DARKEST KNIGHT III -- Fall From Grace

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by Jean Graham
  
Two feet of snow had silenced most of Toronto's usual city noise. 

At midnight, the streets and alleys surrounding 101 Gateway were
eerily quiet. Only two sounds broke the stillness: the distant clang
of a few still-floating buoys far out on the lake, and the crackling
of scrap wood burning in trash barrels. It was not a good night to be
homeless. 

Nick stood in the shadow of his newly purchased warehouse and watched
a young couple huddle over one of the glowing barrels. The woman
barely looked out of her teens, the man not many years older. They
rubbed gloved hands together over the flames and tried to pull their
ragged coat collars tighter against the cold. 

The young woman glanced up suddenly, squinting in Nick's direction.
"Who's there?" she demanded. "Come out where we can see you!" 

With his hands held neutrally in front of him, Nick did as she asked.
"It's all right," he said. "I'm not going to hurt you." 

The man grunted, a disbelieving sound. "What do you want, then?" 

Nick moved slowly down the narrow path they had cleared in order to
reach the trash barrel. "Nothing. Just to tell you there's food, hot
coffee, and a warm place to sleep inside, if you want it." 

"What, in there?" The man jerked his head toward the warehouse. "It's
been locked up tight for months. What'd you do, break in?" 

"No. It's my building now. I'll be living upstairs; moved in last
night. But the warehouse floor is empty, and it has heaters." 

The girl shivered and shrugged her coat higher. "Are you for real?" 

"Yeah. My name's Nick. And you are...?" 

"Jeannie," she said, and thrust out a hand. "He's Topper." 

Nick gave her tiny, gloved hand a brief but friendly squeeze. "Come
on," he said. "I'll show you the way." 

He took in an even dozen of them for the night. There were ground
rules: no drugs, no booze, no one allowed on the upper floor. He'd
dislike having to evict anyone who broke those rules, but if it became
necessary, he wouldn't hesitate to do so. When he'd seen them fed and
comfortable, Nick entered his new security code to access the stairs,
and made his way up to the loft. 

It looked better with the rugs and furniture in place. He hadn't
brought everything over. Most of his possessions remained in storage
at the Brabant Foundation mansion. His one concession to opulence,
though, had been the grand piano. It sat on its own Persian rug,
tucked behind one of the stairways, and would, he knew, require tuning
after the move. But for now... 

Nick sat down, and trying hard to overlook the instrument's slightly
imperfect pitch, began playing a favorite Chopin waltz. Music had
always helped him to think. 

By taking in Jeannie, Topper and the others, he had just violated a
long-standing personal rule. Humans were to be kept at a distance. But
his conscience -- a part of that lingering mortal guilt LaCroix had
loathed so much -- would not let him enjoy the comforts of his new
home while the surrounding alleys were filled with starved and
freezing people. 

So he had bent the rule, though only a little. They would be
judiciously separated: the homeless warm and safe in the warehouse,
and he behind locked doors in the loft, isolated from all the
temptations his guests might pose. 

Having bent the rule that far, however, he was now about to break it
altogether. 

The harsh, discordant sound of a security buzzer interrupted Chopin's
waltz. Nick came back across the kitchen to the cargo elevator door,
where a small surveillance screen overhead showed him the waiting
figure of Dr. Natalie Lambert. 

He tripped the intercom. "I'm glad you could make it," he said. 

She turned to look up at the camera, and her breath formed clouds in
the air when she spoke. "Yeah, well, I had to crawl most of the way
behind a snow plow and then mush my way across your parking lot/yard,
but I made it in the end." 

"Come on up." He pushed the lock release, evoking another loud buzz.
"I've turned on the heaters." 

"Thanks." 

He waited while the lift painstakingly ground its way to the upper
floor, then slid the door open for her. "Welcome to my fortress," he
said, and with a sweeping gesture, ushered her inside. 

She laughed, and quickly surveyed the loft's spartan interior. "That's
probably a good name for it. What are you keeping in here, gold from
Fort Knox?" 

"Let's just say that I like my privacy." 

"Which you've just invited me to invade. Should I be honored?" 

"Only by virtue of being the first." He extended a hand. "May I take
your coat?" 

She looked hesitant, as though she hadn't planned to stay that long,
but finally surrendered the garment to him. "You said you had
something to show me," she said. "I'll admit I was half hoping it
would be a glass of brandy and a roaring fire, but..." She trailed
off, quelled by his perplexed look. "Sorry. Bad joke. Sooooo, what was
it I did come to see?" 

"Just a little something I had installed during the remodeling. Come
on upstairs." 

He led her up to what had been the loft's spare bedroom, opened the
door, and switched on the light before allowing her to enter first.
Her reaction to finding that she'd walked into a new, well-equipped
laboratory was everything he'd hoped for. 

"Nick... I don't know what to say." She brushed a hand over two
microscopes, a test tube rack, a centrifuge, then indicated the room
full of instruments with an inclusive gesture. "This must have cost a
small fortune." 

"Well, I couldn't come up with any more excuses for turning up in your
morgue so often. Sooner or later, Detective... what do they call him,
Donut?... Schanke is going to catch sight of me and start an
interrogation." He'd debated long and hard, though, about installing
the lab in the spare bedroom, so close to his own. Somewhere
downstairs would have been safer, if much less convenient. But the
contractors and building permit inspectors had all argued for -- make
that insisted upon -- the upper floor. 

Natalie sank into one of the cushioned lab chairs. "Well, I could
certainly get comfortable doing research in here." 

"I hope you will. Anything you need -- chemicals, additional
instruments, anything -- just give me a list and I'll see it's
delivered." He sobered then, unsure how she would respond to his next
request. "And there's one other thing. The notes you've been keeping
the past three months will need to be brought here, and kept under
lock and key. I can't risk--" 

"I know." She stood, more serious now as well. "And I agree. This can
keep our business much more, well, private. We're making progress,
Nick. With all this, we should be able to start the test phase even
sooner than I'd planned." 

"You have a formula?" 

"No, not yet. But I will have. It's just a matter of finding the right
combination." 

"Like cracking a safe?" 

"A little like that, yeah." 

"And you think you can?" He paused long enough to take a breath, to
put a damper the rising excitement in his voice. "Find the right
combination, I mean?" 

"We'll find it. I've already identified three substances that have an
inhibitive effect on the pseudo-viral elements in your blood." 

This was news to Nick, and he seized on it like a drowning mortal
grasping a life line. "We can start the tests then, right away?" 

His eagerness seemed to put her off a bit. "As soon as I have a
formula to test, yes. Give it time, Nick." 

"Time..." He retreated to the doorway, nearer to the comforting
shadows outside the harshly lit lab. She'd been standing too close,
and the siren call of her heartbeat had triggered the nagging worry
that this might not be such a good idea after all. "I'm sorry," he
said. "I don't mean to push. It's just that..." He turned back to face
her. "It's been a long time since I had any hope of a cure. I've never
stopped looking, but..." 

"Neither will I. Have a little faith, Nick. Science has come a long
way in eight hundred years." 

"Dr. Lambert, I..." He corrected himself before the objection on her
lips could finish forming. "Natalie. We haven't discussed compensating
you for your time." 

She shook her head. "You're already funding all the research, all the
equipment. I don't need or want anything more. I do have a question
I'd like answered, though." 

"If I can." There was so much he couldn't -- wouldn't dare -- tell
her. A little knowledge was more than a dangerous thing. It could be
deadly. 

"Have there been others, like you, who tried to go back? Others who
wanted to be mortal again?" 

"None that I know of. I've always been... different. My sire would
have said 'defective.' I never quite managed to divorce my mortal
conscience, you see, like a good little vampire is supposed to do." 

And she would probably never know how much that so-called defect had
cost him over the years. When LaCroix had first learned of it, there
had been hell to pay. 

Most of his two-hundred-and-first year as a vampire had been spent
following the carnage of France and England's age-old war. In the
midst of the tumult, both countries had crowned new rulers, and a very
young woman who claimed to hear God's voice had defied both king and
church to don men's armor and lead troops into  battle. Her name was
Joan, and Nicholas had first glimpsed her as she rode a battle-weary
gelding back through Rouen's well-defended city gate. 

He couldn't have said why he followed her, into the city, all the way
to the church, where those of his kind seldom dared to venture. The
pain of so many crosses and the close proximity of her beating heart
had rapidly brought his beast to the fore.  The vampire had had every
intention of taking her for its own, until the simple purity of her
faith had shamed it, routing it as soundly as her armies had defeated
the English. 

By the time she had walked safely away, leaving her wooden cross at
the base of one much larger, Nicholas had returned to himself, and
gazed in awe at the tall, standing crucifix. To look upon it brought
pain, yet he could not look away. 

How did so young and innocent a woman come to possess such faith? Such
courage? How had she acquired such boldness that she came to look
Death in the face and showed it no surrender, no fear? He had never
before encountered such a mortal, and something about their meeting
had unquestionably changed him. 

Emboldened by her show of faith, he had stretched forth a hand to
touch the symbol of light she so revered -- and screamed in agony when
tongues of fire seared his fingers. 

He had fallen back against a wall, and was still cradling his burned
hand when a familiar voice echoed off the chapel's stone vaulting. "My
my my, how positively awe-inspiring that little scene proved to be."
LaCroix moved out of the shadows to glower at his wounded progeny.
"Shall we next anticipate the beatification of a new Saint Nicholas?" 

Nicholas said nothing. Angry blisters had formed on his hand, and the
burns were slow to heal. He had not yet fed this night. 

LaCroix had meanwhile seized upon the small cloth bundle Joan had left
at the foot of the crucifix. "And what is this? A gift? A token of the
lovely lady's esteem?" He hissed on sight of the bundle's contents,
but grasped the wooden cross nonetheless, thrust it into Nicholas'
hands, and forcefully held it there. "Is this what you wished to gain
from her, mon chevalier? Not her blood, but her blood-drenched faith?
Is that the terribly secret desire you've been hiding from me?" 

Nicholas gasped as the cross burned painfully into already-seared
flesh. A fury born of desperation turned his eyes first gold, then
crimson, and from somewhere he summoned the strength to lash out, to
send LaCroix and the cross both flying away from him. He stumbled out
a door, running into a copse of tall trees behind the cathedral. But
he did not run far. 

A rush of wind heralded LaCroix's arrival. His sire's iron grip
clamped Nicholas' shoulders, spun him, and pinned him against a heavy
tree trunk. 

"I will know what you have been hiding from me, Nicholas. And I will
know it now!" 

The attack came so swiftly that he had no chance to resist and no hope
of escaping. His throat was instantly pierced, and in a flash that was
both pain and ecstasy, knowing and being known, all of the guilt and
self-repudiation he had concealed for so long was laid bare, his
closely kept secrets all betrayed with the first stolen drop of his
blood. 

LaCroix's disappointment and mounting wrath flooded back to him
through their abruptly revitalized bond. Visions of death filled him:
dying mortals and vampires alike swam in an eternal sea of red, in
endless, fountaining rivulets of blood. There was nothing but blood,
blood, and more blood... 

Nicholas hadn't remembered losing consciousness, but he awoke to the
disorienting sensation of being carried in LaCroix's arms, through a
door, past the church, down a path between the moonlit stones of a
graveyard, and finally, into a ramshackle wooden building. He'd
thought it a stable, until he glimpsed carpentry tools, stacked
boards, and several rows of open, waiting coffins. 

No... 

Too weak even to get the word out, he was altogether powerless to
prevent being dropped, with bone-jarring force, into one of the open
boxes. 

"So, Nicholas still pines for his lost mortality." LaCroix loomed over
the coffin's crude edge, his eyes crimson. "And for all, I presume,
that it entails? Disease? Suffering? Death? This..." His hand struck
the box near Nicholas' head with a loud crack. "This is mortality,
Nicholas. A state from which I have delivered you. And this..." Joan's
cross, still partially wrapped in its white linen swathing, was
suddenly in LaCroix's hand. "Did you learn nothing from your lethal
encounter with that tiresome priest in Brabant? Shall I demonstrate
for you again just how soothing the martyred carpenter's sigil is to
us?" A tilt of the master's wrist, and the cross slipped free of its
swaddling to land squarely over Nicholas' heart. "Does it burn you,
even through your fine woolen raiment? Does its crushing weight upon
your chest paralyze you with fear?" 

It had done both. Nicholas struggled to speak, to plead with LaCroix
to remove it, but his mouth would form no words. He could make no
sound at all. 

"Well, then. If you so desire a mortal death..." LaCroix turned aside,
and hefted one of many broad planks that leaned against a nearby wall.
It had not occurred to Nicholas, until then, that the boards had been
cut to fit the coffins. "Perhaps I shall allow you a taste of one." 

The lid was slammed into place, plunging him into total darkness.
Then, over his silent scream, an unseen hammer had begun to drive the
first of many nails into his stifling, rough-hewn tomb. 

It had been the merest beginning of hell. 

"I'll put that list together tonight," Natalie's voice said, startling
him back into the twentieth century. Apparently puzzled by his blank
look, she added, "The supplies?" 

"Oh. Yes, please do. I'll see that it's all delivered. And once you're
set up, I'll arrange for an expense account you can use to order
whatever else you need." 

"Expense account?" She shook her head wonderingly. "As in, money is no
object?" 

He smiled at that. "None whatsoever." 

"Oh, a girl could get used to this." She headed back out the door and
down the stairs. "Lucky for you, laboratory supply companies don't
furnish new sofas or Caribbean cruises, much less the most important
chemical compound ever known to womankind -- chocolate!" 

"Actually..." He followed her across the loft's floor and retrieved
her coat for her. "I'm rather looking forward to your getting used to
it." 

She bundled herself in the heavy coat and raised its fake-fur-lined
hood. "G'night, Nick." 

He pulled the elevator door open, acknowledging her parting salutation
with a nod. "Good night, Natalie." 

Two excruciating weeks dragged on while the lab's chemical shelves
were stocked with a burgeoning supply of unpronounceable items,
Toronto's weather worsened, and more of Jeannie and Topper's
companions joined them in the warmer climes of Nick's empty warehouse.


He'd seen to the groundwork, meanwhile, for an updated version of his
former life as a Chicago cop. More detailed references -- and some
"memories" -- would take awhile longer to establish. But he was
working on that. 

On weekdays, Natalie came and went as time permitted, though she'd
devoted both weekends to devising a preliminary formula for something
she called a "suppressor." He'd been so eager to begin the tests that
when she had finally injected him with the first experimental serum,
he'd been sorely disappointed to have no apparent reaction to it at
all. 

"I don't feel any different," he complained while she stared at yet
another blood sample under one of the microscopes. 

"It's only the first dose of the first test," she answered without
looking up. "It's not likely you would feel anything yet." 

"Well, what exactly is this suppressor intended to suppress?" 

"The addictive effects of those pseudo-viral blood elements. It's
probably what keeps you dependent on the blood and unable to ingest
real food." She sat up, and swiveled on the lab stool to face him.
"You said that starvation isn't one of the few ways a vampire can
die." 

"It isn't." 

"Then what happens if you're blood-deprived for an extended period? I
mean, say, several days, a month, a year?" 

Nick couldn't quite banish the horror from his voice when he answered.
"Agony," he replied. "Madness. Finally, a state of living hell known
as true undeath." He shuddered, forcing back an unwelcome memory, and
was surprised, in the next moment, to find a concerned Natalie
standing close beside him. 

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't know it was quite so personal a subject."


"Yeah." He moved away, not to refuse her solace, but because the sound
of blood in her veins had begun to tease the beast, triggering the
hunger. "So, when do we try the next test, the next formula?" 

"Tomorrow. I'll stop by after my shift. Meanwhile, you can call me if
your cravings seem to diminish at all, even a little. It could mean
we're on the right track." 

He smiled. "You'll be the first to know." 

But he had felt no difference after the next shot, or the next, or the
next. The fifth injection gave him his first case of nausea in eight-
hundred years, and the sixth, his first headache. None had so much as
dimmed the hunger. The thirteenth shot, however, had rendered a rather
unusual effect. 

"It made you what?" Over the phone, Natalie sounded distracted, as
though several other things might be demanding her attention at once.
He could hear voices. 

"Dizzy," he repeated. "And nauseated, worse than the last time. To put
it delicately, I didn't exactly manage to hold down dinner." 

"Really?" She seemed more excited by that than sympathetic. "Well,
that could be a good sign. If your system is rejecting the bl--" She
stopped herself before the word came out. "It could mean that trial
thirteen is suppressing the addiction factor." 

"Yeah, well, not exactly. Nothing stays down, but I'm still hungry." 

"Oh." A lengthy silence then, with several voices chattering in the
background. "Listen, hold that thought," she finally said. "I'll be
there in an hour." 

He had no idea what that cryptic statement might mean -- until she
stepped out of his elevator toting a large red-and-white striped
pasteboard bucket. 

"Ohhhhh, no. Not--" 

"Don't knock it till you've tried it! This..." She plopped the thing
down on his kitchen table. "...is the pinnacle of mortal fast food." 

Nick wrinkled his nose at the odeur de deep-fried avian emanating from
the container. "Pinnacle?" He sniffed. "Smells more like pin feathers
to me." 

"Well, this test, fried chicken. Next test, filet mignon. C'mere." 

While she pried open the lid, he approached the table with undisguised
trepidation. "I don't think..." 

"Ah-ah. My old chem prof always said, 'Never say you don't think, or
people will think you don't.' Here." From somewhere, she produced a
paper napkin, reached with it into the bucket and extracted a crispy-
covered leg. "One bite. I promise it won't kill you." She pressed the
severed limb into his hand with a final, succinct demand. "Try it!" 

The condemned did not eat a hearty meal. He managed a very tiny bite,
then fought with a centuries-old gag reflex to successfully force it
down. Miraculously enough, it stayed there -- for the time being,
anyway. 

Natalie was grinning as though he'd just consumed a twelve-course
dinner. "There, y'see? That wasn't so bad." 

"Easy for you to say. Uh... " Gingerly, he handed the chicken leg back
to her. "Is there some point to this exercise, or are we torturing my
already-queasy stomach just to provide you with a good laugh?" 

"Both. We're going to try a second dose of number thirteen, run some
more blood screens, and then see if your tolerance for real food
improves." She pulled out two more pieces of chicken, then reclosed
the bucket and handed it to Nick. "The rest is for Jeannie and Topper.
Are they still in the warehouse?" 

He nodded. "I'll take it down to them." 

"I'm glad you help them out, Nick. It's a very _human_ thing to do." 

"Well, maybe I just know what it's like to be outcast -- and hungry." 

She looked as though she might ask him to elaborate, but she gathered
her dinner in another napkin and headed for the stairs instead. "See
you in the lab in a minute?" 

"Yeah. In a minute." 

He delivered the chicken to his grateful warehouse tenants, and was on
his way back across the loft's kitchen when a new bout of dizziness
made the entire room tilt crazily to one side. He grabbed the back of
a chair and held on until the worst had subsided, but by then another
symptom had begun to assault him. 

Hunger. 

He moved on unsteady feet to the refrigerator, snatched out one of the
green glass bottles, popped the cork -- and gagged at the odor rising
from the container. He tried again, this time tipping the bottle
abruptly and forcing some of the chilled blood into his mouth. 

He barely made it to the sink in time to spit all of it out again. The
gagging persisted several seconds longer. And the hunger... 

The hunger never left at all. 

It had been the worst of his confinement by far, the hunger: more
maddening than the crushing, burning weight of Joan's cross on his
chest, or the suffocating closeness of his wooden prison walls. 

He had waited, in the beginning, for LaCroix's fury to abate, for
father to free penitent son so that they might go on as before. But
his freedom had not been forthcoming. Instead, after a silence of so
many hours that he thought perhaps LaCroix had simply abandoned him
here for the carpenters to find in the morning, he heard the rattle of
an approaching horse and wagon, then footsteps entering the shed.
There was no heartbeat, but the long-familiar signature he did sense
was different somehow -- masked, as though a wall had been erected to
surround it. 

While the box that confined him was lifted, carried, and placed upon
the wagon bed, he tried desperately to breach that wall, to plead with
his sire for mercy, forgiveness, another chance. Anything. He would do
anything. 

The wall remained resolute. 

A hideous fear had seized him then, that LaCroix's intent might be to
inter him alive in the church yard and leave him there, trapped in a
hell with no escape, conscious and aware but unable to move or cry
out. Unable to feed. 

But the wagon hadn't stopped again for many hours. When it did, his
box had been carried at a steep angle into some cold and quiet place
where, after the echoing thud of a closing door, nothing but endless,
deafening silence had remained. 

He'd felt the distant sun rise and fall four times while the hunger
raged and tore at him, drenching him in visions of freely flowing
blood, of mortal women with their throats bared to him, luring,
enticing -- and always just out of reach. 

On the fifth night, LaCroix's heavily shielded signature had returned,
along with another that was not masked at all. 

Janette! Help me! 

His mental cry sent the full force of his misery searing through their
blood connection. He felt her recoil from the sheer horror of it --
and he heard her scream. 

The door opened. He felt her nearness, heard her small feet descending
stone stairs. But her footsteps halted long before reaching him. She
was not alone. 

LaCroix's voice, deep and threatening, said, "You will not interfere."


"Please, LaCroix." Her entreaties were broken by choking sobs. "Did
you think I would not find him, would not feel the agony he suffers?
Please, I cannot bear it any longer! Do not do this. Let him out.
Please, let him out!" 

She received a short and merciless reply. 

"No." 

Her footsteps had begun anew and again had been arrested. A brief
scrabbling sound and then, her sharp cry. Sensations of hurt and
betrayal fed back to him through their connection. Had LaCroix struck
her? Never once in all their years together had he ever known their
master to lay a hand on Janette in anger. 

"Do not do this!" she sobbed again, and he could hear her being
dragged, by force, back up the stairs. "Please!!!" 

Janette! 

The heavy door slammed shut, cutting off her pleas, and leaving
Nicholas alone once again with the hunger. 

He lost track of the sun's tedious march after that. The hunger clawed
until it seemed to have torn him asunder. His soundless screams
reached no one, and offered him no hope at all of salvation. 

The madness overwhelmed him, and drowned him in its blood-soaked
visions. They made the tortures of his private hell complete. Not even
Tantalus had known the unbearable pain of a thirst so all-consuming,
so hideously ravenous as this. It clamored to be satisfied until all
else became nothing. 

There was only the hunger. 

"Nick? You ready?" 

He looked up to see Natalie on the second floor landing, a prepped
hypodermic in one hand. 

"Ready," he said, and ignoring an instinct that was shouting at him to
avoid this, he climbed the stairs and followed her into the lab. The
diverse mix of chemicals now stored there had given the room an acid
and metallic odor. It almost overpowered the scent of warm human blood
surging in Natalie Lambert's veins. 

Almost. 

He acquiesced to the injection, in part because it brought her closer,
but before she'd withdrawn the needle, the hunger had turned his eyes
a smoldering amber. He seized her arm when she had finished, and did
not let go. 

"What--?" She saw his eyes then, started, and tried to pull away.
"What's wrong? What are you...? Nick, don't. Let go of me!" 

He didn't, and the voice with which he answered was no longer even
remotely human. "I think not, Doctor Lambert." 

She started to fight him in earnest then, but with one hand, he pushed
her against a storage cabinet and pinned her there while his free hand
grasped her by the jaw, forcing her head to one side, exposing the
soft skin, the enticingly pulsing artery. 

She screamed his name; he scarcely heard. The end of his hunger was
close now. So close. 

His fangs pierced the soft flesh of her throat, and a warm fountain of
life-giving fluid began its familiar, exhilarating rush over his
tongue. Nick steadied the still-struggling prey with another firm
push, swallowed the first delectable mouthful of her blood -- and was
immediately, violently ill. 

With an outraged roar, vampire cast victim aside and flew blindly at
the nearest access to the night. Glass shattered. Metal snapped. The
window surrendered and released him to the cold night sky, but
flagging strength and a new wave of gripping nausea forced him to
curtail his intended flight. He dropped onto the loft's graveled roof,
and collapsed there into a retching heap of panting misery. 

What had he done? What in God's name had he just done? The hunger, the
vampire, had overwhelmed him, rampaged over all those years of
carefully honed self control, and... 

Natalie. 

He tried to get up, but his legs would not support him. Gravel dug
sharp needle points into his hands and knees. It hurt. 

He'd taken Natalie. Crazed by the hunger, the vampire had taken her
for its own, fed on her blood... 

Nick rolled over, barely managing to sit up against a heating conduit
before something took a renewed death's grip on his stomach. The
seizures did not relent, but through a red-tinged haze, he saw a
vision of Natalie moving toward him across the rooftop, kneeling
beside him, pressing a glass beaker of something milky white into his
hand and holding it there. 

"Drink it," she said. "Your system is rejecting blood. If you can keep
this down, it should help with the nausea." 

The smell of it alone was enough to induce more gagging, but she
persisted, guiding the beaker to his mouth and forcing a mouthful of
the cold, chalky liquid down him. He rebelled against swallowing any
more, and struck the thing away before it could assault his senses
further. 

The Natalie vision remained, waiting, watching him. There were wounds
on her throat. Something yellowish and smelling of disinfectant had
been hastily swabbed over the marks, but they remained, as did the
blood. He reached out, expecting the illusion of her to dissolve at
any moment. Instead, his trembling fingers touched a strand of hair, a
soft cheek. She was real. 

A hand -- warm, human, alive -- took hold of his fingers and held them
through the onslaught of another wave of pain-wracked seizures. When
he could open his eyes again, the very solid "illusion" was still
there, still holding firmly onto his hand. 

"It's all right," she was saying through the roar of some phantom wind
in his ears. "It's only the formula, NIck, don't you see? It means
that something in it, some part of it, is working." 

He could see only that wound at her throat, and the two tiny rivulets
of blood still seeping from it. "Now you know," he gasped, "the sort
of beast you're dealing with, Doctor. One so consumed with its hunger
that it would kill you, without pause, without thought." 

Her grasp on his hand tightened. "But it didn't. You didn't! It means
we're on the right path, Nick. Could you have stopped the vampire from
killing me if something -- the serum -- hadn't intervened?" 

The serum... But for that, his beast might never have attacked her in
the first place. 

He shook his head. "A mistake," he murmured. "I should never have
involved you." 

"Hey, I involved me, remember? I knew the risks when I signed on. And
don't you dare give up on me this easily, Nick Knight, not when we're
finally getting some results. Don't you dare!" 

Nick couldn't believe what he was hearing. After tonight, after what
had just happened downstairs, she wanted to go on? 

"I nearly killed you." 

"You didn't," she said again. "You wouldn't have." 

Nick shook his head and abruptly pulled his hand free of hers. "Don't
be so sure." It was a warming he somehow had to make her understand.
He had to. 

"I'm not giving up, Nick. I'm not letting you give up, either." 

"How?" he marveled. "How can you look on the creature, the beast that
I am, and feel anything but revulsion?" 

"What I feel," she insisted, "is optimistic. Trust me, revulsion
hasn't bothered me since my first week of med school. Now, in case you
hadn't noticed, you just spent an entire day and night unable to
ingest blood. You did, however, keep down one bite of very mortal fast
food, and one swallow of an anti-emetic protein compound. Which seems
to have arrested the seizures." She put the back of one hand to his
forehead, as though he might miraculously have developed a mortal
fever. "With any luck, all of that's the beginning of a possible
cure." 

She got up then, her white hospital shoes making soft scraping sounds
on the gravel. "The sun's about to come up," she said. "Assuming
that's one test we're not quite ready for, I'd suggest we go inside.
I'll need to run several more blood panels, and we'll have to call
about getting the lab window repaired ASAP." She glanced east at the
very faint glow of an approaching sunrise, then stretched a hand down
toward him. "You coming?" 

He wanted to tell her that there was a very fine line indeed between
dedication and insanity; that to go on with this was utter madness.
But the growing light was already making his skin tingle, and
remaining here to debate the matter was no longer an option. Though
his legs would support him now, and he didn't need help to get up, he
accepted the hand she offered. He kept hold of it after gaining his
feet, coming so close to her that... 

He hadn't meant to kiss her. It had only been a short embrace, a brief
brush of lips, and he'd intended to retreat then into the loft's
calming darkness. But then she had returned both embrace and kiss with
an ardor that had -- pleasantly -- surprised him. 

It broke all of his long-standing rules against close contact with
mortals at once, that kiss. 

For some reason he could not, just then, have explained, Nick no
longer cared.
  

--End--