even though he had already admitted to himself that it was true. They hadn't just killed and left the bodies otherwise untouched, after all.

The Doctor leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his fingers knitted together and his forehead wrinkled in thought, then he abruptly stood up and said, "So where have you stashed the bodies? May as well see if I can find anything you overlooked."

Jack nodded as he pushed himself away from the doorframe and led the way out of the office. Although he didn't like the thought that his team might've missed something, he'd take whatever help he could get. Maybe the Doctor would be able to get something more useful from his examination of the victims than feelings of guilt for not having stopped the vampires yet.

As the Doctor followed Jack down to the morgue, he breathed slowly and deeply and tried to shake the tension out of his limbs. He'd forgotten how disturbing it was for him to be around Jack, but he was adjusting now. He'd handled it before, the queasy feeling simmering just beneath the surface, bubbling up from time to time. It'd just about choked him earlier, but he'd been distracted by sifting through Jack's vampire research and had been caught off guard. It was obvious Jack had noticed his reaction, but he couldn't take it back, or even apologize for it, not really. It had been completely involuntary. The best he could do was to try and control his reflexive aversion as much as he could, even while accepting that it wouldn't always be possible. He hoped Jack understood that in some way.

As they arrived at the morgue, the Doctor glanced around at the three walls lined with rows of small doors, each presumably containing a body or ready to contain a body. He briefly wondered where the rest were stored because he was certain there'd have to be a great deal more bodies wherever Torchwood was involved, even Jack's Torchwood. Right now, though, he needed to focus his attention on this plague of vampires. He already had an unpleasant theory as to what they were doing on Earth.

He followed Jack over to the wall directly across from the entranceway and watched as he quickly pulled one of the doors open, then slid out a long drawer holding a sheet-shrouded body. Jack reverently folded the sheet down from the person's face and brushed a stray bit of hair off the forehead of a young woman who couldn't be more than mid-twenties. Jack's expression was one of quiet grief. The Doctor wondered if his sorrow was caused by the woman's tender age or if he somehow felt responsible for her early demise. He could certainly understand that kind of self-recrimination, born out of failure to save someone. He supposed it was even possible that Jack coveted her death. What must that be like, to know the one certainty in every living being's existence was no longer a part of him?

"This was the first one," Jack said quietly, still gazing down at the woman with lingering sadness in his eyes. The life that was so persistently cheap in him surely must make the lives of others so much more precious and dear to him. Even though the Doctor wasn't immortal, his own long lives made the sentiment understandable to him.

"How long has this been going on?" he asked as he moved to the other side of the body and looked down at the woman's pale face. For some reason she looked familiar, but with the number of humans he'd encountered in his life, it was inevitable some of them would appear at least superficially the same.

Jack drew his hands back and stood up straight, his voice now clear and toneless. Back to business. "One victim every day for six days. Nothing in the past day and a half, but that may just be because they're being cautious. We had an intensive search going on before you got here."

The Doctor could feel the icy nothingness of death radiating from the body, but it was mingled with the aura of not-death surrounding Jack. To distract himself from the unsettling mix of sensations, he pulled out his glasses and put them back on. Not that he really wanted to get a clearer view of what had been done to the poor woman, but needs must.

Shifting himself into analytical mode, he quickly evaluated the spectral properties of the hue of her skin, then carefully turned her head to the side and found the expected pair of puncture wounds with a bit of bruising from the peripheral teeth. "Almost certainly a Plasmavore bite." Confirming the attacker's species was one point in favor of his theory.

He glanced up to see Jack frowning hard, his eyebrows drawn together. "How can you tell?" he asked, his voice somewhat peremptory. Probably irritated his team had apparently missed an important clue.

"There's a faint but distinctive greenish tint in the color of her skin, difficult to detect under the grey-blue present when a human bleeds to death. Not the sort of thing you'd normally look for in an autopsy." That seemed to mollify Jack somewhat. "The discoloration is caused by a soporific Plasmavores inject into their victims with their fangs to make them more submissive."

He'd half-wished the one on the Moon had still had that ability. It had been a challenge to keep his panic under control, knowing full well she might consume every last drop of his blood before the Judoon got there. He'd stopped one heart before she'd started drinking his blood so she wouldn't detect a doubled set of pulses and realize he wasn't human as she'd assumed him to be. But if she'd been able to sedate him, he wouldn't have been able to gradually slow the other heart and reduce his blood pressure to make it more difficult for her to drain his blood. She'd gotten a fair amount of it nevertheless, enough that it had been somewhat painful when Martha had revived him and his body had rapidly replenished the lost blood.

"Okay. At least we know what we're dealing with now," Jack said, his tone slightly relieved but then shifting to sarcasm liberally laced with anger as he added, "So assuming we manage to catch them, how do we deal with them? Toss them out in the sunlight? Arm ourselves with silver bullets and wooden stakes?"

"If you wanted to kill them, bullets and stakes would certainly work, just as they would for a great many living things," he replied with a bit of annoyance. He could understand Jack's frustration, but why did humans always have to be so quick to resort to guns and violence, so determined that bloodshed should be met with more of the same? "As for sunlight, they are nocturnal, but all broad daylight would do to them would be to make them a bit tetchy and probably give them a headache. They're not supernatural creatures. They just happen to subsist on blood."

"Yeah, and that's no big deal at all, apart from the fact that it's revolting."

The Doctor started to say something about blood being very nutritious, lots of iron and electrolytes and proteins, but then thought better of it. Jack obviously had his prejudices on the subject, and he had to admit they were warranted in this case since the consumption of blood had been a method to murder other sentient beings.

Forgoing further commentary for the moment, he turned his attention back to the victim and matched his fingers to a dark set of bruises on her shoulder, probably caused by the Plasmavore holding her still for long enough to bite and inject the soporific. He also noted the woman's neck on this side was unscathed by fangs, but the skin was not entirely unmarked. There was a small tattoo of a Celtic knot there. "Oh," he said, pulling away a bit, memories shifting until they formed a clear picture. He'd only seen her fleetingly and out of his peripheral vision, but he did know this woman.

"Oh, what?" Jack asked, leaning forwards to check what the Doctor had been looking at.

"This woman was at the Royal Hope. I remember seeing her in the hall." He spoke quietly, the memory now clear in his mind as he slowly turned the woman's head back to its original position. "Slumped against the wall, one step away from asphyxiation."

"Really? That's an interesting coincidence," Jack said slowly, his thoughts obviously churning.

After a pause during which dread began to settle in his stomach, the Doctor said with a catch in his voice, "Let me see the other victims."

Jack eyed him with what appeared to be concern, but nevertheless did as requested. One by one he pulled the drawers out of the wall and folded the sheets down with care, and one by one the horrible feeling in the Doctor's gut grew. He had to dredge for some of the memories, but the last one was so sharp that it nearly made him gasp. A dark-haired woman in a doctor's coat, crouching and wailing in abject fear. Not her. She'd hold us up. He'd dismissed her, and now here she was, dead. She'd escaped the chaos surrounding the misdeeds of one Plasmavore, only to be caught up in what was evidently the delayed aftermath. We will find him. He had a sickening feeling he knew who they were looking for.

"Doctor? What is it?" Jack asked softly, tentatively.

The Doctor drew a sharp breath and took a single step back from the final victim. He couldn't allow himself more than that, for the moment at least. He briefly considered telling Jack it was nothing, but Jack likely wouldn't leave it alone. He'd know something was going on that he wasn't being told about.

The Doctor kept his eyes averted from Jack, though, as he said, "The connection among your victims is that they were all at the Royal Hope on the day the Judoon hijacked it to the Moon."

Jack was silent a moment, evidently putting the pieces together. "So this is some kind of revenge for the Plasmavore the Judoon killed?"

"Not exactly." A cold, heavy weight of certainty was settling on the Doctor now. Again, he considered leaving Jack in the dark, but something drove him to continue, almost as if he needed to make a confession of sorts. "I think you're right that the deaths of this woman and the other five victims were a means to send a message to the one they really want. We will find him." He did look up now, to traces of confusion still apparent on Jack's face.

"But they wouldn't be looking for a Judoon on Earth," Jack said with a frown. "So who are they looking for?"

"Me." There. He'd said it. He was the one to blame. It was his fault these people were dead. At least now that he knew what was happening, there'd be no more innocent people dying. He'd see to that.

"You?" Jack said, his expression still puzzled. "But you didn't have anything to do with the first Plasmavore's death. She was trying to kill you, wasn't she?"

The Doctor didn't answer immediately and instead busied himself drawing the sheet back up over the young physician and sliding the drawer back into the wall. He didn't need to look at her face any longer. It would be quite some time before it faded back into his memory, probably to be replaced by others whose deaths would be on his hands.

As he latched the chamber door, he saw that Jack was likewise returning another of the victims to uncertain repose. They continued in silence until all of the bodies were hidden from view once again. The Doctor didn't ask what would ultimately become of them. He assumed Jack would treat them with dignity.

That task accomplished, Jack returned to his previous line of thought. He'd obviously reached a conclusion. "You did have something to do with it," he said emphatically. He didn't sound especially surprised. But then why should he be? Where the Doctor went, death followed. There were so many he'd betrayed, so many he'd fought, so many he'd sacrificed, so many times he'd been careless or driven or desperate or cruel, asked more than he should have, expected too much, gone too far or not far enough, acted too soon or too late, hadn't listened to reason, been so sure he'd been right and been so horribly wrong.

The Doctor thrust his hands into his trouser pockets as he returned his attention to Jack. He had to work a bit to keep his voice steady and his face relatively blank. Emotional responses would only be a hindrance and distraction to him right now. "She'd been consuming human blood to mask her biological signature and hide from the Judoon. My blood allowed the Judoon to scan her as an alien."

"There's some serendipity for you," Jack said, then tilted his head to the side and peered intently at him. "Oh, wait. It wasn't luck. You let her drink your blood. You knew what would happen."

He shrugged.

"You're insane."

"So I've been told, more than once."

At that moment, Jack's mobile rang. He jerked it out of his pocket and pressed it to his ear, anger flaring fiercely on his face as he listened. "Damn it. We'll be right there. Don't let anyone else anywhere near the body." He stabbed at a button on the phone and gave the Doctor a grim look. There was no need for him to explain. It was obvious what had happened. The Doctor felt one of his hands involuntarily clench into a fist. He forced himself to relax it and wiggled his fingers to release the tension.

As they headed back to the Hub, Jack made a call on his mobile and instructed someone on the other end of the line to collect the rest of the team and bring them to meet him at the location of the body. That bit of business seen to, he glanced over at the Doctor and asked, "I don't suppose you have any idea exactly how many Plasmavores we're dealing with here? Might be useful to know."

The Doctor really didn't want to talk about it any more – he'd moved beyond thinking and into resolute action – but Jack might need that information if anything went wrong and he was left to clean up the mess. "Most likely six," he said tersely.

"Six bodies, six Plasmavores? Can't be that simple."

The Doctor suppressed a frustrated sigh. Normally, he'd be more than willing to witter away on just about any topic presented to him, but not when he was determinedly focused on handling a situation where lives were on the line. If he refused to explain his reasoning to Jack, though, Jack would think he was holding something back and would continue to pester him with questions.

"Plasmavores are born as identical sextuplets," he said in a voice almost devoid of inflection. This was a simple transfer of information, not an effusive sharing of something amazing and wondrous. "Sort of a vestigial litter breeding trait. They usually hunt together and either kill six times in one hunt or feed individually over six separate hunts." He left out the fact that in cases of revenge, all six would feed on one victim simultaneously. Jack didn't need to know that.

"But the one on the Moon was alone, wasn't she?" Jack asked.

"Yes. I think she'd been alone for a while, or at least the Judoon were tracking only her. She might've been the last survivor of her group of sisters. Or had gone off on her own for some reason. Doesn't really matter." And it didn't. In the end, it came down to one thing – they had to be stopped.

Jack was being damnably persistent in his questioning, though. "So could we be dealing with surviving sisters?"

"Doubt it," the Doctor replied tightly, but he added a bit of an explanation to hopefully forestall further speculation on Jack's part. "Any remaining siblings would be too advanced in years to stage a hunt this effective. And the six deaths indicate a complete group of siblings."

The Doctor wasn't sure if Jack was finally satisfied with the information he'd been given or if he was mulling it over ahead of more questions, but at least the rest of the trip back to the Hub was completed in silence. That gave the Doctor a few moments to sort through anything else that might be important to his objective of finding and stopping the Plasmavores before they killed anyone else.

They'd likely begun with the Judoon who'd been involved. They would've been the first and most obvious source of information. That would mean access to the images and scans of him they'd made when they'd thought he was their target and was lying insensate and apparently dead on the floor of the hospital. That was the usual Judoon method of proving their objective had been met so they could collect their compensation. Instead of abandoning their search, though, evidently the Plasmavores had persisted for some reason and had learned he was still very much alive. They'd know him when they saw him, thanks to the Judoon. He was counting on it, in fact. Then they'd have their prey in sight and would have no more need to lure him in with a trail of blameless lives destroyed.

He was deeply disturbed by the fact that if the TARDIS hadn't malfunctioned and needed refueling, this might have gone on for far longer. Then again, her instincts were often inexplicably exact in bringing him to places and times where he needed to be. Maybe she'd been guided by more than her need for fuel.

By the time they arrived back in the main Hub area, another thought had occurred to him. He followed Jack up onto the platform outside of his office, and while Jack went in to collect his gear, he seated himself at the workstation nearest the stairs. He took out his sonic screwdriver, ran it over the machine and typed a bit on the keyboard.

Jack reemerged from his office a moment later, swinging his coat around his shoulders and sliding his arms into the sleeves as he went. The Doctor caught a glimpse of Jack's gun at his side in a shoulder holster, but he refrained from making any comments about weapons. Jack had his own methods, and there was no point in arguing with him unless your purpose was to make yourself hoarse.

"What are you doing?" Jack asked as he gave a final tug to the lapels of his coat.

"I've added an entry for the Shadow Proclamation to your IM contacts list," he said as he put the sonic away and turned from the workstation. "They respond to text messages relatively quickly provided you keep them brief and to the point."

"I can IM the Shadow Proclamation?" Jack asked with a frown and a raised eyebrow.

"Yep. You can now."

"What's the use of that?" he asked suspiciously. "The Shadow Proclamation has no jurisdiction on Earth, which is how I like it, by the way."

"A situation like Plasmavores feeding on humans to the point of death falls under the Protection of Sentient Species Act," he replied as he stood up and headed back down the stairs and towards the exit, Jack following a step behind. "It supersedes the nonintervention clause of the Proclamation."

"Okay, thanks for the galactic civics lesson," Jack retorted, "but I'd still rather leave the Proclamation out of this altogether. If the Judoon get involved, there's likely to be a mess."

"Oh, I think we can manage to find the Plasmavores quite handily without the Judoon's dubious assistance," he replied as he pressed the button to open the doors.

"Wait a minute," Jack said sharply as he positioned himself between the Doctor and the doors. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the rumbling of their opening. "What's this 'we'? You're not going with me."

"Of course I'm going with you," the Doctor said firmly. Perhaps he shouldn't have told Jack who the Plasmavores were looking for, but he hadn't been able to resist at the time, desperately needing some sort of an outlet for his guilt. "You know better than to try and stop me, Jack," he added with a bit of a glare.

Jack looked as if he were going to do just that, his body tensing and his eyes narrowing, but then he sighed deeply and briefly looked up towards the ceiling. The doors were open now, the Hub falling quiet again. "All right. Fine, "Jack said, obviously exasperated. He raised a finger and fixed the Doctor with a steely expression, though. "But no wandering off. I want you to stick by my side the whole time."

"Jack," the Doctor said with his own sigh and shake of the head. "When have I ever done that, not if I needed to be somewhere else?"

"Damn it, Doctor." Jack pressed his lips together and seemed about to make another protest.

"Don't, Jack. Let's just take care of this, and then I'll be off again, safe and sound." He had a feeling it wasn't going to be that simple, but he'd found humans were strangely susceptible to vague reassurances. Or at least they liked to pretend to believe.

Jack didn't look as if he were convinced, but he seemed to have decided to keep any further arguments to himself. He did look more than a bit angry, though. Frustrated perhaps. Probably both. "Let's go," he said tightly, turning quickly and heading up the stairs and into the exit passage without a backward glance.