HOUSE CALL 3 (INTERLUDE)

by Apache

Content:
Het
Nick/Natalie; Vachon
No Sexual Situations
No Violence

Natalie Lambert, MD, was royally pissed, and incredibly depressed. It was 2 am or so, almost end-of-shift Valentine's Day 1996, and there had not been the smallest peep from Nick.  Not a word.

//Be fair, Nat,// she told herself.  //Last year he let himself tell you and you almost wound up on LaCroix's menu...//  And this year was so much worse.  Nick didn't really have to tell her, it showed up in his blood and tissue samples:  he was drinking human blood these days.  Not just cow's blood, which she'd been fighting against for four years now, but human blood.  He had to be getting it from LaCroix.... he was losing his battle against the vampire nature.

She was losing him.  //Face it, Nat,// she told herself, then had a stirring of anger. //I don't want to face a damn thing!  When did I turn into some kind of limp little girl who says, oh well I tried.  What crap!  Nick WANTS to be human, he's wanted it for a hundred years... he needs help.  He needs a little human strength.//

Half an hour later, she went through the doors of The Raven.

~ ~ ~

It was late, but not for that crowd.  Natalie had gotten to be pretty well able to sort vampires and humans out by sight, and it looked like fifty-fifty.  //Idiots,// she thought at the mortals. // You have no idea what you're playing with here.// But of course, in some ways the Raven was the safest place in town for them.  Yet if you looked, you could see the desire in the vampires' eyes, and you knew what they were fantasizing was a one night stand from which the mortal would never return.

Ick.  Natalie shook off the thought and scanned the crowd for the golden beacon of Nick's hair.  No sign of him.  Damn, this had been her best guess for where he'd go.  //Of course,// she chided herself, //if you'd been able to muster the guts to phone him...//  But courage only went so far.  In fact, it kind of slammed up against a wall of pride.... Natalie Lambert decided what she needed was a drink.

"Let me get you out of here," said a voice she knew.

Vachon, the long-haired one, was right next to her, having appeared out of nowhere.  The one who'd given her a whole pint of his bizarre blood, a third precious sample of vampire DNA to experiment on.  The one who was hanging around Nick's partner, complicating everyone's life.

"No thanks," she said stiffly.

"This is not a safe place for you," he said mildly.

She glared at him.  Did he think she didn't know?  Did he think after four years of negotiating the risks of being close to Nick she had somehow walked blindly into a bar owned by LaCroix?

Vachon blinked.  That was what he'd thought, but her savage glare disabused him of this notion.  He was looking at something fairly familiar, actually:  a woman scorned, except not quite.  A woman troubled, a woman desirous....  what the hell was Knight doing with this woman anyway?  He was only half Knight's age, and he knew better than to piss off a mortal woman.

//Love 'em and leave 'em, it's a simple formula,// he thought.  //Or else love 'em and drain 'em.  Or bring them across.  But don't leave them walking around in a stew.  Make them happy or make them dead, but not this...  what an idiot Knight must be about women.//   He couldn't know he and Natalie Lambert were agreed on that one point.

"Leave me alone," Natalie snapped.

This was one request Vachon had centuries of practice in granting.  She wanted to enjoy her problems in the company of a nest of vampires?...

"Fine," he said, and turned away. //You want it, you got it.// Then he remembered the last thing Natalie Lambert had said to him, down in the dark of Screed's place:  "it's not that simple for any of us."  //OK, she's right,// he thought, an image of Tracy's shining golden hair flitting through his mind.  //Not that easy....// He turned back.

"No, it's not fine," he said. "C'mon." He grabbed Natalie's elbow, forcibly steering her back onto the street.

"Let GO of me," Natalie said, trying to wrench her arm away from him.  He let go once they were outside.  "Leave me alone!"

Vachon looked at her and blinked a couple times before deciding to go ahead and say what he was really thinking.  "Someone else already left you alone."

Natalie stared at him in disbelief.  //What is this, vampire psychoanalysis? Thanks for nothing.//

"Let me take you home, Doctor," Vachon said.  His voice was soft, kind, but now in an impersonal way that his use of her title underlined.

Natalie was still glaring at him.  What right...?  But the vampire was perfectly correct, this was all about loneliness and anger, and the self-destructive things people do when they're unhappy, just trying to hurt someone else by getting hurt themselves.  //Wait a minute,//  she thought, looking at Vachon a little more closely.  //Nick doesn't understand that stuff, but this one does?//   So she gave him a civil answer, saying, "My car's right here, so no thanks."

"Your car," he said-- pointlessly, she thought.  A flicker of intention crossed his face.

"What," she started, but the vampire had pounced.  She found her shoulders seized in a hold as tight as anything Nick had ever used, her legs swept out from under her.  Natalie felt her body suffusing with a terrified certainty that the strange vampire was going to kill her-- how many times had she seen Nick fighting his need, only inches away from her--

"no!" came out of her throat in a small voice and then a completely unfamiliar series of sensations happened...

Cold wind coming down on her, almost a weightlessness, the world falling away-- in the next second, her mind added the sensations together-- Vachon was flying, was holding her so tightly against falling even if she struggled, and the sky was coming closer--

"Look, beautiful Natalie," Vachon said, and she turned her head outward, saw the lights of the city at night, the CN Tower glowing above them all, the dark pool of the Lake, all of it falling away as he went up and up and up, and the blistering cold of the wind as he climbed--

And then he went down again, just as fast, the lights rushing at them, the vampire suddenly paying careful attention, bringing them to the ground in the darkest part of an alley.

//He never even gave you that,// Vachon thought, looking at Natalie Lambert in the darkness.  He had to fight off a reaction to the sight of her skin flushing with blood because of the cold, but he wasn't that hungry, was close to the Raven, found it fairly easy to let her be...  She wasn't talking to him.  Angry again?  How odd to infuriate her by calling her 'beautiful Natalie.' //Women.  Mortal women.// Vachon shook his head.

"C'mon," he said, and walked her out of the alley.

"I'm not going to say thank you."  Natalie Lambert's voice was tense, nearly hostile.

"Didn't ask you to," the vampire said.  But the voice was not sarcastic, instead was thoughtful, even kind.  Vachon studied her. "You'll go home?  Promise?"  Still a soft, caring voice.  //Does he use that voice on Tracy Vetter?// Natalie thought.  //No wonder she cried over him.//

"Promise," she said grudgingly. This was kind of nice, really.  She gave him a smile, and he returned it, nodding.

"I'll walk you to your car," he said, and they turned up the street.

Facing the same direction, they both saw the nickel-mint green of Nick's Caddy coming around the corner at the same moment.  Vampire‑quick, Vachon threw an arm across Natalie Lambert's shoulders and pulled her close.  She had no time to react, to pull away, as Nick's car drew up to the curb and he got out.

"Hi Knight," said Vachon, with a big insouciant grin.

//I'll be damned,// Natalie thought, and ducked her head down to hide her quick, involuntary laugh behind her hair.  When she turned to face Nick, she managed to have a relatively straight face.

"Hi, Nick," she said brightly, and pulled loose from Vachon, who let her go easily.  "Where ya been?"

Nick Knight was looking at something he had to believe but definitely didn't understand.  He looked at Natalie was such confusion in his exquisite, expressive blue eyes that her heart jumped into her mouth.  //You idiot,// she thought, //how you could possibly think for a second that this scruffy creep would interest me?  Why don't you know me better than that?//  She smiled.  //On the other hand...//

"Can you give me a ride home? I was going to catch one with..." //I can come back for the car tomorrow...//

"Of course," said Nick.  His eyes were eloquent, and Natalie's heart was pounding with how much she cared for him, for all his torments, for all his effort... she'd take him home, make sure he came in, talk to him...  they might even have all day.  Maybe she'd even tell him the truth about how she ran into Vachon... but not right this minute, eh, Nat?

Nat reached down and opened the Caddy door, turning back to Vachon.  "Thanks for the offer..."  //oh damn, I blanked on the name...//

"Vachon," the vampire said softly.

"Javier," she said definitely.  This startled everyone, including Natalie-- but her memory, in dire need, had rescued this name from Nick's first telling of the story, back in his loft when she'd held the jewel-laden Black Buddha in her hands and listened to Nick tell the tale of a vampire who'd survived a plane crash only to find himself hounded by the brother who'd been hunting him for nearly five hundred years.

Vachon reached out and held the door as she got into Nick's car.  Settling in, Natalie looked back and exchanged a glance with Vachon that said "thanks" and "I might like you after all" and something more.  And Vachon gave her that lady-killing grin that chilled her blood and said, "see ya around, Natalie."  Then he swung the door closed and headed back toward the Raven, while Natalie turned to Nick, smiling suddenly because there on the front seat of the Caddy were a dozen red roses.

~ Go to House Call 4 (iii) ~

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