==Chapter One: A Night to Forget==

I'm afraid this is going to hurt. But if it's any consolation, the dead don't tend to remember.

"Well, that could have been worse..."

Watson gave the Doctor a pained look as he and the Time Lord struggled through the TARDIS door with their patient – around the Doctor, that line was on a par with 'What could possibly go wrong?' He glanced back over his shoulder in concern at Holmes, who was bringing up the rear; the detective wasn't in much better shape. "Don't get any ideas, Holmes –" he said sternly, "you're next!"

Holmes looked for a moment as if he were about to argue, but he must have caught the implacable glint in his friend's eye, because a reluctant nod was his only response. And that very lack of protest told Watson just how badly the evening's events must have shaken the detective. He and the Doctor bore the barely-conscious journalist down the passage to the medbay; the TARDIS had wisely left that room in the same place ever since they'd become permanent Companions!

Watson couldn't help but smile in grim amusement. Ironic, really, that this whole bloody mess had begun in much the same manner...

o0o

The trio hastily exited the stately Napoleonic building, Holmes and Watson only releasing the Doctor's elbows once they reached the bottom of the steps.

"Well, that went well!" Holmes said sarcastically.

"Oi, it went about as well as it could!" the Doctor huffed, still looking deeply offended.

Watson sighed, raising a meaningful eyebrow. "Considering our exit received the loudest applause of the evening..."

The Doctor ignored the pointed comment, straightening his tuxedo. "Right, so... let's leave off with the motion pictures and go for a walk. Anyone fancy seeing the view from the Eiffel Tower?"

Watson brightened – he had to admit, he would have hated to leave Paris without visiting that magnificent landmark. He and Holmes had had little opportunity for sightseeing when they were last here in '91... "As long as we can take the TARDIS up there," he smiled, a touch ruefully, gazing in admiration at the graceful spire in the distance. "I'll never manage all those steps!"

"'Course we can…" The Doctor blinked, frowning. "I think. Hold on, would she actually fit…" his voice trailing off, "…up there…"

"Well, the second level, at least –" Of course, Holmes must have already made the climb himself before returning to London – "and we can take the lift from there..." The detective suddenly noticed the Time Lord's distracted air. "Doctor?"

The Doctor blinked again, seeming to return to the present. "Nothing. I just... yeah, nothing. All right, then, back to the TARDIS!"

Watson exchanged an uneasy glance with Holmes, although both refrained from commenting for the moment. If the Doctor's heightened senses had indeed perceived something noteworthy, it seemed fair to assume that it would soon make itself apparent to all three of them...

Next instant, the Companions stiffened in alarm as a cry of terror shattered the still night air, ending just as abruptly.

"Good God!" Without waiting for the other two to recover, Holmes took off in the direction of the yell. The two doctors were quick to follow, however – they had to be, Holmes knew the streets of Paris far better than either of them, and being even one corner too far behind in this maze...

Watson's thoughts were interrupted by a cry of pain from up ahead – no, it was more than one, what on earth...?! He saw Holmes reeling back from the next corner, looking dazed, only just avoiding measuring his length on the ground by catching hold of a nearby railing. As Watson and the Doctor raced up, they saw why: a thickset, bearded man in a suit was picking himself up off the ground, putting a hand gingerly to an already bleeding nose. He and the detective must have collided head on, literally.

"Jaysus, boyo," the man groaned, his faint Irish brogue sounding understandably nasal, "look where you're going!"

Still looking rather shaken, Holmes opened his mouth to respond in kind as Watson lent him his arm, then closed it again on registering the man's unexpected accent, eyes gleaming with curiosity.

Then, before any of the trio could respond appropriately, the man was off and running again, this time up a different street entirely. "Well, come on!" he shouted back over his shoulder.

With a huff of what sounded like delighted laughter, the Doctor instantly took off after the stranger, his nonplussed Companions close behind...

The TARDIS had the medbay fully lit and operational as they entered. "Doctor, have you ever actually performed a blood transfusion before?" Watson said anxiously.

"Matter or fact, I have." The Doctor had learned between trial-and-error and the TARDIS's help, but he did know how. He just wished that he hadn't had to learn the way he did... "And we've got every human blood type on hand—few centuries' worth of travel with human passengers getting themselves into all kinds of trouble, and you get to be prepared."

Watson sighed as they lifted their now unconscious patient onto the nearest medcot. "Why does that not surprise me?"

The Time Lord deigned not to respond.

o0o

Another couple of streets over, and their mystery Irishman rounded the corner only to just stop himself from tripping over a pair of legs. The owner lay half hidden in a doorway. "Cac," he muttered, "we're too late..."

The Doctor grimaced. "Oh... ooo..." He knelt and murmured to the body, "I'm so sorry..." He tugged it out of the doorway and nearly fell back in surprise. "Oh... well, now, what have we here?" he mused. The flesh was white and desiccated, as if the body had been totally drained of...

A wide-eyed Sherlock Holmes knelt on the other side. "Doctor, look at this..." He gestured at... oh, hello, a pair of puncture wounds at the base of the corpse's throat.

Above them, Watson was saying to the Irishman: "If you'll allow me, sir? Your nose is bleeding. I apologise for my colleague—he is rather hardheaded..."

The Doctor frowned. "Tha' looks like... 'course, it can't be, they're not real, but still..."

Holmes arched That Eyebrow—the one that never failed to make the Doctor feel as though he was the Companion, rather than the other way around. "Doctor, around you, the word 'can't' becomes rather redundant."

"Yeah, but it looks like a vampire bite, and vampires aren't real. They're not." Not the undead kind the twenty-first century obsessed over, anyway...

The Irishman was sitting on the ground now, grinning and letting Watson tend to him. "Well, now, just me good luck to run into a doctor!"

Out of the corner of the Doctor's eye, he saw Watson smile. "Someone has to clean up the messes my friend leaves..."

The stranger sighed. "Well, I highly doubt he's responsible for this one! Poor devil... Abraham Stoker, Daily Telegraph."

The Doctor's head shot up to stare at the man as he and Watson shook hands. Bram Stoker? That was brilliant!

"John Watson, M.D."

Holmes looked up with a warning frown to his friend. Of course: their past selves were still up in Scotland, and Stoker was a fellow Londoner—and a journalist, to boot.

Stoker's eyes widened. "Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph," he murmured.

Watson seemed to remember too late and glanced away, grimacing.

The Doctor murmured soothingly to Holmes, "Steady on..." He donned his specs and said in a normal tone, "Actually, I could do with a magnifying lens—check these puncture wounds better."

Holmes removed his glass from an inside pocket of his frock coat and handed it over. "A pleasure, Mr. Stoker. Sherlock Holmes—as you've no doubt deduced."

Stoker nodded and shook hands. "A pleasure to meet all of you, Mr. Holmes, although I wish it was under better circumstances. I'd heard you were out of town, but I must admit I hadn't expected to find you here!"

"They turn up in all sorts of places," the Doctor murmured wickedly, unable to help himself. Then he crouched down close to the neck. "I think... there's something there... not blood, not skin..." He glanced up at Holmes and tilted his head invitingly. "Wanna take a look?"

Holmes nodded but frowned slightly at their shadowy surroundings. "I'll need some better light, Doctor—I don't quite have your night vision."

The Doctor winced—he'd have used a torch if it had just been the three of them. "Right..."

Stoker held up a hand. "Allow me, gentlemen." He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small oilskin packet that contained a candle stub and a bundle of matches. He grinned at Holmes's faintly surprised but approving expression. "My work takes me into all manner of interesting places, Mr. Holmes, same as yours." He struck a match on his heel, lit the candle, and shielded the flame from the wind.

Holmes nodded gratefully and took a closer look at the punctures. He took the spent match and a leaf from his notepad, picked the end of the matchstick to a point, and used it to scrape the edges of the wounds, managing to collect some tiny white flakes. He passed the paper over to the Doctor, who was watching in fascination—the first time he'd ever gotten to see the Great Detective do honest-to-goodness forensics. "Don't sneeze," he murmured.

"I won't," the Doctor breathed, taking the paper. His eyes widened at a thought. "Um..." Giving Holmes a questioning look, he used his free hand to mimic holding the sonic to the paper.

Holmes opened his mouth to speak when his gaze fell on the candle. "One moment." He picked up one of the flakes with the matchstick and brought it close to the flame—the flake melted quickly in the heat. "Doctor," he said slowly, looking greatly puzzled, "I think this is wax."

Both Doctors frowned. "But why would wax be in a puncture wound?" said Watson. "A wax-coated... weapon?"

The Doctor grimaced. "Like two pins... or something. Wax-coated pins? But that wouldn't explain how he ended up looking like this."

Stoker cleared his throat. "And I hate to be the bearer of more bad news, gentlemen... but he isn't the first victim, either."

Holmes frowned deeply. "And you did not think to mention this before?"

"Well, I'd assumed that was why you were here in the first place!" Stoker retorted. Then he sighed. "Forgive me, sirs—if your reason for being in Paris is a delicate matter, you can rely on my discretion, I promise you. For my part, my editor originally sent me here to cover the Lumiѐre brothers' film screening... but when I arrived, all of this hullabaloo had already begun..." He spread his hands. "It wasn't exactly a difficult decision to make."

"No, 'course not," the Doctor said soothingly. He rose to his feet. "This is the first we've heard of it." He exhaled heavily and ran a hand through his hair. "Wax in puncture wounds and apparently serial killings." He glanced at his detective Companion. "Holmes? Any theories?"

Holmes only gave him a Look. "I never theorise without sufficient data, Doctor. Mr. Stoker, what can you tell us about the other attacks?"

"Only what I've been told, Mr. Holmes, which I'd advise anyone to take with a large pinch of salt." Stoker smiled ruefully, taking out his own notepad. "Being a journalist is much like detective work in that sense, as well: sifting through all the blarney to find the cold, hard facts. According to 'eyewitness' accounts, both victims had their throats literally torn out, blood all over the place... but I strongly suspect the truth is more akin to what we've got here. Unfortunately, I've not been able to gain access to the police reports, or the mortuary."

"And the victims themselves?"

Stoker consulted his notes. "The first was Paul L'Amorisse, a tobacconist, 25, last seen heading home from the local tavern, found dead next morning only a street from his own residence. The second was Claude Héron, 32, an out-of-work labourer. The neighbours said he'd had a row with his wife after one too many and stormed out into the night... only to turn up, or rather face down, in the gutter two days later."

"And a third young man here," Watson mused.

The Doctor was still smarting from Holmes's reproach as his mind raced to put the pieces together in some semblance of order. "But wax. And the draining of the... the draining." His eyes widened in remembrance. "Oh. Oh, that... but... it wasn't like this that time..."

"Doctor, what is it?" said Watson.

The Doctor shook his head slowly. "I've seen a corpse like this before, just one, mind you. But that was one puncture mark, not two..."

Stoker looked at him pointedly. "We're all ears, Doctor."

Holmes glanced sideways at the Irishman, then gave the Doctor a slight nod. The Time Lord understood—Stoker had already promised confidentiality, and numbers were important with a serial killer on the loose.

The Doctor tilted his head fractionally in response. "It was—" he winced—"a woman who pierced her victim in the neck with a straw and then just... sucked..."

Watson and Stoker paled—Watson on the sickened end of the spectrum, Stoker on the aghast end. "Ifreann na Fola..." The TARDIS glitched slightly in that moment, because the Doctor heard both the actual Irish Gaelic Stoker used and its English translation.

Holmes shook his head in disgust, then frowned. "But what sort of creature would need to drink human blood?" He sighed. "Besides the obvious, which you've already made clear doesn't exist."

Doctor sucked in his breath. "Plasmavores. Shape-shifters—internal shape-shifters. They don't drink blood—they assimilate it. But why...?" He began to pace. "Before, that plasmavore was a murderess on the run... what does this one want?"

Holmes spread his hands. "How much motive does a predator require? If these plasmavores see other races as little more than a means of nourishment... How often have any of us been truly concerned with the feelings of the Sunday roast when it went under the butcher's knife?"

Stoker winced at the blunt but accurate analogy. "Well, this creature clearly needs 're-educating', then!" He smiled grimly. "I'd be more than happy to volunteer..."

Authors' notes: Did anyone else notice that the plasmavore's first victim in 'Smith and Jones' is a Mr. B. Stoker? *sigh* The writers just had to, didn't they? All that's missing is the red shirt... ;)

Funnily enough, this plotline, including Bram Stoker, was originally intended for Episode 5. We had half an adventure roleplayed out, set at Howe Caverns in the north of New York State, but it kind of lost momentum, as we really had no idea how to conclude the story. Eventually, we rewrote 'Icarus' the way it is now, and saved the initial plotline for the shorter TARDISode. We're pretty sure it works better this way! Stay tuned...