This story was written for the Johnlock Challenges November Gift Exchange, for Stormwingsong, who requested explicit vamp!lock fluff. It will be three chapters long, but I have to do some proofreading and finalizing before I get the next two posted. The explicit part starts in Chapter 3, so if that bothers you, the first two chapters should be safe. Enjoy! (Crossposted to AO3.)

Standard disclaimer: I do not own these characters, nor do I make any profit from this story. I just do it because I love it.

Sherlock Holmes stepped out into the pool area of the darkened building. The underwater lights cast strange ripples and reflections around the large space, bathing the room in an otherworldly illumination.

"Brought you a little 'getting to know you' present," he called out, his voice echoing just slightly in the large open space as he held a flash drive up in one hand. "That's what it's all been for, hasn't it? All your little puzzles, making me dance? All to distract me from this." He moved in a slow circle, peering into the dark corners of the room as he waited for a response. He was here, Sherlock knew. He had to be. It was too poetic, too elegant for him to stay away.

Movement caught his eye, and he looked up quickly to see… to see… John, stepping out of a changing stall beside the pool.

"Evening," John said, his voice perfectly flat and emotionless. "This is a turn-up, isn't it Sherlock?"

And Sherlock went still, frozen, perfectly and entirely shocked for possibly the first time in his long long life. He just stood, blinking stupidly at John. John? Could it really be…? He knew he should be taking some action, doing something – extending his senses, rushing at John, letting his body take over and preparing himself to fight, something – but he could do none of it. He could only stand and stare and wait for the world to make sense again.

"John," he breathed out. Only that, a statement, not a question. All he could hear in his head, all he could say, was just John's name.

"Bet you didn't see this coming," John said next, his voice still cold and dead, strangely stilted, and all Sherlock could do was silently agree. He absolutely did not.

"What would you like me to make him say next?" John said then, slowly, his voice making a strange cadence as he pronounced the sentence. And as he spoke, John finally moved, pulling open the bulky winter parka to reveal… Semtex… oh bloody hell, so much Semtex, and a red dot from a sniper sight appeared on his chest. And for the barest second Sherlock felt nothing but relief, relief that John had not betrayed him, was not secretly, cruelly observing and taunting him this entire time. That John really was as bizarrely loyal as he seemed, that John was in fact the friend Sherlock had believed him to be.

Surging up hard and instantly on the heels of the relief was terror, a deep penetrating fear at the sight of his friend, his one and only completely beloved John, wrapped in explosives. The depth of the emotion, so new and raw and unfamiliar, staggered him, sucking down on his limbs, rendering him weak and heavy and fragile. He blinked stupidly at John and remained silent, completely unable to form a sentence.

"Gottle o'gear, gottle o'gear, gottle o'gear," John parroted, expression shuttered, his voice cracking on the third repetition and dropping to a whisper. And rage rose up in Sherlock, dampening the fear and bringing strength and power back into his body. Rage that anyone, anyone, would dare to touch his John, his friend, his healer and his warrior, would threaten and intimidate him, would fill his mouth with cruel words and force him to dance on their behalf.

"Stop it," he said, making an effort to keep his fury out of his voice.

"Nice touch, this," John continued, still speaking in that odd cadence as he repeated someone else's words. "The pool, where little Carl died. I stopped him, I could stop John Watson too. Stop his heart."

"Who are you?" Sherlock turned again, fully extending his senses this time, dragging his awareness across the large room. The water made it difficult to clearly feel the space immediately around the pool, casting ripples and reflections back at his mind when he bent his will in that direction. Nevertheless, he tried his best to penetrate the area with his mind, searching for some sense of an unseen presence.

"I gave you my number, thought you might call," an unfamiliar voice, strangely singsong and high-pitched, rang out into the room. At the same time, Sherlock saw the air about twenty feet behind John start to shift and blur, twisting and bending, drawing a distorted shape in the open space alongside the edge of the pool that finally resolved into… the form of a small, slight, young-looking man in a well-cut designer suit.

Sherlock stared, bringing all of his powers of observation to bear on the unassuming man as he stepped forward. Something about his appearance was familiar, and he exuded an aura of dark, dangerous power, appearing to Sherlock's enhanced senses as a cloud of reddish black mist accompanied by an odour at once sweet and sulfurous. He found himself wanting to rub at his nose, despite the fact that there was no actual smell.

"Jim Moriarty," he said to Sherlock, still in that strange high voice. "Hi!" He sounded almost indecently gleeful as he tipped Sherlock a little wave. The name tripped something in his brain, and suddenly he knew why the man looked familiar. "Jim? Jim from the hospital?" Moriarty continued, voice conveying an exaggerated tone of surprise. "Did I really make such a fleeting impression? Although I suppose that was rather the point." His face wore a look of dark cruel humor as he sauntered forward toward Sherlock and John.

Sherlock squinted, extending his senses to carefully caress the disturbing aura that encircled Moriarty. The feel of it was unpleasant, echoing in his brain and leaving behind a sensation of dirty, crackling hunger. Sherlock had never sensed anything like it before, and he recoiled instinctively from the sensation, slamming down the barriers in his brain. Moriarty smirked.

How had he not felt this when he met Moriarty in the hospital, when he was pretending to date Molly? The man had no aura then, nothing that would attract Sherlock's attention. And he certainly would have noticed something like this. Moriarty's aura absolutely screamed danger and madness to anyone able to sense such things.

"Nice to finally meet you as myself, Sherlock. Oh, may I call you Sherlock? You can call me Jim," Moriarty continued, grinning widely, still walking toward where Sherlock was standing.

"Oh, yes, of course," Sherlock answered, voice dripping sarcasm. "Lovely to meet you as well." He could see John's eyes widen slightly as he stood, staring straight ahead over Sherlock's shoulder, but he did not dare to take his eyes off of Moriarty.

"I had heard so much about you, you know, before I decided to get in touch. I've been just dying," and here he lets out a short, high giggle, "to see what you can do. And I have to say, you did not disappoint."

Sherlock allowed himself to smirk at this comment, attempting to convey an attitude of flattered nonchalance while his mind raced. He needed to get John to safety, first and foremost, but he was also intrigued by this new enemy. How had he not heard of him before?

Moriarty approached until he was standing just behind John, whose jaw was clenched tight as he continued to stare straight ahead, avoiding Sherlock's eyes. Moriarty leaned over his shoulder until his mouth was hovering over John's neck just below his ear, eyes dropping to lock on the column of flesh as he licked his lips. John swallowed audibly when Moriarty drew in a long, deep breath. The rage Sherlock had been feeling spiked up in him as he watched the scene, and he could not stop himself from taking a step forward. At the movement, Moriarty's eyes jumped up to look at him.

"Your pet here and I had a good talk before you arrived," Moriarty said, his mouth still just above John's neck, watching Sherlock closely. Suddenly afraid, Sherlock stopped where he was, looking back at Moriarty unblinkingly. "At first, I assumed he was just protecting you, but then I decided that he really didn't know. And isn't that interesting?" Moriarty's smile was indecently large as he lilted the word "interesting", and Sherlock could see the pointed tips of his incisors peeking between his lips. The sight of Moriarty's fangs that close to John's skin made his stomach clench with a sickening combination of anger, fear, and a muddled collection of other unidentifiable emotions.

Still working to affect indifference, Sherlock rolled his eyes and gave a little shrug, exhaling hard. "I don't see why," he answered. "I'd rather talk about you."

"Hmmm," Moriarty purred out, his eyes on John's neck again. "What do you want to know?"

"Why haven't I heard about you before? Someone as… skilled as you are should have been making waves well before now." Sherlock tried his hand at flattery, in case it would ingratiate him to the madman, but he knew he was not very good at it.

Moriarty leaned back just a little bit from John, his eyes once again on Sherlock, his expression amused.

"Boring," he called out in his singsong voice. "Come now, Sherlock, you can do better than that."

Sherlock's mind spun for a moment before the answer hit him like a brick. Yes, Moriarty was right, he could do better. His fear was clouding his thoughts, and that was a dangerous thing in this situation. He squeezed his eyes tight as he berated himself, before opening them to look up at Moriarty again.

"Obvious. You're young."

"Yes, good," Moriarty answered, as if he was praising a small child for correctly finding a sum. "I had my… new birthday, I guess you'd say, about ten years ago."

Moriarty's words drove an icy spike of fear through Sherlock's stomach. Ten years. Just long enough for a young vampire to become highly proficient in their Talents. Just long enough to shake off the persistent human tendency to obey rules, to embrace an existence without limitations, to be keen to push things to the boundary of what was possible. Just long enough to feel invincible.

He remembered being young himself, dimly. It had been a very long time, hundreds of years, but he remembered the feeling, as if he were above everything, separate, as if there were no consequences for his actions, and therefore he was free to do whatever he desired. And often, there really were none.

Sherlock remembered hurting, killing, destroying. Taking human lives as he fed, and taking them for no reason. He remembered seducing humans for fun, men and women, taking them to bed, and draining them dry, bathing in their blood for no other reason than because he could. He remembered honing his skills, stretching and flexing his Talents until he had mastered them, using up person after person in his pursuit of perfection with no regard and no consideration.

Sherlock, like all vampires who survived past their twenty-fifth year, had eventually outgrown this phase. He had come to recognize the value of the humans he had treated with such cruelty and disregard, to respect the fact that each had their own unique skills, to tolerate the company of some of them. He felt some degree of remorse for his behavior toward humans in the past, and was careful to avoid killing them now, even when he was driven to feed.

It was only very recently, relatively speaking, that he had felt anything more for a human than simple tolerance. He actually cared about Mrs. Hudson, and genuinely liked Lestrade. And it was even more recently that he had experienced the emotion of love for the first time in his life. Mycroft had had a good laugh over that, too. He had been telling Sherlock for years that it would happen eventually. He insisted that, when a being lived as long as Mycroft had, as long as Sherlock certainly would if he avoided doing anything stupid, the chances of encountering someone that you could not help but love became so high as to become a near-certainty. And Sherlock had scoffed and rolled his eyes and made pointed comments about Mycroft's waistline, which had been frozen by his transformation at a size just slightly larger than the older vampire was happy with, making him permanently insecure. And then John Watson had wandered into Sherlock's life, with his unnecessary cane and his wooly jumpers and his steady trigger finger, and Sherlock had to eat his words.

And now John, the very same John who had so casually destroyed all of Sherlock's walls with his concern and his criticism and his gentle, devastating devotion, John was standing here beside this darkened pool wearing twenty pounds of explosives, with a sniper's sight trained over his heart and a ten-year-old vampire breathing inches from his neck.

Terror and fury warring for control of his mind, Sherlock continued to show only calm nonchalance as he spoke. "So, significantly younger than me, then," he said, tossing his head dismissively. Again, he observed John's eyes widen a fraction as he spoke, and he realized that he had given himself away. Moriarty had undoubtedly told John what he was, but John was unlikely to believe someone who was strapping him to a bomb. However, as Sherlock ran through all of the possible outcomes of this confrontation in his mind, he could not see an alternative. One way or another, by the end of this evening John would know for certain that Sherlock was a vampire.

Well, nothing for it then. Sherlock would just have to deal with John's reaction as it came, whatever it happened to be. Right now, getting out of this with John still alive was a much higher priority.

"Indeed," Moriarty answered him calmly, still smiling. From where he stood behind John, his aura was creeping forward, winding dark, sickly-looking tendrils through and around John's sturdy form. The sight made Sherlock feel sick. "Quite a bit younger, yes, but just as powerful. And just as Talented," Moriarty continued.

Sherlock cocked his head, his attention falling entirely on Moriarty now. All vampires had Talents, which manifested once they were turned, and developed fully with use. Some Talents were more powerful than others, and some few vampires were strong enough to become extremely skilled in more than one Talent. Only a very few ever developed more than two Talents, and fewer still did so to any significant degree. Sherlock, of course, had mastered three Talents, and was the only vampire he had ever heard of besides Mycroft and, of course, their Maker – whom they still called Mummy even after all this time – to have done so.

"How can you be certain?" Sherlock asked, genuinely curious. His Talents were not common knowledge, and he preferred it that way. Only Mummy and Mycroft knew the extent to which he had developed them.

"Telling you would be playing fair," Moriarty responded with a smirk. He took a small step back from John, and Sherlock felt his stomach unclench minutely. "But it is true. Shall I prove it? Would you like to see what I can do?" He grinned again, wide and toothy and terrifying, his attention focused suddenly and intently on Sherlock, as if he had forgotten that John was standing there.

"I already saw your skill at Veiling," Sherlock answered, doing his best to appear bored and uninterested, although he was in fact keenly curious which Talents Moriarty had. And he had to admit, the Veiling had been impressive. Typically, even with the distortions caused by the water, he would have been able to sense at least a hint of a presence despite the Veil. Standing water, after all, did not distort as severely as running water. The fact that Moriarty had been able to conceal himself completely from Sherlock's senses indicated an extremely powerful Veiling Talent.

"Oh yes, that's right, you did," Moriarty responded gleefully, speaking at a strange accelerated rate and giving a little self-deprecating shrug. "Would you like to guess my other Talents?"

Talents. Plural. He was claiming to have mastered three, then, just as Sherlock had. Sherlock took a moment to try to work out how Moriarty could have discovered his secret, but could not settle on an answer that seemed likely. Neither Mycroft nor Mummy would have given such information to anyone, let alone such an obviously unhinged young vampire.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe Artistry?" Sherlock answered, deliberately selecting one of the Talents considered less impressive by the larger vampire community in an attempt to goad Moriarty into revealing himself.

"Wrong!" Moriarty called out, loud and high-pitched and vaguely musical. "Let me show you another, then!"

Stepping forward again, Moriarty locked his gaze on the back of John's neck and appeared to concentrate. Very quickly, Sherlock sensed an intensifying in the dirty aura coiling around Moriarty. The tendrils whipping around the edges of the miasma started to thicken and darken, and again Sherlock sensed the smell of sulfur, this time combined with a horrible rotting odour, like garbage left in the sun. He relaxed minutely as he observed this, because whatever it was, this was not the Talent he most feared Moriarty to have, the one he himself had mastered but never, ever used. Not anymore. This was not Glamour.

As Sherlock watched, the tendrils of Moriarty's aura reached toward John. As they licked against his body, John started to tense, wrinkling his nose. The tendrils grew thicker, darker, and started to move across John's limbs. John twitched, a little aborted attempt to take a step, and his head started to swing from side to side. His eyes jumped around, moving quickly and restlessly around the room, and his breathing accelerated.

"Oh, Johnny Boy!" Moriarty exclaimed, still in his disturbingly gleeful voice, as if he had just remembered John was there. John flinched visibly and cringed away from the sound of his voice. "Remember, Johnny, don't move. My snipers are a little quick on the trigger, and they must be getting bored by now. Wouldn't want to end this little meeting prematurely, would we?" As he spoke, his aura continued to darken and embrace John.

John swallowed and stood straighter, but from his position in front of John Sherlock could see that his eyes were moving more frantically, his breathing faster. And his whole body was wracked with tremors, his hands clenching and unclenching tightly at his sides. Sherlock had to fight the almost overwhelming urge to go over and snatch John away from the creeping darkness of Moriarty's miasma, but he resisted. If Moriarty did not see how much this affected him, perhaps he would stop targeting John.

"Repulsion, is it?" Sherlock asked, voice toneless. "A bit localized, though. Repulsion is more useful when you can do it at a distance." When he spoke, John's darting eyes jumped to him, and he appeared to relax just slightly. Well, that was… interesting. Sherlock filed the reaction away to study later.

Moriarty threw back his head and cackled. "Oh yes, that's true. But I can anchor mine. And once I set it, it will keep for years." At this, Sherlock's head snapped around, fixing Moriarty with his gaze. He had never heard of anchoring a Repulsion to a single location, or of one that remained in place once the vampire stopped directing his energy into it. "Would you like to see, Sherlock?"

Moriarty focused again on John, briefly, and then turned and walked away. Around John, the tendrils of reddish black aura stopped thickening and, as Moriarty left, broke off from the body of his aura, settling into the ground and continuing to coil around John's limbs. Once he was a reasonable distance away, Moriarty turned to look at Sherlock, smirking. His aura was clearly disconnected from the Repulsion wrapped around John, but the Repulsion remained in place, and remained as powerful as it was when Moriarty stopped feeding it. John just stood, teeth gritted, body trembling, staring straight at Sherlock. Sweat had broken out across his brow and dripped down his face.

"Impressive," Sherlock commented grudgingly. He hoped now that if he acknowledged Moriarty's power, he might release John more quickly from the Repulsion, which must be filling him with nearly overwhelming fear. If John stayed wrapped in a Repulsion of that strength long enough, he would almost certainly break and run, which would result in drawing sniper fire. Or worse, he might end up cracking mentally from the strain. Sherlock was not sure what effect such a Repulsion would have on someone suffering from PTSD, but he did not imagine it could be good.

Moriarty smiled widely at Sherlock's comment. "But before I show you my third Talent, it's your turn, my dear. Tell me about yours."

Sherlock calculated quickly. Moriarty claimed to already know about Sherlock's Talents, which made this question unnecessary. So either it was a test, or he was bluffing. Either answer seemed reasonable to Sherlock, but how to tell? He carefully phrased his answer before responding to Moriarty's request.

"I have a Talent for Languages."

"Languages…" Moriarty cocked his head, letting the word trail off and watching Sherlock carefully. Sherlock remained silent, looking back at him calmly. After a moment, Moriarty's smile fell from his face and he glared at Sherlock.

"Including music, which is, after all, just another form of Language," Moriarty said, his voice cold and sharp for the first time during the conversation. "Do not attempt to hold anything back from me, Sherlock. You would do well to remember that." He took several swift steps forward, stopping when the edge of his aura reached the Repulsion he had anchored around John. Very swiftly, power poured into the existing Repulsion, causing the tendrils to thicken and tighten around John's body. John responded with a low whimper, his eyes rolling wildly in his head as the tremors shaking his body intensified. But still he did not move.

Sherlock knew that he was not able to keep his concern from his face this time, and Moriarty grinned again as he took in Sherlock's expression.

"He's strong, isn't he?" Moriarty asked, turning his eyes to John and studying him the way that Sherlock himself might study a novel strain of bacteria. "I've broken other men, men who looked much tougher, with half as much power." He shrugged and turned to face Sherlock again.

"Release him," Sherlock found himself saying without meaning to. He swallowed, and then tried again. "He is strong, but he'll crack if you don't."

"That's what people do!" Moriarty shouted, appearing suddenly and intensely angry. Sherlock froze, staring back at Moriarty, mind racing.

"If you destroy him, I will never tell you what you want to know," Sherlock finally said, after the echoes of Moriarty's outburst died down. "I will die first."

Moriarty stared at Sherlock, who help his eyes steadily, unblinking. John let out a stifled whining sound, shuddering so hard he could barely remain upright, but Sherlock schooled his expression and did not shift his gaze. After several impossibly long moments, a lifetime, an eternity, a slow reptilian smile slid across Moriarty's face and he nodded. Sherlock could not shake the horrible feeling that this was the first true, genuine smile he had seen from the other man.

"Of course, Sherlock. You only needed to ask," Moriarty said in an unctuous, ingratiating voice. Sherlock fought the urge to wipe the palms of his hands on his coat at the sound.

Moriarty turned to regard John for a moment, his face blank. Almost immediately, the thick dark tendrils of filth wrapping around John's limbs started to dissipate. As they faded, John's spine slumped and he shook harder, little squeaky whimpers escaping from his tightly clenched lips. As the last vestiges of the Repulsion disappeared, John's legs gave out and he dropped to his knees, panting as if he had been running, sweat dripping from his face.

Sherlock was unable to stop himself from taking three swift steps to John and kneeling beside him, bringing one hand to rest gently against his cheek. John flinched away, and Sherlock immediately dropped his hand and stood, stifling the little twinge of hurt he felt at John's obvious fear and turning his eyes once more to Moriarty. Rage pulsed in him, fierce and hot. His fangs, deliberately kept retracted until now, suddenly punched down into the space of his mouth and he knew his eyes were glowing red. Moriarty looked back calmly, a lightly amused expression on his face.

"Now it's your turn, my dear. What other Talents do you have?"

Sherlock swallowed, flicking his eyes down to John, who was still kneeling on the floor, his head hanging down. Straightening his spine, he turned his glare back on Moriarty.

"I have Farsight," he bit out angrily.

"Ohhhhh!" Moriarty trilled, sounding delighted. "That's a rare one, isn't it? And so useful for a detective!"

"I don't use my Talents in my work. As I'm sure you know," Sherlock answered, anger throbbing in his voice now despite his best intentions.

"Mmm," Moriarty made a soft noncommittal noise, looking at Sherlock with his head tilted slightly to one side like a curious puppy. "Do you have to have touched the objects, or is just seeing them enough?"

"Either," Sherlock answered reluctantly, gritting his teeth. "I can also locate objects from photographs, and even find things that have only been described to me, if the description is thorough enough." Sherlock carefully did not mention that he could usually see about a meter in all directions around the object when he used his Farsight, nearly three times further than anyone else he had ever hear of. That was a secret no one knew, not even Mycroft, and there was no way Moriarty could have that information.

"Description only? My, my, my," Moriarty said in an unimpressed voice. So he had already known after all. "So impressive. And what is your third Talent, darling?"

Sherlock went rigid, unable to stop himself from stiffening. Moriarty's head perked up, his attention focused on Sherlock like a laser as he waited for a response.

"No," Sherlock said, his voice flat.

"I'm sorry?"

"You heard me. I won't discuss it."

"Oh no?" Moriarty asked in a cheerful tone. His eyes drifted back down to John where he knelt on the tiles, and another reptilian grin stretched his lips. "Are you quite certain of that?" He stepped forward again until he was standing just behind John and brought one hand up to gently ruffle John's hair. John cringed forward, away from Moriarty's touch, his head down and his shoulders hunched. Sherlock growled out loud, unable to stop the sound from escaping.

"Don't. Touch. Him."

"So possessive, aren't you?" Moriarty tittered, leaning forward a bit to stroke John's hair again. "And he's not even yours, not properly. He could be though, couldn't he? You could take him, whether he likes it or not. Your third talent is Charm, right?"

Sherlock felt a jolt of relief at Moriarty's inaccurate deduction, and took a deep breath as he prepared to answer with a pretty and well-constructed lie.

"Oh, no, wait," Moriarty continued before Sherlock could respond, his voice sly, watching his own hand move across John's hair. "I misspoke, didn't I? When you develop Charm past a certain point, it's called something else. Your third Talent is Glamour…," and Moriarty's eyes came up to meet Sherlock's, his gaze bright and sharp as a razor blade, "…same as mine."

Sherlock's stomach dropped and a wave of nausea passed through him so suddenly that he feared for a moment he might vomit on the floor. He fought to stiffen his knees, to keep the horror he was feeling from showing on his face. He barely managed to hold in a shocked whimper as he continued to meet Moriarty's lizard gaze. Glamour, in the hands of this monster? Oh fuck. Oh bloody buggering fuck.

Charm was a relatively common talent among vampires. It was a useful tool for getting a meal without struggle, for clouding human minds to avoid detection. Usually, all Charm did was incite a temporary state of docility and obedience in humans, a desire to please the vampire wielding the talent combined with a confused recollection of anything that happened while under its influence. Some vampires, who had a particularly strong skill in Charm, could hold humans in their sway for extended periods of time, and some had been known to use the Talent to create a group of loyal humans to use as protection and a reliable food source.

Very few vampires, if their Talent was powerful enough, could eventually develop it into full Glamour. Sherlock was one of the few. As, evidently, was Moriarty.

The difference between Charm and Glamour was of strength and duration. Charm ranged in strength from mild influence to strong compulsion, and may last from a few minutes to a few months. Glamour, on the other hand, compelled total and complete obedience in the individuals to which it was applied, who were commonly called thralls.

Glamour functioned by essentially inducing in the thrall a state of intense, soul-deep, all-consuming love for the vampire who cast it. Thralls were possessed by the overwhelming need to please their vampire, to serve them. Thralls lost all of the person that they were when the Glamour was cast, and became nothing but a hollow shell in the shape of a human, existing only to provide service to the vampire. And Glamours were permanent. Once applied, they could not be removed without causing immediate death to the thrall. Also, if the vampire who cast the Glamour was killed, or simply lost interest in the thrall and left them behind, the thrall would die, typically by sitting still and refusing to move or eat until they starved to death or died of exposure.

Sherlock had honed his Talent for Glamour very early in his time as a vampire, back when he still thought of humans as walking disposable food containers. He had created thrall after thrall just for the practice, using them as experiments to test the parameters of his Talent. He knew from firsthand experience that being stripped of the Glamour killed the thrall, as well as what happened when their vampire lost interest in them. He knew exactly how much of the original self remained after a Glamour was applied – very little, just repetitive habits and routines, but not the capacity to think independently, to reason or solve problems. He knew how desperately a thrall would fight to do what their vampire willed, even if the result was significant pain and injury to themselves.

His development of the Glamour talent, and the things he did to achieve it, remained the only acts that Sherlock regretted in his several hundred years of existence. Since he matured, since he started to recognize the value of the humans around him, to enjoy their company and attention, and especially since he met John Watson, Sherlock had often wished he could undo his past and rid himself of the Talent of Glamour, of his cruel and vicious behavior. To destroy another's mind, human or otherwise, was abhorrent to him now, and he often remembered with deep self-loathing the number of minds he burned out when he was young and reckless and stupid. He had not used his Glamour in more than one hundred years, and most days he strove to forget he had the Talent at all.

Moriarty was watching the thoughts flicker across Sherlock's face with obvious glee, his fingers still twined in John's hair.

"Now that I've seen what you can do, Sherlock, and you've seen some of what I can do, I have a proposition for you." Moriarty's voice dropped to a low, smooth tone. He suddenly sounded far less insane, and much more cunning. "I am impressed, which is not something I say often. And I think you are as well. If we combined our Talents, there's nothing the two of us couldn't accomplish. I would like to propose a partnership."

Sherlock resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I have no interest in partnership of any kind."

"Oh, come now, Sherlock!" Moriarty admonished in his singsong voice. "There's no way that a Talented vampire such as yourself could possibly be content with the small, unimportant life you lead. Solving petty little crimes, consorting with petty little humans," and here he gives John's hair a yank, drawing a wince. "You're meant for something more, something special."

"Not. Interested," Sherlock bit out, his eyes fixed on John's face.

Moriarty let out a disappointed breath. "Still too attached to your pet, here, are you? Shame, that." He smiled suddenly. "Well, since I've shown you my other two Talents, my dear, I think it would only be fair to show you my third as well," he said in a disturbingly cheerful voice. At these words, Sherlock's heart seized painfully and he took a step forward. "All I need is a volunteer from the audience. Anyone? Anyone?" Moriarty made an obvious pantomime of looking around the deserted pool, holding one hand over his eyes as if to ward off bright lights. After a moment, his eyes turned down to John and he feigned surprise. "Oh, yes, you'll do nicely."

Sherlock's mind raced, and he watched in slow motion as Moriarty turned his head down to regard John. He had to protect John, had to! He could not allow Moriarty to Glamour John under any circumstances. But he only knew of two possible ways to prevent a Glamour from taking hold, and both were unacceptable for John.

Moriarty's aura started to thicken again, shimmering a more uniform red, and slim tendrils started to gather along the edge nearest John's head. Sherlock's thoughts spun as fast as they ever had, but still no alternatives presented themselves. He had done more experimentation into Glamour than any other vampire he had heard of, and the two options he already knew remained the only solutions he could identify.

His choices were these: He could kill John, now, before Moriarty's Glamour set in; or, he could Glamour John himself. Those were absolutely the only acts that could prevent John from becoming Moriarty's thrall.

Moriarty looked up at him again with a grin, and then the thin red tendrils writhing on the edge of his aura struck out, stabbing toward John's head.

Sherlock instantly made his choice, gathering together all of the strength and skill he had developed through years of amoral experimentation and lashing out with his own power. And, as the deepest self-hatred he had ever experienced roared through his soul, he cast his Glamour at John.