The pale image of the full moon tried to shine in the winter sky but the snow clouds dimmed its light while making a very beautiful picture.  It had been a cold month, a long month.  Glancing at the picturesque framing of the cloud occluded moon in the arch of the high window, she briefly thought back to a night such as this a month ago, but other than the time for a brief shiver, she returned to her work.

She never imagined that she'd be part of such a project.  From librarian, senior, yes, but still only a librarian, to research assistant and data analyst.  She was very proud of herself.  Protocol dictated that positions in the library system had to be posted internally before being advertised generally and she'd seen the position on the bulletin board.  That was about a month ago and she'd been feeling really low, so she figured that she had nothing to lose so she submitted her application.

To her surprise, she'd been asked to an interview.  They'd discussed her computer skills, which were considerable, and then the conversation turned to the nature of the research that she'd be participating in.  The library was sponsoring a study that would cross-reference and tabulate various legends from around the world.  An internet crawler had been written that could scan news groups, web pages and FTP sites, searching for key words and performing limited AI analysis on the text to rank its relevance to the study criteria.  The program consumed quite a bit of the computer's resources and most of the processing would be done at night.  Subsequent conversation had turned to the nature of some of the legends and Dr. Rolf, her interviewer, had mentioned the Olcott-Koski hypothesis and her indication of being familiar with it had cinched her acceptance as a member of the project.

Eliza's task would be to access the tagged data and tabulate the correspondence on a data entry form that included the hyperlink and her personal comments. These forms would be feed to an analysis program, along with the initial relevance data, which would then be reviewed by Dr. Rolf.  She had the impression that, while the data would be very useful to scholars of legends, Dr. Rolf had his own motives for the data analysis.  He was younger than she'd expected from is title and position.  He was lean, dark, intense, with a short cropped beard that she'd found attractive.  Over the past three weeks, their contact had been minimal but she found her self anticipating their occasional meetings.  Not only was there a certain degree of "electricity" between them, his theories were fascinating to her.

The beeping of the console indicated the arrival of new search results.  She rolled her chair over to the terminal and scanned the screen.  She felt feverish tonight and her heart just wasn't into the work.  Her head hurt and her throat felt parched.  The smell of the coffee, an aroma she usually loved, seemed nauseating to her tonight.  Even the fountain water, ice cold and achingly pure, had an acrid bitter flavor to it.  "Hope I'm not getting the flu," she thought to herself.  She slid the keyboard to one side and rested her head on her arms and enjoyed briefly the multicolored lights behind her closed eyelids.

Was someone calling her name?  Did she hear a husky whisper calling her name?  She awakened with a start and tried to focus her eyes, but the dim light and rolling fog made it impossible to see clearly and she felt so cold.  She stood, rubbing her eyes trying to get her bearings.  The pain in her head hit her like a strike of lightening, causing her to grasp her temples and whimper with pain.

"Don't worry little one," the husky voice whispered.  "The nectar of life is all you need.  The nectar of life is what we all need."  She felt her hands being gently pried from her temples and a warm goblet was pressed into her trembling hands.  "Drink, little one.  Drink."

The fragrant but unrecognized aroma assailed her nostrils and the raging thirst she'd been feeling earlier burst into full life.  Bending her heat to the goblet, she sipped a warm soothing nectar that seemed to coat her throat, quench the burning thirst and banish all pain.  She sat heavily down and drained the container of its contents.  She looked up to see who had given her this wonder drink but it was as if she was in the midst of a heavy fog.  She could see a form, a dim form but the roiling fog and the seeming inability to get her eyes to focus foiled her efforts of identification.  She shook her head but she found it difficult to hold her eyes open.  Almost as if drugged, she slumped, not fully losing consciousness but unable to respond or fully understand what was happening to her.

She felt her body lowered to a prone position and there was a sensation of heat on her neck.  The most wonderful sensations radiated through her being.  The sharp pain in her neck only acted to highlight the intense sensations she was otherwise feeling.  It hurt.  It hurt!  But everything felt so good she didn't want to change a thing.  She could feel her back arching with the sheer violence of all that she was experiencing.  Sounds, colors, delightful blazing, liquid rushes that left her limp yet tense, and the sharp hot pain in her neck.

"Eliza, be careful!  You'll spill it! It's hot."

She froze.  She didn't want to spill it, especially if it was hot.  If what was hot?  Her eyes flew open.  Dr. Rolf steadied her hands with his.  "Your hands are shaking," he observed, taking the steaming cup of coffee from her and sitting it on the console.  "Are you ok?"  Concern showed in his face.  "Are you bleeding?"  He reached and touched the corner of her mouth.

She jerked back and pulled her sweater tighter around her throat.  "Ah, I tripped on stairs and fell sort of hard."  She wiped her mouth and was surprised at the red smear on her hand.  She felt soiled and rubbed her hand violently on her thigh.  Dr. Rolf put his hand on top of her's, stopping her violent rubbing.  She was uncomfortably conscious of the warmth of his hand over her's and against her thigh.  "I think I'm sort of shook up," she said in a shaky voice.

Well sit yourself down and relax until you stop shaking.”  Eliza sat down in her chair, taking a deep breath.

“What's happening,” she thought.  "Strange dreams, or are they dreams?  Things happening that have no sane meaning to me.  I’m in pain worse than I have ever had before and no rhyme or reason for it."  Placing her fingers lightly on her neck, she felt for the telltale little marks.  Again they were gone, but the slight burning pain was still there.  Although, even as she thought about it, the pain disappeared as though it was never there.

Turning her chair back to her desk, she again started going over the data as it came in.  “Ahem” Eliza heard a dimly voiced cough behind her.  Looking around, she saw Dr. Rolf standing just behind her chair.  With a smile he said “Eliza, drink your coffee while its hot.”
Picking the cup up with a shy smile at Dr. Rolf, she raised the cup to her lips and as she went to swallow, thought the smell was sickening.  It didn’t smell like it usually did.  Slowly raising her hand to her face, she rubbed her temples.

"Oh this headache,  I wish it would go away.”  Everything was blurry as a result of the headache.  Taking her glasses off, she rubbed her hand over her eyes.  There was still the sensation of someone standing behind her, and she knew that Dr. Rolf was there.  Suddenly she felt a soft breath on her neck, and opened her eyes.  Confused, she jerked forward out of the close proximity that his reading over her shoulder had brought them.  Opening her eyes fully, she realized she could see startlingly well without her glasses.  Now she was very confused, as she had worn them for the last 10 years.  Well at least the headache was gone.  With an extreme sense of wonder, she looked around the room and saw things she hadn’t noticed before.

She also noticed the cologne he was wearing was a very musky scent.  Not one that was a common cologne.  It smelled.......nice was too wimpy a word.  But the dizziness ha set in again and her thoughts were spinning out of her control.  Why had his voice gone all husky again.  It sounded so much like that voice she had heard in her dream.  Husky, enticing.
Trying to focus on what he was saying, she forced the dizziness to recede.  Feeling a warmth rise in her face, she knew she was blushing.  Ducking her head, Eliza hoped he didn’t see it.

“Eliza, are you sure you are feeling alright?” he asked.

"Oh dear," she thought, realizing he had seen the blush.

“You seem very flushed and I think you are still dizzy.  Why not go home early, tonight and we will pick up where we left off tomorrow”.  Gently he laid his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.  “You'll feel better in the morning I’m sure” he said.  Eliza protested quietly, but gave in when she saw that he was adamant about her leaving.  “I need you in good health Eliza, and if it means you leaving early, then so be it.  This is the easy part of the task we have ahead of us Eliza.  Soon we'll be working longer hours.”  Knowing the research was going to get much more interesting soon, kept Eliza from arguing.  Intending to push herself back from her desk, the next thing Eliza knew, she was halfway across the room.  “Oh dear heavens,” she exclaimed, “how did that happen?”

Laughing, Dr. Rolf said, “you are stronger than you think, Eliza.”  Face burning with embarrassment, she pushed the chair back across the room to her desk.  Moving to the closet for her coat and boots, she leaned over so quickly she would have fallen if he hadn’t followed and grasped her elbow as she started to fall.  “Slow down Eliza, I don’t bite.”

Smiling timidly, she put her boots on and turned as the Dr. took her coat and helped her to put it on.  “Will you be able to get home alright Eliza or shall I call a taxi?”  Knowing she couldn’t afford a taxi, she told him she’d be fine getting home, it wasn’t that far.  Saying goodnight, she slowly walked out of the room and out into the cold night air.

She was nervous at the thought of walking home, especially after what had happened last month.  She seemed to have suffered no ill effects from it though.  Must have been one of her crazy dreams that she seemed to have been having lately.  Tightening her coat around her, she trudged off into the white, snowy night.

Looking quickly to her left, and then her right, what is that a noise, a shadow, what?  Suddenly a loud meow, meow, meow sounded right at her feet.  There behind one of the garbage cans that lined the street was a small kitten.  He looked very much the worse for wear.  One ear was nicked, with a trace of blood.  He had some cuts on his little body, as if he had been in a fight.  He looked like he’d rolled in a mud puddle and let it dry.  All in all, a poor specimen of kittenhood.   She picked him up and placed him under her coat to warm him.  Snuggling down, he began to knead his little sharp claws into her shoulder.

Arriving at her apartment, she entered and placed the kitten on the floor of the bathroom.  Filling the sink with warm water, she took her coat off and put it in the closet.  Returning to the bathroom, Eliza then gently washed the kitten.  As the layers of dirt and blood were removed, she saw that he was a beautiful little kitten.  All clean, and slowly drying, his fur was a soft, dove grey.  He had blue eyes that were slightly crossed.  Blue eyes? How unusual.
Smiling, she placed a small saucer of milk on the floor and went to make her dinner.  As she took the meat from the refrigerator, the smell of the blood aroused a thirst in her.

Watching her dinner cook, she again became sick to her stomach.  While the thirst grew and grew.  I must be coming down sick, she thought.  I think I will go to bed and get a good nights sleep.  As she prepared herself for sleep, she realized that she really wasn’t tired.  She felt more awake than she felt during the day.  This was becoming stranger and stranger.

The crisp cool sheets felt good on her too hot body.  The furry rumbling body next to her felt good too.  She drifted into a restless slumber, filled with images, possibilities and half memories.