Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 01:35:23 -0400 From: "N. W. Bonilla" The characters in the following story belong to the owners of the television series Forever Knight, even though I love them as though they were my very own. For those who like to know such things ahead of time, this story has lots and lots of Natalie and Vachon. LaCroix, Nick, The Inca and Janette also show up eventually. Special thanks to Judy Freudenthal and Texas Cousin Jules for their encouragement and reliable boo-boo finding. For the purpose of this story, I am *pretending* Ashes to Ashes and Last Knight actually happened, but, of course, they really didn't. No flames, please. I tried my best. If you like it, let me know. If you don't, delete it and don't tell me about it! THE PHOENIX (01/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com Natalie didn't know what was waiting for her at the hospital, or why she had agreed to go, because it could not be something she wanted anything to do with. Too many memories there. The night Nick had taken a bullet in his head, how she'd rushed to his side with fresh human blood and a thousand excuses for why he was suddenly going to wake up even though half his brain had been blown away. LaCroix had helped her out of that one, hadn't he? The old demon had always been there when you needed him, and even when you didn't. Most often when you didn't. More bad memories... or maybe it was the non-memories that haunted her more, now. The non-memory of how she'd ended up at that very same hospital, as close to death from hypovolemic shock as it was possible to come. The non-memory of the week she'd spent in a coma as one organ system after another began the process of shutting down, but by the grace of God , slowly began to function again. It had taken her weeks to recover from the physical trauma of what the doctors so cluelessly referred to as "the assault." That's what they thought had happened. Someone had attacked her and her friend the cop in his apartment. Most of them thought it was the cop himself who had done it. He'd disappeared without a trace, after all. Natalie had never told them they were right. She had sworn with what she had thought at the time was her dying breath that Nick was innocent. Nick hadn't tried to kill her. That was at least true on one level. He hadn't *tried* - not consciously, anyway. And even when she had known that she was dying, that her blood vessels were collapsing as their precious fluid was drained from them, and felt her heart slow, then flutter, then halt altogether, she had not wanted him to stop draining her life, taking her being into himself. He'd told her once that everything she thought and felt was in her blood. Had he felt that she wanted him to keep making a vampire's love to her until he could no longer? Until there was nothing left for him to take, nothing left for her to give? Was that why he had done it? Was that why he had not been able to stop even though he had to have known he was killing her? Or had he simply forgotten it was her, and been unable to stop like always? Had she meant so little to him that, in the end, she had just become helpless prey to a vicious predator, and stopped being Natalie to Nick Knight? She had to convince herself of that. If she didn't, the pain would be more than she could bear. By the time she was able to ask these questions, there was no longer anyone left to ask them of. Nick was gone. The entire Toronto police force had been unable to find a trace of him, and it was not because they hadn't looked. They'd never find him, she knew. And he wouldn't be back. She thought she'd learned to live with that until the call had come from Dr. Turner. The very same Dr. Turner who had pronounced Nick dead the night he'd been shot. The same Dr. Turner who treated her, the night of "the assault," and for some reason had not questioned that there was not a drop of blood *on* her, even though there was scarcely a drop of blood *in* her. Nick had managed to be neat, if nothing else. That night was rife with non-memories, for both her and Dr. Turner. The confused doctor would later apologize, looking uncertain and bewildered when Natalie had questioned her about it. How had she gotten to the hospital? Had anyone come with her? Who had identified her? When had the police realized Nick was missing? Dr. Turner didn't remember, and hadn't written any of it down. Usually, she was not that careless... Dr. Turner had sounded hesitant when she'd called her. One of "her" patients was there. Could she come down? That same puzzled voice, only this time not the result of a post-hypnotic haze. Dr. Turner was puzzled because she knew Natalie had no patients. She knew what kind of a doctor Natalie Lambert was. Doctor to the dead. Formerly doctor to the Un-dead, but Turner didn't know about that. Only They knew about that, and They were all gone now. Turner had described the patient to her. Nothing she said described Nick. Too young, not tall enough, dark hair and eyes. So why was she daring, even as she pulled her car into the parking lot, to hope it was him? She had convinced herself she never wanted to see him again. She was done with vampires. She was over Nicholas deBrabant, bogus cop, real enough Creature of the Night. But what if... Dr. Turner met her in the waiting room. "I'm sorry to call you out at this hour, but he did say his doctor's name was Natalie Lambert, and you are the only Dr. Natalie Lambert there is." "Who is he?" "No ID. He won't tell us his name. He gave us names of a couple of other people to call, but you were the only one we could make contact with. We can't get much out of him." Natalie's curiosity was piqued, and that surprised her. She thought it had withered and died when she had lost Nick. Nothing much interested her anymore. Not her job, not what had become her excuse for a life, certainly not finding cures for sick vampires - or ways to change healthy ones into mortals. Still, They were the only ones who had ever called her doctor and meant it in the physician sense. Natalie smelled him before she saw him. He was covered with dirt, and the dank, damp smell of it was everywhere. This was real dirt, not the kind that accumulated from not bathing, although it was certain that whoever he was, he badly needed a bath. He wasn't on the gurney. He'd retreated to a dark corner of the examination room where he was violently refusing attempts by a nurse and an orderly to touch him. Natalie moved in for a closer look. Scraggly dark hair, muddy leather jacket. She couldn't see his face clearly through the dirt, but she thought... No, that wasn't possible. He was one of the dead ones. Nick had told her that himself. Tracy Vetter had put a stake in him, days before she herself had died. But it was him. How that was possible, she didn't know, but she was sure of it. She said his name softly, and then understood why he was in the corner. "Can you turn off some of these lights?" she said. The orderly fumbled to find the switches, and turned off everything but the fluorescent fixture over the supply table. "Is that better?" Natalie asked Vachon. He nodded. "Be careful, Dr. Lambert," Dr. Turner said. "He might be dangerous." Natalie wanted to laugh. She put out her hand and he took it. It felt like the dried mudpies she'd made as a little girl. He was filthy. "Have you run any tests?" she asked, and tried to make it sound like a professional question, although she had a million lies waiting to explain why the results would be abnormal if they had. Lies she had created for Nick, just in case, but now would never need to use. "We tried to draw blood, but he won't let anyone near him. He'll probably need to be sedated..." "I don't think that will be necessary," Natalie said. She led Vachon to the gurney and he collapsed on it like a pile of rags. He seemed extremely weak, which Natalie knew meant he was probably also dangerously hungry. Another memory stabbed at her. She didn't stash an emergency supply of blood in her fridge anymore. "How did he get here?" "A patrol unit found him lying on the sidewalk. He appeared disoriented, but they didn't think he'd been drinking." That was something to think about. There was no way Vachon would have come along willingly, to this place where he would be tested and poked and questioned. He must have been too weak or too confused to get away, or to put up any kind of a fight. She asked for a pen-light so she could pretend to examine him in the darkened room. She avoided shining it directly into his eyes. Even in the dim light, she could see they were flecked with gold. Hunger or fear or both. Her mind began to run down a checklist of conditions that could cause his symptoms... Autism seemed a bit too exotic. Schizophrenia - they might hold him for psychiatric observation. She needed something she could treat quickly and easily so she could get him out of there... Then in the next instant, she found herself wondering why she should care. What did it matter to her, really, if they found out what Vachon was? Assuming they could even figure it out? But it did matter. It mattered to Vachon. And she had to face it - it mattered to her because he could be Nick, at some other hospital in some other place, needing help and maybe not getting it. "Is he diabetic?" Dr. Turner asked. Of course! Bless the woman! Natalie nodded, she hoped not too eagerly. "Good call, doctor. There's no sign of injury. I'd say he's probably in insulin shock." "Do you want to order an IV?" "No," Natalie said, as if this were routine to her. "Let's try some orange juice first, since he's conscious." Vachon clearly didn't like that idea. Natalie put her hand on his shoulder to calm him. Luckily, the E/R was busy, and both the nurse and Dr. Turner were called away before the orderly returned with the juice, leaving Natalie alone with the vampire. Vachon's voice was raspy when he spoke. "I can't drink that," he told her. "It hurts too much." Natalie didn't understand him. "What hurts?" "If it's not blood." Pain? Was he trying to tell her real food caused them pain? Nick had never said anything about that. All the stuff she had forced him to eat, and he'd never told her once that it hurt him. Maybe it didn't. Maybe Vachon was just different in that regard. "You won't have to drink it," she promised him He gave her a faintly hopeful look. "I'm hungry." She stroked his hair. How different it felt from Nick's. Thicker, coarser, certainly less well-kept than Nick's had been, but their hair, at least, felt human. "I know," she told him. "But you can't stay here, Vachon. It's not safe, for you or for them. I'll get blood for you as soon as I can." He closed his eyes as if it was just too much of an effort to keep them open. For him to be this listless, it would have had to have been days since he'd last fed. How was he controlling himself? Why hadn't he just drained the first humans who had crossed his path, Natalie wondered? It entered her mind that she could be in lethal danger. This vampire could grab her and suck her dry before she could blink. she thought. So what the hell if he did? THE PHOENIX (02/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com The orderly brought the juice, but just as Natalie had counted on, he didn't stay to make sure Vachon actually drank it. Natalie gulped down most of it herself as she wrote up a phony chart, signed her name to it as attending physician, and then released him. She found a wheelchair and made him get into it. She didn't know if she could hold him if he collapsed in the middle of the hallway, and she didn't want any excuses for Dr. Turner to keep him there. She folded his hand around the cup of juice, which now only contained a sip or two, just for appearances sake. "Stay here," she told him. "If anyone comes in, pretend to drink that." This was an E/R. Blood shouldn't be that hard to come by, Natalie thought, and she was right. A few more lies and faked documents later, she had 4 units of O negative: Nowhere near enough, but she dared not ask for more lest someone take note of the fact that there were no serious trauma cases in the E/R at that moment. She created a bag out of her coat and casually draped it over her arm with the blood tucked away out of sight. She wished she had a pair of sunglasses for him. He didn't complain, but she could tell that once they were out in the main corridor that the bright lights hurt his eyes. Nick had adapted to that somehow, but he was an exception, and even Nick had preferred candlelight. They almost made it to the parking lot exit before the E/R nurse came running after them with the faked chart. Natalie tried not to look as nervous as she was. She really didn't like having to make up lie after lie like she had done so many times for Them. The day she got caught at it would have serious professional implications that could damage her career for good, and what else did she have left now other than her professional reputation? Her stomach flipped as the nurse approached them, but she remained outwardly calm. "What is it?" she asked with the impatience of someone who thought themselves vastly superior to whoever they were addressing. Unfortunately, this poor nurse was probably all too used to that. "He didn't sign it. He needs to sign this and this," she flipped to two different forms. She handed Vachon the clipboard and a pen, and both slipped out of his hands. She tried again, this time kneeling beside him and holding the clipboard for him. Vachon struggled with the pen, and couldn't get a proper grip on it. The nurse looked up at Natalie. "Are you sure he's okay? He still seems a little out of it..." Natalie feigned annoyance and grabbed the clipboard. She hated being such a bitch. The nurse's concern was sincere, to say nothing of warranted. Vachon *did* seem out of it. "I'll take care of it," she snapped. "Where do you want me to leave them?" The nurse gave her one last suspicious look, but indicated the administrative desk. As soon as she was on her way, Natalie took the pen out of Vachon's hand. It was easy enough to do. He wasn't actually holding it. It occurred to her she had no idea what his first name was, and wasn't completely sure about his last name. "I can write," he said softly when she asked him. "Well, you fooled me, and I don't have all night to wait for you." Now that *was* deliberately hostile, and Natalie had no idea why. Partly it was nerves, but maybe it was also the idea that she once again found herself involved with a vampire, when she had thought that nightmare was over. Verbally cowed into submission, Vachon gave her the information and she signed his name to the forms. What was one more act of forgery? As she brought the car around, she wondered exactly where she was going to take him. The Raven was closed down, at least as a haven for vampires. A few months before, she would have taken him to Nick's place, but the last time she'd been there - and she had tortured herself by going back - the alarm code had been changed. Vachon might not want to go back to his church and its memories... It hit her then. He probably didn't know about his friend Urs. He was dying himself when she had been killed. And he certainly didn't know about Tracy Vetter, who, as it turned out, had only survived him by mere days. He didn't know he was alone now, unless he'd been around town for awhile and had found out somehow. But Natalie doubted that. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rising when she finally allowed the thought that had been at the back of her mind to push forward into her consciousness. Like some ghoulish abomination in a horror movie, Vachon had crawled out of his grave, and probably no more than a few hours had passed since he had done so. A numbing chill wrapped around her, and she seriously considered driving off and leaving him there. They were predators. They survived. Let Vachon creep away on his own and find someplace to hide from the daylight. Let him find somewhere to hunt and feed in secrecy and get his strength back by himself. But when she drove up to him, she knew she wouldn't do it. He was Nick again. A different face, a smaller body, but They were all Nick in one way or another. She threw the car into Park and got out to help him. "I'm taking you home with me for now," she told him. "You can clean up and get some rest." No argument. She handed the blood over to him as soon as the car was moving. He didn't grab it in a frenzy and gulp it down the way she expected him to . He draped his hand over it to keep it from sliding to the floor, but that was all. "Are you okay?" she asked him. Dumb question. If he was, he wouldn't be there. But he nodded, and then turned to stare out the window. "Thank you, Natalie, for helping me." Now was as good a time as any, Natalie figured. "What happened, Vachon? I thought you were dead." A hint of a smile. "So did I." Natalie didn't want to think he had awakened to find himself buried alive, but that had to have been what had happened to him. He put a hand on his chest. "She took the stake out. I didn't tell her she was supposed to leave it in." "How long..." Natalie begin, but didn't quite know how to phrase the question. "Before I knew I was alive?" He shrugged. "I'm not sure. There was so much pain... I couldn't move, or see or hear... or scream. I thought maybe that was Hell." A tiny laugh. "Then I had to... dig through the earth. I had no strength. I'd dig and then sleep. I don't know how long it took..." "It's been months, Vachon." Another little smile. "I guess that's why I smell so bad." "How long have you been... uh.. back?" He shook his head. "I don't know. I knew I was out of the ground, but I still couldn't see or hear. That didn't come back until I was at the hospital." "That must have been very frightening." She said that as small talk, and she should have known better. Despite their many supernatural traits, vampires still experienced emotion pretty much the same way humans did. The expression on Vachon's face told her the experience had terrified him, and he didn't want to talk about it. She changed the subject. "I thought you said you were hungry?" she nodded at the blood. He shrugged, shifted uncomfortably in the seat and closed his eyes, wincing as if the movement hurt him. "Maybe in a little while." She was concerned because she'd never seen a vampire without an appetite for blood, and that included Nick on his best behavior, but frankly, she didn't want him spilling it in her car, either, so she wasn't going to force him to drink it. She was lucky to find a parking space near the door of her building. There was an elevator inside, but several steps led to the front entrance of the building itself. Vachon hesitated when he encountered them, long enough that Natalie asked him what the problem was. He looked down at the steps, and seemed embarrassed. "I can't do this." "Do what?" Natalie asked, and then realized he meant the steps. Was he really that weak? At first she took his arm to support him, but ended up literally lifting his feet up the steps, almost carrying him. It wasn't that far, and he wasn't that heavy, but it wasn't something she was used to. She was panting with exertion and sweating by the time they got to the top step. Vachon was shaking from the effort and didn't look like he could go any further. "It's just a few feet," she said, coaxing him along. He managed the distance to the elevator somehow, and slumped against the wall. Natalie held on to him. If he hit the floor, she'd never be able to lift him. He was almost dead weight standing on his feet. Finally, miraculously, they made it to her apartment. She opened the door and nudged Vachon through it. He collapsed on the floor in front of the couch. She didn't even try to get him up. His strength was completely spent. Sidney ran to her purring, as he always did. He didn't hesitate to jump over the vampire on the floor and ignore him entirely. Cats weren't afraid of vampires for some reason, or at least Sidney wasn't. Natalie had noticed that with Nick. She unwrapped her coat from around the blood and offered Vachon a bag. He looked like he didn't know what to do with it. She put her arm under his head and lifted it up, then held the bag to his mouth. "It's blood. All you have to do is bite it..." He tried it with his front teeth, which weren't any sharper than an ordinary human's. They wouldn't go through the plastic. His canines were further back in his jaw than Nick's had been, and he wouldn't open his mouth so she could shove the bag in far enough. Natalie wondered if being buried alive hadn't somehow dropped his IQ by several points. She shook him to get his attention. "Fangs, Vachon, c'mon!" It was hopeless. He just didn't get it. He was too exhausted or too starved to think straight, maybe both. She got a pair of scissors, snipped the tubing close to the bag and tried pouring it into him. That only worked until he had more blood in his mouth than he could swallow, and he choked on it. He coughed out a generous spray of it that splattered across the couch and the carpet. But he was too weak too force the rest of it out, and lay there gasping for air while it drained into his lungs. She turned him on his side and gave him a couple of sharp blows between the shoulder blades and he managed a feeble cough that cleared his airway. Natalie sat back on her heels, careful to pinch the tubing on the bag shut before any more of it ended up on the furniture. "Okay, that didn't work..." Vachon had swallowed what was in his mouth and looked up at her. "I need more." He had that same look Nick would get when he'd been too long without feeding. "Please." He wasn't asking politely - he was begging for it. She hurried into the kitchen and emptied the bag into a small mixing bowl. She returned with the bowl and a spoon, settled herself on the floor and lifted his head into her lap. She lifted the first spoonful to his lips and he went for it eagerly. He was so hungry, but he didn't seem able to swallow very much at once. She let him take his time, even though it gave her time to think about the fact that she was actually sitting in her living room, spoon-feeding blood to a vampire. THE PHOENIX (03/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com After the first bag, he was able to sit up. She poured another bag into the bowl and handed it to him, but he had the same problem with spoon that he'd had with the pen. "What's the matter with your hands?" He looked at them thoughtfully and then stated the obvious. "They don't work." She took one in hers and saw that his fingers were stiff and unresponsive. He wasn't able to make a fist when she asked him to, and there was no strength in his grip. His hands were also so dirty she couldn't see any actual skin. "I guess I need a shower," he said, when he saw she'd noticed. Natalie looked at the clock on her VCR. There was less than an hour left before the sun came up. "Right now you need to eat," she said, and started spooning the second bag into him. "We'll worry about the dirt later." He looked down at his grubby hands. "I once went two years without a bath." She thought he was joking and then saw he wasn't. "That's disgusting." "It wasn't something people noticed back then, I guess." "What made you finally decide you needed one?" she teased him. "Lice." "Ugh! And they talk about the good old days..." "Don't think Nick doesn't know all about it." Natalie's face clouded. "Nick is gone, Vachon." She hoped he wouldn't ask any questions. She didn't want to tell him the whole story. How Nick had almost killed her - almost literally loved her to death. How she had fought to recover from that trauma only to find that he had disappeared. She had no idea if he had gone into hiding, or had left the city, or if he was dead. There was no one to ask. LaCroix was gone, too. Vachon sensed her pain, and didn't push. "I'm sorry," he said simply. "Yeah, me too... C'mon, eat." He finished most of the second bag and didn't want any more. "I thought you'd be a lot hungrier," she told him. He nodded towards the window. "The sun's coming up. It's hard for me to stay awake." She offered him her bed, even though he was so dirty that she was immensely relieved when he didn't accept the offer. She helped him out of his leather jacket, which could have stood up by itself since the mud on it had dried. What had been a tee-shirt was now little more than a decomposing rag, so she got that off of him, too. She taped black trash bags over the apartments few windows as an added precaution before closing the blinds and drawing the drapes shut. There was a large window in her bedroom, but she left that uncovered. She told herself it was because it wasn't necessary to cover it, so long as she kept the bedroom door closed, but in the back of her mind, she was thinking that even if it made it harder for her to sleep, she'd be safer with a little sunlight in the room. She hardly knew Vachon, but she was keenly aware that he was not like Nick in one very important respect: He wasn't unhappy as a vampire, which meant he still killed when he could... By the time she returned to the living room with an extra pillow and a blanket, Vachon was fast asleep. He didn't stir as she tucked the pillow under his head and covered him. She noticed too late that Sidney had lapped up the few remaining drops of blood and had licked the bowl clean. When he came purring up to her as she worked at the blood spots on the couch and carpet, she pushed him away. Refusing to be insulted by a mere human, he calmly licked his fur and then spitefully curled up next to Vachon. * * * * * Whatever thoughts she had about being unable to sleep without her drapes closed vanished amidst the other thoughts that kept her awake... Nick was gone. That was one thought that always refused to let her rest, and now that she had almost managed to push it from her life, Vachon had brought it back with a vengeance. She had almost convinced herself, for the sake of her own sanity, that she had never known Nick, or at least, not known him in a way that was different from how everyone else had. No one spoke to her of him at work, half of them thinking the memory of him would be too painful to her, the other half all but convinced that he had been the one who had attacked her so brutally. She had claimed that Nick had been attacked, too, but no one believed that. They found no blood at the crime scene other than a very small amount of hers, and even if they had found Nick's blood, it wouldn't have matched his fabricated medical records. He'd done a lot of backsliding in the last few weeks they were together. The relationship between them had been unraveling for some time, which made the way things ended hurt even worse. She had the dimmest memory that LaCroix had been there at some point, in the last moments she had spent with Nick, standing over Nick with something in his hands. Anything that had happened beyond that point was still deeply buried in her subconscious. She'd discontinued her post-trauma therapy sessions as soon as those memories had begun to surface. Her therapist had strongly advised against that, but if LaCroix had killed Nick she wasn't ready to know that. She probably never would be. Nick was a cop. They were friends. He'd disappeared. She was getting over it. There were no more vampires in Natalie Lambert's world anymore, and that was fine with her. Then, tonight, it had started all over again. When she was startled awake, it surprised her that she had fallen asleep at all. She'd been thinking of Nick again. Dreaming about him. His cold lips on her neck... But it wasn't that familiar nightmare that had awakened her. She fought back panic when she realized she wasn't alone in her apartment, until the events of the few hours before quickly came back to her. The hospital... Vachon... Then she knew what had awakened her. He was in the bathroom throwing up. she thought, and for a moment considered not dealing with it and going back to sleep. He was a big boy, he could take care of himself. But he cried out in pain, and it took a lot to make Them hurt, she knew that. She threw off her covers and went to him. He was doubled up on the floor, his eyes gold, his fangs extended. He looked right at her, which should have frightened her, but she saw no threat in his eyes, only pain. She knelt beside him. "What is it, Vachon? What's the matter?" He squeezed his eyes shut as if that would stop the agony. "It hurts... like before..." She was close enough to the toilet to see that he'd vomited a large quantity of blood. Just blood. Vampires didn't secrete the many digestive juices that gave vomit its characteristically wretched odor, and for that she was grateful. She'd examined Nick extensively enough to know that most of Their internal organs didn't function the same way a human's did. She had no idea what could be the source of pain like this. She pushed his hair back out of his face. "Vachon, I don't know what's wrong. I don't know what to do for you..." But she couldn't just let him hurt. She found the department issue paramedic kit she had been authorized as an M.D. There was morphine in it. Even it if didn't help, it wouldn't harm him. He was quiet by the time she got back to him. Ominously so. He had stretched out on the floor, his entire body strangely rigid. She quickly realized that he was having a seizure. She immediately turned him on his side in case he threw up again. There were no violent convulsions, so she didn't need to worry about him injuring himself on the hard tile. All she could do was support his head until the tonic contractions stopped. When they finally abated, he blinked a couple of times but she saw no sign of awareness in his eyes. She pushed his dirty hair out of his face again and found that his forehead was very warm. He was too warm even for a mortal. She hunted through the medicine cabinet until she found a thermometer. She managed to get him to put it in his mouth, ready to pull it out at the first sign that he might try to bite it off. Nick's basal body temperature had been around 88 degrees. When the thermometer's alarm sounded, she discovered Vachon's was almost 12 degrees above that. A similar rise in body temperature in a human would prove fatal in minutes. She knew They could get sick enough to die. She'd seen it happen. She filled the sink with lukewarm water and used it to sponge him off and try to get the fever down. As the dirt came off, she saw that there were deep scratches on his face and neck that began to bleed when she wiped the washcloth over them. They couldn't be recent - they were caked with mud. Even if he'd gotten them right before he'd been taken to the hospital, they should have healed and disappeared by then. But they bled like fresh wounds, and continued to bleed for several minutes. Seeing that, she was careful to avoid the angry red indentation on his chest. The jagged edges of the wound appeared to be healing inward, but the opening itself was covered only by a layer of skin so thin it looked like it would rupture with the slightest pressure. His heart chose the moment she was examining the wound to contract in one of its six-times-per-hour beats, and she actually saw it pulse directly beneath the fragile skin. He responded to the cooling water and began to look better in a few minutes. His skin was still not vampire-cold to the touch, but his temperature gradually lowered until he was mortal-cool again. Removing some of the dirt hadn't hurt, either. He looked up at her, confused, but aware. "What happened?" "You had some kind of seizure. Has that happened to you before?" "No, of course not." He sounded surprised she'd even ask. No matter what, Natalie thought irritably, They still thought they were so damned indestructible. He struggled to sit up, but then shut his eyes and took a deep breath. "I feel sick again." He wasn't kidding. He threw up until there couldn't possibly be anything left in him. Even so, when it was over, he didn't appear to be in pain any longer. He literally crawled back into the living room and huddled under his blanket, shivering. Then he asked Natalie for more blood. She fed him another bag before he finally went back to sleep, leaving her to worry about where she was going to get more for him when he needed it. THE PHOENIX (04/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com It was two in the afternoon by this time, and she figured it would be pointless to try to go back to bed even though she was exhausted. She showered and then sat in front of her bedroom mirror untangling her thick, curly, wet hair. She'd have to go in to work that night. She'd used up all of her sick leave and then some after the Assault. Besides, she was still wondering where she was going find a source of blood for Vachon. She'd have to experiment with some possible ways she'd come up with to drain a cadaver... The thought was full of hostility. Damn Them all, anyway! She threw her hairbrush at the wall, and narrowly missed an unsuspecting Sidney, who fled in terror. She had never been one to cry easily before... before what happened with Nick. But now she sometimes found herself doing it for no apparent reason. Right then, she was doing it because she was... What? Angry? Worried? Frustrated? She didn't know. She just cried. Vachon didn't wake up, and Sidney stared at her, his green eyes little slits of resentment. Seeing that she'd get no sympathy from either of them eventually calmed her down. She walked over to pet Sidney, to cuddle him, but he stalked away in a huff and curled up beside Vachon once again. She knelt beside him and stroked his fur, anyway, until he forgave her and began to purr. She took him in her arms and lay down on the couch. She knew that falling asleep with her head soaking wet would no doubt cause the dreaded Velcro Hair, but she was too weary to care. She fell asleep dreaming of Nick. His cold kisses, his cold hand in hers. If she never wanted to see him again, why did it hurt so much that he was gone? * * * * * Her subconscious mind was trying to tell her she should be thinking of waking up when she was jarred out of sleep the same way she had been the first time. This time, Vachon was screaming with the pain. Maybe it was a good thing, maybe it was a bad thing, but since the Assault, she didn't fear death. Whether it was because she had come so close, or because she had lived for Nick and now he was gone, she didn't know. But despite her fear that he might hurt her, when she found Vachon on her bathroom floor, she approached him anyway and took him into her arms. She tried to reassure him by reminding him that the pain had passed the last time, but asked him if he wanted her to give him the morphine, anyway. "Just make it stop. I can't stand it." Minutes after she injected the drug, he threw up again. Whether it was the morphine or something that would have happened anyway, Natalie wasn't certain, but she had a bad feeling about it. Blood was the only thing he could eat, and if he couldn't keep that down, where were they going to go from there? At least the pain subsided as soon as he'd gotten rid of the blood in his stomach, although he was feverish again. "You're pretty sick," she told him. "Do you have any idea what's causing this?" He fingered the angry, oozing scratches on his neck. "She scratched me... that little girl. Only she wasn't a little girl. She was so strong... so evil..." "Divia?" "Was that her name? I didn't know... But she hurt me, somehow... It made me hurt like this... before..." "You could have come to me for help." He shook his head. "I couldn't think. I was seeing things... awful things. They wouldn't stop. I asked Tracy to end it. That was all I could think of. I just wanted it to be over. I thought I was dying anyway." He sighed. "Maybe I still am." "No!" she told him sternly. "No, you aren't." The morphine was making him sleepy and Natalie thought she'd better get him back to the living room before she had to leave him on the cold, hard floor. "I'm going to need to run some tests, to see if I can find out what's wrong." she told him as she tucked the blanket around him. "I'll need some blood, some tissue samples..." She felt a lump rise in her throat. How many times had she said those same words to Nick? "Okay," Vachon sighed agreeably. What she hoped to accomplish she didn't know. She'd already failed miserably with one vampire. And she had to admit to herself that her motives were not entirely altruistic. She really didn't want another one of Them in her life, and if she had to find some secret potion to get Vachon back on his feet and out the door, the sooner the better. She'd had enough of the cold-blooded little bastards... Of course, Vachon would pick that very moment to look up at her with his large, expressive eyes. Another vampire - this one completely helpless - trusting her to ease his pain. She smoothed his dirty tangled hair, touching him the same way she had wanted to do so many times with Nick. "You'll be okay," she promised. * * * * * It was amazing how much blood you could drain out of a body bag, if it had a freshly mutilated human in side it. This one was a gunshot wound to the chest. The blood had stopped flowing out of him when his heart had stopped beating, which, from the looks of the hole in him, had been instantly. But it had continued to obey the law of all liquid and drain to the lowest point - where it had flowed out the gaping wound in John Doe's back and into the body bag. Natalie emptied a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke appropriated from the fridge in the employee lounge, rinsed it, and filled it with the run-off from her examining table. She even thought to strain it. Couldn't have Vachon's tender tummy accidentally ingesting a piece of raw meat... she thought. She put the bottle in the specimen cooler. Grace was running a tox screen on the samples she'd taken from Vachon. Some skin cells, a lock of hair. There wasn't much blood to work with. He was so dehydrated that even after she'd stuck him a dozen times, she'd ended up actually stabbing him with an Exacto knife just to get a few precious drops. He'd patiently endured the discomfort, as Nick had done. Maybe for Vachon, it would pay off. The shift had dragged by. She had been very specific about asking Grace what to look for - she didn't want her happening by accident upon the fact that the blood she was working with came from a source not exactly human. Even so, she worried Grace might find something too weird in the samples, so she hadn't had her perform any tests that would involve her using a microscope. She also worried someone would discover her tapping blood from a corpse. And, she had no idea what Vachon was doing while in her apartment. She'd left the phone with him, along with her number, in case he needed anything, but he hadn't called. She had called him and had let it ring a dozen times before she remembered that she'd ordered him not to answer the phone. She couldn't take a chance on anyone finding out he was there. It was not her reputation she was concerned about - God knew that had suffered all it could from the gossip about her and Nick that had circulated after the Assault. But she knew about the Enforcers, and she didn't know if they knew about Vachon. Still, she wished she'd thought to specify a time for him to call her. For all she knew, he could have spiked another horrifying fever and died. Or, he could have suddenly recovered and was at that very moment roaming the streets of Toronto on a killing rampage, making up for lost time... She looked at the clock. An hour and 40 minutes to go. Grace came in looking perplexed. "Where did you get those samples you gave me?" she asked. Natalie Lambert, Expert Liar, already had an answer for that. "It's just something I'm working on for the museum. Why? Did you find anything unusual?" "You could say that..." She showed Natalie her preliminary test results. "There are levels of some unknown toxin that are off the scale... This here..." she indicated a specific area on her diagram, "the book says this signature is a component of nerve gas, but the compound yielding that result has more characteristics of an organic origin..." Natalie appeared only mildly interested. "Maybe some bizarre ritual embalming technique?" "I doubt it. It's too diffused through the tissues. I'd say more likely it was the cause of death, perhaps the venom of some animal or insect. But, it should have killed instantly. I don't understand how this person lived long enough for it to be metabolized to the extent it was." Natalie pretended to be too interested in what she was doing to give Grace's report her full attention. "Just leave it on my desk. Let me know when you have the full study completed." Grace was disappointed. She liked the mysterious, interesting cases, and Natalie had liked them, too, once upon a time. But since the assault - since losing Nick Knight, she had changed. Now, she only went through the motions, got through the day. It was a sad thing to see. As soon as Grace was gone, Natalie snatched the report off her desk. Of course, these results were only superficial, but they spoke volumes. Vachon's system was saturated with some sort of extremely potent neurotoxin. Except for the fact that it was 20 times more efficient, and had the capacity to regenerate, a vampire's nervous system functioned almost identically to that of a human. Who knew what this was doing to him? THE PHOENIX (05/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com Sidney came running as usual when she opened the door to her apartment, but she had to search for Vachon. She found him curled up on the bathroom floor. He looked like he'd been there all night, and somewhere along the way, he'd hurt himself. There was an large, ugly bruise on his forehead and a deep gash under one eye. She knelt down and turned his face to examine it. "How did you get hurt?" He shrugged. She fingered the bruise gently. "There's no way you can not know how you did this," she said sternly. "Did you have another seizure?" He didn't like that question. "Three or four of them, if you must know." "What are you doing in here, anyway? Were you sick again?" "No. The floor is cool. I'm hot." Funny how those last two little words, "I'm hot," stabbed her in the heart. She remembered Nick saying them, afraid he was dying, yet mystified that a disease - any disease - would have the audacity to infect his kind. The work she had done with him had saved him from getting as sick as some of the others - some of the ones who had died. He'd never thought to thank her for that, had he? Was that when he had begun to wonder if he really wanted to be mortal? When he had looked death-by-escaped-laboratory-virus in the face, and seen it for what it was? Not just the end of The Vampire, but the end, period? Had he decided that wasn't what he wanted after all, and had he just been too afraid she'd be disappointed in him to tell her the truth? She felt Vachon's forehead. Barely lukewarm, but by vampire standards, he was burning up. She reached over him and turned on the bathtub faucets, then knelt down and started removing his boots. They felt like they were molded to him, and once she managed to peel them off she threw them in the trash along with his socks. He didn't do anything to stop her until she unbuckled his belt and reached for the button on his jeans. "What are you doing?" "I'm getting you out of these filthy clothes, first of all, and then I hope to somehow get the rest of this dirt off of you and get your temperature down in the process." He pushed her hand away, or tried to. "Uh-uh. No." She grabbed his wrists and held his hands out of her way. "How about that? I'm stronger than you are. I'll bet that's a new experience for you." She pulled the zipper down and slid his jeans off. There was no underwear to bother with. Vachon was embarrassed, but he made no attempt to cover himself, and Natalie got the idea it was because he wanted her to be embarrassed, too. "You forget, I see naked men every day," she told him. "Are any of them ever alive?" That remark stung a bit, as she was sure he meant for it to, but rather than being offended, she was amused at his temerity considering the circumstances. "Get in the tub," she ordered him. He looked as though he considered refusing this request, but he didn't. She had to steady him to keep him from going into the water head-first. If anything, he was even weaker than he had been the night before. She wondered if he could even walk anymore. "Have you had anything to eat?" "No." She was about to ask why when she mentally kicked herself for being so stupid. She'd forgotten he couldn't feed himself. "I'm sorry about that. I'll get you something when we're done here." "I don't want to eat. It makes me sick." "Well, you're going to have to try. I've got some fresh stuff for you." He looked up at her. Surprise, gratitude, she couldn't tell which. She removed the band-aid on the inside of his left biceps which covered the wound she'd made with the Exacto knife. The cut was still there, still open, surrounded by a small ring of inflammation. She was glad she'd sterilized the knife as a precaution. He wasn't healing like a vampire anymore. His hands were dirtier than the rest of him. she thought. She rubbed vigorously at them with a soft nail brush and the dirt came off eventually. His hands were beautiful - flawless skin, long, graceful fingers and nails that looked like glass. Nick's hands had been like that, too, the few times he'd let her hold them. She'd never really had a chance to just look at them and enjoy it. She always had to have some excuse, or he'd pull away, afraid of the contact, the hint of affection. If any of that bothered Vachon, she saw no indication of it. He shut his eyes and let the cool water soothe his feverish body while Natalie scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed some more. As she worked the lather across his bare back, she felt an unexpected pang of resentment. It took her by surprise, because there was no reason for her to resent Vachon. He hadn't done this terrible thing - whatever it was - to himself, and he certainly hadn't asked her to give him a bath. It saddened her when she realized that what bothered her was the fact that she had never done anything even remotely this intimate with Nick... She had never seen Nick naked, never felt his muscles under his cool, pale, bare skin. She had never even really touched him except with a stethoscope, or through his shirt, or in the most formal of friendly ways. She noticed Vachon had two small, deep scars on his back, and others elsewhere on his body. Nick had told her vampires didn't get new scars, but kept the ones from their mortal life. Did Nick have scars? He'd been a solder - she was sure he must have had some. Vachon wasn't circumcised, and it was safe to assume that Nick probably hadn't been either, but she honestly didn't have any idea. How would she? It certainly wasn't something she'd ever asked him about. It was humiliating to think that she had been willing to risk her life to make love to Nick, but that she now knew Vachon's body better than she had his... His hair was so thick she used half a bottle of shampoo before she was satisfied she'd gotten all of the dirt out of it. By then the water in the tub was black. She drained it out and turned on the shower. Vachon's skin felt cool to the touch once again, the fever gone for now, and she figured he could manage to hold his head under the spray and finish the job of getting the soap out of his hair and rinsing himself off. She looked inside his jeans for some hint of what size they were and then thought maybe she had a pair of sweatpants that would fit him. She found them and one of her baggy sweatshirts. She dried him off and dressed him and he hated every minute of it. She didn't blame him. She remembered lying weak and helpless in the hospital while the nurses took care of her most personal needs, and how humiliating that had felt. The pants were too short. She snipped the elastic at the bottom so they wouldn't be uncomfortable. She'd have to go shopping for him. Something else she had only fantasized about doing for Nick. He managed the distance to the living room where he dropped face-down on the couch. "Is it okay if I sleep here?" He asked as though he thought he'd already asked enough of her. "Of course it's okay," she told him. "It has to be more comfortable than the floor." She looked through her cabinets until she found a big insulated mug with the name of the gas station that sold them with unlimited coffee or soda refills. It was light and had a handle big enough for Vachon's hand to fit through. She filled it from the Coke bottle and then rummaged through her junk draw for some straws left over from dozens fast-food and take-out meals. She hoped he'd be able to hold the mug himself and drink through the straw. She doubted his ego would allow her to feed him again. She propped some pillows behind him and hooked the mug over his paralyzed fingers. He needed both hands to steady it, but the idea worked once he figured how to use the straws. She left him alone and got herself something to eat while he sipped at it. When she returned with her microwave dinner, he'd almost finished. "My compliments to the donor," he told her. "I'll tell him you liked it... Do you want more?" "I don't think I better." "Vachon, you have to eat. You've got to be hungry." "I know I should be," he told her, and looked at the blood that remained. "We usually want it all the time, even when we've just had it." "The preliminary toxicology report shows you were poisoned. How did Divia do that to you?" This time when he shrugged, he really didn't know the answer. "She didn't give me anything... I didn't drink from her." He fingered the gashes on his neck, which were still raw and wet-looking. She'd have to bandage them so his clothing didn't stick. "Well, it's an organic poison, similar to some kind of venom. It's affecting your nervous system." "Oh." Natalie was expecting him to say a little more than that. She could see that he wanted to. "Vachon?" He broke eye contact with her before he spoke. "When I crawled out of the ground, I couldn't see or hear, not anything. Some of it came back, but it's not what it was. I don't think it's even what it was when I was mortal..." He looked at her again. "Will I stay this way?" She told him the truth. "I don't know. It depends on the nature and extent of the damage, and whether your ability to heal has been compromised as well." She could tell by the look on his face that she had been too honest with him, too blunt. "I'm still a vampire, Natalie," he said softly. "I can feel that I am. But if I can't..." He couldn't bring himself to say it. If he wasn't human, yet couldn't live as a vampire, what was that going to make him? Natalie couldn't give him any kind of an answer to that. She couldn't even promise that she'd keep him safe, even though at that moment she wanted to. She took the empty mug from him. "It's almost sunrise. Try to rest, and we'll worry about the rest of it later, okay?" But she worried about it then. She fell asleep worrying about it, and when she was awakened by him rejecting the blood once again, she worried about it even more. She wished Nick was there for her. At that point, even LaCroix would do. Any one of Them who could give her some idea of what she could do to help him. Otherwise, he was going to starve right before her eyes. Not die, just starve. Waste away until he was a thing that had no life yet was not dead. "I hate this," he said, once the worst was over and he could talk again. Morphine dulled his pain at least, so she didn't have to listen to him scream. "Nobody likes throwing up." "I was never this sick when I was human." "If you'd met up with Divia when you were human, you would have been dead before you could have taken a second breath." "Well, right now I can't say I'm happy to be alive." Natalie resisted an urge to blurt out something sarcastic. Something about his friend Urs, who might have recovered just as he had, and then unwittingly wandered off into the sunlight instead of ending up with someone who would help her. Something about Tracy Vetter, whose mortal body never had a chance against the bullets that had ripped through her vital organs. Something about Nick... was he happy to be alive - *if* he was alive - knowing he had almost killed her? Or maybe thinking that he *had* killed her? But she held her tongue. Vachon was miserably sick - the least she could do was let him feel sorry for himself. He frowned as a unpleasant thought occurred to him. "Do you think she'll be back?" "Divia?" He nodded. Natalie shook her head. "No, Vachon. Nick staked her, and LaCroix burned her. She's dead." They're all dead, she wanted to tell him. But then wasn't the time for that. THE PHOENIX (06/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com Unable to sleep, Natalie had gone shopping. She had stopped at her favorite ask-no-questions medical supply dealer and put blood collection equipment, IV supplies, broad-spectrum antibiotics, saline, and glucose on her credit card. They remembered her from her last research project - Nick. She then stopped at the mall and bought Vachon some clothes. A pair of jeans, a couple of tee-shirts, socks. All black. Even if he liked other colors, he would still like black. Nick had never been able to explain why, but all of Them liked it. She thought about replacing his boots until she saw how expensive they were. How the hell had he been able to afford them when he didn't have a job? And the leather jacket? Two-fifty at least. Maybe he'd stolen them. Who knew? She found that buying the clothes for him helped her think optimistically. Maybe he'd get well enough to need them. She got to work 45 minutes early, and it was a lucky thing she did. It gave her first crack at one Mr. Warren Thornton. He'd been found dead in the weight room of a posh local health club, an apparent heart attack, but an autopsy was required to rule out foul play even though none was suspected. He had just been brought in. His blood hadn't completely clotted in his veins yet... Natalie tilted the examination table so Mr. Thornton's head was lower than the rest of him. She then used her newly purchased medical supplies to open his jugular vein and carotid artery and began the process of siphoning every available drop of blood out of him. She still had one of the units from the hospital and a liter and a half in the Coke bottle, but from here on out, she was going to have to get it whenever and wherever she could. She was making a big assumption at that point that Vachon wouldn't simply die on her. She had no idea how much longer his body could go without nourishment before the poison in him overwhelmed his system completely. Maybe hours, maybe forever. She would have liked nothing better than to admit him to a hospital and run every test in the book on him, but there was no way that was going to happen. Grace was suspicious enough without dragging in an entire medical team. "Natalie, what are you doing?" Natalie jumped... Grace had appeared behind her. She hadn't even heard her come in. Grace could be as bad as Nick in that respect. "What? Oh, hi, Grace." "Why are you collecting that man's blood?" "Well, I uh... have a new theory I want to check out." Grace gave her a questioning look. "This hasn't got anything to do with all those experiments you were doing on Detective Knight does it?" Natalie looked stricken. Grace put an arm around her. "I know, I know. It hurts just to hear his name. But Natalie, you haven't been the same person since he disappeared. I'm worried about you. Now this..." she waved a hand at the corpse. "I don't understand." If her relationship with Nick had taught her anything, it was how to think fast. "Grace, you're my friend. Can I trust you?" "Of course you can." "It's a relative of Nick's. He's come to me for help. He suffers from the same genetic disorder..." "Does he know where Nick is?" Natalie shook her head sadly. "No. And I'm afraid he's very ill. He is much more seriously affected than Nick. Even the special diet isn't working. Everyone else has given up on him. Nick apparently mentioned our work once, and he got here somehow. I'm afraid now I'm his only hope." Natalie congratulated herself. *None* of that was a total lie. Not really. "Those toxicology studies you've had me working on... they're not..." Natalie nodded. "They're his. So you know how sick he is." "Sick!? I don't know why he's not dead." "I don't either. His condition is far more advanced than Nick's was." "Can I help?" "Grace, you already have. And I know I should have confided in you before. But you see why I have to be quiet about this. I don't have the authority to be conducting independent biomedical research, particularly not in a public facility. But I can't take a chance on this work being interrupted." Good. Still no lies. "Nobody will find out from me... Besides, it's good to see you interested in something again." That comment took Natalie by surprise, especially when she realized it was true. She had not cared about anything since the Assault. She hadn't even managed to interest herself in looking for Nick. Deep down, she was afraid of what answers such a search might reveal. Vachon's intrusion on her life had been both unwelcome and unwanted, of that there was no doubt, but worrying about what she was going to do with a disabled vampire under her roof had, she admitted, gotten her mind off of Nick and put it on something other than her own misery. "You had better let me test a sample of that for HIV before you handle it," Grace nodded at the near-full bags of blood. Natalie supposed that for her own safety, Grace was right. Grace was an extremely intelligent woman. It was possible she hadn't bought a single word of Natalie's explanation. Natalie loved the woman for not asking any more questions. After she left, Natalie opened up the locked drawer at the bottom of her desk. It was filled with notebooks, a journal of the work she had done with Nick. She had the information on computer disks, too, but had found it that if she was unexpectedly interrupted, it was much easier to cover up something on your desk than on a CRT screen. Besides, Nick could get into her computer, but he couldn't access the drawer without breaking the lock. Some of her more personal observations were pen-and-ink only. She tried to glance over the notes quickly. They brought back too many memories she still couldn't deal with, and right then, she wanted information, not to be reminded of Nick Knight. She found what she was looking for. The most thorough - probably the only - complete blood chemistry study ever done on a vampire. Electrolytes, blood sugar, cell counts - everything she needed to know what constituted "normal" vampire blood. Vampires metabolized the blood they fed on by changing the actual DNA structure until it became there own vampire blood, but their bodies did not replenish it. Although their bone marrow contained blood cells, they were not produced there. As far as she could tell, those sites became the source of those unique vampire antibodies once They were brought across. But, she only had one sample to work with. Nick had very definitely not enjoyed it when she had taken a sample from him, and he'd never let her do it again. Eventually, if a vampire's blood was not replaced by ingestion, it became used up, nothing but a muck of dead cells and potent vampire antibodies that would begin attacking the host if not held in check by a fresh infusion. That was what caused them to experience sudden, severe pain if they went too long without feeding. It had been months since Vachon had fed as he should have, and there was very little actual blood left in him. His body was nowhere near any of the proper levels of anything. She examined a slide of his blood and noticed a few strange-looking blood cells, which she dismissed as the result of the decaying process. What was most striking was that it contained only a minute fraction of the antibodies that should have been there. That was good news because it meant they weren't about to turn on him and eat him alive. The bad news was, he probably now had less healing capacity and disease resistance than an ordinary mortal. The poison had devastated his immune system, and without blood to nourish the tissues that produced the antibodies, that would not change. She found the last note book in which she had entered comments about Nick. She skipped those, too. Things had taken a turn for the worse the last few months they were together. He had gone back to drinking human blood, for one thing. She didn't want to remember any of it. On the first blank page, she began new entries. * * * * * Natalie noticed something different the minute she walked through the door, but didn't know what it was until she looked at Vachon, still on her couch, with Sidney curled up on top of him. The tabby hadn't rushed to greet her as he usually did. "So," she stroked his fur, "now you think you're too special to say 'hi' to me." Vachon opened his eyes. "Hi." Natalie laughed. "I was talking to Sidney. He seems to like you." "Sometimes animals don't." He placed a hand on the cat. "Dogs, they like anybody. But cats know... about the vampire. Some are afraid. They usually don't like it that we feel cold either." She felt his forehead. His skin was anything but cold. She checked under the bandage she'd put on the scratches on his neck. They showed early signs of infection. She frowned, and he noticed. "I know. They aren't healing." "Do they hurt?" Severe pain could mean the infection was spreading below the surface of the skin. "Some. Not too bad." He was almost too tall to stretch out on her couch. "I think you'd be more comfortable in a bed. Think you can make it to the bedroom?" He shook his head. "I can't walk anymore." She nudged Sidney off of him. "C'mon. I'll help you." She did most of the work. It would have been much simpler if she had been strong enough to carry him. Once she had him sitting on the bed, she asked him to perform some simple movements for her. She was certainly no expert at neurological assessment, but it wasn't hard to see why he was having such difficulty. Instead of traveling in a direct path, the signals from his brain to his body seemed to be going wherever they wanted to, which made it almost impossible for him to selectively contract or relax specific muscles. If he tried to flex an arm, the muscles that extended it would fire at the same time. Some muscles were spastic and others completely flaccid. He was generally so weak that he could barely sit up. When she saw the examination was upsetting him, she stopped. "Are you too hot in this shirt?" she tugged at the heavy sweatshirt. He didn't need to be any warmer than he was. "I couldn't get it off." She pulled the shirt over his head. "Someone really should be here with you while I'm at work." "NO!" he snapped. "Nobody can know." "Know what?" "That I'm... like this." She touched his hair. She loved the feel of it, and wondered how Nick's would have felt if he'd let it get as long as Vachon's. "It's okay. No one will know." The ugly stake wound still stood out on his chest. At some point in time, it had begun to heal and then stopped. Probably when his supply of antibodies had dropped to an ineffective level. But the scratches were older than the wound. Why had they not healed at all? The only answer she could come up with were that the scratches were the site where Divia's poison was introduced into his body. It was most concentrated at that point, and the antibodies were useless against it. She didn't tell him any of this. It wasn't something he needed to hear right then. THE PHOENIX (07/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com Clearly, being poisoned had made him unable to eat, but at what point had that occurred? And she had nagging questions about why he had apparently suffered horrifying hallucinations immediately after the attack which had now subsided. What would happen if his blood were restored? She guessed she would find out, because she intended to get some blood into him any way she could. "Vachon, were you able to feed *after* Divia attacked you? Do you remember?" "I don't know. I didn't really want to feed..." He looked away, embarrassed. "I just wanted to kill. I was crazy. I attacked Urs. I wanted to kill Tracy. But I don't even remember being hungry." That hinted that his inability to eat might be part of a vicious cycle. The fact that he had healed in the beginning indicated his blood could counteract the poison, but the poison made him unable to eat and replenish his blood. He rejected everything an hour or so after he drank which led Natalie to suspect that the toxins in his body were affecting him in a way similar to the effect chemotherapy drugs had on cancer patients. It wasn't the food or even his stomach that was the problem, but an abnormal neurological response of some kind. He didn't like the idea when she produced the equipment and told him that she planned to try giving him blood intravenously. "It won't hurt." "Yes, it will. I don't like needles." "Nobody likes needles, Vachon. Deal with it, or you're going to starve." She checked his hands, his arms, his feet, looking for a suitable vein - but he was so dehydrated she wasn't able to find one near the surface. That left her with the choice of either cutting down to find an acceptable site, or using the large blood vessels on his neck. The latter was risky in a human, because the blood came gushing out with considerable force once they were penetrated. But vampires had no blood pressure to speak of, no steady heartbeat, and Vachon had hardly any blood left in him, anyway. She pushed his head to the side and swabbed his neck with alcohol. Ordinarily, that wouldn't be necessary. But his immune system was clearly not doing its job the way it was supposed to, and she had no idea how susceptible he was to infection. "Hold still," she told him. "I only want to have to do this once." The way in which he languidly stretched his neck so that she had easy access to every inch of it should have told her something, but maybe Vachon wasn't even aware of the implications at the time. "You ready?" He nodded yes, and she quickly slipped the needle into his jugular vein. A tiny trickle of blood formed at the site, but was instantly sucked back into the wound. Quickly, she taped it down and started the blood flowing at maximum rate. Vachon moaned and shut his eyes. "Are you okay?" she asked him. Personally, she'd have to seriously consider fainting if someone stuck a needle in her neck. He nodded. "Yeah, I... uhh..." He took a deep breath and rolled over so he wasn't facing her. His body tensed, and he buried his face in the pillow and made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a groan. Natalie was perplexed. He didn't sound like he was in pain, or look as though he were experiencing another seizure. She spoke his name, but he didn't answer her, and she began to wonder what fluke of vampire an anatomy she had failed to consider this time, when the answer hit her like a slap on the forehead. She felt the blood rising first into her cheeks then her entire face. A puncture wound to the neck was the vampire equivalent of copulation. And she had been with enough men enough to know exactly what was wrong with Vachon - or rather, what wasn't wrong with him. She had no idea what he was thinking, if in fact he was even capable of thought at that point, but she was so embarrassed she wanted to disappear. He drained the bag quickly, but not so fast that she didn't have time to compose herself and reassume her professional demeanor. During that time, she couldn't help but wonder if she hadn't just inadvertently expanded the horizons of kinky vampire sex. Vachon's entire body quivered when she pulled the needle out. He kept his head in the pillow. Maybe he hadn't realized what would happen any more than she had. "Are you okay, Vachon?" she asked, in the most matter-of-fact tone she could manage. "Oh, yeah." Was he grinning? She was going to smack the little shit if he was! But when he finally turned and looked at her, there was more color in his face than she had ever seen on a vampire. Maybe it was the fresh infusion of blood, but he really did look like he was blushing. "I didn't know that would happen," he told her. Even so, there was a grin creeping into his expression, she could see it! She decided her least humiliating option would be to avoid discussing it altogether, but he had different ideas. He touched the little puncture wound carefully. "The blood always leaves through here... I never felt it coming into me that way... It was... nice." Natalie fumbled with the equipment. "Well, I'm glad one of us enjoyed it. How do you feel?" He gave her a you-should-know look and she definitely wanted to smack him one. If any more blood ran up into her head, her face was going to explode. "We'll wait a couple of hours and see what happens before I give you anymore." He rolled over on his stomach. It was difficult for him, and looked like it hurt. "Are you in pain?" Natalie asked him, gently putting her hand on his bare back. "Everything hurts," he muttered. "It doesn't go away." She rubbed his back gently, which he seemed to appreciate. "Natalie?" "Hm?" "I want Tracy to know I'm alive. I don't know how to tell her..." Natalie felt a ball of ice form in the pit of her stomach. She wasn't prepared to tell him the truth. Not yet. But it would be cruel to lie to him. "We can talk about that later," she said. He accepted that, and was quiet for a few moments. "I don't feel Urs anymore," he said softly. "I told her to leave, but I don't think she did. I'd still feel her... Did Divia kill her?" "I think so," Natalie told him. "She was hurt much worse than you were. I saw her body. I don't think she was able to come back, like you did." "She was never happy about... what I did to her. Maybe now she knows why I had to." "Why did you have to?" Natalie had to know the answer to that. Had to hear it from a vampire. Had to know why Nick *didn't* have to, why he had chosen not to bring her across. But Vachon's reply was disappointingly simple. "She was so beautiful. I couldn't let her die." "There had to have been others just like her, Vachon. Don't tell me you brought them all across." "No. Just Urs. Her blood told me things. That all she wanted was to be loved, protected. She didn't think that was possible for her, but she wanted it so much she didn't want to live if she couldn't have it. I thought I could give her that, but it turned out she didn't want it from *me*, not from a vampire." That had hurt him. Natalie heard it in his voice. He had loved his Urs, in the only way he was able to - as a vampire. But no matter how great that love had been, it had not been enough, had not been what she had needed or wanted. "Yeah, I think I know how that feels," she sighed. This conversation was hitting much too close to home. She pulled the sheet up over him. "Rest now. If you're okay in two hours, we'll give you some more fluids, and then some antibiotics." She remembered the window, and went to get more garbage bags and duct tape. She wondered what on earth her neighbors must be thinking seeing that now every window in the apartment was blacked out. Hell, let 'em wonder. If they asked, she'd tell them she had a houseguest who was a vampire. Like anybody would believe that. When she returned, she saw that Sidney was licking the drops of blood that had drained from the IV tubing. If he could have stuck his tongue up into the bag, he would have. "Bad kitty!" she hissed at him. He hissed back, turned his tail up at her, and folded himself up on Vachon's back. * * * * * It was fortunate she didn't have to go in to work that night. She had taken her alarm clock into the living room and set it to wake her up every three hours during the day, but she'd hardly slept in between, waiting for Vachon to exhibit some violent reaction whatever she had last pumped into him. Luckily, that didn't happen, not with the saline or the glucose or even the antibiotics. She'd also given him another liter of whole blood. Now, after just 12 hours, the improvement was noticeable. His temperature had dropped to just one or two degrees above vampire-normal almost immediately and had stayed there. The inflammation had begun to disappear from the scratches, the incision she'd made in his arm, and the cut under his eye. They still weren't healing like they should have been, but it was a start. Despite her embarrassment, she'd been forced to use his neck repeatedly, and had discovered, much to her relief, that it was only the blood that aroused him, although she knew he actually got an erotic thrill out of having that needle stuck in him. Well, might as well let him enjoy something, she figured. After the fifth transfusion, other blood vessels became detectable, but she decided to stop for awhile. She'd given him almost two gallons during the course of the day, and she didn't know how much he could handle. She had never established with Nick how or if They got rid of excess of fluid in their bodies. Their kidneys didn't appear to function, but that didn't mean they never did. Other organs performed when there was something for them to do; secreting hormones, metabolizing drugs or alcohol, manufacturing new cells. But for all she knew, she could accidentally drown Vachon by giving him too many fluids at once. It probably wouldn't kill him, but pulmonary edema in a vampire was something she had never dealt with, either, and she was too tired to want to have to think about it. Vachon hadn't slept any better during the day than she had, and they were both exhausted. She made sure he was comfortable, then fixed herself a microwave macaroni and cheese dinner and plopped herself down at the kitchen table to eat it. She took out her notebook and had every intention of updating her findings while she ate... She awoke with her head on the table, strands of her hair in the half-eaten macaroni and the ink from her felt-tip pen leaving a spreading stain on her lavender sweatshirt. Her heart was pounding. Something had startled her awake. Again. She sighed and deposited the cold macaroni in garbage can. She thought she heard Sidney meowing for food and expected him to come curling around her ankles. But when she realized that it wasn't Sidney making the strange noise, a cold chill traveled down the length of her back. She was hearing it plainly. A strange sound, but not an unfamiliar one. She'd made it herself a few times thanks to her Nana's temper. It was the stifled cry of a child too intimidated or terrified to wail out loud. "What the hell..." It was coming from the bedroom, but it seemed unlikely that Vachon - an adult and a vampire - would make a sound like that. Her stomach sank as the worst possible scenario crossed her mind. He'd found a victim. One small enough and weak enough for him to overcome... THE PHOENIX (08/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com She didn't see him at first when she entered the darkened room. She found him huddled in the narrow space between her bed and the wall. "Vachon?" He didn't look up at her. The sound was indeed coming from him. He was crying, and saying something in a soft voice that she couldn't understand and first, but then recognized as Spanish. "Vachon, I don't understand what you're saying. What is it? What's wrong?" She took a step towards him and he let out a horrifying scream, nothing childlike about it. Just when she was certain her entire building was going to think someone was being tortured to death in her apartment, he became abruptly silent, as if he were suddenly gasping for air. He began to thrash about violently, with no regard for he fact that he was slamming his head and face repeatedly into the wall and the headboard of the bed. She was certain he was having another seizure - far more violent than the others. If she didn't restrain him, he was going to hurt himself. She heaved the bed away from the wall so she could get to him, and she managed to get her arms around his upper body. Luckily, he was still very weak, but restricting his movement was about as easy as maintaining a grip on a toddler who didn't want to be held. He seemed to be trying frantically to get away from her - or from something, and she quickly surmised that this wasn't a seizure. He was seeing or experiencing something that wasn't happening. For whatever reason, he was hallucinating again. "Vachon!" she yelled as loud as she could. "Stop it! You're all right. You're safe..." She hated to leave him, but when she saw she wasn't getting through to him, and was in very really danger of being injured herself, she ran quickly to her medical bag and rummaged through it until she found the curare that was in there. It was certainly not something ordinarily issued to paramedics, but Nick had told her once that it would sedate a vampire and she had obtained some just in case . She filled a syringe with it. Not too much... curare caused paralysis, and Vachon was barely able to move as it was. By the time she got back to him, he had battered himself bloody. She grabbed one of his flailing arms and quickly plunged the syringe into his forearm. He let out another ear-splitting screech and twisted out of her grasp, bending the needle at 90-degree angle. She wasn't sure if any of the drug had actually gotten into him. She didn't get out of the way fast enough when his right foot came up from the floor unexpectedly. Whether it was a reflex or deliberate, he connected with the left side of her jaw. The blow rattled her teeth and made them feel as if they were being driven up into her eye sockets. In the split second of consciousness that remained after that, she wondered how he could kick so hard when he couldn't even walk. Adrenaline rush... That was her last thought before the blow sent the right side of her head crashing into the edge of the headboard... * * * * * His face hurt. And something was stabbing his arm... He looked and saw the syringe hanging from it. He used his thumb to flick it out of his flesh. He knew why it was there, and who had put it there. No anger. She had made the visions stop for now. "Natalie?" Luckily, he was lying face-down on the floor. He was in a cramped space with no room to turn over, and he'd discovered earlier that on his back, he was almost completely helpless, but this way, he could use his arms and legs to push himself up. When he did, he saw Natalie sprawled across the bed with her head hanging over the side. She was ominously still. He struggled to her side, and pushed her head up onto the mattress. "Natalie? Are you okay?" It was immediately obvious that she was not. But he sensed that her heart was still beating. She was alive, but she was hurt. He had hurt her. Walking was almost impossible, but he somehow got to his feet anyway and made his way into the bathroom. He ignored the blood that he could feel trickling down his own face. He soaked a washcloth, but got too much water on it and couldn't wring it out because his hands were practically useless. He dragged himself back into the bedroom with it and collapsed next to the bed. He draped the dripping cloth over Natalie's forehead, hoping the cool wetness would bring her around. "Natalie, I'm sorry..." When he turned her head to the side, he saw the ugly, purple welt rising along the right side of her face. A large, swollen bruise had already formed on her jaw. He wasn't sure how hard he'd hit her. His memory of doing it was distant and hazy. But he knew a mortal could die from a blow to the head, and she had been unconscious for several minutes by this time. He tried again to rouse her. "Natalie, please wake up!" It was useless, he could see that. And now an odd numbness was beginning to creep through his body. Whatever she had given him had abruptly ended his hallucinations, but now it was doing something else to him. He was sleepy. He knew he shouldn't sleep, that he should help Natalie, but he couldn't fight it. There was a phone next to the bed. His eyes refused to focus, and his fingers refused to cooperate, so it seemed like minutes passed before he managed to lift the receiver and dial 911... * * * * * Natalie's head felt like nails were being driven into it. Big nails. Huge nails. Railroad spikes. She had been conscious for some time, but didn't dare open her eyes. The mere thought of any light penetrating her skull made her even more nauseous than she was. Someone was saying her name. She mumbled in response, her jaw too sore to attempt anything intelligible. "It's Dr. Turner, Natalie. Would you care to tell me what happened?" "I hit my head." A gentle, feminine hand on her shoulder. "Natalie, this is the second time you've shown up in my ER with unexplained injuries. I've already reported it to the police, so you might as well tell me what really happened. Who did this to you? And why are you protecting him?" If it wouldn't have hurt to do so, Natalie would have laughed at that question. She wondered what Turner would do with an honest answer . She tried to sit up, but her head spun with unmerciful persistence. "It was an accident," she muttered. "A patient. He kicked me while he was having a seizure... You remember him, he was here the other night." She opened one eye just far enough to see if Turner was buying any of this. "Who made the 911 call?" "911 call? I... uh... it wasn't me. I don't know." Had it been Vachon? Or had someone been concerned about all the racket and checked on her? And in either case, where was Vachon now? It hurt to even think. "I take it you won't be pressing charges this time, either." Turner's voice had gone from sympathetic to stern. Natalie couldn't blame her. How many battered women had she seen go back for more? "No, of course not. It really was an accident." Turner sighed wearily. "Well, he accidentally gave you a concussion and a hairline fracture of your jaw. You're going to have some loose teeth, but if you're lucky you won't lose any. Maybe next time you won't be. Next time, he might kill you." "I wasn't beaten," Natalie insisted. A discomforting thought occurred to her. "They didn't arrest him, did they?" Turner's lips curled in annoyance. "No, they didn't... I'm admitting you for observation. If you change your mind about this scumbag in the meantime, let me know." She tossed Natalie's chart in the rack and walked out, disgusted. Natalie wondered if Vachon was still in her apartment, sick and alone and now probably scared to death. If he'd left, he couldn't have gotten far. She made a sincere effort to work up enough concern for him to be able to get up and go home, but it was no use. Her head pounded like a bass drum and just thinking of standing up made her stomach churn. Vachon was on his own for now. * * * * * After 24 hours of so-called bedrest, during which she wasn't allowed to sleep for more than an hour at a time without being awakened to make certain she wasn't comatose, Dr. Turner showed up to release her. She handed her a card with the name of a counselor who specialized in treating victims of domestic violence and the phone number of an emergency shelter. Natalie thought about protesting one more time that she was in need of neither, but instead thanked Dr. Turner. It was good to know that if she had been in that situation, there were people like Turner who would care. She was about to phone for a cab to take her home when Grace walked in on her. "Grace... How did you..." "Know you were here? The whole department knew 5 minutes after the report was filed. What happened Natalie? Is Nick back? Did he do this?" Natalie sighed. "Please, Grace. I've explained that a half dozen times, and no one believes me. I'm too tired to go through it again. Just take me home." Thankfully, Grace didn't argue with her. The nausea had finally abated, and she was starved, so she had Grace stop at a fast-food place on the way home. The dull, constant ache in her jaw gave her every reason to believe it was going to be an experience trying to eat solid food, but they ordered fries, burgers and everything else in the basic junk-food groups, anyway. Natalie got a chocolate milk shake, too. She was mentally scanning her list of concocted lies to explain to Grace why Vachon was in her apartment, but when she opened the door, she saw no sign of him. She checked the bedroom and bathroom, too, but didn't see him anywhere. The clothes she'd bought for him were still there, still in the bag from the mall. She'd thrown everything else he'd been wearing out and none of her stuff appeared to be missing. She wondered how far he'd get before someone noticed he was half naked, but something told her he hadn't gone far. Even so, she couldn't look for him while Grace was still there. THE PHOENIX (09/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com She settled onto the couch while Grace fed Sidney and brought plates for the food. Her jaw was so sore she couldn't open it far enough to get the hamburger in. Grace got a knife and cut it into tiny bite-sized pieces for her, which helped, but chewing was still painful. She found herself cursing Vachon with each mouthful. Grace made no more attempt to find out what had happened, for which she was grateful. "Do you want me to spend the night? I can go home and get a few things and be right back," she offered. "No, Grace. Thanks, but I'll be okay, really." "Well, at least let me clean up the dishes..." She carried the plates and silverware into the kitchen and was rinsing them in the sink when something caught her attention. "Natalie?" "What?" "There's blood all over the floor in here..." How to answer that? Grace was bending over a spot on the linoleum. "It looks fresh..." Natalie found the strength to get to her feet in an instant. She saw what Grace was looking at. Sidney had found it, too, and the evidence was quickly disappearing onto his eager tongue - a rivulet of blood that went from the refrigerator to the laundry room. This was not good. She couldn't even begin to come up with a lie to explain it, but her brain tried frantically to do so, anyway. Natalie watched with mute, helpless dread as her friend followed the blood trail to the laundry room, which, of course, led her directly to Vachon... Cornered, Vachon looked first at Natalie, and then at Grace's imposing form. Even if he'd had the ability to get away, there was no escape route. Natalie would have understood if he was frightened, but when she looked at his eyes, she saw more than fear. There was that blank emptiness she'd seen before. He was looking at something that wasn't there, and it terrified him. "Who the hell are you?" Grace demanded. "What are you doing here?" Natalie pushed past her and knelt next to the vampire. Then she made what turned out to be a huge mistake by gently grabbing his arm. Vachon went nuts, screaming and thrashing in a frenzied effort to get away from her. Natalie knew he was hallucinating again, but Grace thought he was attacking her. Natalie would never have guessed that a woman Grace's size could move as fast as she did, but in seconds, she had Vachon pinned to the floor and was using language that would have made a sailor blush. Oddly, her verbal abuse seemed to bring him back to his senses. She grabbed the hair on either side of his head and lifted his face up to hers. "Was it you who did that to Natalie?" she demanded. Naturally, Vachon made things worse by replying, "I didn't want to hurt her." "You no good son of a bitch.." Grace cuffed him a couple of times with her meaty fists before Natalie got her attention. "Grace! Stop! Don't hurt him..." Grace let Vachon go, with an angry warning not to move. Not that there was any way he could - Grace outweighed him by at least 50 pounds and was sitting on him. Natalie used her calmest clinical voice to explain, "Grace, this is Nick's cousin... Xavier." She thought using Vachon's Spanish name might result in more questions. "He's the one I told you about. He didn't mean to hurt me..." Grace looked at Natalie, then at Vachon, then back at Natalie. Clearly unconvinced, she finally stood up, anyway, brushing herself off as if she'd just come into contact with something distasteful. All three of them were clearly at a loss for words. Natalie's Lie Factory had temporarily ceased production... "You can get up off the floor," Grace told Vachon, in a tone several notches away from friendly. She still wasn't convinced he was innocent of battering Natalie senseless. Vachon tried, but it was a monumental effort which Natalie couldn't bear to just stand and watch. She went to him. "He can't, Grace... give me a hand here." Poor Grace looked like someone had hit her with a brick. Despite her outburst of righteous anger, the woman had a marshmallow for a heart. The sudden realization that she had just roughed up a disabled person devastated her. "Oh my God..." she moaned. "I'm sorry. I didn't know..." She rushed to Natalie's side and together they managed to get Vachon off the floor and onto the couch in the living room. Grace checked the bruises on his face. "Lord, I know I didn't do this to you... What happened?" There was still a hint of suspicion in her voice. "They were already there," Vachon said softly. "Sometimes I hurt myself." Something clicked and Lies began to pour from Natalie's mouth once again. "It's a seizure disorder. Part of the syndrome." "Psychomotor epilepsy?" "Very much like it. Hallucinations, convulsions. He takes medication, but some of my treatments seem to have made it ineffective. Nick never had that problem, so I couldn't have foreseen that complication." "And this is was what you couldn't explain to Dr. Turner?" "Grace, you know why I can't discuss my research..." Grace sighed. "I feel like such a damn fool!" She examined Vachon's face again. "For a minute there, I thought maybe you'd gotten a couple of licks in yourself, Natalie... Why were you hiding, anyway?" she said to Vachon. Vachon shrugged. "I think I see things sometimes. And my nose was bleeding. Blood scares me." Vachon looked up at her with those big brown eyes, forlorn and absolutely pathetic. Natalie had to hold back a laugh. The vampire had quickly found Grace's buttons and was now expertly pushing them. Grace encircled him in a crushing hug. "I'm so sorry." "It's okay, Grace, really," Natalie said, before Vachon carried his pitiful act any further. Natalie distracted her by having her fix an ice bag for her jaw, which was much needed by that time, and a microwave dinner for Vachon, which would end up in the trash the minute she was gone. Grace was a good friend, and Natalie just couldn't shove her out the door without letting her know she had been of some help. She set the microwave plate of ravioli in front of Vachon, but gave Natalie a questioning look. "Can he eat this? I remember Nick had so many food allergies..." "This won't bother me," Vachon assured her, truthfully, as he had no intention of eating it. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay?" she asked, Natalie. "No. Really. We'll be fine." Grace looked doubtful, but finally gathered her purse and car keys. "Okay, but I'm going to call here every few hours to make sure you're okay." "That's a good idea," Natalie agreed, guilty because she was doing so only to hasten Grace's departure. Grace reached for the door knob. "What if he has another... episode?" "I know what to look for now." Natalie winked. "This time, I'll duck." THE PHOENIX (10/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com Vachon poked a finger into the microwave ravioli in front of him, only to discover it was hot enough to burn him. He pulled it out instantly and gave Natalie a sheepish look. "Ouch." Natalie fished a napkin out of her hamburger bag and wiped the hot tomato sauce off his finger. "Have you eaten?" He nodded. "I needed to. I was hungry." "The blood on the kitchen floor?" "I bit one of the bags. It came out faster than I could drink it. Then I heard you and your friend coming..." He pushed his hair out of his face. "She's a tough lady." He picked his fork up and held it between his thumb and the palm of his hand and picked at the ravioli until he got one of the small pies open. He examined the contents carefully. "Natalie... What happened yesterday... I didn't know what I was doing." "I know, I know," Natalie reassured him. "Did you make the 911 call?" He nodded. "That was a big risk, Vachon. If they had found you here, you could have been arrested." He shrugged. "I hid in the closet. They didn't even look for me. I did what I had to do." Natalie's heart sank as memories came flooding back. Who had called the paramedics the night she had been found in Nick's apartment? Had Nick done that much for her? She wanted to think so. She wanted that so much. It would make it easier... "Well, thank you, anyway... How are you feeling?" He was moving his fork from ravioli to ravioli, systematically pulling them apart. "Better. But I think it's the blood that's causing the visions. I felt them coming this time, right after I drank." He carefully lifted each of the exposed ravioli fillings and moved them to the side of the plate. Natalie noticed that he did not really have a proper grip on the fork, but was managing quite well with it, anyway. "You want to tell me about them?" He didn't look up from what he was doing. "About what?" "These visions... these hallucinations... what is it you see?" He still wouldn't look at her. "I don't want to talk about it." "They frighten you." He turned to her, with a look on his face that was almost belligerent. "Yeah, you could say that." Back to the ravioli. "When they happen... I can't tell it's not real." No matter what he was saying, he *did* want to talk about it, she sensed that. "It might help if I knew what it is you think is happening. When I touched your arm, you thought I was going to hurt you?" He laughed softly. "'Hurt' isn't strong enough a word..." He was silent as he flipped the empty pasta squares over and began to stack them one on top of the other. Natalie didn't interrupt, but waited for him to continue. "You've never seen anyone tortured." He stated that as the fact that it was. "No." "I did... There was nothing I could do. If I had tried to stop them, they would have killed me and done it, anyway. I was mortal then." He sighed and closed his eyes, long, dark lashes resting again his cheeks. Bruises aside, there was still something perfect, something purely vampire about his face. For a moment, though, despite his outwardly youthful appearance, he looked incredibly old. Without opening his eyes, he continued. "It was a little boy, 4 or 5 years old." Suddenly, Natalie wasn't sure she wanted him to go on, but he did. He told her about witnessing a native ritual, one that had supposedly been banned by the Church, but which was still being performed in secret at the time he had arrived in the New World, before he'd sailed for Peru. It was one of many that demanded the sacrifice of a child, and in this particular instance, it was required that the child die in water, yet not drown. The little boy's hands and feet had been bound behind him and then his air passages had been filled with latex before he'd been immersed in a water-filled urn that was quickly sealed shut. "I saw his eyes. No one knew we were watching, but he could see me where I was hiding. He looked right at me... After he was in the urn, you could hear him trying to get out. It took him a long time to die." He let out a sigh. "After it happened, I couldn't get it out of my head. I still have dreams about it." "These hallucinations aren't just dreams, Vachon." An ironic laugh. "No." He looked at her, as if he wondered if she would believe what he said next. "When they happen, I *am* him... Everything they did to him, what I saw... It's happening to *me*. I feel the pain in his chest when no air would come in. I know how scared he was... It's the worst fear you can imagine, Natalie, and he was just this little tiny boy..." His voice tapered off to a whisper. "I feel everything he felt... How is that possible?" Natalie had no idea what to say. This was much heavier than she had been prepared to deal with. All she could offer was, "Imagination can be a powerful thing." "Divia wanted this to happen. Part of her was in me, and she wanted to experience what had happened to that little boy through me. The visions were constant. The fear never went away. Then, she made me see things that she had experienced, ugly things that she had done that she was proud of, and terrible things that had happened to her..." His voice softened again. "And, I was enjoying it." Natalie looked at him, shocked. "What?" "I know. It sounds sick. It *was* sick. But these visions would trigger a physical response, like the one we experience when we feed on living blood... " He gave her a pained look. "Do I have to describe what that's like?" "Nick told me it's erotic, sensual..." Vachon looked embarrassed. "Yes. There really is no mortal word to describe it. Nothing mortals experience is like that. But whatever Divia did to me, it magnified the sensation until the pleasure was so intense it that I would have done anything to make it stop... I've never experienced anything like that. It was ripping my body apart, and the visions were destroying my mind." He let the fork slide onto the plate and covered his face with his hands. "Is this shit making any sense at all?" Natalie reached for him and rubbed his shoulders lightly. She felt like she had to offer him something positive. "I think there might be a neurochemical basis for what's happening to you, something we can counteract. I'll run some more tests as soon as I can get back to my lab." He looked up at her and gave her a wry smile. "You're going to go to work looking like that?" She gave him a playful nudge. The way she had done with Nick once or twice. "Well, you really know how to make a girl feel good about herself." Nick would have teased her back with something funny. Vachon just smiled. He finished rearranging the ravioli so that it suited him before he spoke again. In the meantime, the codeine-laced Tylenol Natalie had downed with her burger began to make her drowsy. She pulled her feet up onto the couch to get more comfortable and closed her eyes. "Natalie?" "Hmmm?" Nothing. She finally opened her eyes to see if he was still there. He was, staring blankly at the food in front of him. "I tried to call Tracy today." Natalie sucked in a deep breath, and was more obvious about it than she meant to be. Vachon looked directly at her. "Where is she? No one would tell me." Natalie hated this. She was in no way ready for it. If she could have lied to him and gotten away with it, she would have seriously considered doing so, but she couldn't do that. Her stomach felt like a lead ball when she finally said the words. Vachon looked at her, blinked. He had known, she was sure of that. He had just needed to hear it. "How?" he asked quietly. She told him everything. "Nick blamed himself. If she had known he was a vampire, that he wasn't in any danger, she would have stayed where she was safe." He closed his eyes, and turned his head downward again. "She stayed with me when I thought I was dying. She held me in her arms. If that had been the end, the last thing I would have known was that she cared about me. That made it easier, I think. I wasn't afraid..." He looked at her again, silently demanding an answer. "Who was with her?" Natalie couldn't look at him. "Nick stayed until dawn. Her mother couldn't be located. Her father was out of town. He didn't get back in time. Capt. Reese stayed awhile, and then I went back to the hospital, but I was too late." "She was alone when she died, then?" Natalie nodded. "She was alone." She waited for some kind of reaction, but he just stared at his hands. "She had a serious head injury, Vachon. She never woke up. She didn't know..." He looked up suddenly. "She knew." No tears. No display of emotion at all. But his pain was so intense she could feel it herself. She sat up and took him into her arms. Nick would have stiffened at her touch, or even pulled away. Vachon let himself collapse against her, let his weakened body mold itself to hers. His head rested on her shoulder, and she ran her hand over the thick, dark hair. It still smelled of shampoo, with the underlying slightly sweet, slightly metallic smell that she had come to subconsciously identify as a vampire's scent. He didn't cry. Nick had told her once that their tears were blood tears, but she'd never seen Nick cry, either. Maybe it was something they didn't - or couldn't - do in front of humans. But Vachon made no attempt to pull away from her. It was as if he needed to share her warmth, to feel her life force encircling him. "Did you love her?" she asked him finally. "I don't know if that's possible. What we are... I don't know if we can love... Or be loved." She held him tighter. Even if he couldn't cry, she could. Hot tears coursed down her face. "You can be loved," she whispered to Vachon. "You can be..." THE PHOENIX (11/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com At some point, Natalie had rested her head on the cushioned arm of the couch and fallen asleep, with Vachon still in her arms, her chin resting on his head. He'd curled his legs up and had fallen asleep next to her. It was a most compromising position, but what the hell? They were comfortable, and who was going to see them, anyway? She looked at the clock on her VCR. It had been almost three hours since Vachon had taken the blood from the refrigerator, and he seemed to be okay. She rubbed his arm gently. "Are you awake?" "Yes." She wiggled out from behind him. "You haven't gotten sick, from the blood, I mean." "No... It hurts a little, but not bad. I'm okay." Sidney had eaten Vachon's entire microwave dinner. If she had put anything remotely like it in his bowl, he would have tried to cover it. But apparently, eating it off the table right in front of her had, in his little cat mind, somehow rendered the cold, dissected pasta appetizing. She threw the plastic plate in the sink. The phone rang. It was Grace, calling to check up like she had said she would. Natalie convinced her everything was fine, and then listened to her apologize again for her rough treatment of Vachon. She loved the woman, but she thought she'd never stop talking. Vachon stretched out on the couch, and when she hung up the phone, she got a blanket for him. Physically, he perhaps didn't feel any worse than she did at that point, but no one had just told her that someone she cared about was dead. She couldn't pretend to know how he felt. How many mortal lifetimes had he been alive? How many times had he had to deal with mortal death? She didn't know, but even if he was used to it by now, it still hurt. She could see that on his face. She sat down on the coffee table beside him. "Are you okay? About Tracy, I mean?" He nodded, but said, "Nick should have known she was there. He should have done something." "Nick took a bullet for her once, Vachon. If he could have done it this time, he would have. You have to believe that. There was nothing anyone could do. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's all." He sighed. "I was her age when I was brought across. I was dying when it happened to me, and I remember thinking 'Not yet, I'm not ready'. I wonder if she had time..." "She lost consciousness almost immediately, Vachon. I don't think she ever knew she was dying." "Still, it doesn't seem fair somehow that I got a reprieve." "Vachon, what happened to you doesn't happen to most people. Most of us just die." "I know that, and sometimes I wonder 'Why me?', you know? I was nobody special. I was just there. In a certain place at a certain time. Like Tracy." "Nothing mysterious about that, Vachon. It's called 'fate'." "I guess so." "You'll miss her, though." "I always miss them." Natalie knew that They were as emotionally vulnerable as mortals. They grieved. They became depressed - God knows she'd learned that much from Nick. She had no idea how deeply Vachon had cared for Tracy. Was he just her informant, like she had told everyone? Were they good friends? Did he love her? Did they love each other? All she could think of to say was, "I'm so sorry, Vachon." "Yeah. I am, too." True to her word, Grace called every two hours. Apparently, she figured Natalie kept night shift hours even when she didn't have to work. That was basically true, but she finally had to get severe with her friend and ask her not to call again because she was going to try to get some much needed rest. In between Grace's calls, the night was not an easy one for either of them. Vachon knew she wasn't a hundred percent, and never complained or asked for anything, but the blood he'd swallowed did make him feel bad. Even though he kept it down, she could see he was in pain, and from the way he lay there not wanting to move, she suspected he was probably nauseated, too. He suffered no more hallucinations, but did have two seizures. After the second one, she learned that he'd been having several a day, she just handn't seen them and he hadn't told her. They were physically exhausting, but worse, he was embarrassed by them, which made him even more miserable. She couldn't do much more than make sure he hadn't hurt himself and offer reassurance. "They aren't as bad as they could be." That was true. They were little more than tonic muscle contractions, and comparatively mild. "It almost takes a doctor like me to notice them." "I notice them. I don't like it," he stated the obvious, which made her smile. "I can prescribe something that's used for humans..." "Will it make this not happen to me?" "I really don't know... It might. It will mean swallowing something you won't like, though." He nodded, sleepy, even though the sun would not be up for over an hour. "I'll do it." She gave him another liter or so of blood intravenously and prepared a syringe of the curare, just in case. No point in putting him through another hallucination, even if it meant poleaxing him - and even if she had felt up to dealing with it, which she most assuredly did not. Here head was still pounding, and she had needed to take Tylenol continuously for her jaw. She planned on jumping into the shower and then crawling into bed. Vachon seemed comfortable on the couch, so she'd left him there after removing the IV. He'd become quiet and withdrawn, but she concluded that was probably not abnormal, even for a vampire. He would need time to deal with Tracy's death. The hot shower did wonders and she was feeling human again when she walked into her bedroom in a bulky terry robe with her hair in a towel. She sat in front of her dresser mirror and removed the towel. Behind her, reflected in the mirror, were the first rays of sunlight against the morning sky coming through the kitchen window. Her mind was not perfectly clear at that point - the codeine in the Tylenol was having an effect - but something nagged at the back of her mind that all was not as well as it seemed. She ignored it. She was too tired to think about it. She pulled on some old, stretched-out leggins and a baggie tee-shirt, then tried to blow-dry her impossibly thick hair. Finally, she decided just to tie it back even though it was still damp, and leave it to worry about later. She glanced again at the reflection in the mirror. The morning sky was beautiful, - purples, oranges, yellows - all streaked across midnight blue still sprinkled with stars, and below it, the golden crescent of the rising sun... The window was supposed to be covered. She turned around and saw Vachon standing calmly in front of it, waiting to be incinerated. "What the hell are you doing?!" she shrieked. He no longer possessed his keen vampire hearing. In fact, Natalie had reason to doubt he could even hear as well as she did. He must have thought she was still in the shower, because the sudden sound of her voice plainly startled him. There was already a fine mist rising from his bare skin as the cells evaporated upon exposure to the distant rays of sunlight. She yanked the sheet off the bed and ran at him, plowing into him like a football tackle and knocking him to the floor as she threw the sheet over him. She left him to untangle himself while she quickly replaced the plastic garbage bags that had been covering the glass. The kind, sympathetic Natalie abruptly departed while she was doing it. "I can't believe you did that!" she yelled at him. "All of this work... All of MY work trying to save your undead butt and now you try to barbecue yourself! What the hell were you thinking, Vachon? Would you like to tell me, because I don't understand this. Not any of it!" He looked at her with those big, sad eyes, but that wasn't going to work, not this time. "Answer me, damn you!" "It's not something I can explain, Natalie." "Don't give me that mystical vampire angst crap, either. I had more than enough of that shit from Nick!" He raised an eyebrow at her use of profanity. "I guess you really are mad..." "I'm more than mad. I'm disgusted with the whole fang-faced bunch of you! And what about Tracy? Do you think this is what she would have wanted you to do?" Vachon looked appropriately guilty. "Do you?!" Natalie demanded of him. He shook his head. "No. I guess not." Seeing that she had made her point, Natalie softened her tone and extended her hand. "C'mon, get up. Let's see how bad it is." He wasn't seriously injured, but it was bad enough. Mostly first degree burns and some second degree. She applied sunburn ointment to them and he winced more than once. "You forgot these aren't going to heal in five minutes, didn't you?" "I admit I didn't think of that... Ouch!" "Well, I'd say it serves you right, but I really don't understand, Vachon. Why did you do this? You don't want to die." "I know," he whispered. "If it means anything, I would have gotten out of the sun before I really got hurt. I always do." Natalie stopped rubbing in the ointment and looked at him. "What do you mean, you always do? Have you done this before?" His only reply was a shrug, but Natalie had just had her first hint that, as had been the case with Nick, there were many facets to this vampire's personality that she couldn't even guess at. Unfortunately, she was not in the mood to assume yet another role, that of Natalie Lambert, Vampire Analyst. She went into the kitchen to make some strong coffee. As long as the sun was still shining, there was no way she was going to sleep. It was a personal thing at this point. She wasn't about to have brought this vampire back from the brink of wherever it was the undead went only to wake up and find him a pile of ashes on the kitchen floor. She got Vachon a soft, faded Blue Jays tee-shirt that had been washed a zillion times to keep the air off his burns and to keep the burn ointment off her couch. He almost got it on by himself. Whether he appreciated it or not, he was getting better, and she would *not* let him undo that. THE PHOENIX (12/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com She did some laundry, including the new clothes she'd bought for Vachon. If he was at all like Nick, he wouldn't like the way new clothes felt against his sensitive skin. She phoned in a prescription for liquid Dilantin. It was a pediatric formula, but she'd be guessing at the proper dosage for a vampire, anyway, so that didn't matter. She phoned Grace to pick it up on her way to work that night. She hadn't considered what time it was, and Grace was a remarkably good sport about being awakened out of a sound sleep. Grace knew Dilantin was an anticonvulsant, and was immediately concerned. "It's for Nick's cousin," she sighed. "He ran out." Interesting how lies just rolled out of her mouth almost without a thought these days. With her fifth cup of coffee, she sat in the living room chair with her feet tucked under her, watching Vachon sleep. They were almost impossible to awaken when they sensed no danger, and she'd snuck in on Nick a couple of times while he slept. It had been unintentional, but she'd felt a bit ashamed of herself anyway for just sitting there and looking at him instead of leaving a note and returning later. They looked most like vampires when they were sleeping. Their heartbeat dropped to almost non-existent and the color drained completely from their already pale skin. Their muscles relaxed completely, causing their facial features to sink inward slightly, giving them a frail, sallow appearance. It would be very easy to mistake a sleeping vampire for a corpse, and the younger ones had difficulty waking when the sun was out. Nick had explained this was the reason they preferred to hide while they slept. It was too easy for them to be overpowered and dragged into the sunlight if they were discovered. Nick would even habitually lay on his back with his hands folded across his chest, like he was protecting himself from a stake in the heart. He looked like Bela Lugosi that way, and she'd wanted to tease him about that a time or two, but she could never share that kind of humor with him. He'd take it the wrong way, and give her some lecture about what a curse it was to be a vampire... Despite the caffeine overload, she finally fell asleep at around 4 in the afternoon, which gave her about five minutes of rest before the doorbell rang. Natalie only answered it because she was certain it was Grace with Vachon's prescription. Instead, she was greeted with a business card in her face that she couldn't focus her eyes on quickly enough to read. Codeine and caffeine were not conducive to visual acuity... The woman was already in the door by the time she was done introducing herself as Marie something-or-other. She wasn't with social services, but had a private practice counseling victims of domestic violence. Dr. Turner had given her Natalie's name, and it turned out she lived in the building. "Look, really..." Natalie sighed. "Dr. Turner has it all wrong." "Your boyfriend didn't kick you in the face?" she asked, as if she knew perfectly well he had. Natalie was still trying to wake up completely. "No, of course he didn't... Well, he did, but he's not my boyfriend..." By this time, Marie was far enough into the room to see Vachon on the couch. "I mean, he's living here, but we're... uh... not..." Natalie knew she was babbling. Marie put a hand on her shoulder. "Natalie, have you been drinking?" she asked gently. "What? No. Yes, but just coffee..." "What about your boyfriend?" "No, he's just asleep. And he's not my boyfriend." Vachon continued to sleep like a baby. A bruised, scalded one. Marie had noticed. "What happened to him?" Natalie resented the fact that she was once again having to explain something she'd gone over a dozen times already, and some little tiny thread of patience in her snapped. "I slugged the little bastard with a coffee pot and then I dumped it over his head." Marie was aghast. "Oh my God..." "I didn't hurt him. Much. He had it coming, don't you think?" "Natalie, this is not a healthy way to deal with conflict in a relationship." "Oh yeah? Why not?" Marie didn't have an answer ready for that question, but to give her credit, her professional demeanor was unshaken. "I think you both should really come in and see me. Dr. Turner was right to suspect there is a problem in this home." "Well, tell the good doctor thank you, but to mind her own business." Natalie opened the door, and gave Marie a look that told her she was expecting her to walk through it. Once she had, Natalie smiled cheerfully as if nothing had happened. "Thank you for coming. I have your card. I'll keep in touch. Maybe we can do lunch sometime." She shut and bolted the door and headed for the phone to call Dr. Turner. While she waited for the answering service only to find out that the doctor was in surgery, and therefor beyond her wrath at that moment, Natalie noticed a foul odor in the room. At first, she thought maybe it was Vachon's burns, but they really weren't that serious, or that extensive. Besides, even if she didn't want to admit it, she knew what it was. Reluctantly, she headed for the laundry room where she kept Sidney's litter box. She couldn't remember the last time she'd scooped it out, but it turned out it didn't matter anyway. He hadn't used it. Instead, he'd left her a hefty present under the coffee table. And, no doubt thanks to his Italian dinner, it was the loose, squishy stuff that smeared across the carpet like wet plaster when you tried to clean it up. She uttered an appropriate swear word and then spent the next 45 minutes on her hands and knees with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of carpet cleaner. After conquering that mess, she dragged herself into the kitchen to tackle the cat box, only to find that some of its contents had overflowed onto the linoleum, long enough ago that it had dried like paint. After another 45 minutes, she stood leaning wearily on her mop. Cleaning up Sidney's mess had only revealed how embarrassingly in need of a cleaning the rest of her kitchen floor was, and as long as she was ready to drop from exhaustion, anyway, she'd figured she might as well finish the job. While she was working, Grace had stopped by long enough to drop off the medication she hoped would stop Vachon's seizures, and to admonish her for using her sick leave to catch up on her housecleaning. The good news was that somewhere along the way, the fiery ache in her jaw had abated to a dull, bearable throbbing. Unfortunately, by the time she emptied her mop water into the commode and flushed it, she was so tired that every other bone in her body seemed to ache. And it didn't help a bit to look into the bathroom mirror and see that her hair had dried into a frizzy, tangled mass, either. With a sigh, she realized that it was well past sundown, which meant Vachon would probably wake up at any time. She'd still have to see that he got fed one way or the other, and give him the medication Grace had brought. She was literally sagging with fatigue as she dragged her mop and bucket into the kitchen to put them away... And walked right into the first vampire she'd ever met who really, truly scared her. THE PHOENIX (13/35) Nancy W. TP81Kilo@aol.com This was a female vampire, but she was neither graciously demure like Janette, or delicate and dainty as Urs had been. She was as tall as LaCroix and about as feminine, even though she was dressed in a tasteful ivory business suit with, Natalie noticed, perfectly coordinated accessories. Natalie wasn't sure how she knew immediately that the woman was a vampire, but when she opened her mouth and bared her fangs, all doubt was removed from her mind. "Who are you?" Natalie asked nervously. "You have one of ours," the woman said. "I've come for him." "Why? He's perfectly safe here..." "He is so weak I can barely feel him." "So? He's getting better..." "If he cannot survive by his own instincts, he must be destroyed. That is the Code." Natalie wanted to tell her what profane act she could perform with her precious Code, but restrained herself. "You're one of those Enforcers, aren't you? Well, I don't subscribe to your rules. Sorry." The Enforcer looked at her indulgently. "Then I will destroy you, too. Besides, it's not your choice to make..." Natalie's eyes fixed on those of the Enforcer. She couldn't break away from that stare even though she tried. She could feel the blood pounding inside her skull and could almost actually feel her thoughts being pulled in a different direction than the way she wanted them to go. "It's.. not.. my.. choice..." she heard herself utter. "STOP THAT!" The Enforcer looked at her, perplexed, yet amused. "I was told you were strong." Then, as if any further dealings with her would be completely insignificant, the Enforcer brushed past her and went to Vachon. He was wide awake by then, clearly intimidated by this woman, but he struggled to stand up in front of her. "Don't hurt her," he said. "I'll do what you want." Later, Natalie would look back on the incident and realize that stress, fatigue and heavy-duty pain-killers had clouded her judgement. At the time, however, she was merely pissed off. "The hell you will!" She stepped between Vachon and the Enforcer and the Enforcer promptly threw the two of them back into the kitchen. Just a gentle toss, really. Natalie was even able to land on her feet, albeit at a fast trot that caused her mid-section to hit the counter, knocking the wind out of her. Vachon wasn't as lucky. A collision with the sharp corner of the counter top opened a two-inch gash in his scalp before he hit the floor. Blood gushed copiously over his forehead and into his hair, and then began to fall in drops on the white linoleum. Sidney, nonplussed by the unusual activity, immediately went to investigate the blood, and decided it was snack time. The enforcer grabbed Vachon's shirt and lifted him with one arm until their eyes met. She pulled him close to her and licked some of the blood from his forehead. Vachon cringed. "Look at you," the Enforcer said with contempt. "Full of poison and you're practically mortal." Vachon was either possessed of very poor judgement, or he knew he had nothing to lose. His tone of voice was hostile, challenging. "Yeah? Well if you guys had done your job and taken care of that little bitch who did this to me..." That was as far as he got. The Enforcer tossed him at the wall, which caused e